Topologi's Rick Jelliffe will offer Redmond's spin on public articles pertaining to the ODF/OOXML standard.
blogger on a popular technology Web site says Microsoft has offered to pay him to post information on the online encyclopedia Wikipedia.com to "correct" what Microsoft claims is erroneous information about a key software standard.
On his blog on Oreillynet.com, blogger Rick Jelliffe on Monday posted an entry titled: "An Interesting Offer: Get Paid To Contribute To Wikipedia." In the blog, Jelliffe writes: "I was a little surprised to receive e-mail a couple of days ago from Microsoft saying they wanted to contract someone independent but friendly (me) for a couple of days to provide more balance on Wikipedia concerning ODF/OOXML."
OOXML is a Microsoft-sponsored variation of the Open Document Format electronic publishing standard that has drawn criticism from some tech standards advocates.
In his blog, Jelliffe, who is chief technology officer at XML software developer Topologi Pty., said Microsoft needed its own blogger-for-hire because "they are frustrated at the amount of spin from some ODF stakeholders on Wikipedia and blogs." Jelliffe said he'll likely accept the offer. "FUD [fear, uncertainty, and doubt] enrages me and MS certainly are not hiring me to add any pro-MS FUD, just to correct any errors I see," wrote Jelliffe.
Jelliffe didn't disclose the financial details of Microsoft's offer.
Wikipedia officials say they are less than impressed with Microsoft's pay-for-play campaign. "At a minimum, it could be viewed as unethical," says Wikipedia general counsel Brad Patrick. "This is a hot issue, and Microsoft wanting to soften the edges on an entry raises concerns about the perceived independence of both Wikipedia and Microsoft," Patrick says.
Patrick said he believed that Wikipedia officials haven't yet contacted Microsoft officials about the matter.
A spokesman for Microsoft says Wikipedia forced the company's hand by refusing to correct information Microsoft says is inaccurate.
"For instance, we tried to flag a name change," says Microsoft's spokesman. But editors at the online encyclopedia refused to update the entry "because they said there was no consensus on the new name" for the Microsoft Open XML format, which the company has ceded to international standards group ECMA. "At that point, we realized we needed to enlist some help," says the spokesman.
The spokesman insists the whole thing is above board because Jelliffe disclosed Microsoft's offer of payment. "There was no effort to hide anything," says Microsoft's spokesman.
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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.