The most likely cause is because you failed to cite your addition with a reliable source, see Wikipedia:Verifiability for the official policy.

Microsoft is a very old article with lots of discussion; consider re-reading the passage in question over again before getting upset. If there's still a problem, make a note on the talk page and just let it stew for a month or so; this kind of thing is watched by plenty of people.

It's interspersed throughout the article. Do not add a criticism section; it goes against the style guidelines.

Sources are conflicting on this. We decided to go with the older published sources.

Because according to various comments on featured article nominations articles need to be self contained and at least contain a summary, which is what the history section sets out to do.

It's due to the slightly controversial nature of the subject matter; what's common sense to one person has often been called into question on this article, so everything - literally - is referenced. Unfortunately, it does make the article rather cumbersome to edit. Such is the nature of Wikipedia.

This is due to the heavy amount of detailed referencing with templates, as well as inline comments to editors on certain parts of the article. The actual readable prose size should actually be fairly mediocre.

Pay attention to the prose size of the article (not the size when you press edit), it isn't that long. WP:LEAD is general guideline and the gist of it is to summarize everything concisely in the article without teasing the reader about every little detail. It is one of the most refined and tightly written parts of the article.

This is strictly about the company; generally we don't go beyond a general description about its products unless one is a pivotal point in the company's history as this is covered by daughter articles and simply summarized. We focus mostly on the corporate aspect of the company as those generally don't have daughter articles and are taken care of in articles about a company. What this results in is a comprehensive, heavily summarized article that goes into detail about the documented corporate affairs of Microsoft.

This is really arbitrary and has no standard, so we choose the simplest route for now - none at all.

• Culture needs a restructure, probably having two subsections - user culture and business culture (sources, maybe useful); specific mentions/concerns:
  1. "The Culture section seems a bit of a hodge podge - could there be more of a narrative thread?" - From 3rd peer review
  2. "I was a bit surprised that there was not more on Microsoft's sort of decline in the recent past Apple is now bigger in terms of market capitalization (heard this on the radio this morning - NPR). Or how Microsoft was at the forefront in the 1990s with lots of software, but has not done as well with things lately (Google, or Zune vs iPod, etc.)." - From 3rd peer review; need more of a general paragraph of this as well as a sentence about apple most likely. See talk page about major edits for info about apple.
  3. Needs to mention Microsoft Puzzle Hunt in some fashion with WP:RSs'.
• Azure Services Platform wasn't Microsoft's first stab at cloud computing, Microsoft Online Services was - it was supposed to be released in 2006; there is like one blog in 2006 about the beta, but when did it "release"?
• General copyediting; it's always nice to have an extra set of eyes for it.

Yes, make sure to follow the Manual of Style as usual, especially in regards to the use of Template:nbsp and numbers. Please remember to only make links that are relevant to the context. Also, remember that this is a stable article for the most part, so take care while editing while still being bold. Finally, avoid using Microsoft itself as a source.