[WikiEN-l] Wikipedia has PR Problems

[Jimmy Wales]

Thomas Dalton wrote:
> We have a lot of bad PR, certainly, but do with have PR problems?
> Despite all the scandals in the press, Wikipedia holds a unique place
> in the public psyche as *the* place to go for pretty much anything you
> want to know, and that shows no signs of changing. Everyone may hate
> Wikipedia, but they still use it, and that's what matters.

This pretty much conflicts with the way I view how we should behave and 
how we should respond to criticism.

Being a popular website, being the place that "everyone" uses, is and 
always has been only a tangential part of our mission.

What we are is a humanitarian, charitable, and serious effort to create 
and maintain and distribute a high quality encyclopedia to every single 
person on the planet, in their own language.  The fact that some set of 
things is popular is, in large part, irrelevant to that mission.

I think we need to look at the bad press that we sometimes get and 
evaluate it seriously: sometimes it is unfair or silly.  But when bad 
press comes because of something we actually did not do well, that we 
could think seriously about how to do better, then the right response is 
not to shrug our shoulders and say, "So what, we are popular?" but to 
respond thoughtfully.

This is particularly true when issues of ethics and human dignity are at 
stake, as they often are in cases of BLP-related bad press.

--Jimbo