This is an
essay. It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article, nor is it one of
Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been
thoroughly vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints. |
This is intended as guidance for Public Relations people in terms of contributing to Wikipedia. Currently, this is not policy or even a guideline: it is a suggestion from one Wikipedian, User:Jmabel (Joe Mabel).
In the March 2006 issue of PR Tactics (the member newspaper of the Public Relations Society of America) is a piece by Brian Wasson, The wide world of Wikipedia, and why PR practitioners should take note . I felt that he was right on quite a few points, wrong on a few others, and after he published I had some back and forth with him. He was agreeable to my reworking some of his ideas and posting them on Wikipedia as useful guidance for PR people. (In particular, he agreed with me that he had probably over-encouraged people to use external links in Wikipedia to "drive traffic" to their sites: Wikipedia generally considers this linkspamming.) The following should, however, be understood as my position, not Brian's.
If you are reading this, you probably already know that Wikipedia is an enormous, and enormously popular web site. The English-language Wikipedia alone has over 1.35 million articles as of September 2006 (and nearly that many registered users), and the English-language Wikipedia is less than half of Wikipedia as a whole. For some time, Wikipedia has been in the Alexa Top 20; along with Craigslist, it is one of two dot-orgs in the Alexa Top 50. Nielsen/NetRatings places it in the top 10 news and information sites, and as one of the top 10 fastest growing Web brands.
Pretty much anyone can edit Wikipedia; the major limitations on what you can write about are:
If there is one thing I want you to carry away from reading this piece, it is this:
Wikipedia is a wiki, which allows users to collaborate, create and edit Web pages in real time. Articles, once submitted, may be "edited mercilessly" by anyone. The original contributor has no more claim on the evolution of the article than anyone else, and while sane people normally defer to obvious experts, they probably won't defer if they feel that expert is pushing a point of view (in Wikipedia jargon, a "POV"). Trying to take ownership of articles is strongly frowned upon.
Wikipedia has no formal editing process, just the open-ended free-for-all ability for people to modify and correct each other's work. As Brian Wasson writes, "An article can change in a second, and once-correct information can be replaced with fallacies. The site acknowledges this limitation, but maintains that, over time, Wikipedia will mature into a comprehensive, well-vetted informational resource."
Does this make for inaccuracy? Occasionally, and Wikipedia certainly has its critics, but several independent studies, notably one in Nature magazine, suggest that the accuracy is comparable to more conventional reference books: the mass of people able to correct errors appears to cope successfully with the ease of introducing them, and there are various bot-based means of detecting and correcting probable vandalism.
Let's start with something uncontroversial: there is one large, uncontroversial way that public relations people can help both Wikipedia (and other " copyleft" projects) and help their clients: explicitly give all of your promotional photos and other graphics some copyleft license, such as the an appropriate Creative Commons license (nothing more restrictive than CC BY-SA: the license must allow derivative versions and commercial use). It's also nice if you do the same with press releases: after all, this is how you really mean your press release to be used, anyway.
A free license lets us use your materials at will, without worrying that we might be violating your copyright. In particular, this also lets us host copies of your images on Wikimedia Commons, which is great for you and great for us.
Wasson asks half-rhetorically, "So, if Wikipedia is such a popular site, and anyone can add an article, shouldn't savvy PR folks proactively submit an article about their organization or client?" He then answers himself "Well… maybe", pointing out the importance of notability, verifiability, neutrality, and that violations of these generally won't last long. He also points out that Wikipedia discourages "what it calls 'autobiographical' articles about yourself or subjects in which you are personally involved (e.g. your organization or client)." Wikipedia's assumption is that if you are important, someone else will write about you.
The rule on "autobiography" is not an outright prohibition, but it is a caution. If your only involvement in Wikipedia is to write about yourself, you will probably be less welcome than a more general contributor. And if you do so surreptitiously, and are caught, you may rapidly become very unwelcome. In particular, there is an enormous suspicion in the Wikipedia community of people who are being paid to write nice (or nasty) things about someone or something, and that suspicion becomes outright antagonism if those people attempt to conceal what they are doing and are later found out.
Still, corrections of inaccuracies are very welcome, and, also, if you believe some individual or group you are working with or for is genuinely notable and has been overlooked, it is legitimate to get the ball rolling; just remember that the resulting article, once other hands have reworked it, is not likely to be a puff piece.
The following suggestions for professional PR people and their equivalents who are thinking of writing for Wikipedia are modeled loosely on Brian Wasson's suggestions in the cited article, supplemented by some later exchanges with him. Again, the list is Joe Mabel's influenced by Brian Wasson, rather than vice versa.
Wiki is a technology, and Wikipedia is only one of the many wikis out there. Some actively welcome PR contributions. You may want to look into AboutUs.org [1], currently in beta, a domain directory wiki that actively welcomes having organizations write about themselves. (However, the licensing status of its material seems very unclear as of 10 September 2006.)
This is an
essay. It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article, nor is it one of
Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been
thoroughly vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints. |
This is intended as guidance for Public Relations people in terms of contributing to Wikipedia. Currently, this is not policy or even a guideline: it is a suggestion from one Wikipedian, User:Jmabel (Joe Mabel).
In the March 2006 issue of PR Tactics (the member newspaper of the Public Relations Society of America) is a piece by Brian Wasson, The wide world of Wikipedia, and why PR practitioners should take note . I felt that he was right on quite a few points, wrong on a few others, and after he published I had some back and forth with him. He was agreeable to my reworking some of his ideas and posting them on Wikipedia as useful guidance for PR people. (In particular, he agreed with me that he had probably over-encouraged people to use external links in Wikipedia to "drive traffic" to their sites: Wikipedia generally considers this linkspamming.) The following should, however, be understood as my position, not Brian's.
If you are reading this, you probably already know that Wikipedia is an enormous, and enormously popular web site. The English-language Wikipedia alone has over 1.35 million articles as of September 2006 (and nearly that many registered users), and the English-language Wikipedia is less than half of Wikipedia as a whole. For some time, Wikipedia has been in the Alexa Top 20; along with Craigslist, it is one of two dot-orgs in the Alexa Top 50. Nielsen/NetRatings places it in the top 10 news and information sites, and as one of the top 10 fastest growing Web brands.
Pretty much anyone can edit Wikipedia; the major limitations on what you can write about are:
If there is one thing I want you to carry away from reading this piece, it is this:
Wikipedia is a wiki, which allows users to collaborate, create and edit Web pages in real time. Articles, once submitted, may be "edited mercilessly" by anyone. The original contributor has no more claim on the evolution of the article than anyone else, and while sane people normally defer to obvious experts, they probably won't defer if they feel that expert is pushing a point of view (in Wikipedia jargon, a "POV"). Trying to take ownership of articles is strongly frowned upon.
Wikipedia has no formal editing process, just the open-ended free-for-all ability for people to modify and correct each other's work. As Brian Wasson writes, "An article can change in a second, and once-correct information can be replaced with fallacies. The site acknowledges this limitation, but maintains that, over time, Wikipedia will mature into a comprehensive, well-vetted informational resource."
Does this make for inaccuracy? Occasionally, and Wikipedia certainly has its critics, but several independent studies, notably one in Nature magazine, suggest that the accuracy is comparable to more conventional reference books: the mass of people able to correct errors appears to cope successfully with the ease of introducing them, and there are various bot-based means of detecting and correcting probable vandalism.
Let's start with something uncontroversial: there is one large, uncontroversial way that public relations people can help both Wikipedia (and other " copyleft" projects) and help their clients: explicitly give all of your promotional photos and other graphics some copyleft license, such as the an appropriate Creative Commons license (nothing more restrictive than CC BY-SA: the license must allow derivative versions and commercial use). It's also nice if you do the same with press releases: after all, this is how you really mean your press release to be used, anyway.
A free license lets us use your materials at will, without worrying that we might be violating your copyright. In particular, this also lets us host copies of your images on Wikimedia Commons, which is great for you and great for us.
Wasson asks half-rhetorically, "So, if Wikipedia is such a popular site, and anyone can add an article, shouldn't savvy PR folks proactively submit an article about their organization or client?" He then answers himself "Well… maybe", pointing out the importance of notability, verifiability, neutrality, and that violations of these generally won't last long. He also points out that Wikipedia discourages "what it calls 'autobiographical' articles about yourself or subjects in which you are personally involved (e.g. your organization or client)." Wikipedia's assumption is that if you are important, someone else will write about you.
The rule on "autobiography" is not an outright prohibition, but it is a caution. If your only involvement in Wikipedia is to write about yourself, you will probably be less welcome than a more general contributor. And if you do so surreptitiously, and are caught, you may rapidly become very unwelcome. In particular, there is an enormous suspicion in the Wikipedia community of people who are being paid to write nice (or nasty) things about someone or something, and that suspicion becomes outright antagonism if those people attempt to conceal what they are doing and are later found out.
Still, corrections of inaccuracies are very welcome, and, also, if you believe some individual or group you are working with or for is genuinely notable and has been overlooked, it is legitimate to get the ball rolling; just remember that the resulting article, once other hands have reworked it, is not likely to be a puff piece.
The following suggestions for professional PR people and their equivalents who are thinking of writing for Wikipedia are modeled loosely on Brian Wasson's suggestions in the cited article, supplemented by some later exchanges with him. Again, the list is Joe Mabel's influenced by Brian Wasson, rather than vice versa.
Wiki is a technology, and Wikipedia is only one of the many wikis out there. Some actively welcome PR contributions. You may want to look into AboutUs.org [1], currently in beta, a domain directory wiki that actively welcomes having organizations write about themselves. (However, the licensing status of its material seems very unclear as of 10 September 2006.)