Monday, January 23. 2012
QUOTE
PR Making Little Headway with WikipediaA furious battle, which PR is losing, is taking place on the Facebook site called Corporate Representatives for Ethical Wikipedia Engagement (CREWE), created by Phil Gomes, SVP of Edelman Digital, Chicago.
As of press time 127 participants had posted hundreds of comments, many of them by frustrated PR pros who can?t get their entries and corrections past Wikipedia's 10,000 volunteer editors. (We tried five postings on PR subjects and all of them were promptly scratched).
Contributors who run afoul of the volunteers too many times can find themselves permanently blocked.
WP boss Jimmy Wales is dead set against entries by anyone getting paid to submit them. He only wants input from “reliable†media and never from “primary†sources.
A Wikipedian, for instance, would never attend a sporting event and report what happened. He or she would wait for a write-up in a “reliable†medium which would then be posted.
WP interprets “encyclopedic†to mean unbiased and neutral although the dictionary says it means “all-encompassing, exhaustive, in-depth,†etc. There is no mention of truth or accuracy.
Such things are hammered out in public debate as is being done on CREWE. Other websites including www.techdirt.com are conducting the same debate.
A chief WP critic is Gregory Kohs, who has paying clients that want their WP entries corrected and updated.
Kohs, who has posted dozens of comments on CREWE, has now been banned from the site. He says PR pros who think they can be “submissive†and comply with WP rules are fooling themselves.
“The system is deliberately rigged to favor anonymous anti-corporate zealots with agendas to push,†he says.The WP philosophy is that rank amateurs should be in charge of information flow.
We wonder if any Wikipedians would fly on an airplane built by weekend aeronautical buffs?
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PR Making Little Headway with Wikipedia, Jack O'Dwyer
thekohser PR Making Little Headway with Wikipedia 
