Wikipedians Don’t Care About Your Brand.
An upcoming LinkedIn article’s working title is “Too Late to Turn Digital Around?” It will examine how certain roving bands — in stark contrast to the earnest community of wikipedia.org volunteer watchdogs — are assuming responsibility and legal authority for review and oversight elsewhere on the Interweb.
For now, ignore the dark side of the Interweb (or, if you do need some dietary snark in your daily routine, read this, that, and the other one). Instead, raise a glass to celebrate the true, albeit quirky, heroes of the Freeweb:
Wikipedialand
To find an area of today’s digitalsphere that remains happily uncorrupted, you must travel across the moors, and over the moats, to the pilloried castle we’ve come to know as Wikipedia.
Put simply, anyone who is doing something for free is alright, right?
Not always. Here’s an example:
The CEO calls you in to let you know their Wikipedia bio is displeasing. “My bio has a massive disclaimer stickered across the top proclaiming the article is too promotional and not neutral. Fix it, okay?”
You stammer, “But, but … I’ve never edited a Wikipedia article before!”
“Well," the CEO dispassionately rejoins, “You’ll do fine.”
Wikipedia.org is essentially a continuously-evolving social media organism. It survives because (a) it’s 100% free and (b) contributors, called Users, keep posting articles and uploading files to its database.
First of all, however, those Users' contributions must get past The Wikipedians…
The Gatekeepers
Meet Wikipedian Kameraad Pjotr. The hyperlink to his User Page is omitted here since it only reveals “I'm Kameraad Pjotr, a 18 year old person from Belgium.” Oh, there’s also a table listing his six languages ranging from Level 3 English (advanced) to Level 2 Greek (intermediate) and Level 1 German (basic). Not jealous, just saying.
As a member of Wikipedia’s “OTRS” team, Mr. Pjotr is part of an army of volunteers who patrol the borders of Wikipedialand. If a new article, edit to an existing article, or uploaded file is out of line, you may get a terse message like this:
20:46, 25 April - CommonsDelinker (talk | contribs) m (1,254 bytes) (Removing “CEO_Bob.jpg”, it has been deleted from Commons by Kameraad Pjotr because: Copyright violation: http://www.cambridgewhoswho.com/Members/CEO_Bob.html.)
“Wikimedia Commons” is the file storage area of Wikipedia where non-text things like photos get uploaded. Within minutes after OSAM added a photo of Jim to the Commons, Mr. Pjotr (flashing his “administrator” credentials) must have done a hasty Google search and, by golly, found the same photo on the “Cambridge Who’s Who” website. Hmmm, wasn’t it CEO Bob’s admin who provided Cambridge Who’s Who with the picture in the first place? But, guilty until proven innocent, the jpeg was quickly “hanged, drawn and quartered” (a phrase borrowed from Mr. Pjotr’s Administrator Page — true story).
Not only did this Wikipedian delete the jpeg photo file, he also scurried over to my User Page and manually deleted some some offending code from my Sandbox (workspace) because it linked to the presumptive copyright infringement on CEO Bob’s rewrite. The nerve!
Pleading with Kameraad is fruitless. The best thing to do in a situation like this is to take a deep breath, walk around the block, and try to relax — after all, Wikipedians are worthy adversaries. And they’ve got numbers. So, after much ado, a PDF of our staff photographer’s copyright release was sent to the Wikipedia Powers That Be to appeal the ruling, and so on. Happy ending: the jpeg was finally re-uploaded using the file name “Let_CEO_Bob_Be_Free” instead of “CEO_Bob” to https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/…
Avast, Avalon!
After the seemingly basic task of uploading a jpeg file to Wikipedialand, it’s time to surreptitiously re-post the “fundamental rewrite” of CEO Bob’s article in order to purge the Alert Box currently labeling the content as “blatant advertising” written from a “non-neutral point of view”...
Introducing Wikipedia User “Avalon” (you can’t make this stuff up! en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Avalon). Avalon is the Wikipedian who oh-so-kindly spackled on the aforementioned Alert Box.
Other than “male, sixth generation Australian” there’s not much we know much about Avalon. (User or Administrator profiles don’t require any personal information to be entered!) But we do know that, according to his User Page, Avalon is “still a bit miffed we lost the American colonies.” He’s one to talk about a “neutral” pov, huh!
So where did CEO Bob’s article go wrong in the administrative eyes of Avalon? We only know for sure that Wikipedia (ergo the Wikipedians, presumably) wants its “WikiProject Biography” articles to share these traits:
- NPOV (neutral point of view — their abbrev not mine)
- verifiable
- contains no original research
- originates from reliable sources
- cites sources
- follows Wikipedia’s “Manual of Style”
In one sense, Wikipedia is the ultimate form of “transparency” in today’s digisphere. For every article on the site (even User profiles), there are openly-accessible tabs showing Discussion, History, Watch, and an opportunity to Edit This Page. Anyone in the world can collaborate with the site but nothing “goes live” until reviewed and vetted by a member of the Wikipediarmy (ahem, “community”) of editors, inspectors, administrators, et al.
In another sense, Wikipedia is in sync with most other forms of “social” media: collaborative content is always contentious. And anarchy rules the high seas. Aye, mateys…
Hoisting the Jolly Roger
Part III of this journey is where the Wikipedians and I sail happily toward a beautiful, red sunset. That’s because, after the posting my NPOV fundamental rewrite, the scornful Alert Box that once harshed on CEO Bob’s article has been removed.
If someone with a direct financial connection with CEO Bob’s company had posted the rewritten article, there would be an issue, or perhaps even a Wikipedia-style spanking. As it turns out, a User by the name Anon Amos had logged in from an IP address connected to a Best Western Hotel near some lake in New Hampshire (for visuals, see this post).
I can officially take credit from the following performance-enhancing Wikipedia modifications, since these are not related to editorial content:
- Numerous “redirect” links have been added to Wikipedia pointing to CEO Bob’s article — go ahead, try to NOT find “CEO Bob” using the wikipedia.org search function:
- name variants for CEO Bob (including misspellings)
- name variants for OSAM (these are placeholders until the firm’s article is written/posted)
- placeholders for the full title for each of the books authored by CEO Bob
- CEO Bob’s current photo was uploaded. Such a handsome gent!
Protecting brands is for Creatives (noun). Protecting The Truth is best left to an #inclusive forum with hundreds of thousands of volunteers ready to serve.
“All set?”
I’d never edited a Wikipedia article before. Pacing nervously in CEO Bob’s cavernous, faux-paneled office, I gently stroke the new wiki feather in my cap.
“You did fine,” CEO Bob assures me.
I confoundingly reply, “I couldn’t’ve done it without The Wikipedians.”
To be perfectly honest, it does feel kind of good to know Kameraad and Avalon are protecting The Truth without charging a fee — or, at least protecting their personal digitized proxies for The Truth. It’s out there somewhere. We can all do a better job of finding it!
Do The Wikipedians care about your brand? Yes. It’s just that they have a long to-do list of other things far more important to their org than building your brand for you.
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