It is no surprise that a lot of money is spent on PR in the US and globally. US federal agencies spend on average $1.5 billion on PR annually. This money is obviously put into good use by generally accomplishing what is routinely expected. Even in the relatively new age of social media it is pretty cut out what is expected and what PR firms generally deliver. However, 23 years down the line we have seen time and time again people failing in an attempt to boost their PR in a specific area; Wikipedia. More often than not this stems from the fact that most people don’t know how Wikipedia works or what is the encyclopedia’s purpose. Most companies or people tend to use employees or other people in the PR industry to write or modify their Wikipedia articles but more often than not this goes against desired expectations. This sometimes leads to people who are notable end up having their articles rejected and blocked from being created.

The Wikipedia way.

If you think you or your company is notable Wikipedia will tell you that the most appropriate thing to do is to request your article to be created by a volunteer. This however has its downsides as it is not really common for Wikipedia volunteers to create a page for you upon these requests. There are articles of notable companies that were requested over ten years ago yet they are still to be created. To be honest in this scenario you really can’t blame the volunteers. A lot of non-notable people request for articles to be made on them all the time. This usually leads to volunteers generally having a disinterest in going through the requests and making them. However, should you or your company do something that gets a lot of exposure, there is a higher probability of you falling in a volunteer’s radar.

Say you already don’t want to leave up to fate and take matters to your hands and decide to go ahead and make the article anyway. Well according to Wikipedia the correct procedure is first coming up with a draft that will be your eventual article then submitting the draft for review. Should it pass the standards of being notable and neutral you are in the green and your draft will be converted to an article. However, there is a caveat to this. Hundreds of drafts are submitted for review daily yet the volunteers required to go through these high volume drafts are nowhere near enough. This usually leads to a backlog. As of the writing of this, that backlog is 3 months. The real problem really isn’t the backlog, but it is the fact that it isn’t assured whether your article will be accepted or not. Even if you are notable yet the sources you pick don’t demonstrate that the draft will be declined. Reviewers usually don’t go through articles twice hence it is very likely you will have to improve the sources then resubmit, potentially keeping you waiting another 3 months.

The covert way

The above-mentioned is all the ways you should go about in including anything about yourself or any subject you have a conflict of interest with. However, a lot of people and companies don’t follow these set out regulations. Whether it’s down to being unaware of them or simply get fed up by the process. Usually they go ahead and create or edit their own article. While it may seem convenient, there are some drawbacks to it.

If you think you can be sleek and get away with it there are still some limitations. For one if for any reason someone accuses you of being a sock-puppet or UPE (undisclosed paid editor), administrators can check your IP address (yes even if you have an account) and geolocation and see where you are. This is partly how military and police personnel have been caught in the past editing their own articles.

The repercussions to these vary really depending on the content of the article. If the subject is not notable it will certainly be deleted. If there is unambiguous advertising it will also be deleted. If the article is somewhat credible with good sources and written with neutral language, the article might be tagged with eyesore banners that display the article may have been created or edited for undisclosed payments or a major contributor has a connection to the subject or that the article is written as a commercial. These banners are displayed at the top of the article and is usually the first thing readers will notice when reading the article. Some articles have banners on them for as far back as 2008.