User:Ocaasi/Learning to Speak full text


 * Slides available: link
 * The plain and simple conflict of interest guide: link

The title of this talk is Learning to speak in Wikipedia’s Language. This is really a talk about two cultures. The culture of Public Relations and the culture of Wikipedia. A culture is a way of life, a language, a history, a set of practices, a value system, and a collection of goals. When approaching a new culture, it’s best to use an attitude of respectful curiosity. What is it that makes those people tick? What do I need to know to get along with them? What do they really want? The process is one of transforming ignorance into understanding. I’d like to be your guide in that.

But first I need to learn something about you, market research, if you will. How many of you have seen Wikipedia come up in a Google Search? Read an article? Seen the Discussion page? Edited an article? How many of you have a client with a Wikipedia article? Have you ever made a change to it? Ever proposed a change and received feedback from other editors? I’d also like you to flip over your packet and write down 1 question that you’ve been dying to know about Wikipedia, big or small.

Thanks for that survey. Now let me tell you something about myself.

My name is Jake Orlowitz. I’m a volunteer editor on Wikipedia, where I go by the name Ocaasi. Most people I’ve worked with don’t know who I am or where I live, nor do I know anything about them. I’ve been editing the site for about 3 years and made over 20,000 edits. I have created 15 articles with 150,000 views, a contribution I’m proud of but a minor one in the scope of the site and its more prolific editors. One of my specialties in working on Wikipedia is assisting companies and organizations with changes they want to make to articles. I have worked with the Monitor Group, Occidental Petroleum, and the U.S. government, among others, to navigate our policies and improve articles. I have a love for making the site more accessible. I designed a learning game called the Wikipedia Adventure, and I wrote a manual for editors who are personally or professionally affiliated with an article called the Plain and Simple Conflict of Interest Guide. I am an active volunteer. I do what I do for free and for fun. I see problems and I try to fix them.

I am going to talk about three main points today. One, Wikipedia is a massive and increasingly influential global presence. PR professionals should be aware of it and view it as a critical medium in their communication portfolio. Wikipedia matters. Two, the historical conflict between PR and Wikipedia can be resolved with a proper understanding of the two culture’s roles and processes. We can work together. And three, PR professionals can save themselves countless hours of frustration by learning the best practices for editing. You can learn to use Wikipedia effectively.

The culture of Wikipedia
Let’s start at the beginning. What is Wikipedia trying to accomplish? Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That’s Wikipedia’s mission statement, and it’s a radical mission. Most radical of all is that, it’s working.

In 10 short years Wikipedia has become a force of its own, with an importance that has only grown with its size. Wikipedia is the largest encyclopedia in the history of mankind. 8 billion words among 21 million articles. And not just in English. There are 285 separate editions of Wikipedia as many languages. For some, Wikipedia is the only encyclopedia that has ever existed in that language.

The most familiar of those projects is English Wikipedia. 3.9 million articles and 26 million total pages. English Wikipedia is 50 times larger than Microsoft Encarta’s 2002 Deluxe edition. There have been over 500 million edits to the site and every day another 250,000 or so are added. 800,000 uploaded files not including the 13 million hosted at Wikipedia’s sister site Wikimedia commons. There are 16 million registered users, interestingly, of whom only 150,000 have been active in the last 30 days. That virtual horde is overseen by a mere 1500 administrators. The community basically runs itself.

This massive project matters, but not just in a general or cultural way, but to you specifically.

Wikipedia matters to you because it matters to your clients. Wikipedia is the #6 most popular site in the world in web traffic. It averages 2.7 billion pageviews in the US each month out of a global 12 billion. It is the number 1 most influential website in blog mentions. And it comes up in 50% of all Google search queries on the very first page. In January 2012 alone, the article on Krispy Kreme was viewed 25,000 times. British Petroleum 75,000. Pepsi 100,000. Walmart 150,000. And to be clear on Wikipedia’s priorities, Lady Gaga was viewed over 1 million times. These articles are read all over the world.

What if these were one of your clients? Would you know how to manage their article?

Not only is Wikipedia massive and influential, it has become trusted.

A 2005 study in the prestigious journal Nature found that Wikipedia came close to the level of accuracy in Encyclopedia Britannica, which is written by the world’s foremost experts in their subjects. Other studies compared Wikipedia to professional and peer reviewed sources and found Wikipedia’s depth and coverage were of a high standard. That includes articles on medicine, science, math, and history, in addition to the popular culture and trivia which we are known for.

How do millions of people from all across the globe come together to produce something of this magnitude and quality? Let me try to explain how Wikipedia works. 2011 was a historic year in Egypt as the 30 year dictatorship of Hosni Mubarak was overthrown by his own people. Wael Ghonim, a political activist who worked for Google in the Middle East had this to say about his country’s turn. “I say that our revolution is like Wikipedia. Everyone is contributing content. You don’t know the names of the people contributing the content. Everyone was contributing small pieces, bits and pieces. We drew this whole picture of a revolution. And that picture—No one is the hero in that picture. Like the revolution in Egypt, Wikipedia is crowdsourced, chaotic, complex, and above all it is a collaboration.

The sheer unlikeliness of something constructive emerging from such an organic process led a Wikipedia editor to famously retort, “The problem with Wikipedia is that it only works in practice. In theory, it can never work.”

So, What is Wikipedia?

Wikipedia is the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit whose mission is to summarize published reliable sources. Free, as in free to use, but not only that, Wikipedia is also free to modify, to repurpose, to copy, or even to sell. That means two things. One, any text on Wikipedia has to be free from copyright, so you can’t just cut and paste from another website, you have to paraphrase in your own words. Two, if you can improve upon Wikipedia and convince other people to pay for it, that’s ok with us. Anyone can edit, there are almost no barriers to anyone anywhere in the world with an internet connection visiting any page on the site and changing any text on that page. Will it remain there for long if it’s not an improvement? Probably not. But it’s a radically open platform. And as an encyclopedia, Wikipedia is a place to summarize what others have said before, and not just anyone but high quality sources that have a reputation for being accurate.

As with any definition it’s also helpful to know what Wikipedia is not.

Wikipedia is not a dictionary. We don’t do mere definitions. It’s not a publisher of original thought. Everything on Wikipedia was published somewhere else first. It’s not a soapbox or means of promotion. Wikipedia doesn’t exist to advance anyone’s opinion or interests. It’s not a mirror. It develops its own content. It’s not a blog or a social network. It’s not a directory or an index. It’s not a how-to manual. It’s not a crystal ball. We don’t try to predict the future. It’s not a newspaper, because newspapers are the first to report something and we’re never first. It’s not an indiscriminate collection of information. An encyclopedia is a structured approach to synthesizing knowledge. And finally, it’s not censored. The goal of sharing the sum of all human knowledge is not one which tailors itself to any individual’s personal tolerances.

Wikipedia is not just a source of information, it is also a social project.

So, what about the Wikipedia community? Contrary to popular belief, It’s not anarchy. This is a self-organizing project, but there is a Foundation that oversees it, there are administrators, and there are numerous policies and guidelines. It’s not a democracy. We don’t just vote and count the votes. We discuss and seek consensus, true agreement and mutual understanding. It’s not a bureaucracy. Despite our many rules, we are foremost a practical project with the goal of creating an encyclopedia. It’s not a battleground. It’s a collaborative effort. And it’s not compulsory. Participation in Wikipedia, with the exception of those whose job or professor requires them to edit, is completely voluntary.

Wikipedia's core policies
The entirety of Wikipedia’s governance system can be distilled in a few simple core policies, which act as pillars for the entire community.

The first, which you should know by name, is Neutral Point of View or NPOV. NPOV states that, “Articles shouldn’t take sides, but should explain the sides, fairly, proportionately, and without bias.” Wikipedia has no opinion of its own. It seeks balance. It seeks to operate as a map of the territory of the real world and to represent it evenhandedly. That process takes more than just objectivity, it also takes care to weigh different views and material in light of how prevalent they are among good sources.

The second core policy is Verifiability, or just V. Simply, Verifiability requires that another editor can check the source of information in an article. Wikipedia is not made up, it is looked up. We report what others have reported. This principle is taken so seriously that it’s written in our policy that the threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is not truth but rather verifiability. That doesn’t mean we don’t care about the truth. But it means we don’t take it upon ourselves to determine the truth; rather, we rely on sources to do that for us. In order to implement verifiability as a policy, it’s required that editors cite a reliable source for any material challenged or likely to be challenged.

The third core policy is Original Research, OR, or better called No Original Research. Since Wikipedia only reports what others have reported, it is never first and never novel. The OR policy states that, “You cannot include facts, allegations, and ideas for which no reliable, published sources exist.” Further, you can’t take a source or multiple sources and conduct your own analysis of them. Analysis or synthesis of published material that serves to advance a position not advanced by the sources is prohibited.

Those three core policies constitute our content pillars. But again Wikipedia is a social project, and the last core policy I’m going to discuss is our Civility Policy.

Civility is the guiding principle of interacting with other editors. The civility policy says, always treat each other with consideration and respect. Keep the focus on improving the encyclopedia. Most importantly and most difficultly, behave politely, calmly, and reasonably even during heated debates. And do not ignore the positions of others. Take what others say into account and communicate with them to try and achieve consensus. I like to summarize the civility policy as “behave humanely with humans”. It’s so easy to forget that the anonymous contributors to this site are real people, especially when they disagree with you strongly. But they are. It’s critical to remember that Wikipedia is not just created for the whole world, but with it.

That is an overview of the culture of Wikipedia. The culture of public relations is its own world. It has its own ethics, practices and goals.

The culture of Public Relations
The PRSA definition of public relations defines it as “a strategic communication process that builds mutually beneficial relationships between organizations and their publics.” Strategic and mutually beneficial. Interesting contrast.

What is ethical public relations?

Ethical public relations is based on the principles of Advocacy, Honesty, Expertise, Independence, Loyalty and Fairness.

Something I wonder as an observer, is how one can be a loyal advocate while also remaining honest, independent, and fair? That may be an internal tension in the profession. Wikipedia has its own internal tensions. And then there are the tensions that arise when these two cultures meet.

The relationship beween Public Relations and Wikipedia
The history between public relations or more generally paid editing, and Wikipedia is a long time coming. It first came onto the radar in 2006 when an editor began offering to write articles for a fee. Then it was discovered that year that U.S. congressional staffers were making changes to the articles about their elected bosses. In 2007 a computer whiz at Cal-Tech named Virgil Griffith wrote a program called WikiScanner which matched the IP addresses of Wikipedia editors to a database of corporate information. His program revealed a torrent of companies and organizations that had been editing their own articles and even those of their competitors.

Some of the biggest names in politics, business, and media were among them. Microsoft, the CIA, the Democratic party, the Republic Party, the Israeli government, Dupont, Washington Post, Fox News. That was just the tip of the iceberg. And those were only the ones that made the news. These incidents revealed a state of paid editing that was deeply concerning to Wikipedia. It was also problematic for the subjects of those articles that were edited, as media attention focused unfavorably on the worst offenders.

Paid editing
Paid editing matters because: it has real world consequences. Foremost among them is extreme media embarrassment. Wikipedia is a very public forum, and attempts to improperly influence it are frequently reported in the media. At its worst, these incidents are ugly. They can result in significant public backlash and critical press coverage. They pose a risk of alienating one’s own clients. At last, but certainly not least, they taint Wikipedia’s reputation as a credible and reliable source. And yet, despite this history, the public relations industry has begun to argue that there is a rightful role for PR professionals as paid editors on Wikipedia, even a necessity. I want to give a fair overview of that position and then the opposing view:

Lord Bell, the head of Bell-Pottinger, one of the UK’s largest media firms which was caught secretly editing its clients’ articles, put it succinctly: You can destroy someone’s reputation in one minute and it will take years to rebuild.

There are legitimate reasons put forth by proponents of paid editing. Most importantly, Wikipedia has a responsibility to be accurate, and that responsibility only grows with its influence. Inaccuracies can do real harm to real people and real organizations. PR professionals have time, access, and competence to make constructive changes to articles about their clients. And lastly, PR professionals bring a different perspective than the typical editor, one that is more sympathetic to business, to reputation, and one that is well informed about the history and ongoing developments of those they represent. Public relations professionals have argued that many articles have mistakes, are incomplete, are written with bias or even libel, and thus, public relations must be allowed to have a role in improving them.

There has frankly been a lot of resistance to that point of view.

Wikipedia is a site that prides itself on neutrality, and views public relations as an industry which is inherently biased towards client interests. Author Upton Sinclair quipped, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.” Indeed, bias is not always conscious, and when one stands to gain or lose personally or professionally, bias is even harder to detect in oneself.

That cynical view is not without reason. There is a fairly dark history of non-neutral edits made by paid and PR editors. It’s also a clash of principles. Public relations professionals are ultimately accountable to their employers, who have a responsibility to make profit for their company. This leads to a strong incentive to whitewash negative and promote positive information. And finally, neutrality is difficult. It’s difficult for completely uninvolved editors, and even more so for those with a direct interest in an article.

Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, expressed his view: What I have found – and the evidence for this is pretty comprehensive – is that people who are acting as paid advocates do not make good editors. They insert puffery and spin. That’s what they do because that is what paid advocates do. He said this in 2012, and for some time he has advocated that paid or PR editors never edit an article directly.

Jimmy Wales was in a different situation in 2005 when he was called out for editing his own article and that of his former company. He said of that experience: “People shouldn’t do it, including me. People have a lot of information about themselves but staying objective is difficult. That’s the trade-off in editing entries about yourself. If you see a blatant error or misconception about yourself, you really want to set it straight.” The point I am making by bringing this up is not to paint Wales as a hypocrite, but rather to highlight that the temptation to edit articles you are personally connected to is very strong, and it’s a challenging and risky situation, no matter who does it, even the founder of Wikipedia.

Jane Wilson, the head of the Chartered Institute of Public Relations concurred with Wales in part: “We may have to start with an acceptance that Wikipedians have a problem with our profession and this reputation has unfortunately been earned. We can’t change this overnight but by working in partnership through outreach, diplomacy and dialogue, we can make a difference. Gerald Corbett, the head of PRSA had a more challenging view. “It’s wrong for the PR profession to think it can run roughshod over the established Wikipedia community. PR professionals must engage in a reasonable manner that respects the community’s rules and protocols, while also ensuring they are acting in their clients’ best interests. But the engagement should be a two-way street. At the moment we do not believe that to be the case.

The Conflict of Interest (COI) guideline
The history of non-neutral edits by involved editors led Wikipedia to develop a conflict of interest guideline.

A conflict of interest or COI for short, in Wikipedia’s definition is “An incompatibility between the aim of Wikipedia, which is to produce a neutral, reliably sourced encyclopedia, and the aims of an individual editor.” Any time someone would put their own interests before or above Wikipedia’s, that is a conflict of interest. The conflict of interest guideline therefore states, “Do not promote your own interests or those of other individuals, companies, or groups.” And “do not write about these things unless you are certain that an neutral editor would agree that your edits improve Wikipedia.”  Don’t promote, report, and do it objectively.

So, can you edit with a Conflict of Interest?

In our guideline, COI editing is strongly discouraged. You’ll note that it doesn’t say prohibited. There is no technical prohibition, at least not yet, on editing any article in a neutral way if it improves the encyclopedia. And there are specific instances of un controversial edits where editing is generally considered ok such as changes to spelling, facts, statistics, and other basic information. Whether it’s a good idea to make those kinds of changes is something I’ll discuss a bit later.

If you’re feeling like you’ve been painted as the villain, I understand  Let me take a poll. How many of you feel that PR editors, paid editors, or COI editors have been unfairly targeted. Who thinks that there’s been an appropriate level of skepticism given the history. Anyone think that Wikipedia is underestimating how disruptive such editing could be? Ok, let’s focus on the positive: even though COI editing is strongly discouraged, participation from COI editors is still welcome.

Best practices for COI editors
For the rest of the talk I am going to present to you the best practices for what that participation might look like. I’m going to go in chronological order, from what you might experience when you start editing all the way through what to do if you run into specific problems.

The first thing you should do on Wikipedia is register an account with an independent username. Accounts are not required, but they are respected and they increase your privileges. It’s important that the username you choose represents you as an individual, not your company or client as a whole. So if you work in CocaCola’s PR department, don’t be user CocaCola, and even CocaCola Jim is questionable. Safer to go with Sodafan1974 or just BobMarleyLover. There’s no such thing as a company account. The principle is one person per account.

The second recommendation is that you plainly disclose your conflict of interest. This is not required by policy, but it should be beneficial to you. Being transparent about who you are, what you do, and how you plan to edit is the easiest way to gain the community’s trust, get help, and avoid embarrassing revelations of misconduct. Disclosing who you are can invite more scrutiny, but that is a feature not a bug. It is often the poorly informed or inadvertent choices which have the most backlash. Guidance from other editors will help you follow our policies.

Let’s take a look at some examples of real COI declarations. You can put your COI declaration on your userpage, and also summarize it on the Discussion page of any Wikipedia article you’re working on. This COI declaration was written by CanalPark, who works for the consulting firm Monitor Group. He posted, “I would like to disclose here that these contributions are made on behalf of Monitor Group and in consultation with them, and I intend to follow all of Wikipedia’s guidelines. On any pages where I look for assistance, I will be sure to disclose my relationship to Monitor in the interests of transparency.” I worked with Canal Park and we updated and rewrote the coverage of a major controversy about his company. Those efforts were really beneficial and I was able to walk him through the process efficiently in part because he disclosed his COI.

Here’s another COI declaration. “I work for Interprose Public Relations. While we do not intend to directly edit our clients’ Wikipedia entries, we are happy to act as a resource by providing factual, non-advertorial information and accompanying third-party citations.” You don’t necessarily have to use your real name or exact title in the company. Just state your conflict of interest and your intentions. It’s a sign of good faith, that you’ll make an effort to edit well and seek help.

Ok, you’ve registered and disclosed your COI. Now maybe you want to create an article. The first step is to read the notability guideline. The notability guideline spells out what criteria need to be met for your subject to be included. Not every company, person, artist, artwork, event, or website can have an article on Wikipedia. We’re never the first ones to write about a subject; your article requires in-depth, significant coverage from published, reliable, independent sources. Let’s break that down. In depth coverage means more than passing mentions. Published sources, have actually been distributed publicly. Internal memos or emails don’t count. Reliable sources, are those with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy, either a reputable publisher, an expert author, a peer-reviewed process. And independent. You want sources that are not affiliated with the subject.

High quality sources are the foundation of the encyclopedia. What are sources that you want to use? Newspapers, magazines, books, trade publications, expert websites, and academic journals. Published, independent sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy. And what sources do you want to avoid? Self-published blogs (which aren’t independent or in many cases written by an expert), press releases (which aren’t independent and often aren’t neutral), internal company documents… poor sources lack reliability and/or independence. When you use a source, you should cite it. You do that by placing before and after the sentence, with the citation inside it. Note that the second ref tag has a slash before it.

Here’s an example: Barack Obama is the President of the United States.

Now that you’ve registered and done research it’s time to start writing. But can you, an involved editor, with a conflict of interest be neutral? The key is to make an active effort to neutralize your conflict of interest. Take extra care to write without bias. Write so that your biggest competitor would think it was fair and balanced. Moreover, write so that it’s impossible to tell that someone who works for the company or client wrote it. Your work should carry no trace of insider knowledge, affiliation, preference, sympathy, criticism, etc. You have to be aware of even the potential for bias in order to avoid its influence.

In your writing it’s particularly important to avoid advertising or promotion. Articles should inform and reference, not promote or sell. Wikipedia is not commercial. It’s not marketing. It’s not an opportunity to praise new products or highlight someone’s glowing attributes. It’s an opportunity to neutrally summarize what others have written. And that includes views and incidents or controversies that are unfavorable. We’re an encyclopedia. Your text should read like something that could have been in the World Book or Encyclopedia Britannica, not your a press release or a webpage promo..

What next? Should you dive in and start writing? Best practice is to always draft first, to get your text right before it is ever published to Wikipedia. There are great tools to help you do this. If you’re writing a new article, we have a tool called the New Article Wizard at our Articles for Creation project. It lets you submit a draft for experienced editors to review. They’ll either accept or deny it along with an explanation, and you can resubmit it as many times as you need to. Drafts have no real chance of being deleted, so you can work calmly and incrementally as you learn what needs to be fixed. You can also propose drafts on an article’s discussion or Talk page. Every article has a corresponding Talk page, and it is an ideal place to write up changes to an existing article before it gets published.

The primary reason COI editors should draft is to give you the opportunity for other editors to review your work. You want to ask for feedback. It’s better to get it up front than to have your changes reverted or deleted afterwards. There are many ways to get feedback. Again, there’s the new article wizard for new articles and the article talk page for existing articles. We have a live help chat channel, the link for which is at the back of your handout. We have an entire noticeboard just for COI editors called the Conflict of Interest noticeboard. And we have a “WikiProject” devoted solely to helping COI editors called WikiProject Cooperation. WikiProject Cooperation has its own Paid Editor Help board, a place where you can propose changes and get them reviewed. Also, on any article talk page you can place  in double brackets on the page along with your draft, and someone will come by to review whether it is an appropriate change.

The approach here is one of cautious engagement, and the safest way to avoid getting into trouble, indeed the one advocated by Jimmy Wales, is simply to never edit an article directly. The suggestion to not edit directly does not in any way mean that your contributions aren’t welcome. Instead of direct editing, I want you to participate intensively by reading policies, proposing drafts, and letting other editors review your writing. But letting them make the actual changes protects you from negative backlash. Try to influence articles from a slight distance. This requires patience and communication but it can pay off richly. I do want to acknowledge that the COI guideline does not actually prohibit neutral editing and it does permits non-controversial changes, but it’s still risky and not always optimal to edit yourself. A common situation we run into is editors who are informed about some aspect of policy and then they go find 6 articles that do the exact opposite. “They do it, why can’t I?” As with any argument, best practice is not to use other articles as excuses or justification for doing something wrong. Make your own content better and then it will last. We have 3.9 million articles and you want to be one of the good ones.

The last two best practices focus on the bigger picture. First, don’t rush. Wikipedia operates on the timescale of months, years, and hopefully decades. That said, we do consider urgency appropriate in certain situations. Articles about living people take precedence over everything else. If there is unsourced negative information about any subject, but especially a living person, it can be removed at any time by any editor. We want to avoid harm to real people. Interestingly, we don’t have the same policy explicitly protecting corporations, but it’s still the case that our Verifiability policy requires all information be supportable by a source. Now, it’s typical to give other editors a chance to find a source before removing content, but it’s not required, and if its remaining would do real world harm, then it should can be removed. As a COI editor, should you do it yourself? It’s borderline, even in the case of posing direct harm. The best advice is to bring it to the attention of others and let them do it.

The last piece of advice is that you join the community. You should take advantage of the forums specifically for helping COI editors. WikiProject Cooperation is a must, and you might also be interested in Corporate Representatives for Ethical Wikipedia Engagement or CREWE, a Ffacebook group of PR professionals and Wikipedia editors who discuss ways to improve their relationship. From there, try to participate beyond your narrow range of professional interests, to gain knowledge and understanding of the culture of Wikipedia. We have a community newspaper called The Signpost which can get you up to speed. We have a centralized discussion board where major policy issues are reviewed. We have 16 million editors who you might want to get to know.

These best practices should help you. If you follow them, you should be treated with respect. They should put you in a position to work efficiently and to make improvements. But even if you make your best effort, there are bound to be some obstacles. Working on Wikipedia can feel like debating in a foreign language in a country where you don’t know the rules. Although common sense, careful research, and thoughtful writing goes a long way, I still want to give you some sense of how to respond if something goes wrong.

What to do if something goes wrong
Let’s say you created an article. Hopefully you used the new article wizard, but maybe you didn’t. And your article was deleted. One day you visit the page and it’s gone and all that’s left is a brief note saying who deleted it and why. Most deletions happen because articles are lacking sources, they don’t establish why the subject was important, or they are written with a blatantly promotional tone. As with any situation, you want to first seek to understand why, so you can fix it, or at least figure out if it’s possible to fix. The person who deleted your article is an administrator. You can leave a message for the administrator by clicking on the link in their signature. By the way, you sign all of your comments with four tildes, like ~  Content on Wikipedia is never lost or finished and a copy of your work can be emailed to you or put in your userspace so you can keep working on it. If you disagree with the deletion there are also formal mechanisms to dispute it called Request for Undeletion and Deletion review.

What if your article was deleted, or you were just starting to work on it and published, reliable, independent sources just don’t exist. An article on your subject is not required, but sources are. So, first, do more research. There’s Google, Google News, Google Books, Google Scholar, and other research databases. There are those big buildings filled with books called libraries. We also have a Reference Desk that can help you. You might even have to put your PR skills to use and nudge other people to write about the subject. And then you wait, and try again.

What if your article is published, and maybe you proposed or even made some changes to it, but another editor comes along and starts editing the article. Nobody, not even the subject of an article him or herself owns it. Accept that others will make changes and engage them in civil and constructive dialogue.

What if there’s a mistake in your article? Are you truly locked out from fixing it? Technically, it depends. If it’s a minor mistake, you could try and fix it yourself. Again, what’s minor? Spelling, grammar, facts, statistics, basic biographical information. But if it’s anything major or controversial. If it’s the addition of positive information, or the removal of negative information. Or if it’s about one of your competitors, you should seek input from other editors and let them do it. The safest approach is still to avoid editing directly.

What if someone is outright vandalizing the article? You can revert obvious vandalism yourself. Direct personal attacks, racial slurs, middle school kids playing jokes on their friends. But vandalism only applies to blatantly, intentionally destructive changes, not edits you just disagree with. For any significant changes, discuss it with other editors. There is a mechanism to lock down a page, but it’s not used preemptively, and it doesn’t exempt you from reaching consensus if there’s a disagreement. If you have a change you want to make to an article, post the change on the talk page and use. Or, ask at the Paid Editor Help board or the Conflict of Interest Noticeboard.

What if you’re discussing changes with other editors but you strongly disagree with them? That happens in life, and it certainly happens on Wikipedia. Stay civil. Read the relevant policies. Seek the input of other uninvolved editors. Use our dispute resolution process, everything from getting a third opinion to a formal request for comment. Remember that Wikipedia is not a battleground. Try not to treat it like one and you will have a better experience.

What if you have requested feedback but don’t receive a timely response? I have to acknowledge that Wikipedia has not made it easy to always get feedback—there’s not a single place to go and it can take more time than you want to wait. That’s something we’re working on, but I still recommend you follow this approach with persistence. First, be transparent about your conflict of interest. It will raise the level of urgency. Use all of the available forums: Talk pages, the COI noticeboard, and WikiProject Cooperation’s Paid Editor Help. What if those don’t work? There’s also Jimmy Wales’ talk page, there’s direct email to the Wikimedia Foundation at info@wikipedia.org. And finally, we have an arbitration committee, a Wikipedia Supreme Court for disputes that seem intractable.

What if you made a mistake out of ignorance or enthusiasm, and your account was blocked? Blocks are rare and rarely happen without several warnings. But they do happen. The first rule, stay calm. Ask the administrator who blocked you for an explanation. You can appeal the block by placing on your talk page or going to the online unblock chat channel. If you’re blocked, it’s key to acknowledge if you made a mistake and how you plan to correct it. That could be as simple as changing your username, or agreeing not to undo another’s edits.

And last, what if all of this leaves you feeling terribly overwhelmed? The interface, the policies, the terminology. It’s a lot to master. Take your time. Ask for help. We have a help desk, the live help chat, and there’s WikiProject Cooperation and the COI noticeboard. There’s also an Administrator’s noticeboard. And you can also search for any topic yourself in our extensive policy and help pages. For policies and projects, type WP: in the search bar or for help pages, type Help: in the search bar followed immediately by the subject. Ask questions. Remember that we’re here to assist you and we’re not your enemy.

Conclusion
I hope these tips for editing and avoiding common problems will make your experience a positive one. So, What does the future hold? I’m encouraged by the dialogue that has begun between the public relations industry and Wikipedia. The guidance and best practices that are being promoted by organizations like the Public Relations Society of America, the Chartered Institute for Public Relations in the UK, CREWE, and WikiProject Cooperation are turning a conflict into an opportunity for cooperation. If that’s not the Wikipedia way, I don’t know what is.

What I’d like you to take away from this talk is that Wikipedia matters; PR and Wikipedia can work together; and you can use Wikipedia effectively. I want to end where we began. Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is give free access to the sum of all human knowledge.

That’s our commitment. And I truly believe that you can help be a part of it.

Links

 * A free, online copy of this presentation http:/goo.gl/8LsKW
 * The Wikipedia guideline on COI editing http://enwp.org/WP:COI
 * The Plain and simple conflict of interest guide http://enwp.org/WP:PSCOI
 * WikiProject Cooperation http://enwp.org/WP:COOPERATION
 * Corporate Representatives for Ethical Wikipedia Engagement, CREWE http://www.facebook.com/groups/crewe.group
 * The history of COI editing on Wikipedia http://enwp.org/COI_editing_on_Wikipedia
 * The Wikipedia Help Desk http://enwp.org/WP:HD
 * Live Help Chat http://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=wikipedia-en-help
 * The Conflict of interest noticeboard http://enwp.org/WP:COIN
 * WikiProject Cooperation’s Paid Editor Help board http://enwp.org/WP:PAIDHELP
 * The Wikipedia Reference Desk http://enwp.org/WP:RD
 * Jimmy Wales talk page http://enwp.org/User_talk:Jimbo
 * The administrator’s noticeboard http://enwp.org/WP:ANI
 * The official Wikipedia email address info@wikimedia.org
 * The New Article Wizard at Articles for Creation http://enwp.org/WP:WIZGO