Pickypedia II

So much for last year's resolutions. I swore I would not do this again, yet here I am editing Wikipedia. Or not, because, as you can see, I am procrastinating by blogging.

When I put up the article about my church last May, people immediately slapped banners on it. The one that annoyed me the most was the one at the very top of the article that said, "This article does not cite any references or sources." I had kind of thought that the two articles from the New York Times were unimpeachable references.

More warnings at the bottom tell me that "This article about a building or structure in New Jersey is a stub," and "This article about a church or Christian place of worship in the United States is a stub." And if I visit the discussion page there are more banners from the WikiProject Christianity and the WikiProject Anglicanism.

I stopped editing Wikipedia after that experience. After taking a long time to learn to add the citations, the "lack of reference" banner disgusted me.

Now, though, I am dismayed to learn that I have forgotten everything I learned about citing sources on Wikipedia. This is unfortunate, because the company where I work is having trouble with its Wikipedia article. We had a problem with our supply chain the week before Christmas. A Wikipedia editor added a mostly-truthful section about the problem on our article. So my job is either to remove the section or dress up the article so the edit is less conspicuous, all the while maintaining Wikipedia's vaunted neutrality.

We tried the "remove the section" approach, but this did not sit well with the Wikipedia community, which added it back. Fair enough, and we try to abide by the rules.

I discussed the question with my Wikipedia sponsor (How do I ask this editor why he or she did not add sections to our competitors' articles when similar problems have occurred?). In response, my sponsor slapped a "conflict of interest" banner at the top of our article.

The banners are raising my hackles. Especially, though, the charge of conflict of interest. Our product is rather dry. It's not like a church or civic organization, where people's deep emotional connections encourage them to ride the Wikipedia learning curve for several hours so they can write about it. Plus, the product is technical. Even if someone earnestly desired to write about it, he or she would face another steep learning curve in order to be able to describe it.

In short, the only people who are going to write about my product are the people who work for the company. (Or the people who work for the competition--infer what you will about the motives of the anonymous editor who gives only his/her IP address. Or someone with too much time on his or her hands, such as Dr. William Chester Minor.) Yet, this is an important product, one that every Internet user relies on to keep data transmission secure. Playing by the rules, in this case, is really difficult.

Okay, I feel better now. Thanks for letting me share. And best wishes for a healthy and peaceful new year.