Wikipediocracy

RALEIGH, N.C., Jan. 27, 2014 /PRNewswire-iReach/ -- Ethical Wiki, a professional services firm focused on helping companies contribute to Wikipedia ethically, has introduced the Wikipedia Academy for Marketers. The Academy is an online resource with instructions on how marketing professionals can engage with Wikipedia ethically by requesting corrections, offering content for consideration and managing their conflict of interest appropriately. "When marketing professionals use Google to find answers on how to improve Wikipedia ethically, they are faced with a lot of erroneous, confusing or contradicting advice," said David King, founder and Wikipedian for Ethical Wiki, "Some of that advice essentially tells marketers to ignore errors and other problems, while others encourage risky and potentially illegal behavior. I wanted to create a basic resource that provides authoritative, straight-forward instructions."

The Wikipedia Academy teaches professionals how to engage with the Wikipedia community in a manner that is compliant with disclosure laws, Wikipedia's policies and established ethical best practices. The Federal Trade Commission requires that marketing professionals disclose a financial connection online and the Wikimedia Foundation sent a cease and desist letter to a Wikipedia firm that allegedly violated the site's terms of use by misrepresenting their affiliation with clients. According to a recent survey by the Public Relations Society of America, 12 percent of public relations professionals believe it is common practice for marketers to pretend to be someone else in order to make changes on Wikipedia. "In our 2012 analysis of 2,578 company pages on Wikipedia, only ten percent of them were marked as important by Wikipedia's volunteer community," said King. "These articles are paramount to the companies they represent but comparatively unimportant to the volunteer editor community, which maintains thousands of articles on a volunteer basis. Companies can take the initiative to improve them, but the safest and most effective way to participate long-term is to do so in a manner that is ethical, transparent and useful."

According to Ethical Wiki's eBook, marketing professionals should give Wikipedia's editors a similar experience as they would have working with other volunteer contributors. This can make the company uncomfortable, because following Wikipedia's content policies may require including viewpoints the company doesn't agree with. The Wikipedia Academy includes guides on how to offer a new article to Wikipedians for consideration through the Articles for Creation tool, how to request corrections through the Request Edit template and how to approach unfair content.

About Ethical Wiki

Ethical Wiki is a professional services firm that helps organizations offer content, request corrections and discuss issues with Wikipedia's editors in order to obtain neutral, high-quality Wikipedia articles. A substantial portion of Wikipedia's highest-ranked company articles, which have been assessed by an independent editor to meet a high standard of Wikipedia policy, were facilitated by Ethical Wiki.

King is a "Veteran Editor III" on Wikipedia with more than 20,000 edits and five years of experience on the site. He has created more than 15 percent of Wikipedia's most highly ranked articles about companies, which have been evaluated by the Wikipedia community as being neutral, properly sourced and of high-quality. King advocates for the importance of Wikipedia and for ethical participation on the site as a regular speaker, author, and educator. He previously supported public relations, social media and Wikipedia programs at The Hoffman Agency, Gutenberg Communications, Lutchansky Communications and Edelman.

thekohser wrote:He's also hiding his chin from full disclosure.

Ethical Wiki, a firm focused on helping companies contribute to Wikipedia, has launched an online resource called the Wikipedia Academy for Marketers as a guide to how PR professionals can use the online encyclopedia to support clients. The Academy, which launched on Monday, includes guides on how to submit an article to Wikipedia's editors for consideration, request corrections, and approach unfair content using tools and templates. [...]

“One of the most prolific responses you get on why PR people aren't participating on Wikipedia ethically is because they don't know how to, or they feel it is too hard and there is not enough instruction,” said David King, founder and Wikipedian at Ethical Wiki. “Wikipedia itself does not do a very good job providing clear answers; my hope is that the Academy will provide people with a straightforward guide on how to participate on Wikipedia in the correct way.”

The guidelines published by Wikipedia are clear on the topic of neutrality, points of view, paid advocacy editing, notability, and conflict of interest, according to Jay Walsh, communications consultant and adviser for the Wikimedia Foundation, the group that runs Wikipedia. “If Ethical Wiki's guidelines insist on respecting those critical policies and values within English Wikipedia, then there is some likelihood that they are also in conversation with active Wikipedians,” said Walsh, who added that he had not yet reviewed Ethical Wiki's procedures or recommendations. “It will ultimately be up to the Wikipedia community to determine if the procedures and policies Ethical Wiki is proposing are acceptable.” Last September, Walsh stepped down from his role as Wikimedia's communications head after almost six years to found a consultancy. Walsh is contracted to work as an independent adviser and consultant until the group hires a new communications chief.

Since last October, Wikimedia has been in dispute with Wiki-PR, an agency whose primary service is editing Wikipedia pages. Two months ago, the Foundation sent the agency a cease-and-desist letter after it allegedly failed to comply with Wikipedia's terms and conditions by engaging in paid advocacy editing. Wiki-PR has told PRWeek that it does paid editing for clients, but not paid advocacy work. “What Wiki-PR is doing is generally seen as spammy; they are writing ads on Wikipedia and the reader thinks it is crowdsourced and independent,” said King. “Ethical Wiki discloses its financial connection with the client, and we leave important editorial decisions up to crowd sourced, disinterested volunteer Wikipedians.”

“Ethical Wiki discloses its financial connection with the client, and we leave important editorial decisions up to crowd sourced, disinterested volunteer Wikipedians.”

NotNormal wrote:

“Ethical Wiki discloses its financial connection with the client, and we leave important editorial decisions up to crowd sourced, disinterested volunteer Wikipedians.”

I call bullshit!

With the number of clients who "jump" from one paid editor to another, I'll bet it's not unreasonable to imagine that some of Mr. King's former clients end up with companies like Legal Morning or WikiExperts or, heck, even MyWikiBiz... and so we'd have some measurable ability to see if King actually discloses his conflicts in a public enough manner or not.

NotNormal wrote:

With the number of clients who "jump" from one paid editor to another, I'll bet it's not unreasonable to imagine that some of Mr. King's former clients end up with companies like Legal Morning or WikiExperts or, heck, even MyWikiBiz... and so we'd have some measurable ability to see if King actually discloses his conflicts in a public enough manner or not.

All hail Greg! He didn't just hit it on the nose. He hit it on the nose of the nose! So again, I call bullshit!

Eclipsed wrote:Confirmed nose of the nose hit, jump they do. I vaguely recall, way back when, one of mine jumping to work with some dude in philly

Zoloft wrote:There is a scent of cigar smoke in the air...

What do you say, David... are you as squeaky clean as you claim to be?

Zoloft wrote:I should create a Paid Editors Marketplace Forum so you folks can compare notes and trade difficult jobs.
This one would have ads and a monthly fee. Very reasonable.