"So I was a little surprised to receive email 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. I am hardly the poster boy of Microsoft partisanship! Apparently they are frustrated at the amount of spin from some ODF stakeholders on Wikipedia and blogs. 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." So basically, it seems as if Microsoft is trying to 'hire' people to edit Wikipedia.
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Member since:2006-02-15
I disagree. An encyclopedia is supposed to contain fact, not fiction. Fact is objective. It doesn't take sides.
You should discuss the impossibility of being totally objective with Cloudy... ;-)
You called? 
It's impossible to be reasonably objective in most instances. Total objectivity is only accomplished through carefully controlled scientific experiment.
Member since:2005-07-02
It's impossible to be reasonably objective in most instances. Total objectivity is only accomplished through carefully controlled scientific experiment.
I actually agree, and in fact even a controlled scientific experiment is not totally free from bias. I recall this was one of the early questions raised by Quantum theory (though I could be wrong).
I'll add, however, that just because the Utopia is unattainable, that doesn't mean we should stop striving to reach it.
Member since:
2005-07-02
Wikipedia is supposed to be an encyclopedia; however, unlike an actual encyclopedia, there isn't a whole lot of "fact-checking" by objective sources. Anyone can contribute. And, in this case, "anyone" includes people with partisan agendas who are using Wikipedia as an advertising platform to promote their favorite file format and tear down competing formats.
And yet, when a study was done to compare Wikipedia to Brittanica, the results were that Wikipedia was only sligthly less accurate than the venerable Brittanica, which means that the "peer review" system used by Wikipedia gives surprisingly good results.
While anyone with a partisan agenda can promote whatever they want, articles with a strong POV will be corrected by the user community - which is why MS should trust the user community to fix any errors in the OOXML pages. Of course, not everything is going to conform to MS's viewpoint, but that's to be expected.
I do think that the OOXML pages should be as objective as possible, and therefore *if* they are inaccurate they should be corrected. I do think, however, that MS brought any opposition on themselves by playing politics with file formats in the first place.
No, they're actually doing something quite worse: They're spreading disinformation in an online publication that IS supposed to be neutral.
Again, do you have proof of that? And if you do, why haven't you done your part in correcting the actual disinformation?
What MS is trying to do is bring some reasonable objectivity to technical discussions involving its technologies. And it seems like they tried to hire a pretty objective guy, by all appearances. Again, I see nothing wrong with the truth.
They don't have to hire anyone. If the objective guy is already a contributor to Wikipedia, he can simply correct the inaccuracies as he sees them. Giving money to someone immediately introduces questions of conflict of interest.
It appears now that this was in fact not a decision by MS' management, but rather by someone working on the OOXML team. He probably meant well, but he had to know what kind of reaction this would provoke (which is why MS management would have never done something like this in the first place, at least not overtly).
I disagree. An encyclopedia is supposed to contain fact, not fiction. Fact is objective. It doesn't take sides.
You should discuss the impossibility of being totally objective with Cloudy... ;-)
Again, I am all in favor of someone cleaning up the OOXML pages if they are inaccurate. I do think, however, that it should be a neutral third party who is not on anyone's payroll. That's the only way to keep the impression of relative impartiality.