Wikipedia is no doubt one of the most referenced sites. It also drives a lot of traffic to sites and is always in the top search results for it seams like everything. But there is a public misconception about Wikipedia. Sure we all know the information may not be accurate. What I am talking about is the wrongful belief that anyone can update an entry. This was once the intent. It has failed in practice because of human nature to want to own and control territory.
I have on my personal side gone in and updated points of fact. I have also attempted to enter details (again pints of fact) for clients. They are always erased within minutes by rather militant individuals who through their aggressive editing actions have taken ownership of a set of content. We have found this to be the case throughout Wikipedia.
Example, we updated the mission statement for an environmental non-profit. The old mission statement was there quoted from the Web site. We simply updated it to the current mission that had one line adjusted. This was rejected by an editor because this was “self promotion” by an organization. The old mission now remains on the site.
Slate now has an article about how only a limited few can edit pages of popular people. This is no surprise to many people who already know that editing within Wikipedia is actually tightly controlled. So, what make someone popular? Isn’t just being in Wikipedia mean that you are noted somehow above the rest of us mere mortals? I imagine that if someone who is mentioned on Wikipedia tried to correct their own birthday or something similar it would be rejected as being “self-promotion.”
Now let the fun comments telling me I do not know what I am talking about begin!
#1 by Martin - 1 SEO Company on December 30, 2009 - 6:56 pm
I’ve found that certain pages of Wikipedia tend to be highly controlled, but most of the time I edit less popular pages (e.g. pages about small towns) and find that they tend to be accepted and the changes remain.
I tried editing the Sugar page a couple of times and those edits were removed almost as soon as I’d pressed ‘Save’. I was pointing out some of the health problems with Sugar and modifying the section on Sugar and cancer and had assumed some Sugar sales company had a vested interest in that edit not appearing!
If you do edit Wikipedia, I think it helps if:
1. You’re a registered user, rather than an anonymous one.
2. You add a reference which supports what you’re saying.
3. You write clearly and check spelling (for instance, your ‘pints of fact’ gave me a smile, I’ve not come across that particular term before).
4. You are giving a neutral research based perspective, rather than promoting or attacking something.
Hope that helps! Thanks for the blog.
Martin