On 16 November 2012 09:54, Andreas Kolbe jayen466@gmail.com wrote:
Charles, I really am a bit mystified here. First of all, I would echo Tom's point about the insider fallacy. In quality management terms, the people Wikipedia writes about are customers, just as readers are. That's quality management ABC, and I can't imagine why you would contest that.
Well, ask the management of "The Sun" whether the celebs they write about are the "customers", and they'll have a good belly-laugh. Since I'm not interested in the "tabloid" side of WP I know what you are saying here, but I don't think you are expressing the point. Everyone knows that WP operates on universal principles rather than things you find in management books.
Secondly, even the WMUK/CIPR guideline allows that there is a way for PR companies to contribute: by using the talk page and noticeboards. At least those PR professionals who comply with that guideline deserve to receive efficient service, and there can be no intimation that what they do is in any way improper, and had better be done by a lawyer. And if all they do is use talk pages and noticeboards, then they don't have to be able to edit within NPOV to have a right to be at the WP table. Just turning up on a talk page is enough. Do you disagree?
About the lawyer: I think I have been misunderstood here. I meant that a lawyer probably has had enough training and background to deal with the actual issues of representing a client on WP. I was not suggesting that anyone should be using a lawyer to make legal threats and so on.
Since I was involved in the CIPR guideline draft I know what it says.
I think we (the WP community) should show a courteous face to all who come to talk pages and elsewhere on the site needing help.
Thirdly, as Andy has pointed out, PR professionals and employees are not actually at present forbidden from editing Wikipedia.
I was heavily involved in drafting the COI guideline in 2006, so I know what it says (or used to say, at least).
Until four weeks ago, people who clicked "Contact us" to report an article problem were presented with one invitation after another to just go and fix the article themselves. And the number of articles edited by organisations' staff is legion. I sometimes think a quarter of Wikipedia wouldn't exist if it weren't for conflict-of-interest edits. They're everywhere. Pick any article on a minor company, musician or publication, and chances are you'll find the subject or staff members in the edit history.
I think your estimate assumes too much. It would be more helpful to understand how big the problematic sector really is.
People have PR departments, or hire PR agents, to manage their reputation. That's just how it is. If they come to Wikipedia with a justified complaint, Wikipedia should have a process in place that does not require them to edit the article themselves, but provides them with a reasonable level of service, and gets things done when that's the right thing to do. There should be no quibbling that PR professionals have no right to complain in Wikipedia.
The "right to complain" on behalf of someone else is an innovation, I think. And this is where I have a problem. Arrogating to ones' self the right to complain not just about the content (which surely anyone can do) but as representative of a particular interest is questionable. Historically lobbyists had to wait in the lobby?
I don't think that's what you're saying, as you say you are well aware of the need to improved the relationship between Wikipedia and PR professionals, but just what you *are* saying to Tom then escapes me at the moment.
As I said, my example of lawyers was more to do with fitness to do the job actually required than about role.
I have had a couple of interesting conversations with people outside the community about training PR folk to the point where they could more fruitfully do the job of defending clients on WP. What was interesting was that my estimate of how much training it would take was at odds with the estimate I was being given of how long the trainees' companies would be prepared to allow them to take off the job. Time is money, in that sector. But we have to face this as a practical issue, if WMUK (for example) is to move to doing workshops with the PR sector. My actual problem comes down to this: if we are required to teach a quick-and-dirty approach to WP editing to PR pros who then expect simple steps to give good results, there may be disappointment.
The conflation of WP and "social media" in the PR Week online piece shows the trouble here. WP predates social media as people now understand it, and is fundamentally more complicated. We have to make that point clearly in order to get progress here, and if what we get back is based on, say, Facebook as comparison, we are not in serious communication with the other side.
Charles