226967
submission
raner writes:
Recently my company sent out an internal request for comments concerning the modification and maintenance of existing Wikipedia pages about the company's products. Not surprisingly, this message came from the marketing department. I am a longtime Wikipedia fan, and my first gut reaction was "Uh oh, marketing and Wikipedia in the same sentence, does not sound like a good idea." What do people here think about this? Should companies edit Wikipedia pages that pertain to the company's own products?
In my view, it is possible to provide an informative description of a commercial product while still abiding by Wikipedia's rules of conduct. Clearly, a Wikipedia article cannot use the same lingo as an advertising brochure, but an objective (verifiable) description of a notable product seems to be okay by my book. After all, Wikipedia is full of articles about commercial products — http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Office, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coca-Cola, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audi_A4, etc. What we don't know is how much of these articles was contributed or edited by people who are actually associated with the product's manufacturer.
Keeping the recent Microsoft/Wikipedia scandal — http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/01/22/20 56214 — in mind, what is a good approach regarding this? Is it okay if the edits are within the rules stipulated by Wikipedia and the modifications are clearly attributed to a user that is associated with the company? For example, would you put some sort of mission statement on your user page that clarifies that the intention of the contributions is to make sure that all product information is accurate and up-to-date (and not just blatant advertising)? What about creating new articles about specific products? Or is it better to not edit or create pages at all and maybe just point out inaccuracies on the discussion page?
Comments and suggestions welcome!
