It's human nature for the field of public relations to develop best practices based on what "works." However, what's most effective and what is proper, ethical and legal to do doesn't always go hand-in-hand. Astroturfing review sites works and in some countries the press can be bribed. However, your company may have higher standards of ethical conduct, especially if the legal department has a say.
For organizations that make it standard operating procedure to comply with the law, there's a lot of "best practices" on public relations participation on Wikipedia that are actually encouraging illegal behavior.
Some PR agencies or other vendors will say that your edits are more likely to stick if you edit other articles first; That you need the edits to be posted from an "aged account" or that you are less likely to be reverted if you edit slowly, in small bytes.
Each of these practices are effective because they help the organization avoid detection on Wikipedia, create the appearance of being a disinterested volunteer and make it less likely for editors to realize you are a public relations professional. However, the Federal Trade Commission requires that marketing professionals disclose our identity on crowd-sourced websites, not get better at hiding it.
Any credible advice on public relations participation on Wikipedia, should advise you to disclose that you are a PR representative and engage with the site's editors.
This post was first published by the Word of Mouth Marketing Association.
Whether you’re reading WOMMA’s Social Media Disclosure Guide, the newly updated .com disclosures guide from the Federal Trade Commission or the FTC’s application of advertising and marketing guidelines to crowd-sourced websites, the message is clear: Readers must know when the source of their information is someone with a material connection to the subject.
But many reputable and honorable companies haven’t thought about how this applies to Wikipedia or constructed policies to ensure compliance like they have for Twitter, Facebook, and other sites. Wikipedia has become a dark-spot in otherwise ethical marketing programs, leading to frequent media humiliation, contentious relationships with Wikipedia, and even lawsuits.
A precedence-setting court ruling in Germany found that editing Wikipedia to promote your company may be an illegal and covert form of advertising, since readers presume the content comes from crowd-sourced, disinterested editors, and not those with a financial connection to the subject. They ruled that even though the company disclosed their financial connection on the Talk page of the Wikipedia article, the disclosure wasn’t prominent enough to expect Wikipedia’s readers to know the source of the communication.
Here are three principles every company should should adopt to ensure compliance with the site's guidelines, with astroturfing laws and to avoid controversy:
- All of Wikipedia’s content should represent the editorial judgment of volunteers that serve the reader’s best interest.
- Corporate communications on Wikipedia should provide value to the editorial community and its readers.
- Marketers should avoid being an advocate.
Represent the Judgment of Volunteers
The simplest way to ensure that Wikipedia’s content “represents the judgment” of crowdsourced volunteers is to follow the BrightLine concept introduced by Jimmy Wales, which suggests we avoid editing the article entirely. Instead, marketers should request corrections, offer content for consideration, and discuss controversies with the site’s editors like you would for any independent website.
Some common sense is needed. Correcting citation errors, grammar, and spacing is acceptable as a matter of common sense. In some cases, Wikipedia’s editors will insist the marketing person make an edit as a manner of taking credit for their work. While your authorship is not disclosed to the reader, Ethical Wiki believes this is compliant with the spirit of the FTC’s guidelines, so long as the site’s editors explicitly ask you to make the change.
Provide Value
Wikipedia being openly editable often creates a sense of entitlement to contribute and even control the page. Some in the public relations community have argued that PR professionals are just “another member of the crowd” and are thus entitled to contribute “just like any other volunteer.” This is vastly out-of-sync with the Federal Trade Commission’s point-of-view - that those with a financial connection must act differently than crowd-sourced participants.
Marketing participants don’t necessarily need to write content or even be neutral to be valuable to Wikipedia. Some of Wikipedia’s best articles on companies were written by me on a volunteer-basis with the help of public relations professionals that offered corrections, answered questions, donated images, and provided access to hard-to-get source materials. Just like we strive to deliver results for our client or employer by bringing value to influencers, the same is true on Wikipedia.
Avoid Advocacy
While there is nothing illegal or unethical about advocacy in the general sense, Wikipedia discourages it. Some marketing professionals may engage in advocacy unintentionally, because they have strong views about the subject. In other cases, it’s valuable to provide the company’s point-of-view under the knowledge that it will be balanced by other viewpoints. You may give the appearance of advocating, even if you do not intend to, so this principle requires good judgment.
It is often due to the appearance of advocacy, micro-managing, "hovering," and other tactics that create contentious relationships on Wikipedia and expose the organization to the risk of controversy.
This blog was first published on SocialFresh.
Offering content to Wikipedia's editorial community is different than traditional content marketing. The content is rule-bound. The editors are thorough. And we must produce neutral content about the company, rather than a thought-leadership subject.
Some companies have such strong opinions about themselves and certain controversies they are involved in, it can be an emotional process to write neutrally on it. Recently I've seen many public relations professionals following the best practices established by Chartered Institute of Public Relations, Jimmy Wales, and PR associations around the globe to offer content and other suggestions on the Talk page and allow impartial volunteer Wikipedians that serve the reader's best interest make editorial decisions for their readers.
This is how it should work. This is also what is legal for us (marketers) to do, after a court foundthat editing Wikipedia anonymously was an illegal form of astroturfing. But the success of these projects are mild at best. I thought it would be helpful to write on the three components that best establish whether a company will be successful on Wikipedia or not.
1. Aligned outcomes
To be successful on Wikipedia, your organization needs to want the same thing Wikipedia does - an article compliant with Wikipedia's policies. If your organization has a negative reputation in the press or doesn't meet Wikipedia's notability requirements, there may not be any way to simultaneously serve your client or employer and improve Wikipedia.
Most neutral articles include some things that are sensitive to internal stakeholders. The software is glitchy, the organization was engaged in a lawsuit, or they had layoffs years ago. We pursue product reviews even knowing they will be fair and balanced, but it is more difficult for us to be fair and balanced for ourselves - to write our own product reviews and have the company see value in it. First, consider if a wiki-compliant article will make stakeholders happy.
2. Wiki Know-how
You need to know (or be willing to learn) how to edit Wikipedia in the general sense. Most of Wikipedia's new editors do not do well and new editors acting in a PR role do even worse. According to one editor I talked to "it is almost impossible for a 'social media expert' to just come along here and immediately write anything worth keeping."
The Wikipedia community is constantly urging public relations professionals to edit Wikipedia in a general way before attempting to improve articles where they have a conflict of interest, but most struggle to justify the time investment. Besides using a vendor like us, PR agencies and large companies can assign one person in their marketing team to become an expert who is willing to devote the time to learn.
3. An advocate for ethics
For most companies that want to do content marketing on Wikipedia, there will come a time in the process that will challenge your ethics. Questions will be raised like, "will Wikipedians notice XYZ is missing?" or "would we get away with positioning it this way?" There needs to be a voice in the process to persuade the team to be fair and honest.
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Wikipedia's content on the Prudhoe
Bay (depcited above) oil spill was written
by British Petroleum |
This time it's British Petroleum who is at the center of media controversy for their participation on Wikipedia. BP's corporate communications team has been participating on the Talk page of BP-related articles for about a year, but Wikipedia's editors grew uncomfortable when entire rewrites of content written by BP regarding their environmental record were copied and pasted into the article by volunteers.
BP followed Wikipedia's policies and guidelines to the letter by proposing content on the Talk page, but Wikipedians are understandably uncomfortable knowing readers are getting information on some of the biggest oil spills in history directly from BP itself, under the assumption the material was written by disinterested volunteers.
Did BP actually do anything wrong? Probably not. Despite claims to the opposite, nobody has provided compelling evidence of spin by BP about their environmental record. On the contrary, BP has added a lot of informative content about their operations and pointed out a large number of corrections and outdated information.
Some have even pointed out that the PR participant from BP has been more neutral than the editors sparking the debate, many of whom are advocates against big business or that the treatment of BP's PR person borders on harassment. But just because BP did nothing wrong, doesn't mean they didn't put themselves in an avoidable situation where the controversy could have been reasonably predicted. We can all avoid similar circumstances following a few best-practices:
1. Give up control: Marketing teams have a compelling urge to try to get a corporate-approved version of content on Wikipedia, but no matter how neutral the copy is, it will always make people uncomfortable for companies to write their own high-profile controversies. Try offering sources, corrections and feedback and letting Wikipedia's volunteers take a stab at the content.
2. Be easy to work with: A large contributor to criticisms of BP's participation was an editor that threatened to retire from Wikipedia, because he felt the PR editor had strong-armed the community into making bias edits and felt overwhelmed by the resources BP was putting behind the articles. Your relationships with Wikipedians that take an interest in your company is as important as your relationships with the press. Treat them with care.
3. Don't micromanage: Even if you are correct, it will always make people uncomfortable to have public relations editors arguing for very specific language and phrasing of the issues. Some things aren't worth arguing over.
4. No Advocacy: Advocacy is not allowed on Wikipedia anywhere. PR professionals that make well-formulated arguments or work with favorable editors can create a favorable bias on Wikipedia, but in doing so create ticking time-bombs for another more critical editor to come by. The most important part is just making the article "good" by Wikipedia's standards and not allowing corporate issues to get in the way.
5. Disclose all: Wikipedia expects a higher standard of ethics than is normal in the PR field. Many of the accusations against BP are regarding source material that was missing from his proposed drafts. Traditionally in PR it's the expectation that we push positive information and have no comment on controversies, but Wikiepdians expect us to share information even if it's harmful to us.
This post was first published on SocialFresh.
Qorvis recently joined the ranks of PR firms like Bell Pottinger, Portland Communications and Finsbury that stand accused of manipulating Wikipedia entries for their clients.
Something that stood out from the summary at The Daily Dot was that Qorvis is defending their actions with a familiar tune - accusing Wikipedia of not providing reasonable processes to correct errors and have their clients' reputations treated fairly.
That inspired me to write this post on six ways to correct errors, address bias or contest content ethically and safely as a PR/marketing participant on Wikipedia.
Avoid becoming the next media embarrassment by following these steps:
1. Talk: 
The first step is to identify yourself on the Talk page of the article, describe the error clearly and provide sources that can verify the correct information.
2. Request Edit: Often the Talk page is not closely watched by the site's editors. Add {{request edit}} above your comment on the Talk page to add it to a queue of requested edits. This makes your request for correction visible to editors that may not be watching the individual article.
3. Editors: Even the Request Edit queue often grows stagnant with old requests and can take weeks or months, so it may also be a good idea to ask editors directly to consider your request. Take a look at the Talk page or the article's edit-history, find the most active editors on the page, and ask them to respond to your request directly through their Talk page.
4. COIN: COIN stands for the "Conflict of Interest Noticeboard" and it's a fairly active forum for editors to ask for help or raise issues related to conflict of interest, where they need the attention of more editors.
5. OTRS: OTRS stands for the open-ticket request system. If the error or bias is obvious, if you need something handled privately, or if it's urgent, contact Wikipedia at info-en-q@wikimedia.org. You'll get a prompt response each time from an experienced volunteer, though they probably won't handle complex requests.
6. Offer content: Sometimes the article is factual and accurate, but only the organization's controversies are covered, creating an imbalanced article. Unfortunately, it's unlikely volunteer editors will devote the time to beef up the article at your beckoning, so you've got to do the work to add the other side. Put together a really solid draft of the content you want to add and offer it to the site's editors.
If you feel an editor is picking on you or has a bias, this can be resolved through 3PO (third opinion) and other dispute resolution processes. However, often a public relations editor thinks volunteers are bias or picking on them, when it's really us who are bias!
Asking for corrections on Wikipedia isn't as obvious as it is with the media. There's nobody to call, several different ways to go about it and a lot of venues that often don't elicit a response. But, by following the advice above, you can get corrections made and stay out of trouble while doing it.
When was the last time you saw a Wikipedia component included in a marketing case study or award nomination? Public relations professionals are eager to brag about our work, but apparently not about what we do on Wikipedia.
At a recent American Marketing Association conference on social media, I asked the panel of speakers what their company's policy was on Wikipedia. The panel had been pulled together at the last-minute. They were those eager for the publicity, on the edge of their seat, microphone in-hand. One speaker was so bold as to discuss a client's CEO that started following XXX Twitter handles. But at this moment, the speakers dropped their mics and crossed their arms. An uncomfortable silence took the stage. Even a panel of experts on social media were either ashamed, uncomfortable, or completely un-knowledgeable when it came to one of the world's most influential websites.
One question: Why?
The Wikipedia community often assumes that marketing doesn't know any better and we merely contribute to Wikipedia poorly by mistake, because we didn't know the rules. It's plausible right? We were bias accidentally. But I think it's the skeleton in everybody's closet; the dark spot in our otherwise bright marketing programs.
I want to change it. If you're not proud of your work on Wikipedia, stop doing whatever you're doing. If there's one thing I want to accomplish at EthicalWiki, it's giving companies the tools they need to make genuine improvements to Wikipedia and raise their heads high while doing it. Helping them do work we can all be proud of.
It's time for us to contribute honorably and be proud of our work. Is it harder? You bet. So lets get to work rather than taking the easy way out.
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| Some red tape can be a good thing.82,000 |
82,000 Euros have been awarded for a project led by the German Wikipedia community to figure out the best way to handle "paid editing." That's the term used by Wikipedians to describe editors paid by a client or employer, such as public relations participants. Historically, the German Wikipedia has been known to establish precedence for other language Wikis, so this may lead to global progress in the relationship between the PR and Wikipedia communities. The project aims to create more consistent and clear guidelines for ethical participation by companies and create a series of workshops and events, as well as informational pamphlets to educate marketing pros on the appropriate way to engage with Wikipedia.
The effort represents a significant change in tone. For years Wikipedia has praised its "chaos that works," boasted that it has no firm rules and urged editors with a "conflict of interest" to do their best to be neutral. For marketing professionals, it's a frustrating experience without process. Wikipedia had guidelines that encourage you to edit your own Wikipedia article, even though you will most likely get in trouble doing so.
I've adopted the habit of telling others that EthicalWiki's approach to Wikipedia ethics is based on legal guidance, not Wikipedia's rules. Not out of disrespect for Wikipedia, but because the Federal Trade Commission and precedence set by a
German court ruling set much higher standards for ethics and offer clearer guidelines. It just makes sense. Editing a crowd-sourced site as if you are another disinterested volunteer is not acceptable. But being a resource for the site's editors - offering content, requesting corrections and discussing controversies to help improve their coverage is a good thing.
Any journalist will say that good PR is useful and the same is true on Wikipedia. But Wikipedians rarely experience good PR. This is evidenced by the dozens of discussion strings concerning the damage PR editors are doing to the site's legitimacy and fears that PRs are corrupting the site. It's true. We do great PR for the media, have fantastic social media campaigns and blow-out advertisements, but one area few marketers excel is Wikipedia; the dark spot in our otherwise case-study worthy work. Out of the thousands of case-studies our industry produces each year, you'll rarely see someone boast of the quality of work they did on Wikipedia.
Meanwhile, Wikipedia does an awful job at establishing boundaries or collaborating with public relations professionals. In my view, the community needs to stop thinking of public relations as editors who just so happen to have a "potential conflict of interest" and start thinking of them as practitioners that are "trying to do their job" in a way that is respectful and ethical. While there is some room for content marketing like EthicalWiki does, offering complete articles that include the good and the bad, I think the path for most marketers that don't have five years and 11,000 edits of experience on Wikipedia is to fly support the same way we do with media. To offer first drafts, request corrections, donate images, provide sources, answer questions and incite editor participation.
Public relations aren't "replacement editors" or "paid editors"; they are representatives from the company, who support the site's editors. Any journalist will say that "good PR is useful" but they won't ask companies to write their own full-length profile stories and controversies. They will ask public relations to provide images, experts and factual corrections. The best thing for Wikipedia to do is to answer the question: "What would a journalist do?" This is a powerful North Star to guide progress in the relationship and advance Wikipedia as a project to a more sustainable, professional-quality encyclopedia, instead of a junk-yard of blatant promotionalism and rampant bias.
This blog was first published on SocialFresh.
Ethical Wikipedia engagement is similar to traditional public relations with journalists. Just as a PR firm would with media, EthicalWiki offers contributed content, resources, discussion and factual corrections to Wikipedians. As it is with media, relationships, reputation and offering something of value to the medium are crucial.
The big difference?
Journalists expect PR professionals to be bias, while Wikipedia expects us to do our best to be neutral. This puts companies in an awkward position. We may have "no comment" on a subject for the media, but glazing over the issue on Wikipedia is seen as hiding information, manipulating Wikipedia and betraying the community's trust. Journalists expect us to be advocates, but for Wikipedians, advocacy raises defensive walls.
In every case the best thing for the company to do is to just work to make the article compliant with Wikipedia's standards. Companies that create bias articles with obvious omissions often have their articles corrected to the other extreme, invite risk and anger the Wikipedia community; a community that is equipped to enact vengeance on the company through negative editing. Because Wikipedia is openly editable, this leads to a sense of entitlement to control the page, but our relationships with Wikipedia editors are just as important as those with the press.
How do we build relationships on Wikipedia? Like anywhere, they're earned. Through expceptional integrity, patience, diplomacy and neutrality. Trust is the currency of most relationships and on Wikipedia it takes twice as much to earn it through honesty and transparency.
All this creates a seemingly impossible standard for the PR professional that wants to do the right thing. Wikipedia expects you to be neutral, but a half-dozen stakeholders within the company want the Wikipedia article to read like a press release, reiterate corporate messaging and omit all the less flattering aspects of the company's history. How can you do what's right, when your boss and colleagues measure success differently than Wikipedia does?
For the marketing professional that wants to do the right thing, there are at least four ways to convince internal stakeholders to be honest and neutral:
- Newt Gingrich's Wikipedia controversy was proof that even Talk page collaboration on Wikipedia creates risk of media exposure, if it's viewed as an attempt to undermine Wikipedia's sacred neutrality.
- Wikipedians will usually reward honesty and punish indiscretions. Companies that try hiding information or gaming the system can earn short-term gains, but run the risk of getting caught and attracting unwanted attention long-term.
- Companies that put their trust in the community will usually find them to be fair and balanced.
- Relationships count. Companies that want to have a long-term positive relationship with Wikipedians interested in the same topics, should demonstrate the qualities Wikipedians want.
PR and marketing firms are stuck between a rock and a hard place. Edit Wikipedia on behalf of your client and risk
breaking the law or joining a
long history of publicly humiliated organizations. Tell the client there is nothing that can be done, and you ignore arguably the world's
most important website, while inviting client do-it-yourselfers to add their corporate kool-aid to Wikipedia. For many marketing professionals, there is mounting pressure from a boss or client to edit Wikipedia and seemingly no way out of a bad situation. Here's five ways to convince your client or boss that anonymously editing Wikipedia is not the best route.
1. It may be illegal
Wikipedia's rule that marketing professionals disclose our "conflict of interest" and use Talk pages may also be the law. The Federal Trade Commission's
guidanceasks marketing professionals to disclose our affiliation with the organization in online communications. In Germany it was found that a CEO's edits to Wikipedia was an illegal form of covert advertising, even though he disclosed his affiliation with the company on the Talk page. While the FTC hasn't taken a stance on the issue yet in the US, it's certainly legal/ethical hot water most organizations don't want to dip their toes in.
2. Vengeful editing
Even months or years after a company posts promotional content on Wikipedia (which they may have thought was neutral) it's routine for Wikipedia's editorial community to add negative information (sometimes unfairly) to help "balance" the page. Most Wikipedians aren't excited about the prospect of spending hours culling through our content, so there's a simple mantra: "If you do it poorly, I'll do it poorly too." Once companies have already created bad blood with Wikipedians, it's very difficult to earn that relationship back or correct the problem. In general, Wikipedians will do what it takes to discourage bad behavior in an efficient way.
3. There is an ethical way to go
Companies edit Wikipedia anonymously often because they didn't know there was an ethical way to participate. Over-simplified media stories and a lack of general education have led to the assumption that any participation on Wikipedia is unethical and therefor must be done in-secret. When companies learn that there is an ethical path by doing PR and content marketing with the site's editors, rather than astroturfing the page, most companies will take the higher path. Why would anyone put their reputations at risk, jump into legal/ethical hot water and anger Wikipedians just to take a shortcut in doing it properly?
4. Credibility
The level of credibility Wikipedia has with its readers is on a per-article basis. Some articles are well-sourced, neutrally written and high in quality; this makes them credible to readers. On the other hand, Wikipedia's readers routinely tell me that they can tell when they found a self-written promotional page and they are quick to dismiss it. Companies think they have succeeded when a glowing Wikipedia page is created, but all that's been accomplished is turning Wikipedia into another of the 200 advertising messages bombarding people every day that are largely ignored.
5. Wikipedians know you
The guardians of many company pages on Wikipedia are journalists, analysts and customers, especially in B2B or niche areas. Companies that violate Wikipedia etiquette and do things that anger the editors on their page are often rubbing their largest customer or closest analyst the wrong way. Because of Wikipedia's anonymous model, the company will never know the harm they've done. I could name a few companies that think they're getting away with something, but many of their users are talking about their Wiki activities. Wikipedians don't always take the time to point it out or do anything about it. On the other hand, doing Wikipedia well and ethically often strengthens evangelists who are excited you've taken an interest in their side-hobby and demonstrated exceptional character in the manner it was done.
Gall Pharma, a German nutritional supplements company, was fined €250,000 by the Munich High Regional Court for edits made to Wikipedia, according to the German Wikipedia's newsletter. The company's edits highlighted that their incense products were available in German pharmacies and elaborated on why their competitor's products were not, a contested claim that could influence buying decisons.
The German court found that:
- The company's disclosure on the Wikipedia article's Talk page did not suffice, because readers can't be expected to see it
- Readers have an expectation that Wikipedia is written by objective and neutral editors
- Wikipedia is a form of advertising and content on the site may constitute an "endorsement" of a product
- These edits constituted a form of covert advertising
The ruling may set a precedence on how the European Unfair Practices Directive is interpreted regarding the legality of Wikipedia astroturfing and it will be interesting to see if the US-based Federal Trade Commission has a similar interpretation of its own Endorsement Guides, which require marketing professionals to disclose their affiliation in online communications:
"When there exists a connection between the endorser and the seller of the advertised product that might materially affect the weight or credibility of the endorsement (i.e., the connection is not reasonably expected by the audience), such connection must be fully disclosed."
Many Fortune 500 companies have - perhaps without considering the legal and ethical ramifications - written glowing product reviews on Wikipedia that are not far afield from Gall Pharma's editing. Additionally, huge swaths of Wikipedia's English articles on companies are written by the company's representatives anonymously. Are all these edits unlawful?
What it means for marketing
The news reinforces what EthicalWiki's position has been all along, that directly editing Wikipedia is - at the very least - ethically and legally ambiguous. Many PR professionals have been advocating against Jimmy Wales' "Bright Line" rule that public relations pros not directly edit Wikipedia. It turns out it may not just be his rule, it may also be the law.
That being said, like many of Wikipedia's policies and guidelines, the FTC's regulations have language that encourages common sense. I don't forecast companies will get fined for correcting grammar, removing vandalism or offering content for consideration. Rather the ruling re-affirms that Wikipedia is an atonomous site; that PR professionals are not correct to portray ourselves as just another member of the public editing; and that there are some disclaimers in Wikipedia being the site "that anyone can edit."
Marketing is not without recourse for improving our Wikipedia articles. According to Jimmy Wales, "using the talk pages, wikiprojects, notifying other editors on notice boards, coming to my talk page, emailing OTRS - these are all valid options that work successfully. Editing directly is extremely likely to prove embarrassing for your client."
Any contribution to Wikipedia of any size that is genuinely valuable to the site can be made in a format that leaves content decisions in the hands of impartial editors where they belong. EthicalWiki has overhauled controversies, re-written articles and made 5,000+ word contributions without ever touching the page.
The take-home message? Stop editing Wikipedia and start doing quality public relations and content marketing with the site's editors.