Wikipediocracy

The historian held the keys to drawer after drawer of artifacts from every era of the company’s existence — sewing machines, product sketches, vintage ephemera, love letters from fans, even the world’s oldest pair of dungarees. It was stuff with a story to tell, and she used it precisely for that purpose. She traveled the world giving presentations that featured these artifacts to illustrate the company’s brand promise through a visceral experience that no brochure or blog post could match.

Given how fashionable storytelling is today, you’d think every market-centered company would have a person like this on staff to manage the collective memory of its brand. But in my experience, not many do, and that’s a shame. Artifacts and stories articulate a company’s identity, purpose, and value to customers and communities in a very real, powerful way. Making these past and present narratives accessible to current and future audiences is an important role because it captures the spirit of the organization and uses that to develop an even stronger brand. This role is so important, in fact, that companies should give it executive-level visibility, authority, and resources.

Hex wrote:...if Wikipedia forbids businesses from ever writing about themselves, then it will be forever be condemning itself to mediocre articles about them.

thekohser wrote:

Hex wrote:...if Wikipedia forbids businesses from ever writing about themselves, then it will be forever be condemning itself to mediocre articles about them.

Post that on Jimbo's Talk page and let us know how it goes.

Employees can write about this stuff, they just cannot do it for the first time in Wikipedia, according to a cardinal content rule, NOR. And they are welcome to share published information on the talk page. Alanscottwalker (talk) 11:38, 18 July 2014 (UTC)

Whether or not they are usable in articles, images of "company folklore items" should be uploaded to Commons, which has explicitly rejected limitations on paid editing. The annotation pages for these images provide plenty of room for text explanations. Wnt (talk) 12:10, 18 July 2014 (UTC)

Disclosure I am often a paid editor. The chief problem with the Bright Line is that PR professionals (not historians typically) only "get it right" about 20% of the time. In the face of a COI disclosure, volunteers only get it right about 60% of the time. (yes, I am making up/guessing those statistics). It's basically a coin flip whether the edit will be accepted, even if it is an overt COI edit, or an overt BLP problem.
The Bright Line is intended to be a single simple rule that is not easily gamed by bad-faith editors hiding behind AGF as they make COI edits, but it is actually more effectively gamed than direct editing ever was.
Historians would do better editing than PR professionals, however I have a few times received a book from a client written by a historian with the question "will our Wikipedia page look like this?" and found many discrepancies between the book and reliable sources. The corporate historian is recruited to create a slanted version of history CorporateM (Talk) 14:23, 18 July 2014 (UTC)

Is anyone concerned that Scott appears to be proxying for a banned editor? - 2001:55810:AD5C:C6C0:2EE8:9093 (talk) 15:59, 18 July 2014 (UTC)

About as concerned as I am with which banned/blocked identity-concealing individual you are, which is to say, not much at all. How about you evaluate Scott's words on their own merit, rather than over-eagerly sniffing a breadcrumb trail like a Loony Tunes bloodhound? Tarc (talk) 16:19, 18 July 2014 (UTC)

Tarc, the IP is the banned editor. Per the link, he got someone to post the concept here, which in itself not the end of the world, and now he is going out of his way to be obnoxious about it. Newyorkbrad (talk) 16:45, 18 July 2014 (UTC)

Hex wrote:LOL.

It's not often that I'm moved to song by Wikipedians, but Demi, this one's for you. (NSFW)

Hex wrote:if Wikipedia forbids businesses from ever writing about themselves, then it will be forever be condemning itself to mediocre articles about them.

Hex wrote:The Jimbotalkians seem to think "businesses writing about themselves" means "businesses having free license to write whatever they want about themselves regardless of content policies". Nobody's suggesting that, but it sure is easy for them to argue against nevertheless.

thekohser wrote:Hex, are you cruising for a Wikipedia ban, or merely one of Jimbo's terse "you are invited to no longer write on my Talk page" commands?

Midsize Jake wrote:Heck, you could even theoretically have situations where the guy who does the lion's share of the actual work on something - a new website, for example - and who for some time has been referred to as the "co-founder" of that website (along with his employer at the time), might suddenly have that credit taken away from him, given that the employer probably wants all the credit for himself.

Indeed, it is a policy that I have long thought unwise and not particularly helpful with any meaningful problems. There are other problems in how we deal with corporate editing, too. It would be nice to have a constructive conversation about how to improve that, but such conversations tend to be derailed very quickly by excessive rhetoric and, with you Brad, I believe that is likely self-consciously so.--[[User:Jimbo Wales|Jimbo Wales]] 21:03, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

thekohser wrote:Am I misreading, or did Jimbo just suggest that Newyorkbrad is prone to "excessive rhetoric" and "self-consciously so"?

HRIP7 wrote:

thekohser wrote:Am I misreading, or did Jimbo just suggest that Newyorkbrad is prone to "excessive rhetoric" and "self-consciously so"?

Heh. We did the same double-take.

Hex wrote:

HRIP7 wrote:

thekohser wrote:Am I misreading, or did Jimbo just suggest that Newyorkbrad is prone to "excessive rhetoric" and "self-consciously so"?

Heh. We did the same double-take.

I'm pretty sure that was ham-fisted writing and what Wales meant to say was "I'm with you on this Brad". But then again what would I know? I'm just a "jerk".

thekohser wrote: Oh, wait. I get it. Jimbo's sentence construction is terrible, but he's trying to say that he agrees with Brad's assessment of Scott, that Scott's excessive rhetoric is self-conscious.

Hex wrote:

thekohser wrote: Oh, wait. I get it. Jimbo's sentence construction is terrible, but he's trying to say that he agrees with Brad's assessment of Scott, that Scott's excessive rhetoric is self-conscious.

Oops, I missed this - sorry. Yes, atrocious construction.

The only part where I consciously engaged in rhetoric was the final line, which was too fun not to write. The rest was straight-up arguing. Wales dismissed it as that's easier than actually responding with his own logic. The best he can come up with is "unconvincing" and "discredited", but then my comments are "just noise". What a vapid airbag.

Jimbo Wales wrote:Two people are disagreeing? Then the best thing is if some third person comes along and sees a way out of the disagreement by finding a compromise that both parties agree is better than either of their initial preferred options. "Mediaviewer good or evil?" is a question with no happy answer. "Mediaviewer: how to make it better for everyone than the old way" is a question that, if we can answer it, resolves the problem neatly and moves everyone forward with joy and relaxation.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 19:34, 17 July 2014 (UTC)

"Mediaviewer: how to make it better for everyone than the old way" is a question that, if we can answer it, resolves the problem neatly and moves everyone forward with joy and relaxation.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 19:34, 17 July 2014 (UTC)