[WikiEN-l] Wikipedia has PR Problems

[Thomas Dalton]

On 16/05/2008, Christiano Moreschi <moreschiwikiman at 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.

So does anything in the public eye. There might be something we can do
to reduce it, but we certainly can't eliminate it. My point was that
it isn't actually harming us in any significant way, so why bother
doing anything about it at all?

> Obviously, we do many things wrong at Wikipedia, some of which we are justly censured for.

Yes, such cases do arise and then we do need to do something about it,
absolutely.

> 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..."

Often the reason no-one was able to explain it at the time was because
the journalist in question didn't want to understand, they just wanted
a sensational story, so they didn't ask anyone about it (at least, not
anyone that could actually help).


>  Quite often, of course, there's no response from WMF (not asked?), or no coordinated one, so this doesn't help.

There often is a response, though. Take a look at Sue's latest monthly
report on foundation-l, under the communication section it lists who
they've spoken to in the press, and it's a decent length list. I
imagine when they don't respond it's a concious decision and not a
lack of co-ordination.