Last night I wrote about the blogger who received an offer from Microsoft to be paid for editing a Wikipedia entry on their behalf. Today, that story continues with a report that a Microsoft employee who took issue with Techcrunch editor Michael Arrington’s post about the controversy vandalized the Wikipedia entry for Techcrunch, then wrote about it on his blog. Clearly this person isn’t very sophisticated, and is probably just looking for his 15 minutes of internet fame.
To be clear, I think the employee was reckless here, and so I’m not placing blame squarely on Microsoft’s shoulders. What’s really interesting is that his experiment, as he referred to it, was a failure. The vandal wrote that Arrington wouldn’t be able to fix the entry himself, as that’s perceived to be a conflict of interest, nor could he solicit others to do so. Instead he would have to post a message on the talk page for Techcrunch entry, to which the vandal concluded, “Yeah, I’m sure that’s going to get read as much as the Wikipedia entry.” Contrary to what the vandal thought, less than two hours after the vandalism took place multiple people had reverted the page to its previous state, citing Wikipedia’s guideline stating “Do not disrupt Wikipedia to illustrate a point”.

Furthermore David Gerard, a Wikimedia volunteer press contact, posted a comment to the vandal’s blog explaining what steps Wikipedia has taken to rectify the larger issue – here’s an excerpt: “…I think at this stage it’s an editorial problem, i.e. normal article work. As such, I invited Rick to contribute to the OOXML and OpenDocument articles using his subject area expertise, and reassured Doug that speaking in his Microsoft role on the talk page of the OOXML article would be entirely appropriate and welcome. I’ve also put out a call for Wikipedia editors experienced in dealing with disputed articles to come in and lend their editorial sense to the articles and get proceedings moving calmly. So the articles should be a lot better in a reasonable time!”

I think the actions demonstrated by Wikipedians, as well as the professionalism of the volunteer PR contact, demonstrate the strength and credibility of Wikipedia’s community.