5 ms·

Is it unethical for, say, a company's "media guy" to update Wikipedia if his company releases a major new project? "On October 1, 2013, Initech released version

by jff 13y ago

Is it unethical for, say, a company's "media guy" to update Wikipedia if his company releases a major new project? "On October 1, 2013, Initech released version 2.0 of its flagship product IniIDE Pro(tm)" I think there's a line to draw between adding some pertinent information to keep the page from being outdated, vs. fighting to keep all negative information off the page.

phdp 13y ago
If it's really newsworthy, wouldn't someone else not related to the company do that?
- jff 13y ago
  I'm not a wikipedia editor, so they may think of things differently, but when I see a news story about a company, I generally think, "Interesting." I don't think, "Ooh, I better check if this is in their Wikipedia article yet." Now, maybe the most devout of wikifiddlers will do that, but why not just make it part of your process? If it's not notable, presumably someone will delete that bit eventually. It's better than going to an article and finding that there's no news since 2009 or whenever the article was first written.
  - phdp 13y ago
    Maybe if there's a process for a pull-request like feature, similar to github, but what a company thinks is newsworthy may not be, or it may be newsworthy for a different reason than the company thinks it is, like a product that exploded on the launch day.
chris_wot 13y ago
Borderline really. There are clear conflict of Internet guidelines for the project, whilst that isn't an egregious example, I would counsel anyone working for a company to avoid editing any articles related to their company. The PR mess you might cause (even for innocent edits) could well outweigh any gains you may have achieved. The best thing is to participate on talk pages. Even there, be careful not to respond to inflammatory comments or trolls.
- smsm42 13y ago
  Why? What is unethical about providing the truthful and correct information about company and products? I would understand that if Wikipedia banned all commercial product information, but it does not. So why it is OK for unknown schoolkid (random example) to edit a page with the list of, say, Cisco products (random example), but it's not OK for a person working for Cisco who actually knows what he's talking about and has access to most accurate, correct and up-to-date information possible? Wikipedia requires reputable sources - which means the said schoolkid would be copypasting some info from somewhere anyway - so what's wrong with the most authoritative sources - people actually making things it describes and knowing everything about them?
  - chris_wot 13y ago
    For the same reason that we frown on politicians from accepting money for making ethical decisions. The issue is that the Wikipedia community do not know whether the information is slanted towards a positive viewpoint by an interested party. In fact, seemingly neutral information may often gloss over important information or give undue positive weight towards a subject. I would suggest reading up on Wikipedia's information on this subject at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Conflict_of_interest http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Conflict_of_interest - it's very informative and should answer most of these questions.
    - smsm42 13y ago
      Bad analogy. If you want to make better analogy, you'd say it's unethical for a politician to give an interview about his own party or write a newspaper column about his own political platform, because that is self-promotion and creates conflict of interests, and makes him gloss over negative sides of his policies and give undue positive weight towards the subject. Sounds silly, right, politicians do that all the time, that's the name of the game. Of course, editing process can be abused by interested parties - politicians can lie to advance their causes, and wikipedia editors can be (and sometimes are) driven by motives very different from the quest for pure and accurate knowledge. However this can and is happening without any employment relationship, and employment relationship does not add much to it - one can be non-neutral by thousand other reasons (e.g. N happens to be a fan of certain ice hokey team and rewrites its Wikipedia article to extoll its virtues in excess). It seems as one of these reasons - a very real one, but definitely not unique - is being singled out. Is it because money is the root of all evil?
dm2 13y ago
It's fine to add information. It's not ok to remove negative information. What about listing a company under the product or category page or placing subtle advertisements on the page? An example would be Nest adding links to their wikipedia to the Thermostat wikipedia page. Is that ethical? Is it legal? Is it against wikipedias Terms of Use?
- eli 13y ago
  Seems like an awfully fine line. What if the negative information is unfair or even false?
  - dm2 13y ago
    Negative information such as criticisms or controversy, such as http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft#Criticism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft#Criticism They must obviously have a reputable source.
- DanBC 13y ago
  > It's not ok to remove negative information. Why? The BLP stuff has been clear and firm for years: Anything that is unsourced should be removed quickly, especially if it's BLP. Obviously, removal of suitably sourced material is a problem so I agree there.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]

by jff 13y ago

phdp 13y ago

If it's really newsworthy, wouldn't someone else not related to the company do that?

jff 13y ago
I'm not a wikipedia editor, so they may think of things differently, but when I see a news story about a company, I generally think, "Interesting." I don't think, "Ooh, I better check if this is in their Wikipedia article yet." Now, maybe the most devout of wikifiddlers will do that, but why not just make it part of your process? If it's not notable, presumably someone will delete that bit eventually. It's better than going to an article and finding that there's no news since 2009 or whenever the article was first written.
- phdp 13y ago
  Maybe if there's a process for a pull-request like feature, similar to github, but what a company thinks is newsworthy may not be, or it may be newsworthy for a different reason than the company thinks it is, like a product that exploded on the launch day.

chris_wot 13y ago

Borderline really. There are clear conflict of Internet guidelines for the project, whilst that isn't an egregious example, I would counsel anyone working for a company to avoid editing any articles related to their company. The PR mess you might cause (even for innocent edits) could well outweigh any gains you may have achieved. The best thing is to participate on talk pages. Even there, be careful not to respond to inflammatory comments or trolls.

smsm42 13y ago
Why? What is unethical about providing the truthful and correct information about company and products? I would understand that if Wikipedia banned all commercial product information, but it does not. So why it is OK for unknown schoolkid (random example) to edit a page with the list of, say, Cisco products (random example), but it's not OK for a person working for Cisco who actually knows what he's talking about and has access to most accurate, correct and up-to-date information possible? Wikipedia requires reputable sources - which means the said schoolkid would be copypasting some info from somewhere anyway - so what's wrong with the most authoritative sources - people actually making things it describes and knowing everything about them?
- chris_wot 13y ago
  For the same reason that we frown on politicians from accepting money for making ethical decisions. The issue is that the Wikipedia community do not know whether the information is slanted towards a positive viewpoint by an interested party. In fact, seemingly neutral information may often gloss over important information or give undue positive weight towards a subject. I would suggest reading up on Wikipedia's information on this subject at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Conflict_of_interest http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Conflict_of_interest - it's very informative and should answer most of these questions.
  - smsm42 13y ago
    Bad analogy. If you want to make better analogy, you'd say it's unethical for a politician to give an interview about his own party or write a newspaper column about his own political platform, because that is self-promotion and creates conflict of interests, and makes him gloss over negative sides of his policies and give undue positive weight towards the subject. Sounds silly, right, politicians do that all the time, that's the name of the game. Of course, editing process can be abused by interested parties - politicians can lie to advance their causes, and wikipedia editors can be (and sometimes are) driven by motives very different from the quest for pure and accurate knowledge. However this can and is happening without any employment relationship, and employment relationship does not add much to it - one can be non-neutral by thousand other reasons (e.g. N happens to be a fan of certain ice hokey team and rewrites its Wikipedia article to extoll its virtues in excess). It seems as one of these reasons - a very real one, but definitely not unique - is being singled out. Is it because money is the root of all evil?

dm2 13y ago

It's fine to add information. It's not ok to remove negative information. What about listing a company under the product or category page or placing subtle advertisements on the page? An example would be Nest adding links to their wikipedia to the Thermostat wikipedia page. Is that ethical? Is it legal? Is it against wikipedias Terms of Use?

eli 13y ago
Seems like an awfully fine line. What if the negative information is unfair or even false?
- dm2 13y ago
  Negative information such as criticisms or controversy, such as http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft#Criticism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft#Criticism They must obviously have a reputable source.
DanBC 13y ago
> It's not ok to remove negative information. Why? The BLP stuff has been clear and firm for years: Anything that is unsourced should be removed quickly, especially if it's BLP. Obviously, removal of suitably sourced material is a problem so I agree there.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]