infOpinions?

Todd Defren has kindly mentioned me at his blog – PR Squared – regarding whether or not PR practitioners should be allowed to edit the Public relations entry at Wikipedia.

First of all, thank you, Todd. Your article was very interesting. I am flattered by your endorsement, too. Not sure I’m worthy, but grateful for your kind comments.

Looking at the PR entry at Wikipedia, I see it has had 75 edits (or attempts) since October 1. Most have been reverted.

However, I wouldn’t touch that entry with a 10-foot mouse pointer. The ideal behind Wikipedia is great. The reality of Wikipedia is sometimes irrational and always unpredicatable. There is legitimately valid information in there. But, to assure you are getting valid information users must fisk out the details on every entry. Wikipedia cannot possibly have enough editors to keep up with all those articles.

For Wales to suggest that the editors of Wikipedia do not have any “conflict(s)-of-interest” or “agendas” is hard to fathom. First, the editors are anonymous, for the most part. Most of the attempted edits are identified solely by IP numbers. Those with authority to roll back the changes are identified as Raul654 (Mark Pellegrini) and GraemeL (no identity provided), for example.

Wales may know who they all are, but we sure don’t. Are we just expected to trust Wales? He doesn’t trust all of us. Why should we trust him? There is no way for the casual observer, and I doubt even Wales, to identify all of the editors at Wikipedia. And, we’ve seen enough stories about false entries and the process of having them fixed, or removed, before. That’s another topic, but something Wikipedia has never fully resolved. I don’t think that one can be resolved under their present practices, either.

On the one hand, I have seen Wales reference court documents allowing Wikipedia information to stand as evidence. On the other hand, I’ve seen him suggest that people shouldn’t take everything in Wikipedia as fact. Well, which is it? You can’t have it both ways.

You’d think, with all of this anonymity, the site would be a haven for Strumpette, for example. However, “Strumpet now on the spam blacklist” appears in the history of edits on the PR entry (Source and the evidence of Strumpette’s anonymous self-promotion within Wikipedia. Also see: “You’ve already been warned three times about linking to your own sites.”)  Someone tried to make an anonymous reference to Strumpette in the entry. These edits came from the same IP – 207.229.142.248 – as we’ve seen in various blog spam and attacks – 207-229-142-248 (dot) hnc-bsr1.chi-hnc.il (dot) cable.rcn.com. Now that is funny. Gee, wonder who that might have been?

If someone were to ever try and create an entry or edit an entry, for a client or themselves, I believe they should sign their name. Their real name, not “Lord Zorg” or some such nonsense. Go ahead, call me naive. I know.

Finally, if Wales and the editors think their site hasn’t been “played” by people with agendas already, they are the most naive people on planet earth. There are currently (as of this writing) 1,441,783 entries in Wikipedia. Is anyone, with a straight face, going to suggest that all of the information in there is sans opinions and agendas? Please. It can change in an instant by just signing up and creating an account. How many edits are made a day? Can the editors really keep up with all of that? I doubt it.

Now, for the punchline. Todd kindly singles me out as an example of a potential editor for the PR entry. Guess where Jimmy Wales went to school? Auburn University. Yep, he has a “Bachelor’s degree in finance from Auburn University and started with the Ph.D. finance programs at the University of Alabama that he left with a Master’s in finance.” (Source) Small world, huh. I am actually proud of the fact that he is an AU alum.

Now, all this being said, I would still be very happy and grateful if Jimmy Wales would agree to come back to Auburn and speak to our classes. I’d love to have him help us learn about Wikipedia and all of his other projects. I believe he is a smart man with many great ideas. I’ve written about him before. I’ve written to him before. Never heard back.