Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2012-05-07/Paid editing


 * Does Wikipedia Pay? is an ongoing Signpost series seeking to illuminate paid editing, paid advocacy, for-profit Wikipedia consultants, editing public relations professionals, conflict of interest guidelines in practice, and the Wikipedians who work on these issues by speaking openly with the people involved.


 * Paid editing overlaps in places with public relations, the industry of individuals who are employed by companies and clients to manage an image and communicate a message. On Wikipedia, public relations does not enjoy a positive reputation. Considered 'spin' and viewed skeptically by many due to a history of adding positive and removing negative information, it would be fair to characterize public relations as far from having gained the respect of the community.


 * This standard narrative has recently become more complex, as the PR industry has begun to push for an accepted place in the Wikipedia ecosystem, arguing against a history of what they see as unfair excommunication by Wikipedia editors—which in their view has left articles on corporations and brands rife with inaccuracies and devoid of constructive improvements that expert corporate communicators could provide.


 * That charge has been led by Phil Gomes, a marketing executive with Edelman Digital, whose January 4 open letter on his blog catalyzed the public relations community around a set of grievances and a growing consensus for some corrective action. The momentum generated by Gomes' letter morphed into Corporate Representatives for Ethical Wikipedia Engagement (CREWE), a collective of industry professionals and some Wikipedia editors. CREWE's membership is attempting to simultaneously chart a path forward while coming to terms with a complex history in the relationship between PR and the encyclopedia.


 * The Signpost spoke with Phil Gomes to better understand how he views Wikipedia and what he thinks needs to change.

'''What's your background in PR? When did you start? What do you do?'''

I was nearly a decade in Silicon Valley, mostly representing startups, science- and research-focused organizations and a few enterprise-scale firms. From there I joined the Edelman public relations firm in 2005 and spent 18 months in the firm's LA office. I moved to Chicago in 2007. As Senior Vice President of Digital Integration, I aim to imbue online community principles into the day-to-day communications activities of the firm and its clients. My entire career experience has been as an agency/counselor rather than in-house.

A more interesting story concerns how I started focusing on online communities. You can find that on my blog.

'''What do you like about public relations? Why do you think it is important? How do you counter the cynicism that public relations is mainly 'spin'?'''

PR makes it your job to learn (and keep learning) how the field of communications and the nature of influence and persuasion changes day-to-day. Clients rely on people in my line of work to maintain this knowledge and devise the best ways to apply it. Public relations is an important function for companies and organizations because reputation is absolutely vital. This issue has gone from being merely arithmetic to absolutely geometric in complexity over the past 20 years or so, given the Web. It's an incredibly exciting time to be in the field.

'''The Public Relations Society of America lists six qualities of ethical PR conduct: advocacy, honesty, independence, loyalty, expertise and fairness. How are advocacy and loyalty compatible with honesty, independence, and fairness?'''

Those terms are not mutually exclusive, and the question is whether you can be a loyal advocate for your client while remaining independent, honest and fair. Everyone deserves to have their point of view heard in the marketplace of ideas, as well as the responsibility to address that marketplace's reaction. PR is the discipline by which that point of view is articulated and dialogue is maintained. And, keep in mind, it's not just businesses that make use of PR. Activist groups and non-governmental organizations ("NGOs") also have very strong communications operations and are adept at articulating their own points-of-view as well and crafting strategies for same. The Wikipedia Foundation itself sought public relations help in mid-2009:.

'''How do you deal with conflicts of interest as a PR professional? Is disclosure standard practice or required by your ethical code or company?'''

Yes, indeed. Management of potential conflicts is something that we pay a lot of attention to. It's also called out specifically in my employer's code of ethics and business conduct.

'''Can you give an example of a time when you found yourself with a conflict of interest? How did you navigate it? What were the results?'''

Great story. An outside-the-US consumer products company once approached us with a very large potential budget. They wanted to hire a firm that would stuff positive reviews on the likes of Amazon and stuff bad reviews for its competitors. "After all," their rationale was, "our *competitors* are doing it!" (I imagined George C. Scott in "Dr. Strangelove" screaming "We must not have a sockpuppet gap!").

We responded with what we would do with that budget—a long-term plan that would both respect the mores of online communities and help identify and cultivate a fan-base. It was a completely above-board public engagement program that, frankly, would have been an absolute blast to implement. The company wasn't all that interested in an ethical approach, though. We walked away from an opportunity that would have been lucrative. My bosses backed me up at every step of this process.

'''When and why did Wikipedia come onto your radar as an issue for public relations? What problems did you perceive in the way that Wikipedia currently handles PR professionals or other paid editors?'''

Online reputation, as a broad topic, is something I consult on for a number of our clients worldwide. Obviously, Wikipedia is an important part of that. Contrary to popular belief, my boss is not mashing my phone number on speed-dial asking how we might make vast amounts of coin selling "Strategic Wikipedia Consulting." I do what I do because I feel that companies can—and absolutely must!—be proactive about managing their reputation. The common view is that a communications professional has nothing to contribute whatsoever—that he or she is "damaged goods". But far from being damaged goods, most of us want to do right by Wikipedia *and* the companies we represent.

'''You wrote an open letter on your blog recommending a sea-change in how Wikipedia treats PR professionals. What motivated that post?'''

The primary motivation was that talk page entries for articles on multi-billion dollar firms (and their related Wikiprojects) in high-interest industries were going ignored for several weeks, all while inaccurate information about the company persisted and remained highly available to search. That struck me as not right. There were also odd reports of people who tried to do right by Wikipedia and got smacked for it (e.g., putting one's employer's name as part of a login ID like "InitechMichael" in the interests of full disclosure, only to be banned for "promotion.") And I was hearing stories of communicators who made small and incontrovertibly factual edits only to get banned, which I thought an extreme response.

What was the response to your open letter, in both PR and Wikipedia communities?

In the first month, people ascribed meaning into my post that they so desperately *wanted* it to have, rather than what it actually said. Some Wikipedians and Web 2.0 royalty seemed to regard it as yet another example of a PR guy who "just doesn't get it." Some PR folks and Wikipedians thought I was advocating the full-on opening of Wikipedia to PR editing; that's equally incorrect. Others used it as a way to resurrect long-held grudges against Wikipedia that are neither of concern nor interest to me. All of this is typical when a group forms around a particular topic that people are very passionate about for different reasons. After about a month, the tourists started to go home and people who are seriously dedicated to exploring this issue remained and continued to participate. What did happen (eventually) was that we are now having some of the most productive, constructive, sustained, wide-ranging, thoughtful conversations about companies' relationship to Wikipedia that we've ever had.

Do you read the conflict of interest guideline as prohibiting all direct paid editing, some editing, or rather permitting any editing that is neutral?

I see COI as an admonition that you shouldn't put your own interests above those of the encyclopedia. That's just and fair. The problem, in practice, is that any editing of Wikipedia by a corporate representative is not likely to be treated as a matter of degree. In any event, you'll notice that CREWE long ago left behind the topic of directly editing an article (even within extremely narrow guidelines). I can't remember the last time someone who wasn't deliberately trying to mischaracterize our work brought it up.

What about how CREWE is seen in the Wikipedia community?

Much of the mischaracterization of CREWE as endorsing direct editing of Wikipedia articles probably comes from my early observation that there's little opportunity for COI damage in an article infobox (e.g., founding date, CEO name, annual revenues) and that it could be a walled-off section for a corporate communicator to update. As it stands today, though, it would be treated more or less like "whitewashing". Critics of a company would then run with "evidence" that company was "changing its entry" even if that edit was as simple as correcting, say, a list of board members. A mainstream press not sensitive to those nuances would quickly run with a "bad company behaving badly" story.

I still don't think a PR person updating the summary-box should be a big issue, but it's just not where CREWE has focused for the past several months. We've instead focused on educating people in the communications industry with regard to proper engagement with Wikipedia. So claims that CREWE attempts to "forcibly change Wikipedia policy by off-site coordination of paid advocates" (to quote Jimmy Wales in a previous Signpost edition) strike me as inaccurate.

'''There's a scandal-ridden history of individuals, groups, and companies editing their own Wikipedia articles. Do you understand why there's a high level of opposition and skepticism about encouraging or allowing PR and paid editors on Wikipedia?'''

Of course. I wouldn't have helped start CREWE with John Cass if I didn't think there was an issue and a capabilities gap that could be solved. I just happen to have a point of view on the matter that many in PR have been too scared to articulate and many Wikipedians dismiss as asked-and-answered without really exploring it.

'''Wikipedia's foremost principle is neutrality. Public relations officials are accountable to their employers and are hired to improve their profitability and commercial success. How are those two motivations compatible?'''

As a point of clarification: PR officials aren't specifically on the hook for improving a company's profitability. It can and very often does play a role in terms of positioning a company for commercial success, but the shades of gray in that discussion probably exceed readers' interest. Most reasonable people can agree that, for example, a representative for Union Carbide ought not to be mucking around in the Wikipedia article on Bhopal. That's not what we're talking about here, really.

Early on in the CREWE discussions, someone put the argument that activists don't have a neutrality problem or COI because they don't get paid for being activists. This is wrong on multiple levels, principally: However, if an accurate article is in the public interest, it doesn't matter if the source of that verifiable information is a PR person, Wikipedian, or dyspeptic chipmunk.
 * Many activist organizations drum up donation money on the basis of their perceived ability to promulgate a certain point of view and to encourage others to do the same.
 * An activist—by definition, money or not—exhibits a degree of passion about a topic that typically precludes neutrality or, at least, no more or less so than it might for a PR person.

I think some PR people need to recognize that their job isn't to push every positioning point for incremental advantage in every forum. Rather, they should focus on guiding companies to help online communities do better in the spirit of mutual and objective benefit. Both critics and many people in my field may find this view naive, but I think it will be increasingly essential in terms of preserving a company's perceived moral authority to participate in online communities.

What do you think a healthy relationship between the PR community and Wikipedia would look like?

Any such relationship would serve the public interest of accurate articles that are maintained, developed and delivered in a way that meets the goals of an encyclopedia. That takes the form of articles that are truly of encyclopedic quality—a goal that Wikipedians profess to have and most companies will reasonably accept. This requires that PR make a good-faith effort to participate in the community with full disclosure of their reasons for being there.

It also requires that Wikipedians not dismiss corporate representatives out-of-hand as "damaged goods". Via CREWE, corporate communicators and Wikipedians are coming together constructively to help companies navigate those waters to the benefit of all involved. CREWE's first output here is a flowchart for doing so—an attempt to harmonize the disparate policies, guidelines, admonitions and whatnot that exist in several different places around Wikipedia.

'''You and others in the PR community have made the point that many articles on corporations have errors and PR editors are in an ideal position to correct those errors. Media coverage of a recent PRSA study published by Penn State professor Marcia DiStaso characterized the proportion of articles with errors as some 60% (Signpost coverage: here). What's the state of corporate articles and how can PR editors improve it?'''

The original PRSA announcement and the articles that followed most certainly did not reflect the spirit of CREWE or even the findings of that research. It's not that 60% of articles about companies had errors, it's that 60% of the 1,200+ respondents reported that their companies'/clients' entries had errors. Bit of a difference. The latter is still a very important finding, though. The research should have also been positioned as a wake-up call to the PRSA membership and the PR trade in general. For me, at least, talk-page participation is absolutely "table stakes" when it comes to companies working with Wikipedia. In the survey, 88% of those polled hadn't gone anywhere near a talk page.

As to the state of corporate articles, I point to Robert Lawton's FORTUNE 100 project. 54 out of the FORTUNE 100 were "C" class and below. 98 were "B" class and below. Some students did an audit of what basic facts were outdated or otherwise inaccurate. We now need volunteers to normalize their work into Robert's Google Doc so we can get to the next level of detail. Meanwhile, those same articles show up in the first five results on Google for 88% of companies; 96% on Bing. This, again, is one of Mr. Lawton's findings.

'''What are CREWE's goals? What are you working on?'''

The stated mission is simple: "CREWE comprises Wikipedians, corporate communications, academics, students and other interested parties who are exploring the ways that PR and Wikipedia can work together for mutual benefit, defined narrowly as cooperation toward more accurate and balanced entries." The main projects right now are the aforementioned flowchart and the FORTUNE 100 project. We're also allied with Wikiproject:Cooperation and the efforts going on there in terms of mentorship, etc.

'''Jimmy Wales has been stridently opposed to any paid editors directly editing articles. That so-called "brightline rule" has led him to view CREWE's motivations skeptically, since the group is pushing for broader editing privileges than 'brightline' would provide. What's been your interaction with Wales, and what do you think of his position?'''

As mentioned earlier, we haven't really focused on the the direct-editing issue in some time. I still think there are areas of an entry that might admit PR participation without harming the integrity of the encyclopedia through COI risk. Again, not a current focus.

Observably, there are mechanisms for dealing with the unethical ones. Plenty of PR folks who want to do the right thing both by the companies they represent and Wikipedia (or online communities in general). Again, it's clear to me that Wikipedia has reached the absolute limits of the "public shaming" approach. It's simply no longer as effective a deterrent as it once was. This is resulting in what I call "umbrage fatigue." One of the ideas that came up was the notion of case studies posted to Wikiproject:Cooperation, and I think it's a good one. I suspect that this "umbrage fatigue" is why Wikiproject:Cooperation managed to get quite a bit more momentum than another effort spawned around the time CREWE started, WikiProject:PaidAdvocacyWatch.

'''There's a current of concern that a horde of paid PR professionals is at the gates of the site, that they are using the issue of article inaccuracies as a wedge to get into the community, and that once they do they will overwhelm the unpaid volunteers with their corporate resources, expertise at spinning information, and pro-client bias. What do you say to assuage them of their fears?'''

I remain curious as to why there's no such anxiety applied to, say, activists or class-action lawyers, both of which are groups that possess the resources, expertise and bias described here, and in ample amounts. I guarantee you, though, that activists and class-action lawyers are not about to create a group dedicated to exploring best-practices a middle ground between their interests and those of Wikipedia volunteers. I'm not naive enough to think that, by itself, this is enough to overcome significant distrust quickly, but it's a start.

'''Among the negative reactions to your efforts, there have been new roots of cooperation, notably among some of the Wikipedia editors who have joined CREWE and also in WikiProject Cooperation itself. What do you think of those efforts? Will they be able to outweigh the controversy and entrenchment on both sides, or is this situation destined to be deadlocked for years?'''

Sterling "Silver Seren" Ericsson has done some great work and has been a wonderful asset to CREWE and WikiProject:Cooperation. I'm especially a fan of the mentoring idea. Controversial and mis-marketed though it was, the Penn State research shows that there is plenty of room to grow on both sides. Even the flowchart, humble though it may be, is a significant step. The best thing we can do at this stage is demonstrate that we bring something of value that, in the end, actually helps the encyclopedia.

What do you think Wikipedia is doing wrong?

Wikipedians should consider judging the quality of the contributions. By all means point out when "marketingy" contributions are offered, but don't dismiss the source simply on the basis of how he or she makes a living. For me, it all comes back to, "is the result objectively better?"