Ask a Wiki Expert #2: How Do I Know if My Company Qualifies for a Wikipedia Page?
Note: this blog post is a companion to the video series “Ask A Wiki Expert”. Watch the video here.
How do I know if my company can have a Wikipedia page?
Hello, and welcome to Ask a Wiki Expert. I'm William Beutler, and I will be your wiki expert today. In this video series, I answer questions about Wikipedia from a business perspective, because that is what my firm, Beutler Ink, does every day.
Our question this week is: how do I know if my company can have a Wikipedia page? Wikipedia theoretically has room for everything, but obviously not everything qualifies: you might've even had the experience of seeing a page you created get deleted for being "not notable".
Can I edit my own page?
This is because Wikipedia editors want to make sure only topics of lasting interest get to have their own separate entries. To explain how they make that judgment call, we have to refer to the main rule on the subject, which is called the Notability guideline.
The guideline says—and here I’m quoting—"if a topic has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject, it is presumed to be suitable for a stand-alone article".
That densely packed sentence raises a few questions, most importantly: And what's a reliable source? And what counts as significant coverage?
What counts as a reliable source?
Wikipedia looks to what it calls "reliable sources" to demonstrate which topics are important enough for Wikipedia to cover. These are usually well-established news publications known for doing quality journalism.
This can be tricky, though: sometimes generally reliable sources publish things that can't be used for this purpose. For example, having a piece in the Washington Post sounds great, but if it turns out to be an op-ed from your CEO, then it can't be considered "independent of the subject".
What they're really looking for are news stories, feature articles, and reported profiles. Also note that Q&As don't count for these purposes. Basically, the content needs to be written by a staff writer under some form of editorial oversight to be considered.
What counts as significant coverage?
You also need a lot of them—and that's where "significant coverage" comes in.
There isn't a simple formula that says: four articles is too few, but five articles and you're golden. And just being mentioned in passing, even if it's a lot of articles, isn't quite enough either. It's not about how many links you can find, but about how deep the coverage is.
If you look at the breadth of coverage and the professional news sources contain most of what you think should be in your Wikipedia article, then it's probably worth exploring further. But if you have to fill in too many gaps with press releases or company blog posts, then it's probably not.
How Beutler Ink can help?
When someone asks my team at Beutler Ink about creating a new page, we always begin with what we call an Eligibility Review to determine if it meets the Notability standard. If you're curious to learn more, send me a message or send us an email at hello@beutlerink.com.
So that is how you start to answer the question, how can I tell if my company qualifies for a Wikipedia article. While there is no simple checklist, there is a framework for finding the answer.
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.
