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Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2014-06-11/News and notes

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<Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost |2014-06-11

PR agencies commit to ethical interactions with Wikipedia: Eleven public relations agencies have declared their intention to follow "ethical engagement practices" in Wikipedia editing. The results were published last Tuesday: a joint statement from the participating PR agencies—representing five of the top ten global agencies and all but one of the top ten in the United States—clarifying their views and practices with regards to the Wikimedia projects.

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11 June 2014

News and notes

PR agencies commit to ethical interactions with Wikipedia

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Eleven public relations agencies havedeclared their intention to follow "ethical engagement practices" in Wikipedia editing.William Beutler, who has edited the site since 2006, kicked off the initiative by hosting a closed-door meeting at theDonovan House in Washington DC with several PR professionals and Wikipedians. The results were published last Tuesday: a joint statement from the participating PR agencies—representing five of the top ten global agencies and all but one of the top ten in the United States—clarifying their views and practices with regards to the Wikimedia projects. They committed themselves:

To seek to better understand the fundamental principles guiding Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects.
To act in accordance with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines, particularly those related to "conflict of interest."
To abide by the Wikimedia Foundation's Terms of Use.
To the extent we become aware of potential violations of Wikipedia policies by our respective firms, to investigate the matter and seek corrective action, as appropriate and consistent with our policies.
Beyond our own firms, to take steps to publicize our views and counsel our clients and peers to conduct themselves accordingly.

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More articles

Beutler told theSignpost in aseparate interview this week that "It's a challenge to communicate best practices through an entire agency, particularly on a topic relatively niche as Wikipedia. But it's important that they're now making an effort to do so."

But what caused them to issue such a statement? PR agencies have had a rocky history with Wikipedia, beginning withGregory Kohs, whofounded a company (MyWikiBiz) with the express purpose of creating and editing Wikipedia articles on behalf of paying corporations. He was promptlyblocked by Jimmy Wales, the site's co-founder.

Still, with the gate open, others followed: theSignpost's archives, for example, hold stories onMicrosoft's attempts to monitor articles (2007),the Nichalp/Zithan case (2009), and a PR firm's problematic edits ("The Bell Pottinger affair"; 2011).

Stepswere laid by a British association for ethical engagement with Wikipedia, but these efforts were overshadowed a year later by Wiki-PR, whichcreated, edited, or maintained several thousand Wikipedia articles for paying clients before being exposed. Their edits were quickly met with acease and desist order from the Wikimedia Foundation, and while they claimed that they were"demonized" by the WMF, their action inrenaming themselves in February this year suggests that they might yet be a problem for the movement.

For their part, Beutler and his compatriots recognize that they have a long way to go to obtain the Wikimedia community's trust: "I'm very happy with the attention we've had this week, but I hope no one thinks that anything has been solved":

“

The purpose of this statement was to show that Wikipedia and communications professionals are not so far apart as either side might have thought before.

There is a very long road ahead, where a difficult conversation must take place. I do expect that disagreements will occur, and even the companies who have signed onto this will not be able to keep everyone in line just yet.

I am hopeful that the agencies involved can rise to meet the requirements that may be set by the new Terms of Use, and where they are not, we need to find a mechanism to bring them back to the fold.

Likewise, I am optimistic that Wikipedians are ready to put community resources toward answering the challenges that will come about from outside interests asking Wikipedia why certain articles say things they don't think are accurate or up-to-date—and will help address these issues.

”

In brief

FDC and staff in November 2013: nominations for four appointed members close midnight end of Sunday 15 June.

FDC: still time to nominate, but only just: In 2013, there was acommunity election for three spots on the critical nine-member WMF volunteerFunds Dissemination Committee (FDC). The next stage in the evolution of its membership, in accordance with the FDC's"framework" document, is for the WMF board to appoint four committee members to replace those whose two-year terms will end in July.Nominations opened almost two weeks ago, and will close at midnight UTC on Sunday 15 June, just a day after this edition of theSignpost is published. Candidates will need to have sufficient time and dedication: concentrated reviewing of substantial applications is required before the in-person meetings in San Francisco, twice yearly. Themembership criteria andexpectations are set out on the nomination page on Meta. AQ&A page for community–candidate discourse is now live, and expected to become active after the close of nominations. Eleven Wikimedians have put their names forward, mostly in a last-minute wave—a pattern very familiar onwiki. As if in an attempt to outdo the onwiki gender gap, the eleven candidates thus far comprise ten men and one woman.
Does Wikipedia think Linnaeus is more important than Jesus or Hitler?: Researchers from the University of Toulouse havetaken on 24 different language versions of Wikipedia and tried to rank the most important people, as measured by the number of incoming links.Carl Linnaeus beat out all of the overall competitors—but it appears that the authors did not control for the effect of the thousands of species articles that link back to him. On the English Wikipedia, Linnaeus came in third, behind Napoleon and Barack Obama.
Bangladesh chapter registered: Wikimedia Bangladesh, which has beenrecognized as an official national chapter since October 2011, has finally been recognized in its home country. The multi-year process was marked by several pitfalls. Thanks to the need for a security clearance, only about 5% of non-governmental organizations' applications succeed; those problems are separate from multiple demands for bribes to allow the application to move forward. One commenter onWikimedia-l called it "unprecedented" that a "foreign-affiliated Internet technology organization mostly run by younger people who have a relationship to a major Internet property" were able to do so without a bribe.
Education programs: Wikimedia in education news came on two fronts this week: Serbia and Israel. The former country will beintegrating "wiki tools" into the university curriculum for aspiring secondary schoolteachers, while Israel willcollaborate with the country's national Wikimedia chapter to train existing teachers in showing their students how to edit Wikipedia.
Longest disambiguation pages:Slate haspublished an article on the longestdisambiguation pages on the English Wikipedia. Trends includes Persian towns, which were largely the work of one editor, and churches.

Foundation initiative in trouble: The brand-newmedia viewer has run intostrong headwinds on the English Wikipedia, with only two total users supporting it in any way at the time of publication. Complaints about it are wide-ranging:Ahecht noted that "There is no obvious way to get to the image page from the lightbox, there is no obvious way to disable it ..., it is confusing as it initially presents a blurry image before downloading a higher resolution one, and it makes browsing difficult on touch-screen devices that use pinch-to-zoom, many of the buttons contain cryptic icons, and their function can only be revealed by hovering over them assuming your device has a mouse. It becomes almost unusably slow on older slower machines or machines on a slow connection. It doesn't allow zooming and scrolling within the image." The Foundation has beenworking to address the problems, even delaying higher-priority projects to do so, but is still under fire for the proposed changes, which include the addition oftooltips so "users can tell what each button will do."
Summer of Monuments: Wikimedia DC hasselected Leo Zimmerman to head "Summer of Monuments", which aims to improve Wikimedia Commons' photographic coverage of historic sites in ten southern US states and "demonstrate how Wikimedia Commons can be a valuable ally for historians". Zimmerman hopes that the vanguard of the program will comprise historians, librarians, photographers, and amateur enthusiasts. Prizes will be awarded on an individual and institutional basis.

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So... some PR agencies "have declared their intention to follow 'ethical engagement practices' in Wikipedia editing". Take it from someone like me, who is older and wiser, and who has been associated with the field of advertising for over 25 years: this is the foxes declaring they can be trusted to guard the chickens! I am asking the community not to be naive about this, and not to take steps that we will look back on and regret.Invertzoo (talk)12:57, 14 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Your negativity and lack of good faith isn't very Wikipedian. William and others have been positively editing Wikipedia for years and have done their absolute best to follow the conflict of interest rules.Silver seren^C15:29, 14 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Ethics from a PR firm? That's rich. I'll AGF it for now, but I gotta feeling that this is is gonna end up producing some outrageously crazy AN/I and Arbcom cases.TomStar81 (Talk)17:24, 14 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
So PR firms agree among themselves not to violate Wikipedia rules - I think that is wonderful as far as it goes. But of course we should not assume that all problems with PR and other paid editing will magically disappear. "Trust, but verify" - we should give them a bit of trust and they shouldWP:Verify their edits on the talk pages. As far as the ethics of PR firms, they do have professional ethical and legal responsibilities - not to Wikipedia, but to their employers. They cannot write an NPOV article, if it goes against the interests of their employers. Legally, this is called the duty of loyalty, which is automatically part of any employment contract under common law. You must put your employer's interests above your own or anybody else's in the scope of your employment.Smallbones_(smalltalk)18:32, 14 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Except we're talking about paid editors here. And even in regards to direct PR firm employees, they can still follow the rules and just not make a change if it is one that will not be neutral. Seriously, what is this "duty of loyalty" nonsense? The PR rules and regulations go far and above that and violating those ethical codes is much more severe and can lead to being disbarred by the other groups.Silver seren^C19:08, 14 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

SeeDuty of loyalty - though this focuses on fiduciaries
SeeWhat is an employee's duty of loyalty? or any of the many sources you can google for "Duty of loyalty" - they make clear that the duty applies to all employees in the US and that they "have an obligation not to work against their employer’s interests."
See thePublic Relations Society of America (PRSA) Member Code of Ethics

Rule 1 "ADVOCACY- We serve the public interest by acting as responsible advocates for those we represent...."

Rule 5 "LOYALTY - We are faithful to those we represent, while honoring our obligation to serve the public interest."

So in short PR folks are ethically and legally required to put their employer's interests first, above anything to do with NPOV. As far as the silly claim that they can just refuse to edit if their employer's interests don't align with ours: they'll always add complimentary information about their employers when it is true, and always leave out uncomplimentary information, which will not lead to an NPOV presentation. Rather it will put a systematic bias in all our articles written with PR "help".Smallbones_(smalltalk)21:56, 14 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

In general, people are going to be more likely to add positive or neutral information about a topic than negative information. Since a direct focus on negative information would be a concern about the editor having a personal negative COI regarding the subject. Also, one of the examples given in the PRSA Code of Ethics is this:

"Examples of Improper Conduct Under this Provision:

A member representing a ski manufacturer gives a pair of expensive racing skis to a sports magazine columnist, to influence the columnist to write favorable articles about the product."

So I don't think acting irresponsibly and non-neutrally is in line with the Code of Ethics. It's quite clear that doing as such, on Wikipedia or elsewhere, would be a violation of it.Silver seren^C00:02, 15 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Also, this following example seems to directly deal with your last concern there:

Examples of Improper Conduct Under This Provision:

A PRSA member declares publicly that a product the client sells is safe, without disclosing evidence to the contrary."

Does that help? Making edits to Wikipedia that doesn't disclose the negative evidence would be a violation.Silver seren^C00:06, 15 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

And even more than that, making this kind of public statement means throwing down a gauntlet. We've seen the media attention that organisations being caught editing under the table gets; can you imagine how fun journalists will find "Caught editing under the table, after explicitly saying they wouldn't"? Particularly for firms that specialise in public relations. I'm actually pretty confident in the willingness of companies who have signed this to follow it - not necessarily because I think they're all wonderful lovely people who give the projects' needs and desires primacy (at the end of the day, someone is giving them money to prioritisetheir needs and desires), but because not being able to control yourown PR is a great way of making that stream of money dry up. Selfishness is a great motivator.Ironholds (talk)19:12, 14 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

There's a lot of truth in this, but it only goes so far. Your argument is that when it serves their interest, PR folks will help us. But of course there are times when it won't serve their interest to help us, in which case I'd expect them to hurt the encyclopedia.Smallbones_(smalltalk)21:56, 14 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Absolutely; isn't that the entire problem with paid editing? ;). My argument is not "we're out of the woods now that they've made this statement", it's that the amount of incentive required to hurt us is now greater because the consequences of being caught doing so are so much greater. For that reason alone, this is a good thing to've happened - it doesn't solve the problem, but it does increase the barrier to it happening. I'm probably just an optimist, though.Ironholds (talk)21:42, 15 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

We agree 100% on this.Smallbones_(smalltalk)21:59, 15 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

So all these PR agencies are going to stop doing PR? That's good news, and better for them than followingBill Hicks' advice. --Jeandré, 2014-06-17t11:24z

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