[WikiEN-l] More about PR firms

[Sheldon Rampton]

Thanks, Erik, for giving me a heads-up that this discussion is  
happening.

Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:

>> I think we need to be very clear in a lot of different places that PR
>> firms editing Wikipedia is something that we frown upon very very
>> strongly.  The appearance of impropriety is so great that we  
>> should make
>> it very very strongly clear to these firms that we do not approve of
>> what they would like to do.

And Erik Moeller <eloquence at gmail.com> replied:

> My take on it is that if we push PR industries to far to the outside,
> they will just do their work clandestinely. This will damage
> Wikipedia's reputation far more if it becomes known, especially when
> an article that has 200+ revisions was started and carefully groomed
> by a paid propagandist.

I'm not sure how this discussion originated, but I think Erik has a  
point. It sounds like the proposed restriction on PR firms is a  
special case of Wikipedia's general rule against editing articles  
about oneself or one's own organization, in which PR firms are seen  
as agents editing on behalf of their clients. The issue of "editing  
articles about yourself" has always been tricky, in part because it  
exposes a paradox in Wikipedia's editorial policy:

(1) Editing articles about oneself is strongly discouraged, if not  
outright prohibited; yet

(2) Anonymous editing is allowed, which makes it difficult if not  
impossible to enforce the policy against self-editing. (In fact, the  
policy against self-editing creates an INCENTIVE to edit anonymously  
as a means of evading the restriction.)

I realize that Wikipedia's existing policies have a lot of history  
and inertia behind them, but I have long felt that the policy against  
self-editing is problematic. I think it should be revised to the  
following:

Editing an article about yourself or your client is permitted, under  
certain conditions:
-- CREATING articles about yourself or your client is not allowed,  
only editing of existing articles.
-- Self-editing is allowed if limited to adding or correcting  
noncontroversial facts. For example, if the article about me gives an  
incorrect date of birth, I should be allowed to correct it.
-- People should not self-edit when dealing with controversial or  
disputed facts or interpretations. Any such disputes should be  
addressed on the talk page and left to others to resolve, and can be  
submitted to arbitration if they are not satisfactorily resolved.
-- People who wish to edit an article about themselves or their  
client are strongly encouraged to do so transparently, by disclosing  
that they are editing an article about themselves on the article's  
talk page.

The problem with the current policy is that is is gradually expanding  
into an umbrella that excludes whole classes of people from  
participating in Wikipedia. Members of the U.S. Congress and their  
staffs were banned (although they could easily circumvent the ban by  
simply editing from their homes rather than their offices). Now we're  
talking about restricting PR firms. It's easy to come up with other  
classes of people who could also be restricted from editing on  
similar grounds. What about lobbyists? Employees of think tanks?  
Trade associations? Labor unions? Should Christian missionaries and  
clergy be told not to edit articles about Christianity?

A restriction on editing "articles about yourself or your client" is  
also a poor fit with the problem that the current policy is  
attempting to solve, because some PR firms do work that is not about  
their client but rather aimed at attacking their client's  
COMPETITORS. One example that we wrote about recently involved a PR  
firm which circulated a claim that Apple's video iPods were dangerous  
to children because they could be used to download and view  
pornography. The client in this case was Sony, which makes a rival  
MP3 player. But how would you enforce a policy that says PR firms  
working for Sony can't edit Wikipedia articles about Apple products?

Another recent example: the DCI Group, a PR firm whose clients  
include Exxon, recently got caught anonymously circulating a video on  
YouTube that mocked Al Gore's activism on global warming. Al Gore was  
not their client, and the video didn't mention Exxon at all. But does  
it make sense to have a policy that says employees of PR firms can't  
edit articles about politicians?

Preventing this sort of thing from happening on Wikipedia would  
require a policy that forbids people who work for PR firms not only  
from editing articles about their clients, but also from editing  
articles about any topics of potential interest to their clients. A  
policy of this nature would be so vague that it would be a nightmare  
to enforce -- especially since many PR firms do not disclose their  
client lists.

On the other hand, a policy that requires PR firms to be transparent  
about disclosing whenever they edit an article related to a client or  
a client's interests, coupled with the restrictions that I outlined  
above, would be reasonably enforceable. PR firms would be discouraged  
from anonymous or POV editing by the strong possibility that they  
would be identified and embarrassed for doing so.

--Sheldon Rampton