Posted by dcparris on Jan 23, 2007 10:06 AM EDT
LXer - Linux News; By D.C. Parris (Charlotte, USA) Mail this story
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Microsoft is paying Rick Jelliffe to "correct errors" in Wikipedia's entry for OOXML Rick Jelliffe announced on his blog that he has been offered the opportunity to edit the Wikipedia entry for OOXML, namely to correct errors in statements that reflect negatively on OOXML. Even among those who seem to respect his transparency, there is nevertheless concern that corporate-sponsored entries in Wikipedia corrupt the process. His blog post sparked something of a debate over the nature of his project and the differences in the two standards.
Some commentators noted that Jelliffe's transparency in disclosing his Microsoft sponsorship means he can be trusted. As others have pointed out, his Microsoft sponsorship means he can be trusted to represent Microsoft's interests, rather than act as an un-interested party in editing the Wikipedia entry. While Jelliffe criticized the OpenDocument format's ability in terms of archiving old MS Office documents, he never explains why Microsoft never took the opportunity to contribute to ODF to resolve such issues. So, while claiming to counteract FUD, he engages in it in his announcement.
ODF proponents are quickly responding to Jelliffe's criticism of what he sees as ODF FUD by posting links to information to support their claims. The GrokDoc site, which is geared toward usability issues, has a page dedicated to OOXML objections. Jean Hollis Weber posted in her blog that "The office documents standards war (between Microsoft and just about everyone else) is well into a new phase". She also pointed to Groklaw's page raising concerns about OOXML. Pamela Jones, whose postings on legal issues have been highly accurate, has addressed some of the technical and practical issues involving OOXML in depth.
Thus, the document standards war is being fought, not only in the blogs and in the editorial sections of news sites, it is being fought in the reference sites as well. The issue is certainly food for thought. Aside from questions about the impact of this war of words on a reference website, it raises questions about Microsoft's need to pay for editing in a volunteer-dominated website. It also demonstrates Microsoft's commitment to fight OpenDocument, rather than collaborate to make it an even better standard than it already is.
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Software giant Microsoft has attempted to correct a Wikipedia article concerning the Microsoft Office Open XML format.

Wikipedia strongly discourages contributors involved with the subject of an article from editing the article, when a conflict of interest is likely. Instead, such contributors are advised to comment or suggest changes to the articles for the broader community of editors to review and implement, if found acceptable. Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales and  administrators have on occasion blocked users thought to have violated these guidelines from editing Wikipedia.

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Doug Mahugh from Microsoft contacted Rick Jelliffe, who is the top technical officer for Sydney computing company Topologi - and offered to pay him for the time it would take to modify the article.

“Wikipedia has an entry on Open XML that has a lot of slanted language, and we'd like for them to make it more objective but we feel that it would be best if a non-Microsoft person were the source of any corrections,” reads the email Microsoft employee Mahugh wrote to Jelliffe.

One of Wikipedia's core policies is that articles must be written from a "neutral point of view" or NPOV.

“Would you have any interest or availability to do some of this kind of work? Your reputation as a leading voice in the XML community would carry a lot of credibility, so your name came up in a discussion of the Wikipedia situation today."

The e-mail also stated that Microsoft would not stop Jelliffe from disclosing the deal and rather encouraged him to post it on his blog at oreillynet.com. It also reassured Jelliffe that Microsoft did not have to approve any changes he made to the article.

"We were very disappointed to hear that Microsoft was taking that approach," Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales said. Wales stated that the proper thing for Microsoft was to write a "white paper" concerning the article, post it on an outside website and then link it to the discussion page of the Wikipedia articles' discussion forums. "It seems like a much better, transparent, straightforward way," Wales said.

Microsoft spokeswoman Catherine Brooker said she believed the articles were heavily written by people at IBM, which is a supporter of the rival ISO-approved OpenDocument standard used by two leading Open Source office suites rather than the controversial Microsoft Office Open XML format.