Ask A Wiki Expert: What is the Right Way to Approach a Wikipedia Article About You or Your Company?
Note: this blog post is a companion to the video series “Ask A Wiki Expert”. Watch the video here.
What is the right approach to Wikipedia?
Hello and welcome to Ask a Wiki Expert. I am William Beutler, and I will be your wiki expert today. This is a new series from Beutler Ink where I answer questions about Wikipedia from a business perspective.
Let's kick things off with what is probably the fundamental question that affects business professionals, and that is: what is the right way to approach a Wikipedia article about you or your company.
Can I edit my own page?
If you're even asking the question, you are probably already aware that Wikipedia has a "conflict of interest" rule that discourages someone with a financial connection from editing an article on that subject.
But what you're supposed to do instead isn't quite as clear. I've heard a lot of people say they know they shouldn't edit their page directly, but want to know if it's OK if I do it for them. Or they'll ask, is it OK if they just don't use a company computer?
The answer to all of these is: sadly, no.
What constitutes a “conflict of interest”?
To explain the right approach, we'll start by contrasting it with the wrong approach.
The wrong way is having someone affiliated with your company edit the page themselves without acknowledging their connection. Wikipedia editors consider that deceptive marketing, and if they find out about it, they might add some unsightly warning messages to your page.
The reason you can't just hire someone outside your firm to make the edits is because, as soon as they agree to accept payment from you, they now have a conflict of interest themselves.
And using another computer or IP address doesn't make a difference. That advice sounds like someone telling you how to avoid getting caught.
It's also not much better to ask a friend to edit the page as a favor. While it might get around the strict focus on financial relationships, it's not much of a long-term strategy. And if you keep asking, they might start to get annoyed after a while.
Fortunately, the right approach is actually fairly simple: to reach out to Wikipedia volunteers using the talk page to see if they'll agree to make changes on your behalf.
Creating a Wikipedia user account
To do this, you'll need to create a user account. Then go to the talk page for your company. If you don't know where this is, it's just to the right of the Wikipedia logo on every article.
On the talk page, state what you see is wrong, offer a solution for the problem, include links to back up your point if you have them, and—this next part is really critical—make sure to mention your professional connection, so volunteers know where you're coming from.
There's a lot more to this part of the process, and we can get into that in other videos. I should add, I am not saying it's easy to be effective. But I am saying it's not hard to put yourself in a position to succeed.
So, that is my answer to the question, what is the right approach to Wikipedia. If you have any follow-up questions, please add them in the comments and they might become the basis of a future video. Thank you for watching, and I'll see you on the next Ask a Wiki Expert.
