Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales has had to spell out the site's community media guidelines again after Microsoft apparently paid a blogger to work on various technical entries. Wikipedia is currently the 13th most popular UK website according to comScore, so Wales faces an uphill battle to keep the site clear of PR and corporate clutter.
According to the Australian, Microsoft has confirmed that it commissioned Topologi CTO Rick Jelliffe to correct what it said were inaccuracies in entries.
Writing on O'Reilly's XML blog last week, Jelliffe said he rarely uses Microsoft products and was surprised too be approached by them. But he reckoned the firm is frustrated by what it thinks are partial entries written by open source advocates, and wanted "independent" Jelliffe to edit for a couple of days.
"I think I'll accept it: FUD enrages me and MS certainly are not hiring me to add any pro-MS FUD, just to correct any errors I see. If anyone sees any examples of incorrect statements on Wikipedia or other similar forums in the next few weeks, please let me know: whether anti-OOXML or anti-ODF. In fact, I already had added some material to Wikipedia several months ago, so it is not something new, so I'll spend a couple of days mythbusting and adding more information."
He gave various examples of how he would tweak details in entries about various technical definitions including OOXML. In a later post he shuffled point-by-point through Wikipedia's conflict of interest guidelines for professional writers and concluded that as he would be paid to correct entries on technical formats, and not Microsoft products, there is no conflict of interest.
Several of the 37 (to date) comments on that post were very critical of Jelliffe. One anonymous person claimed to be one of the authors of the guidelines but said that Jelliffe had to accept that his own opinion is not the opinion that counts on any possible conflict of interest.
"Meaning that you don't fight over what goes in the articles but are content to offer suggestions on the talk page (or in the articles if no one protests) than we don't have a problem. Anyone can add an edit. Anyone can delete an edit. People who fight about it get banned. People who play well with others are encouraged to help even more."
Wales himself said he was disappointed at Microsoft and said the proper course would be for them to commission independent papers on the subject and link to those from discussions on Wikipedia.
Stephen Colbert trashes Wikipedia
Comedian Stephen Colbert has apparently been vandalising Wikipedia, although his edit of the "reality" entry lasted less than a minute if you go by the edit history. That swift edit was certainly a credit to Wikipedia's voluntary editors, but they did have a reasonable tip-off in the form of Colbert presenting his Wikipedia hack on national US TV.
Blog PI, for one, was not impressed:
"The Wikipedia onslaught may be harmless insofar as pages are immediately fixable and reliably fixed, but that doesn't mean it isn't destructive. Not to mention, Colbert's pranks reinforce overwrought fears about the website's supposed vulnerability.
But think of Wikipedia like the internet itself. The structure of the network and the community of editors is redundant by its nature. If one thing goes wrong and even if many things go wrong, the corrections are usually prompt. Yes, they're less reliable along outlying nodes and even some overtrafficked ones. Neither claimed to be without flaws, yet both will withstand virtually any attack (save electromagnetic pulse)."
Flickr's Yahoo messiness
There is a disturbance in the force.
Webbites don't like being forced to do things. They dislike it more when forced to do things by big companies. As far as Flickr goes, it seemed inevitable that one Yahoo bought the site, it would attempt to Yahoo-ise its members somehow. So yep, from 15 March you'll need to have a Yahoo log-in to sign into Flickr.
Old school Flickr members wore their Flickr-only logins with pride. New schoolers had to sign up to the Yahoo empire.
Flickr staffer Stewart Butterfield said there is no secret agenda, just that having multiple log ins systems was basically a waste of money that could be spent improving the site.
That wasn't much consolation for Flickr-ers that liked "feeling special". And Flickr has also snuck in a few limitations, such as a maximum of 75 tags per photo and a cap on 3000 contacts.
But it's the loss of the kool old skool factor causing the distress. Most people will put up with it, and Yahoo will get a new wave of sign ups, even if some of them are reluctant. The hardcore old schoolers will migrate somewhere else - at great personal effort and resulting in a grand "nil PR points" for Flickr, which will lose some of its most dedicated and innovative users.
But that's the way of the web. New photo sharing site, anyone?
PR firm Taylor Herring goes digital
Taylor Herring, the PR firm behind the Jimmy Carr Second Life gig, launch a new media division this week called force 10. Matt Park will be online PR manager and the division will launch an interactive press portal later this month.
RDF goes digital too
TV production company RDF also announced a new digital division today that will focus on producing content for the web. IWC Media founder Zad Rogers, the guy behind Location Location Location, will be creative director of the new portal. IWC was acquired by RDF in December 2005. In the release RDF CEO David Frank said though in its infancy, the web has huge potential for broadcasters to create bespoke content as well as generating secondary income from existing content. From C21.
