Hello everyone,
Wikimedia UK has just published a blog post giving its response to today's news stories in The Times and The Daily Telegraph about paid editing of Wikipedia.
You can see the blog post at http://bit.ly/ZfSaln but the full content is below.
If you have any questions please do let me know.
Thanks,
Stevie
In response to today’s news articles in The Times and The Daily Telegraph about PR editing of Wikipedia
This morning The Timeshttp://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/business/industries/telecoms/article3597035.ece ran a story about how staff at the public relations firm RLM Finsbury edited the Wikipedia article on Alisher Usmanovhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alisher_Usmanov, including removing negative material. The story was also republished online by The Daily Telegraphhttp://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/mediatechnologyandtelecoms/9671471/Finsbury-edited-Alisher-Usmanovs-Wikipedia-page.html .
Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia and as such its articles should be written with a neutral point of view. To maintain this neutrality we recommend that anyone with a conflict of interest, such as PR professionals, follows the guidelines we created with the CIPRhttp://www.cipr.co.uk/content/policy-resources/best-practice-guides-toolkits/wikipedia-and-public-relations. When PR professionals engage with the volunteer community via talk pages, we almost always see good results. If you need to seek an urgent correction, you can email info-at-wikimedia.org for assistance – there is a volunteer team on hand 24/7 to help.
We are pleased The Times notes that, while it took more than a month for the Wikipedia community to initially spot the changes and undo them, once they were changed again it only took seconds for this to be picked up on and undone once more. This shows that the Wikipedia community is active and that protecting articles from this kind of editing is taken seriously. This is important for Wikipedia’s credibility and for its readers and editors.
We also welcome the CIPR responsehttp://newsroom.cipr.co.uk/cipr-responds-to-reports-of-rlm-finsbury-editing-wikipedia-pages-for-alisher-usmanov/ to these reports. It is clear that the majority of PR professionals are willing to work with the Wikipedia community and to follow the community’s guidelines. Problems arise when PR professionals try to “fix” articles by directly editing them, as this story shows.
Wikimedia UK is always happy to engage with anyone, including PR professionals, about how Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects work. You can contact us by emailing info-at-wikimedia.org.uk or by calling our office on 020 7065 0993.