Making The Case For PR Pros Editing Wikipedia

from the is-it-really-notable dept

Obscured amidst the hysteria over anti-piracy bills SOPA and PIPA has been a valuable discussion bubbling up within public relations about PR people editing clients’ Wikipedia entries.

It’s a topic that has been debated for years. From Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales stating in 2006 that “PR firms editing Wikipedia is something that we frown upon very, very strongly” to last year’s Bell Pottinger lobbying scandal, where it emerged that the firm was surreptitiously manipulating client’s Wikipedia entries — raising the ire of Mr. Wales and his Wikipedia acolytes — it’s a discussion that seemingly knows no end.

PR people have long been frustrated by the complexities of the Wikipedia editing process. Colleagues tell us they feel rebuffed by what they believe is an arcane system meant to ostracize them whenever they attempt to correct inaccurate or outdated employer or client entries.

The issue over edits made on Wikipedia is one that affects more than just the public relations profession. It has implications for every business, organization and institution around the world, given Wikipedia’s widespread use as an information resource.

The matter gained particular prominence recently when Phil Gomes, an executive at Edelman Digital, began to peel back the layers of distrust and confusion between PR people and Wikipedians with a blog post and Facebook group aimed at bringing together the sparring parties.

Gomes’ initiative, dubbed the Corporate Representatives for Ethical Wikipedia Engagement, is based on four pillars:

1. Corporate communicators want to do the right thing.
2. Communicators engaged in ethical practice have a lot to contribute.
3. Current Wikipedia policy does not fully understand Nos. 1 and 2, owing to the activities of some bad actors and a general misunderstanding of public relations in general.
4. Accurate Wikipedia entries are in the public interest.

It’s a noble effort and one that my organization, the Public Relations Society of America, wholeheartedly supports.

Techdirt further examined the issue when Mike Masnick asked, rather pointedly, whether PR people should be “able to edit otherwise ignored Wikipedia pages of their clients to correct errors?” He focused on some fairly glaring issues that we believe Wikipedia has yet to adequately address. Among them: Where do professionals turn to if their efforts to go through the proper channels to request edits to inaccurate or outdated information are either rebuffed or ignored?

That question has been overlooked for far too long. As Mr. Gomes pointed out in the comments of Mr. Masnick’s Techdirt post, “Some of us are working together to help [the] PR [profession] do the right thing by the Wikipedia community, especially considering that guidance is at times contradictory.”

The Case 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.

At its most basic level, it is a matter of serving the public interest.

An accurate Wikipedia entry serves the public interest far better than inaccurate entries that are allowed to languish with errors because Wikipedia editors refuse to allow “paid advocates” to make necessary, accurate changes. A disclosure of one’s professional affiliation with a business should not automatically exempt him or her from being allowed to responsibly edit Wikipedia entries.

Greater accuracy and transparency within Wikipedia entries should be the basis of how Wikipedia goes about its practices. It should not matter who edits a page, so long as the information is accurate, unbiased and properly sourced.

PRSA certainly does not condone behavior on the part of public relations people or PR firms that is unethical or dishonest in respect to their editing of clients’ Wikipedia entries. To be sure, there are some who wish to abuse the system. Let’s not kid ourselves into thinking otherwise. But on the whole, we believe that PR professionals, particularly those whose work adheres to the PRSA Code of Ethics, are responsible and respectful of the online communities in which they engage and seek to influence.

We’re encouraged by efforts in the U.K., where the Chartered Institute of Public Relations is establishing guidelines on how the PR profession deals with Wikipedia. We hope to do the same in the U.S. by working with Wikipedia to develop rigorous and explicit editing guidelines that can be used throughout the profession.

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.

Gerard F. Corbett, APR, Fellow PRSA, is chair and CEO of the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA).

Filed Under: companies, editing, pr, wikipedia
Companies: wikileaks

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. 

Thus, he comes up with some specific suggestions to try to solve this issue, in which in very limited situations, and with tremendous transparency, perhaps PR people might be able to edit some pages for clients:

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.

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.

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.

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?

Filed Under: companies, editing, pr, wikipedia

Wikileaks & ICE Domain Seizures Show How Private Intermediaries Get Involved In Government Censorship

from the intermediaries-matter dept

There have been two big stories this week, both of which have elements of US government censorship of speech. The first, of course, is the pressure put on Amazon to drop Wikileaks as a customer of its S3 storage. The second is Homeland Security seizing a bunch of domain names by getting VeriSign to hand them over. In both cases, defenders of these actions claim they're not censorship, but both appear to involve the US government stepping in and either explicitly or implicitly getting a US corporation to block a form of speech. That's concerning.

Of course, beyond the problem that the government would be doing this in the first place is a separate concern: the role of corporations in helping make this happen. Some have argued, in the case of Amazon, that as a private company it has the right to refuse service to anyone. That's absolutely true. But if it's refusing service based on political pressure from those in positions of power, that's still censorship. While I don't buy into the idea that companies like Google and Facebook are monopolies, Ethan Zuckerberg does raise a very good point (talking about the Amazon/Wikileaks situation) about the role of corporate giants as intermediaries that can help a government censor:

If they simply responded to pressure from a US Senator, or to boycott threats, it sends a very disturbing message: that Amazon will remove content under political pressure. Yes, Amazon is within its legal rights to refuse service to a customer… but as I’ve argued previously, they’re a private company responsible for a public space. That’s the nature of the internet – we use it as a space for public discourse, though the sites we use for much of our discussion are owned by private corporations and controlled by terms of service that are significantly more stringent than restrictions on public speech.

The rise of internet hypergiants like Amazon that host servers for hundreds of thousands of clients makes these potential conflicts more clear. If you are dissatisfied with the terms of service of your hosting provider, you can always find another… up to a point. There’s been massive consolidation in the web hosting market, and companies like Amazon are likely to control large shares of the market in the future, both because there are economies of scale in providing low-cost service, and because large server farms can more effectively defend from attacks like DDoS. But if large providers like Amazon won’t take on clients like Wikileaks, they’re forced onto smaller ISPs, which may be more costly and less able to thwart DDoS attacks.

I'm not as convinced that this is a problem in the web server space yet. There are still other places that Wikileaks can certainly go. But when it comes to domain names, the central nature of companies like VeriSign is at least a concern. It's also why more distributed solutions become a lot more interesting.

Filed Under: censorship, companies, free speech, homeland security, ice, intermediaries, internet
Companies: amazon, verisign, wikileaks

Should Companies Have A 'Privacy' Right To Shield The Release Of Damaging Info?

from the if-a-company-is-a-person... dept

Should companies have privacy rights? With recent legal rulings suggesting that companies have similar legal rights to individuals, does that include privacy rights? A bunch of groups, including Public Citizen and the EFF, have filed an amicus brief in a case that looks into that question. The lawsuit is between the FCC and AT&T. It seems that the FCC had done an investigation where it determined that AT&T -- the same company that has "helped out" the government by explaining how the feds could get around pesky oversight rules by using post-it notes -- has been over-billing the government.

That seems like pretty interesting information, and some others thought so -- which is why a Freedom of Information Act request was made to the FCC, and the FCC agreed to hand over the documents concerning the investigation. AT&T, in response, sued the FCC, saying that releasing this info would violate the company's "personal privacy." Huh? It's hard to see how a company has "personal privacy." You can understand not releasing confidential information that involves a trade secret, or other such information. But claiming that details of an investigation of how you may have bilked the government is "private" info seems a bit absurd. If that was the case, then any company could demand that any embarrassing information never be released.

Unfortunately, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with AT&T, suggesting that the exemption in the Freedom of Information Act for "personal privacy" does, in fact, apply to AT&T as well. The new brief urges the Supreme Court review the case:

Unless the Supreme Court takes the case and reverses the Third Circuit decision, records about safety violations at a coal mine, environmental problems at an offshore oil rig, filthy conditions at a food manufacturing plant, financial shenanigans at an investment bank and many other records like these may be the subject of so-called corporate privacy claims that could result in agencies withholding those records from the public under FOIA.

Filed Under: companies, freedom of information act, privacy
Companies: at&t, fcc

Company Decides To Run For Congress

from the brilliant dept

Earlier this week, we jokingly pointed out that with the Supreme Court's ruling on how corporations were people, a company like Google could run for President. Well, it appears that others have the same basic idea. A PR firm in Maryland has announced that it's running for Congress in Maryland's 8th District and has put together a nice campaign ad:

Filed Under: companies, congress, free speech, people

How Congress Might Accidentally Ban US Companies From Doing Business In The US

from the double-standard? dept

A couple of years ago, we wrote about a proposal to restrict search engine companies from doing business in foreign countries whose Internet policies the United States government deems "repressive." In March, we noted that it was back. Jonathan Zittrain has written up an analysis of the latest version. It would supposedly "prevent US companies from aiding the censorship and surveillance operations of repressive foreign governments." It would target "Internet Restricting Countries," which are countries that are "directly or indirectly responsible for a systematic pattern of substantial restrictions on Internet freedom."

Now, I understand that the intent is to target truly repressive regimes like China and Cuba, but I have to wonder about how this is being defined. After all, you could argue that the United States's gambling ban is a "substantial restriction on Internet freedom." Ditto for the recent FISA bill, which allows warrantless dragnet surveillance of Americans' international calls. Likewise, some European countries restrict Internet freedom with regard to Nazi memorabilia. And of course the Australian government forces its ISPs to censor online pornography. Will American companies be prohibited from doing business in the United States, France, Germany, and Australia? Somehow I doubt it. All of which is to say that putting the US government in charge of drawing up a list of countries with bad Internet policies seems like a bad idea. The list will wind up being a political football rather than an objective assessment of countries' internet policies, and in any event it will hurt American businesses a lot more than it will promote human rights abroad.

Filed Under: censorship, companies, congress, global online freedom act, internet

More Companies Using Experimental Economists

from the a-step-forward dept

While it's true that it's difficult to find economists who agree with each other, that doesn't mean (as some would like you to believe) that economics is useless. The basic principles behind economics are pretty sound. The issues generally come up in how people interpret putting specific situations into economic models. That's because there are so many variables in real world economics, it's nearly impossible to model them all. So, the different opinions coming from different economists tend to be based on what sorts of variables they throw into models, and how they weight them. The truth is, however, that there's plenty of good things to be learned from the various models and experiments done by economists in various fields to try to narrow down those variables and perfect those models.

And, of course, those models can be quite practical. So it's great to see more and more companies (especially in the tech world) hiring experimental economists and putting them to work to start making more economically sound decision making, rather than seat-of-the-pants decisions on ways to adapt new business models, products and pricing. While there will still be plenty of mistakes, there will be a much better overall understanding of what works and why.

Filed Under: companies, economics, experimental economics
Companies: google, hp, yahoo