OMG! Microsoft tried to pay someone to update Wikipedia! n00bz! LOLOLOL!!!!1

Yeah, whatever. First came the horrible, tragic story of Microsoft’s supposed faux pas in trying to pay someone to edit Wikipedia, then the apparent Microsoftian Offender (a.k.a. Doug) shed some light on the other side of the tale.

More interesting to me than the pay-for-edit issue is why people just assume Bigger = Eviller.

Maybe that isn’t entirely fair. I wouldn’t argue that some of the Presumed Evil Club, like Microsoft and Intel, have made some bad decisions at times in the past, or that the sheer size of these companies is enough to make people rightfully wary. The problem is that with trauma like this, more often than not it is just some honest person trying to do their job and getting either misinterpreted or having things blown out of all context and proportion.

Back in 2000 Intel drew some bad press for supposedly forcing some Apple macs to be covered up at an event at Harvard. It sounded all evil and maniacal the way it was reported, but I work with the “Intel rep” involved and it was a miscommunication gone awry, nothing more. It made good fodder for the Intel haters, ruffled a lot of feathers, and made things really tough for a bunch of well intentioned folks who got caught in the middle. If Doug’s take is honest, then he may have wandered into a grey-zone but it doesn’t look like he tried to strong-arm anyone. Yet what impact will all this have on him, his life, and his job?

The point is this: call us out when we do something genuinely bad, cause honestly damaging problems, or name another product as silly as Viiv… but give the smaller things the benefit of the doubt. Our company may be huge, but we’re still just hard working peeps trying to earn our paycheck.

Let he who is without SNAFU cast the first blog.

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