Evil Wikipedia: How to Thwart Your Ruination

1 Comment

I’m neither famous or successful, and thus Wikipedia–the open-source encyclopedia for the Web 2.0 generation–would never feature me in its pages.  So unless fame or fortune descend upon me, I’m safe from the “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” that can be an article in the pages of Wikipedia.

The problem with [tag]Wikipeda[/tag], and the root of its success as well, is that it is a wiki at heart, an open source that anyone can edit by simply registering.

Is that such a bad thing, you ask?

In many cases, yes.  For instance, if you’re a billion-dollar manufacturer of yellow widgets with an entry in Wikipedia, you’re open to edits by the disgruntled.  Say a few clients or customers feel you mistreated or cheated them; they can simply go to your Wikipedia entry and, without sounding rancorous, post the “facts” of what happened.

Sure, you can go in and delete these additions, but the volunteers who run the site will discover your deletions and restore them.

You’re stuck, and by deleting the “bad news,” you further damaged your reputation by appearing to fear the truth.

What’s worse is that Google places high page trust and rank in Wikipedia, and the search giant invariably ranks Wikipedia entries in the top few results of just about any search.

What can you do if you feel bad information exists about you or your company on Wikipedia?

There are some legitimate options and tactics, and Jessica Bowman has some solutions.

Just stay below the radar like me, poor and ignored, and you won’t have to worry about any of this.

Categories: Grammar Sucks

One Reply to “Evil Wikipedia: How to Thwart Your Ruination”

  1. No matter where you go there will be bad news for anything, whats different about finding it on Wikipedia? This goes into the fact that we have a freedom of speech and are therefore allowed to express our opinions. Yes, once they hit degrading levels the comments can be removed, but until then I see nothing wrong with facts being placed on a company name.

Leave a Reply to Fred Telles Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *