Microsoft has landed itself in hot water, again, among the blogosphere and public in general after it offered to pay a blogger to edit certain Wikipedia articles in their favor.

Wikipedia is a collaborative encyclopedia – anyone can add or edit almost anything on the site. The chaos of such a method is maintained in two ways: readers spot and correct errors, spam or other material out rather quickly; and a series of volunteer editors and moderators maintain core pages and set up a series of ‘blocks’ that prevent PR firms, or anyone who may have a conflict of interest from contributing.

Microsoft is likely itself banned from editing Wikipedia entries, so this was a desperate plea to circumseed these imposed boundaries. But it backfired.

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.

Brooker said Microsoft had gotten nowhere in trying to flag the purported mistakes to Wikipedia’s volunteer editors, so it sought an independent expert who could determine whether changes were necessary and enter them on Wikipedia.

Brooker said Microsoft believed that having an independent source would be key in getting the changes to stick — that is, to not have them just overruled by other Wikipedia writers…

Wales said the proper course would have been for Microsoft to write or commission a "white paper" on the subject with its interpretation of the facts, post it to an outside Web site and then link to it in the Wikipedia articles’ discussion forums. – Via CNN

Lessons to be learned:

1. Transparency is just as important on wikis as it is on blogs
2. Opinions cannout be bought, for this creates bias
3. There are always transparent options available to correct what you feel to be incorrect information about you or your industry, no matter where it is displayed
4. Attempting to "defy" these rules will tarnish your reputation