Katie Hafner wrote a great overview of Wikiscanner in today’s New York Times. This story has gotten legs since Wired News uncovered the tool last week (I can’t locate a link to the original story anywhere – if someone bookmarked it, would you comment below?).
If you or your client have ever broken Wikipedia’s rules on editing or providing content without an objective point of view, the NYT article is a must-read. However unlikely it is that you’re called out on it, if you are, you want to have some good responses ready.
If you haven’t, then I still recommend the article, as well as my post from April this year that offers some words from Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales on how PR people can successfully interact with Wikipedia content.
1 response so far ↓
David Gerard // August 20, 2007 at 7:22 am
I must stress that in my experience (as an English Wikipedia admin and a press contact for the Wikimedia Foundation), lot of it isn’t done out of underhandedness at all – it’s that they think they’re honestly setting the record straight, but don’t know the right way to do it. And the news stories are demonstrating that “perceived conflict of interest” and “the right way to do things” isn’t just explicit Wikipedia rules – but implicit rules of the society we live in. I’m still amazed at the press interest in this story and that my phone is still running hot …