On Fri, May 16, 2008 at 11:07 AM, Christiano Moreschi moreschiwikiman@hotmail.co.uk wrote:
That's true, but in general I think we get a lot of bad press that we simply don't deserve. Obviously, we do many things wrong at Wikipedia, some of which we are justly censured for. But so often I read some hit job in the press and think "Oh, that's just a misunderstanding. These people don't get quite how wiki works. If only I'd been able to explain at the time..."
Quite often, of course, there's no response from WMF (not asked?), or no coordinated one, so this doesn't help.
Some bad press, you can't explain and make better. It doesn't matter how you try and explain or engage on the issue, it's just wallowing in the mud to engage at all.
Much of that are issues which are so fundamentally off the wall that they bear no resemblance to reality.
The WMF not trying to answer every crazy assertion made in the press is not a bad thing. It's a sign of maturity of PR response. Some things, you just have to take the hit on and move on.