More about PR firms - First post here by myself

[Michelle D'israeli]

Hello all,

My appologies if the subject line appears more convuluted than strictly needed, the posting guide seemed to suggest something like it. Unfortunately I know I wouldn't be able to keep up with the list, so you'll forgive me for not subscribing.

Before my main thoughts, an idea just (literally) occured to me - have the Germans discussed this yet? They seem to be ahead of the game on a number of points, from what i've bumped into. Unfortunately, my german vocabulary is very limited, so I can't really go have a look :(

As has been mentioned a few times, there is the "Wikipedia:Conflicts of interest" proposal that is being slowly worked upon. However before any further mention occurs, it does have to be pointed out that this is very much a working document that is still rather in the preliminary ideas stage. Please remember when viewing this proposal and the associated talk page that it is clearly not complete yet, although we'd like to get that fixed!

In many respects, this whole issue appears to be one of ethics. As WAS 4.250 said on the aforementioned talk page, you could argue that ultimately this is a case of Verifiability and Neutral Point of View. As long as these two policies are met, no one would be any the wiser if this were to happen from an anonymous account. However recient events have reminded us that paid editors and others with a conflict of interest may try to use the community process in unethical ways, and Sheldon Rampton has reminded us here that it's not just about positive comments on your own article, it's also about negative entries in those of competitors.

One thing being discussed on the COI discussion is that there are other forms of conflict of interest. This raises far more interesting ethical questions, since not all such conflicts are automatically bad. As we understand it, wikipedia would actually be benifited from experts within a field updating related articles, as long as they avoid original research! But on the other hand, there is a matter of trust inherant in such things. An example given for a situation in which some people may feel uncomfortable about giving that trust would be a christian group editing articles on evolution and inteligent design.

So far much of the COI talk we have done has focused upon procedures for new articles, with a current rough leaning towards consensus acceptance being needed. We should really try and steer some discussion off towards the problem with editing existing articles. Not only is this potentially more damaging, but it represents a compromise between article integrity and article improvement. Whilst it would be nice to believe that every request for work placed on the corresponding talk page would get answered (or rejected, if needed), I seriously doubt this would happen in a timely manner without an additional system to draw attention to the work request. Perhaps I'm just bitter and jaded (for reasons not relating to wikipedia), but in general I've found people would rather others who they see as being 'able' to do the work do it themselves rather than ask for it to be done. I suspect some of the issues with editing existing articles would be mitigated by a stable article system, wh
 ich would allow for the work to be done, but verified before being accepted.

I've ran out of steam now, so I'll stop. I'll keep an eye on the list, and you can get back to me at this address, my talk page (user talk:LinaMishima) or on the COI discussion. I'm off to move the key points from the thread here to the COI discussion...

~Mish, LinaMishima
Michelle D'israeli



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[Mathias Schindler-2]

On 8/22/06, Michelle D'israeli <m.k.disraeli@...> wrote:

> Before my main thoughts, an idea just (literally) occured to me -
> have the Germans discussed this yet? They seem to be ahead of
> the game on a number of points, from what i've bumped into.
> Unfortunately, my german vocabulary is very limited, so I can't
> really go have a look :(

de.wp had a similar discussion in 2005 about politicians and political
activist groups that were messing around in wikipedia in biographies
of opposing politicians. In general, dewp does not appear to have
major problems with PR companies. And if so, it would not be much
different to how we already deal with entities who are discovering
wikipedia via an article about themself (which is fine) and messing
around with it (which is not fine). We talk to them, if possible.
Several german speaking magazines from the PR industry have issued
warnings about editing in wikipedia in an inproper way because of the
risks associated with it of being exposed in public. The general
strategy could be described as "talk to them, encourage them to use
the talk page, ask them to behave nicely".

The article about the Siemens company is quite often edited by IPs
from the Siemens network. The vast majority of these edits is positive
such as updating of figures. This is insofar funny as I spoke with an
employee from Siemens' PR department and he insisted that they should
be the only from Siemens to edit the article and that no other
employee is allowed to make public statements about Siemens. He later
realized by himself that he shouldn't be worried about this Siemens
policy or Wikipedia but rather about his superiois finding out that
the PR department is getting more and more redundant :)

The problem of external PR companies is (IMHO) associated with the
kind of articles that each wiki allows. If you focus on concepts and
principles and more about the thing in general, rather than a destinct
product from a specific company, you might be able to avoid a lot of
problems as there is no place for PR companies to land. Focus on
[[car]] not on [[Mercedes L-400 2006 edition 1,5l diesel with ipod
socket]].
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[Mathias Schindler-2]

On 8/22/06, Michelle D'israeli <m.k.disraeli@...> wrote:

> Before my main thoughts, an idea just (literally) occured to me -
> have the Germans discussed this yet? They seem to be ahead of
> the game on a number of points, from what i've bumped into.
> Unfortunately, my german vocabulary is very limited, so I can't
> really go have a look :(


This is timing. The german newspaper "Die Welt" has just today written
an article just about mywikibiz

http://www.welt.de/data/2006/08/24/1009086.html

Als wichtigstes Nachschlagewerk des Internets wird Wikipedia immer
mehr zum Ziel von Werbe- und PR-Profis. Enzyklopädieartikel gegen Geld
bietet nun eine PR-Agentur ihren Unternehmenskunden. Ein Angebot, das
die Wikipedia-Community in Aufregung versetzt.


(Being the most important reference work of the internet, Wikipedia is
becoming more and more a target of PR and advertisement-professionals.
A PR agency is now offering encyclopedic articles for money to their
customers. [This is] an offer that causes quit a stir within the
Wikipedia community)

80% of the article is about the mywikibiz.com thing, the remaining
part is about the Siemens thing when someone edited [[:de:Klaus
Kleinfeld]].

Mathias
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[Matthew Brown-5]

On 8/24/06, Mathias Schindler <mathias.schindler@...> wrote:

> The problem of external PR companies is (IMHO) associated with the
> kind of articles that each wiki allows. If you focus on concepts and
> principles and more about the thing in general, rather than a destinct
> product from a specific company, you might be able to avoid a lot of
> problems as there is no place for PR companies to land. Focus on
> [[car]] not on [[Mercedes L-400 2006 edition 1,5l diesel with ipod
> socket]].

However, there's much less damage that a PR company can do at your
example of a specific car model.  The worst we get is an uploaded
brochure, and hopefully some pictures we can use.  The puffery can be
edited out, the factual stuff can stay.

-Matt
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[geni]

On 8/24/06, Matt Brown <morven@...> wrote:
> However, there's much less damage that a PR company can do at your
> example of a specific car model.  The worst we get is an uploaded
> brochure, and hopefully some pictures we can use.  The puffery can be
> edited out, the factual stuff can stay.
>
> -Matt

Problem is the odds are the image uploaders won't have the right to
release the images under a free lisence.

--
geni
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[David Gerard-2]

On 24/08/06, Mathias Schindler <mathias.schindler@...> wrote:

> The problem of external PR companies is (IMHO) associated with the
> kind of articles that each wiki allows. If you focus on concepts and
> principles and more about the thing in general, rather than a destinct
> product from a specific company, you might be able to avoid a lot of
> problems as there is no place for PR companies to land. Focus on
> [[car]] not on [[Mercedes L-400 2006 edition 1,5l diesel with ipod
> socket]].


en: has articles on types of products ([[videocassette recorder]]),
lines of products ([[Casio Exilim]]) and on individual products
themselves ([[Ford RS200]]).

For edits from companies, the main benefit they could bring to the
wiki would be references for the sort of detail that product geeks
really want to see.


- d.
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[Mathias Schindler-2]

On 8/24/06, Matt Brown <morven@...> wrote:

> However, there's much less damage that a PR company can do at your
> example of a specific car model.  The worst we get is an uploaded
> brochure, and hopefully some pictures we can use.  The puffery can be
> edited out, the factual stuff can stay.

The worst we can get regarding this exaple is a company "updating"
this article with no-one around to fix it with people reading this
shit with other companies following this bright example.
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[Matthew Brown-5]

On 8/24/06, David Gerard <dgerard@...> wrote:
> On 24/08/06, Mathias Schindler <mathias.schindler@...> wrote:
> en: has articles on types of products ([[videocassette recorder]]),
> lines of products ([[Casio Exilim]]) and on individual products
> themselves ([[Ford RS200]]).

And so we should, IMO (which I suspect you meant) - at least, when
there is sufficient info to write an article and sufficient interest
to keep it maintained.

[I wondered why [[Ford RS200]] seemed familiar; turned out the images were mine]

> For edits from companies, the main benefit they could bring to the
> wiki would be references for the sort of detail that product geeks
> really want to see.

And hopefully the official references rather than poorly-maintained,
poorly-available fan pages.

-matt
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