Microsoft Gets Transparent on Wikipedia

Or at least one employee does.  Peter Torr, a program manager at Microsoft, admits to editing Wikipedia articles on HD-DVD in order to "[keep] the pages interesting, up-to-date, and accurate".  He also comes clean about doing a bit of anonymous editing in the past and states he created a Wikipedia account so noone can "stumble" on his edits and accuse Microsoft of astroturfing or such.  Which of course people will.  I personally applaud Peter for being upfront with his editing, it will be up to the users of Wikipedia to decide if his comments are biased or not.  I would encourage Microsoft to make a standard corporate Wikipedia account that their employees should use if they want to edit Wikipedia.  Or establish a policy that they must create a MSFT* user or some-such.  Though most companies are becoming transparent wither they want to or not, thanks to WikiScanner.   Regardless,  another sign that Microsoft is more open then people give them credit for.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thanks Michael. My original anonymous edits weren't meant to be "secret"; I just never thought I'd do more than a couple of small changes so couldn't be bothered creating an account... until now.

Anonymous said...

Ooops, that last comment was from me :)

Michael said...

Oh the irony ;)