the right way to fix inaccurate wikipedia articles

the right way to fix inaccurate wikipedia articles get search news recaps! email: daily monthly feeds and more info 2 « combat click fraud by blocking low quality traffic | main | google maps, privacy and the eye in the sky as more streetview photography added » aug. 7, 2007 at 8:51am eastern by durova the right way to fix inaccurate wikipedia articles suppose your company, boss or political candidate discovers that their wikipedia article is wrong, or has subtle inaccuracies that nonetheless paint them in an unfavorable light? most people unfamiliar with how wikipedia works consider only two solutions: edit the article or sit on their hands. unfortunately, neither approach typically results in the optimal outcome: a factually accurate profile containing trustworthy information. search marketers and reputation management professionals should know that there are legitimate ways to correct errors in wikipedia. knowing the right way to fix things is even more important now that wikipedia results frequently appear in the top listings of google search results. the good news is that wikipedia actually offers a broad range of options for correcting inaccurate or negative entries, and even better, all are easy to use and take little time to implement. my last column looked at examples of inappropriate editing originating from a united states congress ip address—meaning one politician's staff was attempting to use wikipedia for less than ethical purposes. this time we'll confront the opposite problem: an anonymous vandal inserted false information to the biography of united states congressman steve latourette of ohio. for four months, congressman latourette's staffers were aware of the falsehoods but did nothing to fix them because, as spokeswoman deborah setliff told the plain dealer of cleveland, they feared a pr backlash if they edited the page. the most serious problem occurred in the second paragraph. according to the plain dealer story: "latourette's anonymously authored biography on one of the world's most visited web sites claims he once disrupted a law school assembly honoring england's prince of wales." the exact text as it appeared in wikipedia was: "a graduate of the university of michigan, latourette studied law at the cleveland-marshall college of law and had the dubious distinction there of disrupting a school assembly honoring prince charles, the prince of wales. latourette was roughly removed by the secret service." the really damaging aspect of that allegation is how it bears a tangential resemblance to the truth. there actually had been a student disturbance when prince charles visited that law school. latourette was enrolled at the time but had nothing to do with the incident. wikipedia and its volunteers do care about edit vandalism and the biographies of living persons policy makes this problem a special priority. latourette's staff could have e-mailed the wikimedia foundation, either directly or via the open ticket request system (otrs) that creates a tracking number for each query. as a wikipedia administrator i see the opportunity to go deeper than otrs and fix the underlying problem: this article obviously wasn't being watchlisted. watchlists alert active editors of changes to particular pages. these are among the most powerful tools for combating vandalism. to solicit more volunteer watchlisting, latourette's staff could have contacted two projects that are interested in the article: wikiproject biography and wikiproject u.s. congress. most article talk pages contain links to one or more wikiprojects. a good general contact point is wikipedia's counter-vandalism unit. inappropriate edits usually vanish within minutes when enough editors watch a page. best of all, the site's volunteers will solve future problems while you sleep. wikipedia also maintains noticeboards to address specific issues. here's a short list that every search marketer or reputation management professional should keep for reference. requests for page protection: if a series of controversial edits hit an article within a short time, a week or two of edit protection usually resolves the problem administrator intervention against vandalism: administrators prevent continued disruption by blocking persistent vandals biographies of living persons noticeboard: an informal alternative to otrs for biography articles administrators' noticeboard/incidents: addresses urgent problems that don't fall within the scope of other noticeboards site administrators insist on reports that include page diffs like the one displayed above for the vandalizing edit. these are accessible through the smx in europe! don't miss this outstanding event: • smx london (nov. 15-16) agenda · register travel marketing specialists: attend smx travel @phocuswright - orlando, nov 12-13 save the date for: • smx west - santa clara, ca (feb 26-28) check out the discount pre-agenda registration rate! • smx advanced - seattle, wa (june 3-4) • smx east - nyc - (oct. 6-8) learn more about search marketing through free online webcasts and webinars from our sister site search marketing now. upcoming webcasts: search marketing - the basicsthursday, december 13, 2007 1:00 est about search engine land staff contact us advertising info more about this site past articles & archives stay updated! get our search newsletters: email: daily monthly get our search feed: more about our feeds & newsletters bragroll wall street journal recommended reading ad age power 150 blog technorati top 100 blog toprank top 10 self made minds top 100 larry chase top pick sej's top 2 & 3 seo bloggers best sem newsletter ebizmba top tech site, blog & seo blog daily blog tips top 25 seo blogs top 50 marketing blog to watch in 2008 techmeme leaderboard source   ©2007 third door media, inc. privacy policy & terms. all rights reserved. google, yahoo & microsoft logos trademark respective companies and used with permission.

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