Kevin Gorman wrote:
I was invited to the meeting Bill refers to, but unfortunately unable to attend. I've talked to a number of the participants though, and would like to stress that this is, well, er, not a joke. The PR-side people involved in this are sincere in what they state, and I genuinely believe that this is probably the best opportunity we've had to establish a working relationship with the PR industry that preserves the integrity of our encyclopedia while avoiding stuff like Bell Pottinger, Wiki-PR, and all the low level constant PR manipulation that occurs throughout our sites that we've ever been presented with.
Re: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:PRSTATEMENT
The statement is a nice read and it's hardly objectionable. I'd expect nothing less from a group of public relations folks, all of whom have a very vested interest in presenting themselves as good guys.
However, my gut feeling here is that this statement is a sham. My (cynical) read of this statement is basically "agencies such as ours keep getting caught editing on behalf of clients and it turns into a real shit-storm, so we'll say we'll play by the rules now, even though we'll really just hire contractors and subcontractors to do our dirty work."
These public relations firms are paid millions of dollars to ensure that their clients look good on the Internet. Wikipedia is a major player on the Internet, but Wikipedia's purpose is not to make these clients look good, it's to have objective and neutral educational content about notable entities. Both public relations firms and Wikipedia are served by better, more accurate articles, but only one side is being paid millions of dollars each year to ensure that the information makes clients look good.
It also seems a bit strange that these companies feel it appropriate to use the English Wikipedia as their hosting platform for this statement. This probably needs further thought and consideration. It isn't as though any of these companies would have difficulty buying hosting elsewhere to post their essays and statements about how they're now reformed.
About the general trend, this practice is not novel. As I wrote in May 2012, the current approach by (particular) paid editors is a "radical transparency" approach, it seems. The idea is that if you do everything out in the open, you can't later be punished because everyone was aware of what you were doing and who you were doing it for. It remains an open question whether this approach is working well or benefitting Wikipedia.
MZMcBride