[WikiEN-l] Fwd: The counterattack of the PR companies

[Andreas Kolbe]

On Wed, Apr 18, 2012 at 1:02 PM, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com>wrote:

> They say you have to wait 2-5 days for a response after requesting changes
> as though that is a bad thing. I'm very impressed with that response time.
> How many commercial encyclopaedias can do better?



I hope you're joking here. :)

Just in case you weren't: commercial encyclopedias have a sophisticated
editorial and legal process in place to ensure they do not print defamatory
content. Sometimes subjects are sent a draft before publication, and are
given an opportunity to make an input.

Wikipedia has none of that. What it does have is a history of articles
littered with malice, bias and inaccuracy (witness its history of
arbitration cases).

I was struck by the following passage in the paper:

---o0o---

Although another one of the five pillars is that Wikipedia does not have
firm rules – Wales recently stated, “This is not complicated. There is a
very simple “bright
line” rule that constitutes best practice: do not edit Wikipedia directly
if you are a paid
advocate. Respect the community by interacting with us appropriately”
(Wales, 2012a,
para 2).

This directly conflicts with the Wikipedia FAQ/Article subjects (2012) page
that specifically
asks public relations professionals to remove vandalism, fix minor errors
in spelling,
grammar, usage or facts, provide references for existing content, and add
or update facts
with references such as number of employees or event details.

---o0o---

On that, at least, they're correct.

Andreas