PR professionals should not directly edit Wikipedia pages relating to their organization or brand, according to guidance released by four international PR groups today.
Led by the U.K.’s Chartered Institute of PR, the group set out to provide “clear and detailed advice” for PR pros seeking to engage the Wikipedia community. They recommend PR pros should suggest amendments to Wikipedia content to so-called Wikipedians, the “editors” who participate in the online information collective.
“The main theme of the guidance is quite simple – where there is a clear conflict of interest created by the relationship between the public relations professional and the subject of the Wikipedia entry, such as a client or employer, they should not directly edit it,” said CIPR CEO Jane Wilson, noting Wikipedia is “one of the most visited sources of information on the internet.”
The Canadian PR Society, PR Consultants Association, and PR Institute of Australia collaborated with Wikipedians on the project, which produced a crowd-sourced, 19-page guidebook for PR pros using Wikipedia.
Where a Wikipedia article on a client is perceived to be unfair or erroneous, PR pros are urged to engage with regulator contributors on the article’s “talk page.” If a request levied there is ignored, the guidelines suggest moving to the author’s talk page and to continue through a series of quality controls designed by Wikipedians. Legal threats are discouraged. “’See you in court’ will not help you or a client. It can get you banned from editing while the issue is referred to lawyers,” reads the guidelines.
A study funded by the Arthur W. Page Center at Penn State University in April found that 60 percent of Wikipedia articles about companies contain factual errors.
Wilson acknowledged the Facebook group, Corporate Representatives for Ethical Wikipedia Engagement, or CREWE – led by Edelman’s Phil Gomes and lobbying Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales to streamline onerous rules for correcting or changing information on the site – but said such policy changes will not be made quickly and urged PR pros to respect the “community workings” as they stand now.
The guidelines say PR pros are free to contribute Wikipedia articles unrelated to their jobs and urged them to do so to learn how the site works.
The project also backed the following definition of PR: “Public relations is the discipline which looks after reputation, with the aim of earning understanding and support and influencing opinion and behavior. It is the planned and sustained effort to establish and maintain goodwill and mutual understanding between an organization and its publics.”
View the guidelines (PDF).