I’m sure this is something that happens quite frequently with lesser-known companies and individuals, and of course there HAS to be all sorts of spam-related pages and updates done. We could even consider the updates that some turkeys would put up. Yet, none of them would be in the same category as what this article suggests.

Apparently, Microsoft offered to pay a blogger to correct errors in some of the articles listed in Wikipedia. Although there are probably valid arguments or reasons that can be put forward as to why the articles may need some adjustment, it seems a little underhanded and sinister to have taken this route to have the changes made. A company like Microsoft could have simply posted their complaints on their own blog, leveraged their influence, and hoped for the masses to come forward on their own to make the changes. The only thing I can compare this to would be the Sony incident with false reviews being provided for their movies.

It’s difficult to not have some sympathy for Microsoft over the articles, as I can only imagine how users may try and paint the software giant and work against their product, however, something like Wikipedia has to remain clean and untouchable, a la Elliot Ness, for it to be the source of public information it should be.

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