Should PR People Be Able To Edit Otherwise Ignored Wikipedia Pages Of Their Clients To Correct Errors?
from the the-community-won't-like-that... dept
As a tech blogger with a reasonably large audience, I am fairly inundated with pitches from PR people on a daily basis. Almost all of these pitches are mistargeted and not at all well thought out. They are about things we obviously would never cover, and many are clearly mass mailings (my favorites are the ones who address me by the name of other tech bloggers -- you'd be amazed how many times I've been called Om). It's pretty rare that we ever get a "story" from a PR person. Most of the time, honestly, PR pitches are about as close to spam as can be. Multiple times, I've publicly lashed out at bad PR people for being much more of a nuisance than helping. All that said... it's easy to jump to the conclusion that all PR people are bad and not helpful. But that's an exaggeration. There are, certainly, some very good and very helpful PR people out there, and I've worked with many. Generally, they're not pitching me on "stories," but helping me get answers -- or they're people who actually read the site and understand what we talk about here, and recognize that, "because my client wants me to get this story on Techdirt," is not a good reason to pitch us, if the story has nothing to do with what we talk about.Consider that preamble for a simple point: there are good PR people who do good work, and it's generally people who actually understand what they're talking about. PR guru Phil Gomes, who I've known for many, many years, is definitely one of the good guys. A Linux-using, open source-loving techie to the core, he's not your ordinary PR guy. He's also a guy who I can sit down and talk with about ridiculous government actions and crazy intellectual property cases for many hours, and the conversation is always fun, and we tend to agree on most things. But when he put out a pitch to Jimmy Wales at Wikipedia, saying that, in certain, very specific cases, PR people should be able to edit Wikipedia pages of the companies they work with, I cringed a bit. Something about the concept feels wrong. Though, the case Phil makes is pretty compelling. He's arguing that if a company page is completely inaccurate, and not updated properly, it's silly that a PR person can't go in and fix things.
- Wikipedia is on the first page of search results for nearly every company, brand, product, personality, captain-of-industry, etc. This shoulders Wikipedia with a great level of responsibility, whether asked for or otherwise.
- Many entries are derelict, even for important topics and well-known industry bellwethers. Financial data is often years old. Some companies are described as remaining in businesses long divested. A WikiProject for reviving abandoned articles, and a proposal for a similar effort, themselves both appear abandoned.
- You can imagine why a company might consider its entry to be a high priority (perhaps even to the point of distraction) and task its communications staff to "do something", especially if the entry is inaccurate.
- Entreaties on Talk pages�determined as the most appropriate place for a company representative to make his/her case�often go ignored for very long periods while inaccurate information persists.
- The small concession to PR on the FAQ (that a company can "fix minor errors in spelling, grammar, usage, or fact", etc.) takes a lot for granted and helps neither a PR representative nor Wikipedia. For example, too often, a company representative will �go native� when it comes to separating matters of �fact� from matters upon which reasonable people might disagree. On the other hand, activists (hardly of a neutral point of view) appear to enjoy much more latitude.
When an entry is derelict (duration and definition TBD), a communications representative should be granted greater leeway in editing the entry. The entry can have a notification at the top indicating the derelict status, or even that a communications representative has had a hand in updating it. This will allow visitors to make their own judgments on how to evaluate the entry or even prioritize it in terms of how and when it gets evaluated and/or revised by a neutral party. The choice is between the certainty of an inaccurate entry or the possibility that the entry would not meet NPOV guidelines. Negative attention to bad behavior (or even to mediocre efforts) would mitigate the impact of the latter.That actually started to make me uncringe -- and actually does make some sense. The issue here is that he's actually talking about both greater accuracy and greater transparency, both of which seem like good things. Phil also suggests a system by which companies could create entries, posted to their own corporate sites, along with a way to alert "independent Wikipedians" to react to the content and decide if it's worthy of being on the site.
An interesting discussion ensued, with folks in a variety of camps... including Jimmy Wales, who weighed in himself, sticking to his initial stance that paid PR folks have other avenues to alert Wikipedians.
Best practice is very simple and no one in the PR industry has ever put forward a cogent argument (and seldom bother putting forward an argument at all) why it is important that they take the potentially (especially if I have anything to do with it) reputation damaging step of directly editing entries where they are acting as paid advocates.He also notes that there is "comprehensive" evidence that "paid advocates do not make good editors." In the end, he notes (quite accurately) that the community itself has made it clear that it doesn't want paid advocates -- and having paid advocates edit the site definitely leads to backlash.
The simple and obvious answer is to do what works, without risking the reputation of the client: talk to the community, respect their autonomy, and never ever directly edit an article.
There are many avenues for you to make simple factual corrections, and these avenues actually do work. You can post on the talk page. If you don't get a timely response there you can escalate to appropriate noticeboards. Perhaps the most effective thing you can do is email us! The OTRS team is very good about helping out with basic issues.
Of course, to some extent, I think both Phil and Jimmy are right. Just as in my initial cringe, plenty of people don't like the idea of paid advocates/PR people directly editing client pages. There are just too many areas to insert bias into a system that supposedly insists on keeping a neutral point of view (though it doesn't always succeed). That bias can be subtle -- and it may not even be done consciously by the advocate, but it's still likely to be there. However, I'm still partially swayed by Phil's first suggestion. So if the methods that Jimmy lays out (talk pages, noticeboards, email) simply don't work and no one responds, would it then be okay if a PR person made corrections with the clear caveat of who they are, what they're doing and why they're doing it? Perhaps followed up with a further notice for independent Wikipedians to check their work? I'm not sure that's such a terrible thing, as a last resort. After all, isn't accurate info more important in the long run than inaccurate info untouched by PR people?
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Reader Comments
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How about a short note or page for the subject to annotate?
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Re: How about a short note or page for the subject to annotate?
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Re: Re: How about a short note or page for the subject to annotate?
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Re: Re: How about a short note or page for the subject to annotate?
"This piece has been edited by a PR representing the company in question. Please help us keep it accurate (Hmtl code for link to edit)here(/html code)."
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Re: Re: Re: How about a short note or page for the subject to annotate?
What I find interesting about this whole discussion, is that people aren't just assuming that the majority of PR people are less scrupulous than Phil Gomes, and they simply edit their clients' articles from the wireless connection at the neighborhood coffee shop. Or is that what you meant by saying that this is the status quo (except that in that case there is nothing like the notice you talk about for the sake of transparency).
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Re: Re: Re: Re: How about a short note or page for the subject to annotate?
I also appreciate the risks inherent in allowing PR firms access tot he editing process. I know Edit-wars can carry on over the most insignificat (for outsiders) things.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: How about a short note or page for the subject to annotate?
This was the thinking behind the Mentor Program I suggested on Wikiproject Cooperation (which is up and running now for all intensive purposes) which entails greater attention from a volunteer editor.
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Re: Re: Re: How about a short note or page for the subject to annotate?
There's already tags for bias, reads like a press release, merely promotes the subject and so on.
-David King
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Re: How about a short note or page for the subject to annotate?
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Re:
Wikipedia already has mountains of instructions for COI editors, but it's a lot for your average media-focused PR person to invest in learning it all.
-David King
Wikipedia Ethics
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Re:
Many believe that paid editors (like PR people) should be subject to extra scrutiny and that "Assume Good Faith" isn't reasonable amongst an audience with such a compelling conflict of interest.
The community doesn't generally block quality content contributions due exclusively to the source. PR people are blocked/reverted/etc. due to policy violations. Since they're not familiar with the rules, the incident is interpreted as being picked on.
-David King
Wikipedia Ethics LLC
www.wikipediamarketing.com
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Re: ??!
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Re: Re: ??!
Besides, all we'd hear from them is "YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH!"
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Re: Re: Re: ??!
-David King
Wikipedia Ethics LLC
www.wikipediaethics.com
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Re:
But more generally, does Wikipedia ban members of Greenpeace from editing the Exxon page? Everyone has a lot of biases and yet Wikipedia keeps getting better because the community has the tools to deal with bad actors. Paid PR people will either be good actors or they will get kicked out individually just like the other bad actors.
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Re: Accuracy and Integrity
This is a fundamental problem with Wikipedia and other repositories with user contributed content.
Where is the guarantee that information already contained in Wikipedia has not been tainted by marketing, political, or other special interest spin?
It is for this reason that I prefer using an encyclopedia with an accredited editorial staff, and why Wiki and other "free" information sources containing information with questionable integrity.
In other words, I trust the information in Encyclopaedia Britannica, but I am skeptical of what I read on a Wikipedia page.
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Problems
I agree with setting up some system to indicate that the page was edited by a potentially bias party. An indication that could be removed when the change is approved as accurate and non-trivial.
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Talk amongst yourselves...
You say that no reader or editor stumbles on the correction in Talk? Then it is unlikely much of anyone is reading the main page (and why is this main page subject paying PR fees in the first place?)
Unrelated aside: I can't believe how short the Techdirt page is on Wikipedia! Mike ought to hire one of these PR guys to build it out :-
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Re: Talk amongst yourselves...
Today, 1/20/2012, some of those edits were made.
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Re: Talk amongst yourselves...
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Market opportunity
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Re: Market opportunity
However, I have heard of companies that hire a freelance writer to write and post an article without letting them see it, because the organization itself is unable to approve encyclopedic copy.
I suggested on the Wikiproject Cooperation page that we encourage paid editors to donate to the Wikimedia Foundation and even that was shot down pretty hard. No one wants to see anything that can be construed as an endorsement of paid editing on Wikipedia, which would open the doors wide to all kinds of hacks.
-David King
Wikipedia Ethics LLC
www.wikipediaethics.com
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Talk amongst yourselves...
You say that no reader or editor stumbles on the correction in Talk? Then it is unlikely much of anyone is reading the main page (and why is this main page subject paying PR fees in the first place?)
Unrelated aside: I can't believe how short the Techdirt page is on Wikipedia! Mike ought to hire one of these PR guys to build it out :-
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Re: Talk amongst yourselves...
1. The "correction" by the PR person didn't contain sufficient documentation to sell an unbiased person that it is correct;
2. The error is not important enough to correct;
3. No one but the subject of the story cares. And Wikipedia is not a vanity glossy. If no one cares, the tree didn't make any noise (if you get my drift.)
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Re: Re: Talk amongst yourselves...
It would be nice if Wikipedia provided a report for that. I suspect that there are some pages which have high traffic but very slow editor activity. If I look up a company, on Google, I often land on their wikipedia article. Quite frequently, the article is woefully out of date.
At the very least, there are some uncontroversial facts that company insiders could update. For instance, they could update their financials shortly after SEC filings. They could update the fact that they have been purchased or merged. They could update number of employees. They could update the fact that they discontinued a major product line. I mean, sure, they can lie, but they'll be found out pretty fast and IP-banned rapidle.
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Re: Talk amongst yourselves...
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How would Wikipedia even know if a PR person edited a page anonymously from a non-company-owned IP address? If they make enough intentional mistakes the edits would surely be indistinguishable from the crowd-sourced variety of edits.
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Re:
Just the other day I identified over a half-dozen anonymous user accounts all owned by a single PR agency - no IP addresses required.
However I've had this conversation with someone on Wikipedia. If a PR person making covert edits is smart enough to avoid detection, is that a threat to Wikipedia, or are they just making good edits?
-David King
Wikipedia Ethics LLC
www.wikipediaethics.com
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Transparency Key for PR Pros Editing Wikipedia
We believe there is a case to be made for PR professionals to responsibly edit client Wikipedia entries in an ethical and transparent manner. As you rightly note, accurate information, especially within one of the world�s most searched and used websites, is far more important and valuable than inaccurate information. In that regard, it should not matter who edits an entry, so long as the information is accurate, unbiased and properly sourced.
Greater accuracy and transparency within Wikipedia entries are absolutely good things and should be the basis of how Wikipedia goes about its practices.
The Public Relations Society of America certainly does not condone behavior on the part of public relations professionals or PR firms that is unethical or dishonest in respect to their editing of clients� Wikipedia entries. To make proper edits or corrections, PR pros must respect the Wikipedia community and should clearly indicate who they are and the interests they represent.
Our position on this matter is simple: it's wrong for the PR profession to think it can run roughshod over the established Wikipedia community. PR professionals must engage with it in a reasonable manner that respects the community�s rules and protocols, while also ensuring they are acting in their clients' best interests. But the engagement should be a two-way street in which Wikipedia is willing to see and accommodate both sides of the issue. At the moment, we do not believe that to be the case.
Keith Trivitt
Associate Director
Public Relations Society of America
http://www.prsa.org/
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Wiki admins disagree about the role PR can play
This was three years ago, though; maybe the attitude has changed.
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Re: Wiki admins disagree about the role PR can play
-David King
Wikipedia Ethics LLC
www.wikipediaethics.com
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Transparency Key for PR Editing Wikipedia
We believe there is a case to be made for PR professionals to responsibly edit client Wikipedia entries in an ethical and transparent manner. As you rightly note, accurate information, especially within one of the world�s most searched and used websites, is far more important and valuable than inaccurate information. In that regard, it should not matter who edits an entry, so long as the information is accurate, unbiased and properly sourced.
Greater accuracy and transparency within Wikipedia entries are absolutely good things and should be the basis of how Wikipedia goes about its practices.
The Public Relations Society of America certainly does not condone behavior on the part of public relations professionals or PR firms that is unethical or dishonest in respect to their editing of clients� Wikipedia entries. To make proper edits or corrections, PR pros must respect the Wikipedia community and should clearly indicate who they are and the interests they represent.
Our position on this matter is simple: it's wrong for the PR profession to think it can run roughshod over the established Wikipedia community. PR professionals must engage with it in a reasonable manner that respects the community�s rules and protocols, while also ensuring they are acting in their clients' best interests. But the engagement should be a two-way street in which Wikipedia is willing to see and accommodate both sides of the issue. At the moment, we do not believe that to be the case.
Keith Trivitt
Associate Director
Public Relations Society of America
http://www.prsa.org/
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�paid advocates do not make good editors�
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From he who created the ruckus...
The core philosophical issue isn't *so* much about whether/if an ethical PR practitioner operating above-board is editing an entry. What's at issue is the question of whether a preferable condition for an entry is 1) objectively inaccurate, though untouched by a PR person, or 2) objectively accurate, with the help of a PR person. Almost everyone seems to agree that an accurate entry is in the public interest. Some of us are working together to help PR do the right thing by the Wikipedia community, especially considering that guidance is at times contradictory.
I've been strongly encouraged by the participation of a few Wikipedians who want to explore that "middle way." There are also great contributions from those who have looked at the intersection of PR and online communities for quite a long time.
Less encouraged at the level of agency participation, though they'll most certainly benefit from the outcome of these efforts. As the twist on the old saw goes, the early bird sometimes get the worm, but the second mouse always gets the cheese.
More news as it develops, both on the CREWE Facebook page and the Cooperation Wikiproject.
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PR people editing Wikipedia
Jimmy Wales is right.
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A Different Point of View
It seems Phil and I have a fundamental disagreement (which is ok) in that I feel Wikipedia has already adequately dealt with this issue through pre-existing policies, guidelines and essays.
It's PR professionals that need to adapt to Wikipedia, not the other way around and there's already many PR pros who have learned how to make ethical, encyclopedic contributions to Wikipedia.
However if Edelman does take this on and develops in-house expertise, they would be the first large PR agency (that I know of) to do so, but far from the first organization.
-David King
Wikipedia Ethics LLC
www.wikipediaethics.com
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