Wikipedia: to PR or not to PR?

Having become a relative newcomer to the online encyclopedia-cum-community-interest-learning facility Wikipedia (I’ve been a passive user for a while but this week I actually made some additions), I continue to stand in awe at its socialist ideals and range of information available.

Allowing all of us to share our knowledge – and most importantly to have that questioned, challenged and refuted – it brings to the fore to the power of the internet and its means as a communication tool. However, its openness can also be its downfall.

Run by a collective of worthy and good-meaning truth seekers called the Cleanup Taskforce their job is to ensure accuracy and settle disputes. Canny PR types have capitalised on this rather hands-off approach to use Wikipedia as another powerful, ‘objective’ voice to promote clients. Key messages, abridged histories and ‘salient’ facts drawn together ensure their clients’ reputations are safeguarded.

Earlier this year, Wikipedia’s founder Jimmy Wales told the PR industry where to stick its attempts at controlling corporate messages on the site’s pages. And, while I agree that our industry’s involvement may well rail against Jimmy’s principles of well-meaning individuals adding, editing and updating for the sheer fun of it, I fail to see the problem. In launching an online, open-access forum for debate and discussion, it seems disingenuous to think that those of us who manage messages and devise and implement media campaigns to showcase our clients, wouldn’t want to do the same across new media.

Its checking mechanisms and Cleanup Taskforce may well be kept more busy than previously, but how does that differ from the role of sub-editors on a newspaper whose job is to ensure accuracy of message and language. PR and journalism operate a symbiotic relationship and newspaper editors and their subs have the job to check that we submit – and get printed – isn’t totally PR-speak and is a factually honest account. Wikipedia’s high morality shouldn’t be treated as an excuse to batter the PR industry – many of us recognise the power we have in forging opinions of our clients in the public eye and treat that with responsibility and respect. Please, Jimmy, treat us with the same respect and get your own house in order to keep the more flagrant elements of our industry under control.

Finally, as to my own additions: having looked at other towns’ and suburbs’ pages I felt Pudsey’s was under-represented. My role: to ensure Pudsey’s page is as positive a representation as possible. The desired result: who knows, maybe my little area of Leeds will be the next up-and-coming ‘burb!

On a totally separate point, Lynne Franks seems to be losing it. I wonder if she still feels promoting the work of SEED is worth it.