Wikipedia talk:Public relations (essay)

My thoughts after a ten second glance

To be quite frank, I've had a good day and now I'm tired and relaxing, so I have yet to pay your piece the attention it deserves. However on a very quick glance, it seems to be putting forth the idea that PR isn't special or new, it simply has to follow the core concepts of wikipedia, and will not in any way be treated differently to any other editor (other than if they appear to add blantant spam). That is a similar view on many accounts to one of the more influencial e-mails I read on this matter from enwikil, and indeed that very e-mail is why I've not been active on this front. It had a good point, and I suspect you have one, too - especially since you have seemingly written a PR introduction to wikipedia based on that idea (I think). Good work, anyhows LinaMishima 19:13, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Copyright

Don't say "don't post things that are under copyright" - legally, unless it has fallen into the public domain due to age, everything is technically under copyright. I went away and read up on it once, and it's a horrible mess :P Instead, talk about "only add material that has been licenced under the GFDL or a compatable licence". —The preceding unsigned comment was added by LinaMishima (talk • contribs) 7 September 2006.

That isn't quite the issue either. But I'll try to reword to accommodate your concern. - Jmabel | Talk 06:52, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

Looks good :) LinaMishima 14:42, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

Licensing at AboutUs.org

Hi Joe.

I've asked the guy in charge of AboutUs about the licensing issue. I should have some info on that in a day or two now. -GTBacchus^(talk) 18:45, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Here's the reply. -GTBacchus^(talk) 17:09, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

In short: TBD. - Jmabel | Talk 07:43, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

From a month or two ago: AboutUs:Copyrights - MarkDilley

What about creating "new" articles?

Jmabel, I saw over on WP:COI that you were pissed that few people are commenting here. The main reason I haven't made much effort is that I saw nothing in your treatise about the situation a company might find itself in, when it currently LACKS any article whatsoever in Wikipedia. What then? (That's of the greatest interest to me. I still cite our experience with Arch Coal -- it took me a couple of weeks of whining about it before someone finally executed the oh-so-difficult task of copying a complete GFDL article from our firm's site, and pasted it into Wikipedia. It only took five years and my whining for Wikipedia to realize that it ought to have an article about the number-two American coal mining company? That's just sad. Plenty of Pokemon content, though.  ;-) --MyWikiBiz 04:47, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Clearly meets notability. Not even sort of borderline. I personally would have no problem with such an article being created by someone at the company in question.

My own suggestion in such a case: make a stub in Wikipedia (in this case, the lead sentence "Arch Coal, Inc. *NYSE|ACI* is the second-largest coal producer in the United States, claiming to contribute approximately 12% of America’s coal supply (140 million tons in 2005)" (with inline citation, which it seems to lack) would have been a good body for the stub. Externally link the company's own GFDL page. Comment on the talk page that the company's GFDL page is available to be mined (how appropriate!). (and, clearly, if you are not this obviously notable, don't be surprised if it is AFD'd rather than expanded, as happens to many articles that are started on a non-PR basis: the bar is the same, regardless.)

Would that meet your concerns? - Jmabel | Talk 07:51, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

That would meet my concerns; but, really, I don't have any "concerns", per se. There are two drawbacks that I see about your approach to new articles written for payment. (1) It seems like a double standard to say that it's okay to write a stub about a company that has paid you to do so, but it's (apparently) not okay to go the next step and write an article. That has to be housed off site? And, (2) Jimmy Wales, if I understand his position, would say that posting even a mere stub for payment would be, as he said, "Absolutely unacceptable, sorry." So, once again, I have to say, all this talking and talking is lovely, but who's going to bring Wales to a new way of thinking? --MyWikiBiz 21:41, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

Being that Jimbo Wales has been totally silent on this subject since issuing the concordat, I have no real idea what he thinks. The current Jimbo Method is farcical, do you think that even a experienced Wikipedian would be able to tell that Arch Coal was written for payment? You can't tell, because its posted by another user, there might literally be no trace of it from the original writer, heck, the original author doesn't even need a Wikipedia account. Why not post the article in a suitable user space, make it blatantly obvious it is a user page (categorise as a user page, remove non-user page categories, surround the article in a "closed AFD style" box stating clearly on top that "THIS IS NOT AN ENCYCLOPEDIA ARTICLE" in red). Thus we will have the edit history of the article, this could be put up on an "articles for creation" type system, and then experienced users can comment on it and edit it, before it is "moved" into the mainspace by an established user. You'll see my other comments at User_talk:MyWikiBiz#Wikipedia:Articles_for_creation, User_talk:Jimbo_Wales#Commercial_editing_of_Wikipedia and Wikipedia_talk:Conflicts_of_interest#Just_say_no_to_PR_firms where I dismiss GMaxwell's ban all PR firms idea. - Hahnchen 23:50, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

It is not at all clear that Jimbo was speaking ex cathedra on this matter rather than expressing his view as an individual, and as I've previously remarked about Jimbo on issues like this: "Divine intervention doesn't scale." I hope to be in a meeting with him in Portland in November. This is high on my list of what I hope to bring up. - Jmabel | Talk 02:43, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Feel free to conference me in on the conversation, if you have it, Joe. Jimbo has my cell phone number. --MyWikiBiz 03:07, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

How can PR people help the Wikipedia (and other wikis)

I think that there should be a section with the same title as this section. One big suggestion that I would make is that they should explicitely give all their promotional photos and other graphics some copyleft license, such as the GFDL or Creative Commons. Even press releases should probably be copylefted, since that is how they are handled anyway. Although these issues are mentioned in the "Wikipedia and public relations professionals" section, I think that they should get their own section. ^BlankVerse 10:23, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

nice

Hi Joe, You've obviously thought this out in much more detail than I have, but this is roughly what my attitude towards PR. The one example that always springs to my mind is User:USSTRATCOM PAO, as being both upfront and clear on the parameters within which the account would be used. Conversely, I've seen a user on the Darfur conflict page state that he is an advocacy intern in the Save Darfur Coalition, but is editing as an individual, which is just confusing. Given that I've seen this sort of editing happen all over the wiki, I'm glad someone has written down some clear guidelines, even as a personal essay. I hope you don't mind if I refer the occasional user to this page. - BanyanTree 15:26, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Not at all, but be aware that Jimbo apparently disagrees with me and advocates a "just say no" approach. I would love to have an actual discussion with him on this. - Jmabel | Talk 05:09, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Move to project space?

This is a really good informative essay. Have you considered moving it into project space? -- œ^™ 05:00, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

Seconded. You might update the GFDL bits :-) – SJ + 06:39, 22 October 2013 (UTC)

• SJ: Updated the GFDL bits. Is an essay appropriate in project space? I'm very open to moving it there, if you think there is a useful way to do so. - Jmabel | Talk 04:14, 24 October 2013 (UTC)