Credibility redux

Y'know, I'm not affiliated with Microsoft at all, although I own some stock and use their products happily. So I'd like to think that when I say something like, this Microsoft employee has credibility, it's because the employee actually has credibility and not because I'm biased or brainwashed towards the Borg.

I've been a loyal subscriber of Dare Obasanjo for at least a couple of years now, and a happy user of RSS Bandit, although I'm now evolving a bit into Google Reader for its mobile capabilities. So when I read his article about changing Wikipedia I didn't think much about it; mildly interesting but not a big deal, and his changes in the TechCrunch entry certainly deserved reverting under the Wikipedia "No experimenting" clause. But Michael Arrington's reaction was out of line:

A Microsoft employee, who took issue with this blog post, vandalized the TechCrunch Wikipedia entry and wrote about it on his blog.

That is a misuse of the word vandalized by any stretch of the imagination. Dare added maybe a couple of sentences with a dry, unemotional tone. He put up an apology in the comments, too, but in two or three comments (which have now disappeared) Arrington repeated the vandalism charge, and he's showing no signs of backing down. IMO, there is a serious credibility gap in repeating an emotionally charged word like that in response to some rather minor issues. I'd never heard of Arrington before, or read TechCrunch. This little flap doesn't make me want to, either. Michael Arrington joins Andrew Orlowski in my credibility book.