Wikipedia:FAQ/Business

Business' FAQ

Wikipedia is an incredibly popular website and the fact that anyone can edit means that it attracts many PR agents and business people who wish to present their company more favourably. Many organisations, even if non-profit, may still be drawn to Wikipedia for the same reasons. Individuals who promote themselves or friends of such individuals sometimes come to Wikipedia with a vested interest in creating or modifying an article.

If you are one of these people, then this FAQ is for you.

[edit] May I advertise my company or product on Wikipedia?

No. Wikipedia is not a place for you to post advertisements about your company or your product. Our policy on neutral point of view makes this impossible and any such edits will be removed. Advertising may be in addition considered spam and will likely lead to penalties such as blocking or even banning.

[edit] Am I allowed to edit articles about myself or my company?

An important guideline here is our guideline on conflict of interest. You are strongly discouraged from writing articles about yourself or organisations in which you hold a vested interest. However, if you feel that there is material within the article which is incorrect, or not neutral in its tone, please point this out on the article's talk page. Likewise, if you have content which you think should be added, please discuss this on the talk page. Editing articles that you are affiliated with is not completely prohibited; you may do so as specified within the COI guideline, but you must be extremely careful to follow our policies. Don't resist when other people edit your contributions. If you follow our basic rules, your edits should be accepted by the community. If you don't, however, your edits may be reverted and you may end up blocked if you do not stop when asked to.

For more suggestions see the essays: Wikipedia:Search engine optimization and Suggestions for COI compliance.

[edit] Can you "lock" an article so that it stays on my preferred text, or so that only certain people can update it?

No. We can temporarily protect articles to halt vandalism or end a content dispute, but both our neutral point of view and page protection policies prevent administrators from using the tool to enforce a particular version. Remember, Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a vanity press, so "official" descriptions and biographies do not belong here.

[edit] What rules should I follow whilst editing Wikipedia articles?

There are two important policies that you must follow while editing. Edits that don't conform to these rules are likely to be removed.

• Verifiability: Content that is added must be published by a reliable source. This means a third-party source - for most content, your company website does not count as a source. You need to avoid original research. This means that information that is included must have been published by someone other than yourself (or your company).
• Neutral point of view: Wikipedia strives to keep the tone of its articles neutral. Both favorable and unfavorable information may be included, but advertising is not permitted and neither are attacks. If you can quote the opinions of relevant authoritative sources, please do so, but including your personal opinion on an article's subject is not allowed and such additions will be removed.

To put it another way, articles should be written in natural, but neutral, language and merely summarize factual information from third-party articles, studies, reports and books that are already in print. This is in contrast to what many people with a conflict of interest do, which is to write in a promotional tone summarizing their own highly favorable personal knowledge and opinions of the topic. If you can write articles just by summarizing sources in a neutral tone, it is much less likely that you will run into any kind of problems with other editors.

[edit] Why doesn't Wikipedia have an article on my company?

Many people see that a competitor (or at least, another company that sells a similar product or service) has an article. And naturally, they assume their company is due an article as well. The first thing to understand is that Wikipedia editors are unpaid volunteers; there simply is no one who can direct that an article be written, so demanding that an article be written is not going to be helpful. The second thing to understand is that new articles are created when members of the community are interested enough in a topic to write them.

You are strongly discouraged from writing an article about yourself, because of conflict of interest issues (see above) and because Wikipedia is not a vanity press.

Finally, Wikipedia has inclusion standards for companies: see Wikipedia:Notability (organizations and companies). The basic requirement is that multiple independent sources must have written non-trivial amounts of information about a company before a Wikipedia article on that company is appropriate. This requirement helps ensure there's actually enough neutral and factual information to write a proper article. If these sources do not exist for your company, then unfortunately an article is not appropriate at this time.

Wikipedia is not a directory of all companies, but other wikis do aim for comprehensiveness in their subject specialities. For example, Wikicompany intends to build a wiki which lists every legally incorporated business in the world. The first step in successful wiki editing is to make sure you start with the appropriate wiki for the article you want to write.

[edit] I think my company deserves an article on Wikipedia but none exists. What can I do?

First, see the question directly above this one. If your organisation is 'notable' enough to deserve an article, and you wish to avoid conflict of interest accusations, you may follow this procedure:

1. On your user page, disclose your relationship to the company.
2. Create a draft of the article in a user subpage, for example here. Use an encyclopedic tone rather than peacock language.
3. Make sure that this draft cites at least two independent reliable sources. Information that does not meet Wikipedia's verifiability policy may be deleted at any time.
4. Find a WikiProject related to the goods and services that your company sells.
5. On the WikiProject's talk page, post a link to your draft, and make sure to mention your relationship to the company so the person who creates the article understands where the request is coming from.

If the article has promise, a member of the WikiProject may move it into the article space. Keep in mind that due to the nature of Wikipedia and its community, being honest in your relationship with your company will increase the chances of your article being improved by the community, rather than deleted.^[1]

If you have little or no experience with editing on Wikipedia, please realize that starting new articles that "stick" can be very difficult for new users. Wikipedia has many unobvious policies and guidelines that may trip up new users who start from a blank page. The result is that Wikipedia deletes thousands of new articles. A gentler introduction to Wikipedia is to begin by making small edits to existing articles, to gain experience and understanding before adding new articles, and to demonstrate a good faith interest in helping the Wikipedia project and not just one's own corporate interest. See our Cleanup and Maintenance pages for lists of articles that need work. You may also request adoption by an experienced user who will train you to edit productively here.

[edit] My company's article has been nominated for deletion and I think it should be kept. What can I do?

You should generally avoid, or be extremely careful about, commenting on a deletion debate about your own article or direct competitors. It is important to always ground your arguments in policy. Try to avoid comments along the lines of "I like it!" or "But it's a really good company!". State clearly why you think it should be kept; provide sources (i.e. news articles and critical reviews), improve the article's quality, or show that it's a 'notable' topic. Unfortunately, articles that don't meet our notability criteria are likely to be deleted. Again, Wikipedia is not a vanity press.

Please don't try to subvert the discussion by creating multiple accounts to comment from, or getting other people to do that for you. This practice is known as sockpuppeting and this will be obvious and result in blocking. As always, you will gain more respect and credibility if you are transparent about your actions and reasonable when dealing with other Wikipedians.

Consider writing about your company on another wiki which specializes in business information, such as Wikicompany. Specialized wikis often accept a wider range of articles in their subject specialty than Wikipedia does.

[edit] The article on me/my company is an attack! What can I do?

Your first step should be going to the article's talk page. If you feel that the article contains unnecessary attacks or unreliable information for the purpose of portraying your company in a negative light, please explain why and discuss it with other Wikipedians. Don't misrepresent who you are on a talk page. Openness and transparency will give you more credibility. Say that you represent the company, calmly and politely present information that makes your case along with citations that back them up. Don't try to spin the facts; it will just lessen your credibility.

If this yields no response, or if you feel that the response is unsatisfactory, please post at the conflict of interest noticeboard to give the issue attention from a wider pool of Wikipedians. Neutral point of view works both ways; if your article is being edited with the purpose of making you look bad, we will stop it.

If an article contains derogatory information about a living person that isn't substantiated by a reliable source, this is a violation of Wikipedia's biography of living persons policy. In cases of obvious libel, you may delete the offending material immediately, even in your own article. If there is nothing in an article but libel attacking the person or company in question, and you have examined the history of the offending page and found nothing but unsourced attacks, ask an administrator to delete the whole article by adding the code {{Db-attack}} (include the braces) to the top of the page. An administrator will then examine the page in question and delete it if he or she agrees with you that the article is nothing but attacks. If you are unsure whether to do this, you can post a notice at the biography of living persons noticeboard.

If a claim in the article is not supported by a cited reliable source then it may be challenged by anyone. You can either put a {{fact}} tag beside it to request a citation, or if you feel it is misinformative you can remove it stating in the edit summary that the fact is not verified by a reliable source.

What you should not do is engage in edit wars with other users. If you perform a change and somebody else reverses that change don't simply put the change back. Instead go to the talk page and create a topic about it making your argument. Escalating conflict will not help. When users go back and forth reverting each other's edits, we call it an edit war. We don't allow this and if you do this you may end up being blocked. If you are in the right then other users will agree with you and edit the article themselves and/or not continue to revert your edits.

Above all, do not make legal threats on Wikipedia. If you do, you will be blocked until the threat is withdrawn or the legal action is resolved.

[edit] Can I add a link to my company's website?

You should avoid adding External links to your or your company's website. If the link is relevant, helpful and informative and should otherwise be included, please consider mentioning it on the talk page and let neutral and independent Wikipedia editors decide whether to add it. Whilst it may be tempting to linkspam, editors often notice and will remove them. Persistent linkspammers are usually blocked and may have their website(s) added to the WikiMedia spam blacklist. Our blacklist prevents links from being added to any area of Wikipedia.

It is important to understand that our blacklist is public, many website operators use this list for their own websites so if you end up on our blacklist other websites who use this list may block your link as well.

However, this does not apply if the link is the 'official website' of the subject of the article. If your company's article does not contain an official link to your website, you are welcome to add one.

[edit] Can my company have an account?

For copyright reasons, it is against policy for two or more people to share an account for any reason. If there is evidence that an account is being shared it will be blocked.

Additionally, usernames that match or include your company name, or website name, could be inappropriate under Wikipedia's username policy. Instead, please have your company representative register an individual account that doesn't reference your company but declare the affiliation on the account's user page.

[edit] What materials can I upload? What do I need to know about the GFDL license?

Public relations (PR) agents often copy and paste content from company websites into their Wikipedia articles. Please be aware that all text on Wikipedia must be licensed under the GFDL, and almost all images must be under a free license. Additions to Wikipedia that do not fall under such licenses will be removed.

Images uploaded under a free license are more likely to be retained, as we are able to use them however we please. The GFDL and other free licenses mean that other people can come and take your contributions and modify them however they see fit. However, many free licenses like the GFDL often require reusers of your contributions to credit your work on the reused items. Failure to attribute your work in such reuse violates these licenses and may allow you to sue the plagiarist(s) for copyright violation. You are welcome to upload images, diagrams, logos and other media, and will receive a warm welcome if you license them freely. However, images that are overly promotional may be deleted.

Be aware that a PR copy is almost always inappropriate in tone for Wikipedia, even if released for use under the GFDL. The tone of a Wikipedia article must always be neutral, but promotional materials have an inherently non-neutral tone. Use of peacock terms common in PR, such as "innovative" and "exciting", contravene Wikipedia's Manual of Style and may provoke cynical reactions. Content added to Wikipedia will almost always have to be written specifically for Wikipedia—by somebody other than your PR agent. If your PR agent adds promotional material to Wikipedia for you without disclosing their professional relationship, that's astroturfing and will be removed.

[edit] Can I use Wikipedia as a corporate wiki?

The short answer is "No," but you may download the MediaWiki software for free, the same software which powers Wikipedia, and set up your own corporate wiki. There are also many other wiki software packages, some of which may better meet the needs of your business. For more information, see: b:Wiki Science/How to start a wiki, mw:Manual:Installation guide, and mw:Manual:Wiki on a stick.

People who work in corporations of all sizes visit Wikipedia. Some become aware of how well Wikipedia allows physically remote strangers from around the world to work productively together without the need for physical travel. Mediawiki is probably one of the most effective systems for telecommuting yet invented, and one of the easiest examples for the general public to study. The effectiveness and low cost of Mediawiki's remote, distributed, collaborative editing model naturally causes some businesspeople to think about using similar technology in their businesses.

Wikipedia itself is not a suitable platform for corporate wiki activity, because much communication between employees in a corporation fails to meet Wikipedia's requirements (including: reliable sources, notability, and no original research). Wikipedia also lacks security and privacy features which are usually necessary for corporate work. Content on Wikipedia falls under the GFDL, so a corporation would give up its ownership of employee contributions. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, rather than a general-purpose corporate information appliance. However, for people who want to make good-faith edits to encyclopedia articles, Wikipedia is an excellent place to learn wiki editing, with our tutorial, our extensive internal documentation, and the Help desk and other assistance pages. Wikipedia has accumulated a huge amount of know-how for remote collaboration, and people who have become respected contributors on Wikipedia can quickly become productive on a corporate wiki.

Questions relating to corporate wikis occasionally appear on the Help desk. You may search for them and read the answers for more information.

[edit] Notes