Wikipedia is a global phenomenon; the openly-editable encyclopedia is the sixth most popular site in the world. So it’s not surprising that, every now and again, vested interests seek to manipulate its content. Not least in the American presidential race, where, its been reported that Mitt Romney’s Wikipedia page has been edited hundreds of times since the Republican primaries began.

Wikipedia’s community guidelines are all available online and easy to find, and emphasise that entries must be written from a neutral point of view, in line with the second of its five pillars. So as a communications professional it’s always worth bearing in mind the following principles (adapted from Wikipedia’s guidelines), to avoid wasting your time creating/editing changes that are undone, or worse, cause severe embarrassment or legal consequences:

1. All of your edits should be in line with the aim of Wikipedia, which is to produce a neutral, reliably sourced encyclopedia
2. Wikipedia is not a battleground – you should not try to begin or engage in disputes via Wikipedia entries
3. Avoid Conflict of Interest (COI) editing. This involves contributing to Wikipedia in order to promote your own interests or those of other individuals, companies, or groups. Where advancing outside interests is more important to you as an editor, than advancing the aims of Wikipedia,this counts as a conflict of interest
4. This includes avoiding self-promotion: adding advertising links, personal website links, personal or semi-personal photos, or other material that appears to promote the private or commercial interests of the editor, or their associates. Examples of these types of material include:
   • Links that appear to promote products by pointing to obscure or not particularly relevant commercial sites.
   • Links that appear to promote otherwise obscure individuals by pointing to their personal pages.
   • Biographical material that does not significantly add to the clarity or quality of the article.
   • Promotional article production on behalf of clients Editors should not create articles which serve solely to promote their subject. All Wikipedia articles should contain useful information written as if from a neutral point of view. The writing of “puff pieces” and advertisements on Wikipedia is strictly prohibited. If you contribute to Wikipedia on behalf of clients, you owe it to both them and the encyclopedia to make very sure you understand the standards for content here, and do not insert promotional material.
5. Wikipedia is not a soapbox or means of promotion or advertising. All information about companies and products are written in an objective and unbiased style. All article topics must be verifiable with independent, third-party sources, so articles about very small “garage” or local companies are typically unacceptable. See also Wikipedia:Notability (organizations and companies) for guidelines on corporate notability.
6. Those promoting causes or events, or issuing public service announcements, even if noncommercial, should use a forum other than Wikipedia to do so.
7. If you are in a situation where you need or wish to try and adapt a Wikipedia page on behalf of an individual or institution on the grounds of accuracy, explain your case on the Wikipedia talk page that sits behind it (example shown below) – being transparent about how you would like the page to be edited and why, and including reference links.

(Adapted from a post which first appeared on Mariamz blog).

The recent decision by Facebook to prevent pharmaceutical companies from disabling comments on their company fan pages caused quite a few Pharma companies to take their toe they were tentatively dipping in the water and run back to the beach and sit safely under their big umbrellas.

Some of you may be thinking too right Facebook, why should Pharma companies be allowed to disable comments on their pages, why should they be special…it is a social network after all, it is supposed to be about engagement and interaction not a one-sided discussion.

The reason that Pharma companies have traditionally been reluctant from interacting with their members is not because they don’t want to respond to enquiries or have something to hide, but because there is a regulatory code that they have to abide by.

The Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI) provides very strict guidance about Pharma companies providing information to and interacting with consumers. Pharma companies can’t provide individual medical advice on their wall and can’t permit members to share unqualified information, as well as being against the regulations, it would not be ethically responsible.

Despite the regulatory challenges, a few Pharma companies such as GSK and Pfizer have kept their Facebook fan pages. It has meant that by doing so that they have had to delete comments about medication and refer people to their local healthcare professionals to ensure that their page stay compliant with the industry code of practice and the law.

This has resulted in some backlash from the social media community who may not understand the regulated landscape that healthcare must live within and it is a shame as rather than lambast these Pharma companies they should be applauded for trying to stay part of the conversation. It just might coax those still on shore to come back into the water.

No doubt some of the UK PR community had a wry grin on their faces when they heard that Brands2Life had been called out by popular pointer-out of media medical mistruths and general caller of shens, Dr. Ben Goldacre. On Friday Goldacre picked up on a story that had appeared in the Mail, Telegraph and Standard about just how many creepy crawlies we share our daily commute with. The company behind this obviously PR driven piece was RentoKil, and it had apparently found, after spraying the inside of a tube carriage and bus with insectide and counting the dead ‘uns, many many iccky things that we’d rather didn’t share our travel space – nice.

Goldacre, like some of the initial reports, questioned how Rentokill came up those figures, and being a savvy sort followed up his unanswered media request via Twitter, where it appears to have been duly ignored until late in the day.  A clarification of how the figures were arrived and apology was eventually posted on the Rentokil blog on Friday night, well over a week since the initial press release was distributed.

This post is not an autopsy into who did what wrong, rather the reading the various tweets and associated blogs posts raised a question with wider implications. While he waited for his questions to be answered, Goldacre flagged that Rentokil’s twitter strategy seemed to be a bit askance, and pointed his readers to a Rentokil post reassuring people that it had recently started to follow in Twitter as to why it had started to follow them on Twitter. Some of the commenter’s on the post seem to feel quite strongly that they don’t like the idea of being followed by a company and consider it to be spam. One even said that if @rentokil were to follow them it would block it and report it for spanning.

Now spam to most people means receiving messages or information that you haven’t requested. If a company follows you on Twitter, then that’s not necessarily going to happen unless you follow them back, and then it’s not spam, it’s bacon.Of course they could @  you with all sorts of spammy-badness but they don’t need to follow you to do so.

To be honest I am a little confused about the overreaction but perhaps it’s an indication of Twitter users becoming more savvy and protective about their Twittering space.  What is interesting is that this reaction came about after RentoKil decided to:

move outside of the field of pest control and find experts in other fields including social media, websites, PR, facilities management, I.T., etc. and others who are not experts but who just seem to enjoy using Twitter (there are still quite a few of us that do – despite the 109 million hits on Google which state Twitter is dead!)

A strategy to which only one, one-word, question can be asked – why? Twitter is great for building audiences and engaging with interested parties, (NB. emphasis on the interested there). Following people, no matter what their expertise is, who are outside of your field of interest is always going to a look a bit, well a bit like you’re hoping that they will follow you back and increase your own popularity and influence. Which while not technically spam is very off behaviour in this more personalised world of social media. It is entirely possible that it’s not the case, but you have to wonder what the overarching objective is to be supported by a tactic of following lots of random people, or if RentoKil, like many companies are mixing up the success of a tactic with the success of the strategy.