Renée Bagslint wrote:As has been said before, Wikipedia has a content policy disguised as a conduct policy. Businesses will certainly see an advantage in having an entry in Wikipedia that presents them favourably, and some of them will work, or pay for work, to make that happen. This is clearly a problem for an encyclopaedia that claims and proclaims neutrality, but which anyone can edit. The sort of people who invest their time and energy on Wikipedia often seem to be the sort of people who dislike business and so are motivated to stop business articles being skewed by two factors, one high-minded and conscious (the good of the neutral encyclopaedia), one not so high-minded and often less conscious (sticking it to the man). That entitles them, in their view, to behave badly to other contributors who take a different line, even though it might be one that independent civilised human beings might reagrd as reasonably neutral. People who disagree must be labelled as an outgroup, against whom no form of abuse is too great: terms such as sock-pupper and paid editor are brought into play, and have exactly the same function as the word witch did in Salem, or communist in the HUAAC. Because the vocal minority and the silent majority agree with the anti-business line, it prevails, because that's how Wikipedia works.
I agree with much of this.
I was a word processor at an investment bank for over 14 years. We did these company profile pages that had basic publicly accessible data when I worked on M&A jobs. It's basic, industry-established information.
When I've tried to add a lot of this information to business pages, I get accused of either paid editing (I'm not) or being promotional. Because often there's no understanding of this type information, it is perceived incorrectly. Just plain wrongly.
It's great anyone can edit Wikipedia. But it's also a problem when someone who doesn't understand an industry makes unilateral decisions.
There's a reason for crap business entries, ones that specifically lack basic factual information. It's too much of a battle to get this basic info up there.
I'm so tired of this. Really. I would have loved to improve business-based content on Wikipedia. It's really unfortunate.
Apologies, I'm just whinging and moaning, repeating myself here. I feel very strongly about this.
- Erika
User:BrillLyle