From the AP:
Microsoft acknowledged it had approached the writer and offered to pay him for the time it would take to correct what the company was sure were inaccuracies in Wikipedia articles on an open-source document standard and a rival format put forward by Microsoft.
Spokeswoman Catherine Brooker said she believed the articles were heavily written by people at IBM Corp., which is a big supporter of the open-source standard. IBM did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The sad thing is that Microsoft was very close to doing the right thing here. If Microsoft has legitimate corrections or additions for articles in Wikipedia, it should correct them, but it should do so in a transparent fashion.
January 24, 2007 at 2:23 pm
Microsoft told the writer to feel free to blog about it and he did, before making any changes. I think that’s pretty transparent.
http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/technology/archives/2007/01/24/microsoftie_tries_to_improve_wikipedia_indirectly.html