[WikiEN-l] Fwd: The counterattack of the PR companies

[Tom Morris]

On Wednesday, 18 April 2012 at 13:58, David Gerard wrote:
> Also note that in my experience, it is pretty much impossible to get
> across even to nice PR people that they have a really bloody obvious
> COI. I have spent much time trying. I would guess that this is because
> getting their POV in is, in point of fact, what they get money for.




So, recently, I've been advising a PR/social media company (unpaid) about their article, which was deleted for lack of notability.

They are perfectly well-aware of their COI and so on: that's why they've contacted me.

The stance I've taken with them is basically to ask them to find at least five reliable sources that meet the GNG, I'll have a look at them and if I think they do, I'll open a DRV on the deletion, listing the five sources. In the DRV, I'll make it quite clear that I've communicated with them, what the nature of the relationship is (no commercial relationship, I just happen to know a lady who works at the company personally) and they provided me the sources, but I won't open a DRV unless I agree that the sources meet the GNG. I hope that's a way to do it with some integrity.

Being that I'm pretty damn cynical of PR companies, and when I read about how PR companies want to edit Wikipedia "ethically", my initial bullshit detector goes off the charts. But in this instance, I think it's certainly possible.

User:Fluffernutter gave a talk about paid editing last year at Wikimania, comparing it with needle exchange programmes. Much as my gut feeling is "god no, don't give an inch to PR people even if they are claiming to act 'ethically'!", I have a funny feeling we're going to need to do something very soon.

-- 
Tom Morris
<http://tommorris.org/>