What about Wikipedia editors who change career to become PR people? :-) Carcharoth
(Who nevers wants to be a PR person, ever) On Sun, Apr 4, 2010 at 5:00 PM, William Pietri <will...@scissor.com> wrote: > I think we are pretty much in agreement. > > If there is gray area, it is the PR person's job to maximally exploit > that without ever getting caught. It's our job to minimize the gray area. > > I think the reason people feel that we can generally detect PR spin in > the wiki environment is that PR people aren't used to dealing with us. > Their habits are mainly tuned for broadcast media and the general > public, so their attempts at manipulation often look clumsy and obvious > to us. > > However, it is still early days. The first step will be them learning to > stop being obvious jerks, and this article is a fine example of that. > But if Wikipedia is actually important to them, they will learn how to > play the game like any other skilled POV pusher. And unlike the hobbyist > POV pushers we have now, these people will be professionals, ones > playing a long game. They'll have a number of advantages, like a steady > paycheck and an information asymmetry that strongly favors them. > > Having watched skilled PR people totally play professional journalists, > I'm sure that they'll learn to play us just as well. For us, that will > mean appearing earnest, helpful, concerned about a balanced article, > etc, etc. It will mean knowing about our policies and culture. It will > mean providing useful references, building good articles, and generally > being a good citizen. They'll learn how to build trust with us in the > same way that they have learned how to build trust with journalists, and > then they will use that trust to the benefit of their clients, because > that's their job. > > Like you and DGG, I think their interests and ours coincide about 90% of > the time, so I don't have a big problem with that. If they are pros, the > good ones won't cause the trouble that blatant POV pushers cause. I just > wouldn't want people to forget that PR people are paid POV pushers with > an ineradicable conflict of interest, no matter how nice and helpful > they learn to become. > > William > > On 04/03/2010 07:29 PM, James Alexander wrote: >> I'm don't think that is always true which is what DGG was getting at. You >> are right you CAN run the risk of them being "so good" that you can't tell >> it's spin but to be honest you usually can in the wiki environment. A good >> PR group is going to know that just getting a well written article on >> Wikipedia (even with bad things in the article) can increase the information >> and exposure out there for the company and in the end be much much better >> then an article with spin that gets deleted :). The biggest problem is >> making sure that >> >> 1. The PR people see that there is a difference and that they and the >> company they represent our better served by a good Wiki article. >> and >> 2. That the COMPANY realizes they are better served by a good Wiki article >> so that they let the PR company do it. >> >> James Alexander >> james.alexan...@rochester.edu >> jameso...@gmail.com >> 100 gmail invites and no one to give them to :( let me know if you want one >> :) >> >> >> >> On Sat, Apr 3, 2010 at 12:58 PM, William Pietri<will...@scissor.com> wrote: >> >> >>> On 04/02/2010 12:51 PM, Fred Bauder wrote: >>> >>>> Here's the question: If you can't tell it's PR, is there anything wrong >>>> with it? >>>> >>>> >>> >>> Possibly, which is the problem. The main function of PR is to put the >>> best spin on things in a way that everybody accepts that as the truth. >>> By its nature, it's unavoidably POV and COI. Bad PR gets caught doing >>> this; good PR doesn't. >>> >>> Wikipedia has shifted the balance of power some: there are new ways for >>> PR people to get caught, and importing their broadcast-media habits >>> makes them look dumb. But I have every reason to expect that PR people >>> will adapt. Even so I think they'll have a hard time shifting the tone >>> much on articles that get a lot of attention; the room to spin there is >>> small. But for more obscure topics, I think there's plenty of gray area >>> within which they can construct an article that suits their purposes. >>> Purposes that are necessarily different than ours. >>> >>> William >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> _______________________________________________ >>> WikiEN-l mailing list >>> WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org >>> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: >>> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l >>> >>> >> _______________________________________________ >> WikiEN-l mailing list >> WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org >> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: >> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l >> > > > _______________________________________________ > WikiEN-l mailing list > WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l > _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l