Special Podcast: What Role Should Companies Play on Wikipedia?

It's one of the toughest issues facing the public relations pros and marketers face today: what role (if any) should companies play on Wikipedia? As we all know, its hugely influential. Should employees or employers start up new articles, make factual or content changes to existing entries?

This challenge is exactly what four of my me2revolution colleagues (Michael Wiley, Phil Gomes, Leah Jones and Ming Yee) and I debated on a special Edelman podcast (MP3 download). We're putting this out there to solicit your feedback so please do share it in comments to this post.

Here's a guide to the podcast...

01:05 - Phil kicks off the show’s theme: A debate on corporate wikipedia participation between Edelman’s Steve Rubel, Michael Wiley, Ming Yee, and Leah Jones.

01:50 - Steve begins the debate.

03:17 - Michael agrees "in theory."

06:26 - Steve: "There’s a cultural vibe that says ’hands off.’"

07:46 - Michael: "Where does a long arm of a corporation begin and end?"

10:04 - Phil: "Jim Carrey: ’I’m going to choke you now and don’t you dare defend yourself."

12:49 - Michael: Notability criteria

14:55 - Ming: On factual errors

15:18 - Steve: On the definition of an "error."

17:10 - Leah looks at the entry on Starbucks (Ed. Note: An Edelman client)

20:00 - Company vs. community re: article creation and correction

26:00 - "Padding" Wikipedia entries

27:06 - Influencing Wikipedia policy

29:15 - Phil wraps up the show

29:26 - Disclaimer

Tags: wikipedia

Comments

[Todd Defren]

Hi Steve -First - a pleasure to meet you in person yesterday at the PRNewswire/BDI event, and an honor to be seated with you on the panel.

FYI, Constantin "Beloved By All" Basturea was at the event yesterday, and was up in arms about Wikipedia's plan to bar PR firms from participating at any level. He'd be a good guy to connect with on this topic, if you pursue it further.

[Rita Desai]

Do you have a transcript of the podcast available? I lost my headphones=(

[Mike Keliher]

One big point from my perspective: Your colleague (I forget his name) kept saying that he felt it was OK for Edelman to create a Wikipedia entry because it's a big company that impacts a lot of people, etc...

My point, and I think you are the same page, Steve, is that no matter how simple, factual and proveable the Edelman entry is, it should only exist if someone WHO'S NOT EDELMAN thinks it should be.

Hell, I think I'm a great guy, but I'm not throwing up my own Wikipedia page with my birthday and place of residence just because it's proveable. If anyone gave a damn, they'd have made that page for me.

[Mike Keliher]

Wait...I just listened a bit more to the audio, and that same guy said something about "so you lose ownership of that page?"!

You don't HAVE ownership of that page. It's not yours; it's about you. I think the other folks on this podcast with you just don't get it. This goes beyond Wikipedia, too; it's exemplary of the whole social-media idea.

[Amanda Chapel]

Steve,

Well, unless Wikipedia can be bought like Technorati, you're out of luck.

In case you missed it, PR is now considered spam in social media (see http://www.strumpette.com/archives/201-Has-Public-Relations-Become-Synonymous-with-Spam.html)

So much for the "revolution."

- Amanda

[Steve Rubel]

Rita, we don't have a transcript. Thanks everyone for the feedback (yes, you too Strumpy).

[Gregory Kohs]

I know that by your Wikipedia guidelines, I ought to sit here on my hands and wait for some nerd to make the comment that I feel ought to be made, but heck, I'm gonna "be bold".

It is amazing to me that none of you podcasters even mentioned the experience of MyWikiBiz over the past few months. If anyone's unclear about what happened, the Wikipedia Signpost did a decent job of summing it up.

The really very interesting part of it is how King Wikipedian, Jimbo Wales, called this factual, encylopedic article about Arch Coal a "travesty of neutral-point-of-view" and "corporate fluff"; summarily erased it from the public record; and then the Wikipedia community REVERSED Wales, and called their new, revised version "quite good" and said that it "looks great".

From the beginning, MyWikiBiz has envisioned itself a "paid encyclopedist" -- NOT a Public Relations operation. Wikipedia is NOT a Hall of Fame. The companies MyWikiBiz seeks to assist should be looking for informational recognition and cross-referencing only, and not advertising puffery.

With that stance, MyWikiBiz launched in the bright, disinfecting sunlight of full disclosure. If our contributed content was consistently biased and overstated, then the community would quickly learn to watch for our submissions and either edit them mercilessly, or delete them.

Instead, Jimmy Wales sought to push MyWikiBiz underground, where the "appearance of impropriety" wouldn't be so fully noticed. Perhaps MyWikiBiz was hitting too close to home, given that there are over 2,000 outbound links from non-profit Wikipedia to Jimbo's for-profit venture Wikia.com.

I'm disappointed that (most of) the Public Relations community seems to be assuming the fetal position and letting Wikipedia kick them and their clients around with a big, black, hypocritical boot.

You're leaving the decision of what companies deserve inclusion in Wikipedia to people with opinions like this. They're too busy editing articles about Pokemon characters and asteroids with numbers but no names, to have a serious interest in the business world.

[Phil Gomes]

Greg... I like you... You know I do. But I gotta disagree with you here.

First... I'm sorry your company wasn't mentioned in this episode of earSHOT. (I mean... I guess...)

Second... There's often the tendency to believe that the users' sense of entitlement with regard to a particular service should somehow override the stated terms of service itself. Remember what happened when Google basically said "You can have a whopping 1GB of storage, but we'll use the context of your note to help target the ads the end up in the sidebar." Politicians and civil libertarians went crazy but, fact is, Google is under no obligation to deliver a service based on any terms but its own. If people don't like those terms, they can go somewhere else. The fact that no one at that time offered 1GB of free email is immaterial.

If wikipedia slips into intellectual dishonesty, people will see that and it will eventually find that other resources will fill that gap. The barrier to entry for another wikipedia is actually pretty low. And, of course, terms of service often change over time.

Third... As you likely heard when I reminesced about the Jim Carrey interview, I too refuse to believe that a company's lot in life is to approach social media with a hand tied behind the back. I also believe that matters of a provably and indisputably factual nature should be corrected and it doesn't matter much where the source comes from. Unfortunately, PR folks will too often want to edit based on matters of positioning or emphasis -- which will rightly and loudly be rejected.

So... If Wikipedia wants to dispute provable fact based on the source, then so be it. I think that they'll find trust in their resource begin to erode if that's the case.

[Amanda Chapel]

Phil,

As there is a rising cultural rejection of PR in the blogosphere... what do you intend to do for a living?

- Amanda

[Gregory Kohs]

Phil, the problem here is that you are talking about "Terms of Service", but there are none on Wikipedia. Go ahead; go now to Wikipedia. Scroll to the bottom. You see "Privacy policy", "About Wikipedia", and "Disclaimers". No "Terms of Service".

The problem is that Jimmy Wales is making up (and changing) the Terms of Service that he has floating around in his busy mind, then executes them (or parts of them) in a haphazard and subjective way. This is sometimes known as "rule by fiat".

When MyWikiBiz was launched, months of research were spent investigating whether Wikipedia did or did not "allow" a third-party to edit content for pay. No prohibition was found. In fact, we did find an officially sanctioned area called the "Reward Board", where anyone could post a dollar amount and a request for creation or improvement on an article about any topic. Sounds like "paid editing" to me.

So, we launched.

Then Jimbo blocked our account.

Then we talked to Jimmy and came up with a compromise, where we'd edit content on OUR OWN SITE, and other independent, non-paid editors could scrape and paste it into Wikipedia.

So, we were back in business. Someone posted the article about Arch Coal.

Then Jimbo blocked our account again, for various NEW reasons that he dreamed up over a week or two.

Meanwhile, the 8th-grade Missouri student who is looking for help with a research report on "Companies headquartered in St. Louis" wouldn't have found Arch Coal, under Jimmy's design. The activist looking for "mining operations in Wyoming" to list in a state grant proposal wouldn't have found Arch Coal, under Jimmy's design. The precocious 9-year-old curious to find "what organizations were incorporated in 1997" (the year of her birth) wouldn't have found Arch Coal, under Jimmy's design.

Who stands to benefit from the case-by-case exclusion of paid-for, neutrally-written content; and who is losing? Wikimedia Foundation is a non-profit organization, driven by public donations from people who are being told it is the "free encyclopedia that anyone can edit". If that is not true, that's misrepresentation, and probably a case for the Florida office of the Attorney General.

What PR seems to be saying is that Wikipedia is not a "free" encyclopedia, but a "protected playground" for the commercially uninformed and business-challenged to call all the shots, in as subjective a manner as they care to.

I guess I'm the only one with any sense of "fight" left in me.