User:Ethan (HPR)

Hi, I’m Ethan. I’m a communications professional based out of the San Francisco Bay Area. I’m part of a two person team working on Wikipedia-based projects; my current teammate is User:Shelly (HPR). We handle different aspects of our projects, so you may not see the same amount of editing from each of us. We understand that the activity of communications professionals on Wikipedia has been controversial in the past, but we believe that communications professionals have an important part to play in the construction of a neutral and comprehensive encyclopedia.

The problem
Wikipedia doesn’t have enough editors to ensure that all notable topics are covered well, and definitely doesn’t have enough editors so as to ensure that articles about people and companies are up to date. It is totally understandable why an average Wikipedian volunteer may not want to spend their time updating sundry facts and figures on corporate articles, but it still presents a significant problem for many of our clients. One study conducted by Penn State in conjunction with the PRSA found that 60% of Wikipedia articles about companies contain factual errors, and that companies often have a hard time correcting these errors. Since Wikipedia is now a trusted source of information for so many, it’s important that articles are accurate.

Our pledge
We believe that transparency is critical in our efforts. Just as Wikipedia’s guidelines request that editors who have conflicts of interest disclose them, the code of ethics of the Public Relations Society of America similarly mandates transparency. We believe that transparency serves the best interests of our clients and the encyclopedia, and that being transparent is the only ethical choice. To the best of our ability, we will strictly adhere to all of Wikipedia’s policies, because we believe that only by doing so will we be able to generate the greatest value for our clients, for Wikipedia, and for the world. If you believe we have violated one of Wikipedia’s policies, please point it out to us; we welcome scrutiny.

We strongly believe that Wikipedia is one of the most important developments of the last century. We want to make Wikipedia the best encyclopedia it can be, and don’t think the large number of omissions and errors that exist in Wikipedia today can be allowed to persist. Although we believe that our client-based work will help address one aspect of this bias, we realize that it can’t address all of them, and we believe that the other aspects are also critically important to address. Towards that end, we will also be creating neutral, encyclopedic articles that we do not have a conflict of interest for in areas of Wikipedia that are currently under-served. We will clearly delineate what articles we work on that we have a conflict of interest for, and what articles we do not.

Conflict of interest disclosures
We've decided to disclose our conflicts of interest (where they appear) in several different ways. We think that our usernames themselves suggest that many of our edits may have a COI, and we clearly indicate the fact that we are communications professionals on our userpages. In every instance that have a conflict of interest - financial or otherwise - on any article that we edit, we will clearly indicate that COI (a) in all of our edit summaries on that article, (b) on the talk page of that article, and (c) list that conflict on our own userpage. We believe this provides a significant degree of transparency, and will allow others to monitor our actions on Wikipedia to ensure that they are appropriate. We've decided not to follow Jimmy Wale's bright-line rule in most situations; we believe that following it universally would both place an undue burden on Wikipedia's community and result in COI edit requests being backlogged. Please feel completely free to edit any pages we've put up, although we'd appreciate feedback either on the talk page of the article or on our userpages if you think our writing style needs improvement.