EthicalWiki

A disingenuous name and an insidious agenda. Pure evil. Propaganda starts after this sentence and does not stop until the Categories.

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EthicalWiki is a Wikipedia:consultancy in Wikipedia:Wikipedia engagement, focused on offering content to Wikipedia's editorial community on behalf of companies. The firm advocates that corporations find middle-ground between a hands-off policy and directly editing articles on Wikipedia they are affiliated with. Specifically, it recommends that companies draft and offer content of value to the site's volunteer editors, and it sells a service that does this. In June 2012, it published a report on Wikipedia's need for contributions related to articles about branded commercial goods and services. The report suggested marketing professionals understand Wikipedia's needs for such contributions and made recommendations on corporate objectives that are aligned with Wikipedia's goals. The firm is also active in the Wikipedia community. It contributed substantially to a Wikipedia project to facilitate collaboration with paid editors (called Wikiproject Cooperation), the article on Wikipedia:public relations, and dialogue on conflict of interest issues in The Wikipedia Signpost.

Approach

EthicalWiki is a consultancy in Wikipedia:Wikipedia engagement. Corp Comms Magazine said EthicalWiki advises companies to "respect Wikipedia's autonomy by offering valuable content to the Wikipedia community transparently, without directly editing articles they have an affiliation with." The firm draws parallels to how Wikipedia:content marketing and Wikipedia:public relations professionals engage with other news and information sources. EthicalWiki provides consulting, writing, research, coding and community collaboration services related to Wikipedia.

Views on company policy

David King from EthicalWiki believes Wikipedia editing by companies has only been controversial because its open model leaves it vulnerable to companies using it for advertising and censorship. King says marketing departments that directly edit Wikipedia engage in a controversial practice in ethical grey areas, but a hands-off policy is just as risky because the organization exposes itself to vandalism, bias, and a low-quality corporate definition. King advocates that companies find middle-ground between a hands-off policy on Wikipedia and direct editing. He also suggests that organizations draw a line on where they need an expert and what can be done without expertise. King recommends most marketing professionals flag issues, make corrections, fix grammar, share sources and update information, while substantial content contributions require someone who has made a long-term commitment to "earn their Wikipedia stripes." EthicalWiki feels the average marketing agency can't reasonably justify the time investment to develop professional quality ethics consulting, encyclopedic writing, coding and Wikipedia policy compliance. According to King, marketing professionals find Wikipedia frustrating because of the difficulty in following all of its rules.

Publishing

In June, 2012 EthicalWiki published a report titled, "Brands on Wikipedia by the Numbers" based on data collected from 2,578 company articles on Wikipedia. The report, published by David King, was identified by Wikipedia:PRWeek as a call for brand managers to better understand Wikipedia's content needs. The report suggested that bias, quality, and timeliness were among the top concerns Wikipedia's editorial community has on company articles and that 85 percent of brand articles are incomplete or poor in quality. It identified Wikipedia:Fox Entertainment Group, Wikipedia:LG Corporation, Wikipedia:Playtex and the Wikipedia:Pepsi Bottling Group as articles that were poor in quality, but high in priority by the Wikipedia community's standards. Other findings included that more than half of requests for improvements to brand pages were related to a need for credible third-party sources to draw content from. It found that 90 percent of Wikipedia articles on brands are marked as low or medium priority by the Wikipedia community. The report suggests objectives like heritage, branding and corporate identity are better aligned with Wikipedia's content needs for company articles than advertising or product marketing. It also says companies should focus on being reasonable and easy to work with, rather than appealing to the accountability of editors.

Wikipedia community

EthicalWiki argues that, as Wikipedia's content grows but the number of editors shrink, vandalism, bias, outdated information and blatant errors are becoming more common. In David King's blog post "Why Wikipedia Needs Marketers," he argued that marketing is the most motivated audience to maintain and improve articles that are important to them but the industry has to learn to follow the rules. The post garnered positive responses from respected Wikipedia editors and Philippe Beaudette from the Wikipedia:Wikimedia Foundation. Later in the Wikipedia Signpost, King suggested he was concerned about the bias that editing with a conflict of interest introduces, but is equally concerned about the bias without marketing participation.

King has been featured in Wikipedia's community paper, The Wikipedia SignPost, regarding conflict of interest issues and the Wikipedia editing of Newt Gingrich's communications director. David King has also contributed to the Wikipedia article on Wikipedia:public relations.

External links

• Official Site
• Report: Brands on Wikipedia by the Numbers