Good Morning Silicon Valley’s John Paczkowski does an outstanding job of putting in their place all those lambasting standards expert Rick Jelliffe and Microsoft for the latter hiring the former to correct whatever Jelliffe judges to be inaccuracies in Wikipedia entries about on ODF (Open Document Format) and OOXML (Microsoft Office Open XML). Writes Paczkowski:
The company seems to have been honest and open about its intentions. It offered to hire an independent expert to suggest corrections in his area of expertise. Jelliffe obviously isn’t a Microsoft apologist. And ultimately any changes he might make to the entries at issue will be reviewed by Wikipedia’s editors and removed if they’re inaccurate. Given Microsoft’s position, what else was it supposed to do? Have Waggener Edstrom (Microsoft’s PR firm) make the corrections?
Bravo! That was exactly my take on the matter after reading Jellife’s post. The critics are simply letting their anti-Microsoft sentiments get in the way of giving this situation an intellectually honest weighing. Microsoft didn’t do anything wrong, unless you believe every WikiSubject is obligated to sit quietly while what it perceives to be untruths go unchallenged. And Jellife most certainly didn’t do anything wrong … unless you want to count inviting an inevitable round of baseless criticism.
