User:Martijn Hoekstra/Editing for organisations

This is an essay.

It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article, nor is it one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints.

This page in a nutshell: Editing well and within our guidelines to a subject you are close to is really hard. Almost everyone fails. If things go wrong, it is likely your work ends up deleted and your account ends up blocked. You are free to attempt to, but we advice you not to. Don't say I didn't warn you it was hard

One of the things that come up quite frequently are people from organisations^[1] (generally from the public relations department) that either create a new article about there organisation, or improve current articles on the organisation. This often goes wrong as there is a plethoria of pitfalls and difficulties. Articles end up deleted or protected, new editors end up blocked, old editors end up annoyed, and general displeasure ensues. This essay is a guide on the practical pitfalls along the way of these new editors.

What it is, and what its not

Wikipedia is the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit^[2]. That means it is

Free. This means that everything on Wikipedia can be shared, remixed, and reused, without any permission, within the limitations of our licence.
Encyclopedia. Yeah, we're an encyclopedia. Not a forum, not a listings site, not anything else.
That anyone can edit. This includes you. It does not however mean you are free to write anything you want, or that we should cary anything you write. What is included on Wikipedia is up to the community.

Why you are editing Wikipedia

Our editors (and if you have made your first edit, that includes you!) have one goal, and one goal only: To write the best encyclopedia we can. This is also your time to reflect on why you are here. Are you here to write a free online encyclopedia? Great! Are you here because you believe the public should know about something, because it will benefit them (or you)? Then you are at the wrong place. All the help and advice we can give you won't help, because your fundamental goal does not coincide with ours.^[3] I strongly urge you not to edit subjects you are close to, especially companies you work for. You are allowed to as long as you follow all guidelines, but it very very rarely works out. Most of the time by far it ends with the content you worked so hard to create deleted.

Getting started

So you are here to write an encyclopedia. Great! What you need now are a username, and a handle on our editing policies, and you are good to go.

Username

For people representing companies, our username policy is often a first hurdle. Your username can be pretty much anything, with a few limitations. Important to realise is that your account represents you as a natural person and an individual, not anybody else. We don't allow so called role accounts. Another restriction often encountered is that we don't allow any promotional usernames. Usually, usernames that violate this policy are quickly discovered, and the username is subsequently blocked. If you have set up an account with a disallowed name just abandon it, and create a new one. We don't mind.

Your conflict of interest

Now that you are set up with a proper account, and the intention to improve Wikipedia, let's take a moment to make a few notes on your conflict of interest. The conflict is the following: when you make an edit, are you making the best edit for the encyclopedia, or the best edit for something else? That's a tough question to answer. Don't worry though, people are willing to help you out. First thing you should do, is declare your conflict of intrest. That will get you brownie points off the bat. What you are basically saying is 'look, I am close to the subject I am writing about, and I'm aware that that might raise complications. I want all you guys to be aware of that too, so that we can work together to overcome those problems'. Good places to declare this are on your user page and on the talkpage of the article you are editing.

Core policies

The most important policy you should know is our policy on verifiability. Since anyone can edit Wikipedia, how do you know you can trust what is there. The short answer is, you can't and therefore everything should be attributed to a suitable source. We don't count all sources as suitable, and have developed some directives for what sources are suitable, and what sources are not. In Wikipedia lingo these are called reliable sources, which is something of a misnomer^[4] but it's the used term, and I will stick with it for now. Try looking for sources that:

Are independent of the subject. So no press releases, organisation owned or affiliated websites or other material published by the subject itself, or affiliated to to the subject, like brochures, leaflets, price listings, etc.
Have editorial control. It shouldn't be user-submitted pieces, but some editor who answers to an editor in chief should have created the content (note that this also rules out Wikipedia itself, as we have no editorial control).
Give significant coverage to the subject. As a rule of thumb, at least one paragraph dedicated only to the subject should be good.

It is preferred but in no way needed that these sources are in English and available online. If something is only available in print, in a language other than English, but it meets the criteria above it is fine. If you also have a source that tells us the same, also meets the criteria above, and in addition is in English, and is available online, even better. The best way to include these references is inline. You can do so by typing the title and link behind the statement you are referencing, starting the reference with <ref> and ending it with </ref>^[5]. Make sure you have a final section called 'References', in which you put <references />. Everything you have put between those <ref> tags will be displayed here, and linked to from the line of your reference.

If you have references that don't reference any specific statements, but are just general references you can just type them out under the <references /> tag. These don't need <ref> tags.

Criteria for inclusion

As mentioned before, not everything is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia. The most used policy here is that, what by lack of a better word, we call notability^[6]. If you can answer the question 'Are there multiple sources that meet all the criteria of the reliable sources mentioned above?' with a resounding yes, you are on the safe side. The community has the ultimate say in what stays and what goes through our deletion process. Some specific types of articles can even be deleted on the spot, for example entries that are not articles at all, but are purely promotional in for or tone.

So now what?

Now we build an encyclopedia! If you are still determined that you are able to overcome your conflict of interest, and edit articles close to you in the proper way, go ahead and give it a try. If you are getting signs that you might be not doing it right, either by reverts of your edits, notes on your talkpage, or requests for deletion on things you wrote, chances are, you did not manage to overcome your conflict of interest. This is in fact, even after reading through this entire essay, still the most likely outcome. But now that you are here anyway, and have a basic understanding of our policies and guidelines, we would really appreciate it if you could help us out on one of our backlogs. As you can see, there are plenty of ways to help us out.

Need more help?

The easiest way to solicit help is editing your own talkpage, and putting the {{helpme}} template on there, with the request or question you have. You'll be amazed how fast you will have someone who is ready to help you out in your specific case knocking on your door.

Referenced policies, guidelines and essays

WP:COI - "Conflict of Interest" guidelines
WP:RS - "Identifying reliable sources" guidelines
WP:USER - "User pages" guidelines
WP:TALK - "Talk page" guidelines
WP:U - "Username" policy

WP:NOSHARE - "Sharing accounts" section of "Username" policy

WP:V - "Verifiability" policy
WP:N - "Notability" guidelines
WP:DELPRO - "Deletion process" guidelines
WP:OWN - "Ownership of articles" guidelines

Other useful policies, guidelines and essays

Wikipedia:FAQ/Organizations - Frequently Asked Questions about Organizations and Wikipedia
WP:ORG - Notability guidelines for companies and organisations
WP:BIO - Notability guidelines for people

If you are a PR company considering creating/editing articles about your clients, you should read this Rush PR News article, which concludes Inevitably, the agency will be called to account as to why the article was removed, so it is undoubtedly the best option to be honest with the client about Wikipedia’s stance, and to wait for someone completely removed from the business to deem the business noteworthy enough to want to submit an article of their own accord.

Notes

^ Organisations here is used in the broadest sense. This essay is about all organisations. This includes but is not limited to corporations, not-for-profit organisations, schools, and grassroots movements
^ It says so on the main page, so it must be true
^ If you are here because there are errors, factually wrong information, or plain old vandalism on an article, do feel free to fix it. Another way to do this might be to send a request through WP:OTRS. Your requests are usually handled promptly and well.
^ The problem with the term reliable sources is that it implies that these sources are always reliable and true, and sources that don't fall under our reliable sources policy are not. This is simply not true, and have been known to cause confusion. Don't read to much in the name 'reliable sources', the policy and reasoning behind it are sound, even if the name is not.
^ The fancy way of doing this is using the {{cite}} template to format your reference. Don't worry about that for now
^ This is another term which I am not fond of. We're not trying to say you, your company, or your organisation is not important. We certainly don't want to snort and be like that subject is too unimportant to us. There has been historically a lot of debate on Wikipedia on what to include, and these guidelines represent the community's ideas on what should be included and what shouldn't quite well.

[1] Organisations here is used in the broadest sense. This essay is about all organisations. This includes but is not limited to corporations, not-for-profit organisations, schools, and grassroots movements

[2] It says so on the main page, so it must be true

[3] If you are here because there are errors, factually wrong information, or plain old vandalism on an article, do feel free to fix it. Another way to do this might be to send a request through WP:OTRS. Your requests are usually handled promptly and well.

[4] The problem with the term reliable sources is that it implies that these sources are always reliable and true, and sources that don't fall under our reliable sources policy are not. This is simply not true, and have been known to cause confusion. Don't read to much in the name 'reliable sources', the policy and reasoning behind it are sound, even if the name is not.

[5] The fancy way of doing this is using the {{cite}} template to format your reference. Don't worry about that for now

[6] This is another term which I am not fond of. We're not trying to say you, your company, or your organisation is not important. We certainly don't want to snort and be like that subject is too unimportant to us. There has been historically a lot of debate on Wikipedia on what to include, and these guidelines represent the community's ideas on what should be included and what shouldn't quite well.

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