Is Correcting Your Wikipedia Article Worth The Time

Should you take the time to correct factual errors with your Wikipedia Article?

So you recently discovered that there is a Wikipedia article about you or your company. As with many Wikipedia articles, it contains errors in facts or is worded to give the inappropriate amount of weight to certain information. Correcting your Wikipedia article is something that you want to do. But, before you do so, you need to determine if it is worth correcting your Wikipedia article.

Wikipedia is one of the top 10 most visited websites. This means that if there is a Wikipedia article about you or your company, people are likely to read about you there as opposed to your own website. While it is often good to have a Wikipedia article as you are assured a top 10 placement on page 1 of Google, it is often a menace as Wikipedia articles are prone to factual errors. While only you control the content on your own website, EVERYONE controls the content on Wikipedia. This means that you are at the mercy of what is printed about you in reliable sources and the editors who interpret those sources when editing your article.

When determining if you should correct your Wikipedia article, there are several things to keep in mind.

Reliable sources govern the “facts”:

It may seem like an easy thing to do, but correcting factual errors is not as simple as you think. Wikipedia is not based on facts, it is based on what reliable sources say about the subject. This means that although your article may contain a factual error, the only way to correct that error is to find a reliable source that contains the facts. Here is an example:

If your article says that a company has 4,000 employees when the company actually has 6,000 employees, it is likely that the most recent reliable source uses 4,000. It is common for a company to correct its Wikipedia article to reflect the correct number, only to be met with uprising from the Wikipedia community for doing so. If the most recent reliable sources says 4,000, then that is the number that will be used for Wikipedia. You will need to find a more recent reliable source containing the true number if you want to correct the information.

Sometimes it seems like looking into a crystal ball is the only way to determine fact from fiction on Wikipedia.

This is an issue that came to the forefront regarding #gamergate. The topic is heated and was the target of many stories printed in reliable sources. In early 2015, it was reported that Wikipedia has banned numerous female editors from the topic when it fact it had not. Unfortunately, Wikipedia became a burden onto itself as since the reliable sources stated that the community banned the editors, this is the information that went into the article.

Wikipedia editors are looking for you:

Wikipedia editors are always looking to tell other editors they are doing wrong. This is even more emphasized when their find a new editor doing something wrong. Many times new editors do not understand the guidelines. Hell, even experienced editors do not understand many of the guidelines and make mistakes. As a new editor Wikipedia editors are more likely to scrutinize and delete your edits than they are with an editor who has been editing the site for years (some editors have created a “bully” persona and are unlikely to be challenged for any edits they make). So, when making a change to any article, make sure that you do so within Wikipedia guidelines and cite the reliable source that supports the content you are changing.

Wikipedia editors hate conflicts of interested and they are not shy about threatening to destroy any edit where someone has one.

Now, if you are editing for yourself or your company, keep in mind that Wikipedia editors HATE conflicts of interest. Even if you are changing something as simple as the number of employees for your company, editors are likely to revert your edit simply because you are doing so on behalf of your company. That is why correcting your Wikipedia article will be more difficult as opposed to you correcting another article that you have no connecting with. Of course no editor will know that you represent a company or yourself unless you edit without an account (it will show your ip address which can then be tracked to its location) or use an account name that links you to the article (such as using your own name to edit an article about yourself – this is an obvious tell).

Even the Wikipedia co-founder of Wikipedia Jimmy Wales learned this lesson when trying to correct his own article years ago.

If it’s not that bad, leave it alone:

Correcting your Wikipedia article may seem like a big deal to you personally. After all, you want the truth to be told, not interpretation of conjection between reliable sources. However, keep in mind that any edit you do will be scrutinized by the Wikipedia community. If they know that you are the topic of the article you are correcting, it will likely lead to an editor leaving an ugly tag at the top of the article or even worse – deletion. So, if it is not something that makes a difference one way or another, leaving it as it is should be considered.

If you are looking for help correcting your Wikipedia article, I will gladly provide you with advice on how to proceed. I never charge for initial consultations and will let you know any specific issues that you are likely to face. You can then proceed on your own or obtain a quote for me to do it for you. I do charge for services, but I also like to help those looking to dive into the world of Wikipedia without having to deal with the bureaucracy of editors looking to bite the hands of newcomers to the website.

Is Correcting Your Wikipedia Article Worth The Time