[WikiEN-l] Wikipedia has PR Problems

[Matt W]

Word 

--M



> Date: Sat, 17 May 2008 10:31:46 +0300
> From: jwales at wikia.com
> To: wikien-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia has PR Problems
> 
> 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
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

_________________________________________________________________
Make every e-mail and IM count. Join the i’m Initiative from Microsoft.
http://im.live.com/Messenger/IM/Join/Default.aspx?source=EML_WL_ MakeCount