Wikipedia Scanner: open season on companies

Since Virgil Griffith launched Wikipedia Scanner, it’s been open season on organizations whose IP addresses are linked to changes made to entries on the popular DIY encyclopedia. For example…

• PRWeek’s UK edition notes that “PR agencies are flouting Wikipedia rules demanding they do not edit the site. At least six of the PRWeek top ten UK agencies have edited the site in the past year…FD is the biggest offender filing 25 edits, primarily concerning clients Russ DeLeon and Ruth Parasol—founders of the online gambling company PartyGaming.”
• Wired is taking and publishing submissions in a posting titled “Vote on the Most Shameful wikipedia Spin Jobs.”
• Over 750 blog posts have been contributed on the topic, and a Google search produces 342,000-plus results.

Cumulatively, the number of organizations being outed for making changes is staggering. Rarely does a single tool produce such an overwhelming indictment of institutions’ predlicition for spinning facts and history.

But a little perspective is in order.

I’ve been visiting the Scanner over the last few days, spending time in the “Editor’s Picks.” For example, I spent a fair amount of time clicking through edits made from Exxon Mobil’s IP addresses. As of right now, there is a whopping 1,205 edits made by Exxon Mobil. Outrageous, right? Well, no. In fact, only about 20 of the edits seem to have anything to do with entries related to Exxon Mobil. 

What, then, were all these other edits? Here’s a very small sampling:

• Correction of a typo (“choose” instead of “chose”) in an entry about Disneyland’s Autopia ride
• Addition of a paragraph about how refrigeration cycles work in an entry about air conditioners
• Removal of an offensive addition to the biography of country singer/actress Dolly Parton
• Removal of a gratuitous addition (I LOVE YOU JENNY) to a listing on the history of American Football
• A section on “Economy” was added to the listing for the city of Natchitoches, Louisiana, suggesting that the city’s tourism industry needs little promotion.

Are these blatant abuses by Exxon Mobil? Clearly not. These are employees who also happen to be Wikipedia fans; they don’t care whether they’re at home or at work when they make their corrections and additions. But because their entries from work computers get aggregated with all other revisions from the company’s range of IP addresses, they get added to the total. Without these entries, Exxon Mobil probably wouldn’t have attracted the editor’s attention and become an editor’s pick.

A look at Amgen’s results shows a similar pattern. Most changes were made to entires dealing with a band called Caustic, the late Monty Python alum Graham Chapman, the term “mnemonic,” the New Progressive Party of Puerto Rico, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and the like. Reviews of other companies produced the same kinds of results.

And what about the edits to Exxon Mobil entries, the ones that clearly violate Wikipedia’s policy? While some are egregious (deletion of content about the impact of the Exxon Valdez oil spill, for instance), others simply correct facts. For example, the entry about Mobil 1motor oil originally stated that Mobil 1 was introduced two years after Amsoil “marketed the first API certified synthetic engine oil.” The change reflects the fact that Mobil 1 was, in fact, the first API (American Petroleum Institute) certified synthetic motor oil.

At this point, you also have to wonder how many of the edits to company-specific content were business-motivated—that is, deliberately executed by the PR staff—and how many were individual employees who visited the company’s listing and said, “Hey, that’s not right,” and made the change without understanding the consequences. Companies now need policies that limit employee edits to company listings in Wikipedia.

I’ve been on the record opposing the Wikipedia rule that bars companies and their agents from editing company content. Honest efforts to correct mistatements of fact are prohibited by the rule (such as changing the number of employees from 500,000 to 50,000 because the original author added an extra zero) while unethical companies will simply make their inappropriate changes from non-work computers or use proxy services that mask their identities. Meanwhile, thousands of people who don’t work for the company but do have a biased point of view merrily post entries that obviously were never crafted with objectivity in mind.

But my objection doesn’t matter. The rule is the rule and if companies can’t play by it, they deserve whatever heat they take as a result of being outed courtesy of the Wikipedia Scanner. And, to be fair, most of the companies that have been the subject of news reports since the Scanner opened for business have been caught trying to rewrite history.

Still, it’s important to separate the wheat from the chaff, and not much of an effort has been made so far to draw the distinction between truly unethical manipulation of content, minor factual revisions, changes made unwittingly by front-line employees and changes to non-company content by employees accessing Wikipedia from work computers.

1. Thanks for applying some “wait just a minute” level-headedness to this issue. While the thought crossed my mind, this is the first published coverage of this Wikipedia Scanner issue that actually considered the innocence of many of the edits made by “companies.”

   An interesting article from the New York Times, though:

   http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/20/technology/20link.html

   They spoke with Mike Godwin, general counsel of the Wikimedia Foundation, and at the end, the article says:

   =======================

   But there is no Wikipedia rule against editing an article about yourself or your employer, and Mr. Godwin freely acknowledges editing his own article. “There has been some give and take about my biographical entry,” he said. “I removed factually incorrect information. Who could dispute that we were better off?”

   Posted by Mike Keliher  on  08/27  at  08:38 AM

2. That’s really useful Shel - thanks for pointing it out - and providing your usual measured analysis!

   Posted by Simon Wakeman  on  08/27  at  11:52 AM

3. It’s a funny one really… should companies really need to draw up policies on employees using wikipedia? I don’t think so!

   I do think that people should take things they read on there with a pinch of salt tho!

   Posted by Edward Lewis  on  08/28  at  07:38 AM

4. Why do you not think so, Edward? Well-meaning employees making changes to their own organizations’ listings can cause untold grief to those companies. Why do you think a policy wouldn’t help address the problem? Or, at least, some comprehensive and pointed communications to employees?

   Posted by Shel  on  08/28  at  09:34 AM

5. Understanding the nature of transparency is, perhaps the firts issue. TheNewPR wiki is a starting place.

   Posted by David Phillips  on  08/30  at  10:47 AM

6. I think that Wikipedia’s policy that employees of a company, including those in PR, cannot edit that company’s Wiki entry has led to many unforeseen consequences and needs to be changed. It’s simply against human nature to expect that employees, who are among the most interested parties, be excluded from the conversation that any wiki article is. The scanner will simply drive people further underground , haunting cyber cafes and public libraries with gmail addresses. This is the antithesis of transparency. It’s so much cleaner to let an employee post and let the reader, who can easily view the history, decide how to evaluate that comment.

   I’d like to know when some of our communications organizations—IABC, PRSA—as well as the social media associations will approach Wikipedia to work out an arrangement in which company representatives may visibly edit their organization’s wiki entry, but be strictly reviewed for fact and NPOV. This allows companies to correct errors (which serves the interests of Wikipedia’s readers) and to provide the corporate perspective on controversies (which helps establish NPOV, so that readers can make up their own minds). This will lead to more balanced, fair, accurate and transparent Wiki articles in the long run.

   Posted by Kris Gallagher, ABC  on  08/31  at  06:58 AM

7. The scanner will simply drive people further underground , haunting cyber cafes and public libraries with gmail addresses.

   Posted by tourism guide  on  01/13  at  05:24 AM

8. PR = Page rank?

   Posted by David Murphey  on  02/11  at  08:00 PM

9. Wikipedia’s come-one, come-all invitation to write and edit articles, and the surprisingly successful results, have captured the public imagination.At its core, Wikipedia is not just a reference work but also an online community.

   Posted by wine country tours  on  02/18  at  10:27 AM

10. Wikipedia’s policy that employees of a company, including those in PR, cannot edit that company’s Wiki entry has led to many unforeseen consequences and it needs to be changed.

    Posted by Techitrout  on  08/13  at  09:46 PM

11. The rule is the rule and if companies can’t play by it, they deserve whatever heat they take as a result of being outed courtesy of the Wikipedia Scanner. And, to be fair, most of the companies that have been the subject of news reports since the Scanner opened for business have been caught trying to rewrite history.

    Posted by cyber cafe canada  on  08/19  at  08:12 PM