Wikipedia:Employer Requests

Sometimes an editor asks for help or advice, in the Teahouse or in some other forum, because their employer has asked them to write a Wikipedia article about them (the employer). The employer is probably acting in good faith, and the employee-editor is asking other Wikipedia editors for help or advice in good faith, based on a completely mistaken idea. Wikipedia is not a directory. There are some tasks that an employer can assign that are simply mistaken. An employer can, in good faith, ask an employee to go to the First National Bank and cash a check from John Jones written against Second Union Bank. First National Bank won't cash the check. (They may accept the check as the starting deposit for a new account, but that may not be what the employee was told to do.) That is just a misunderstanding by their employer as to what is possible. The teller at First National Bank won't cash the check just because the employee was asked by their employer to cash the check. The branch manager at First National Bank won't tell the teller to cash the check. That just isn't what the bank does. The employee may have been sent on an impossible errand. The bank won't cash the check. The errand was a mistake by the employer. That isn't the fault of the employer, or the employee, or the bank.

An employer can, in good faith, ask an employee to go to the town library and pick up discarded books. Maybe another library in a nearby town sometimes has discarded books that can be picked up, but if the library that the employee has gone to doesn't give away discarded books, the employee has been sent on an impossible errand. The library won't give away books if they don't give away discarded books. The errand was a mistake by the employer. That isn't the fault of the employer, or the employee, or the library.

Creating a new article is one of the hardest things for a new editor to do. It is a good idea to read the advice at Help:Your first article, and to ask for further advice at the Teahouse. It may also be a good idea to ask your employer to read the advice at Help:Your first article. This may not stop your employer from requesting an article, but it may make it clearer to you that your employer has asked you to do something that doesn't work.

An employer can, in good faith, ask an employee to get an article about the company or its managers listed in Wikipedia. That assignment may be a good-faith mistake by the employer. Wikipedia doesn't accept or publish an article about a company or its managers or anyone else unless they meet Wikipedia's standard of notability, and the article must be written from a neutral point of view.

If your employer has asked you to get an article listed in Wikipedia, your employer may have made a good-faith mistake about what Wikipedia does and does not do.