To pay or not to pay - it's an issue many in the online media have been fighting about this week.

A blogger this week wrote that Microsoft Corp wanted to pay him to fix supposed inaccuracies in technical articles on Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia.

Microsoft then suffered a rash of complaints from bloggers, and a rebuke from Wikipedia's founder for behaving unethically. The free encyclopedia requires all articles must have a neutral point of view.

Writer Gregory Kohs had launched MyWikiBiz, a service that offered to write Wikipedia entries for businesses, but was blocked, and told by Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales the business was "antithetical" to Wikipedia's mission.

Here's how media watchers reported the issue:

“It makes the content of Microsoft's own Encarta encyclopedia highly suspect. After all, if they're prepared to pay contributors to create FUD (acronym for fear, uncertainty and doubt) in other publications, what do they get up to when they control the whole thing?” - Geoff Palmer, PC World New Zealand

''It's a free encyclopedia; freely written, freely edited and freely read. It's not a place for paid spin and PR doctors.'' -Croquant, Neowin.net

"Everybody is getting rewarded somehow. Whether it's intangible or tangible, what's the difference?" -Andrew Ressler, vice president, Helium.com.

"Wikipedia has an entry on Open XML that has a lot of slanted language, and we'd like for them to make it more objective but we feel that it would be best if a non-Microsoft person were the source of any corrections." - Microsoft's Doug Mahugh, writing in Slashdot.com

"Paying independent experts is what, for example, Encyclopedia Britannica does all the time... The problem with Wikipedia is that you also have to keep it corrected, because any random bozo can come along and introduce errors, and they very frequently do... Given that the proportion of random bozos on the web has grown steadily from 0% to roughly 94.8%, this is not a problem that is going to go away." - Jack Schofield, GuardianUnlimited.com Technology Blog

I'm surprised that MIcrosoft offered to pay, especially as Doug Mahugh submits the argument of objectivity.

Im my opinion, if it was a must to have a journalist make the 'correction', then basic principles of media / press engagement applies to Web 2.0 - pitch it as you would any conventional, credible 'story' and allow editorial judgement and right to prevail.