[Wikimedia-l] Paid editing v. paid advocacy (editing)

[Martijn Hoekstra]

On Fri, Jan 10, 2014 at 7:17 PM, Federico Leva (Nemo) <nemowiki at gmail.com>wrote:

> Arne Klempert, 10/01/2014 17:51:
>
>> I've heard that before from Wikipedians. However, it does not match
>> with what communication professionals keep telling me. Even larger
>> companies with solid communication departments are usually not in a
>> place to spend enough ressources to correct their articles beyond
>> basic facts. [...]
>>
>
> That only means that their return on investment is too little for them,
> not that they wouldn't have enough resources. Usually, that's because what
> they're trying to do is impossible, so they keep hitting a wall. Wiki-PR's
> very reasonable prices show that the job can be very cost-effective and not
> so heavy, if one knows what can survive in the system.
> In my experience, every time you talk with a company's communication
> person you have to spend hours convincing them that every single thing they
> thought or wanted to do on Wikipedia is totally impossible, then after a
> complete mind-reset you can teach them the simple things they can do
> successfully. Things could be much smoother, but our approaches are too
> inefficient (or our resources insufficient by several orders of magnitudes
> with current approaches) for the necessary mass-education of communication
> professionals to happen and enable them to productive interaction.
>
> Nemo
>
>
I very much agree with this. Currently we just don't have the manpower to
explain to 'the corporate world' in an understanding and clear fashion that
what they are trying to do is *all wrong*, and what it is they *can*
actually do. As long as corporate spam outnumbers well-meaning Wikipedians
who are willing to invest time and effort in explaining by roughly a factor
1 : 10, there is little we can do. But at the same time, it's the work
environment of those tons of spam that make our editors treat every new
contribution and contributer like spam and spammers - even the ones that
aren't, which fosters an aggressive uninviting environment that inhibits
the influx of people who can become seasoned Wikipedians who can help deal
with the issue.

I'm pretty sure that's the problem. I wish I had a solution to it too, but
unfortunately I don't.




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