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Oracle erases criticism from their wiki
02-Jun-2008It might come as little surprise that Oracle is very actively moderating their Oracle wiki, but a recent blog entry reminded me just how important culture is to wiki adoption.
The story is, a Denmark-based Oracle partner had posted something "not unambiguously positive about Oracle WebCenter" and was "immediately flamed by an Oracle product manager, and any trace of negativity edited out."
Of course, wiki owners always have a choice about how strongly they want to moderate, and that choice naturally will affect the culture of participation. Oracle clearly decided in favor of strong moderation. The Rules of Conduct on the wiki say nothing about excising mentions of product weaknesses, but WebCenter is certainly a hot topic at the moment with customers waiting for roadmap details after the BEA acquisition.
So, official wikis present a dilemma for vendors. Clearly Oracle made the edits in order to keep damaging material out of competitors' hands. Other vendors, like Microsoft, also limit who can post to their public wikis based on an application process. That's their prerogative. But as a customer, you should understand the rules of engagement are rather different than, say, Wikipedia, and evaluate the content accordingly.
(Thanks to Sten Vesterli from Oracle partner Scott/Tiger for the heads up.)
- Submitted by: Janus Boye, Contributing Analyst
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