Sara K. Eisen

Navigating Wikipedia: A Basic Guide for PR Professionals

It happens all the time: We are consulted by PR firms with the question: Why is a certain request for a Wikipedia article consistently rejected by the editor community? One firm told us, in exasperation: “Our client is a noted professional in her field. She has 30,000 followers on social media. She has appeared on television a few times. Her results, for credibility reasons, should surely include Wikipedia. Why is relative fame not enough for Wikipedia? What on earth does it take?”

Great question! Here is our answer. 

Wikipedia Land, located at the top of the information stream, is hard to navigate without a map. Many great PR teams get lost there, and could potentially save themselves much time and trouble by better understanding the routes the experts take. (See here for more on editing Wikipedia.)

Here are some notes, compiled from the advice of some of my colleagues, who are experienced trekkers.  

• Notability is the gold standard for a page on Wikipedia (see why this is, below.) This is not the same as being well-known. Having a podcast, or appearing as an expert on TV, can sometimes help with Twitter verification; but they are not sufficient for Wikipedia. The theoretical bar for notability in Wikipedia generally amounts to something like: If we were writing a big encyclopedia for a time capsule, this person or entity would need to be included.

• Since this is so hard to prove, the gateway becomes sourcing. Notability on Wikipedia is determined by legitimate sources, as follows: 

• Sources need to be independent (i.e.: not the company’s own website, self-published corporate history,  or a press release) and from a reputable, non-tabloid-type source (eg: The Wall Street Journal works great, but The Daily Mail won’t fly.) You generally need three or more of these to help you to get over the notability hump – but there is no exact formula here.

• The sources you cite need to be largely ABOUT the individual or company in question. Sources that mention the entity in passing (e.g.  your client is mentioned in a list of top twenty women in education) will generally not do the trick. 

• Wikipedia doesn’t accept content that is generated or spoken by the subject of the article for most purposes. However – there are exceptions to this rule, namely, uncontroversial, easily provable  statements that the subject makes about themselves (e.g. “Born and raised in Topeka, Kansas.”). Interviews are often not regarded as a good source for most claims, unless the journalist makes independent observations that support the assertion made in the Wiki article.

• On a related note, there is a separate issue of verifiability: The sources you use should expressly support the claims you make on the page as everything written on the page needs to be backed up by legitimate sources. For example, if you are a well-known pediatrician, and are extensively quoted in articles about a nutritional health crisis, these sources would still not be useful to support a statement such as  “Dr. X is 55 years old and a graduate of Duke Medical School,” unless this is mentioned in the article. In other words, the source must support the information you want to present in a direct way.

PR teams working to secure press for clients obviously have several goals in mind, but if getting clients to the point of Wikipedia notability is one of these goals, aim for multiple, independent sources that are reliable; intellectually independent of each other; independent of the subject; largely about the subject of the article; and which speak to the statement made (or which the client wishes to make) on the Wikipedia page. 

So, for an archaeologist, an article in the New York Times about their innovative method of determining the age of artifacts would ideally be complemented by a trade journal article talking about recent discoveries, and a career highlights profile in a local magazine from their proud hometown, which would cover some biographical facts they wish to have on the page.

By the way, we know many people have flouted these rules in the past! But editors will eventually catch up to those old pages that went up in a shoddy way, and they can get flagged and suddenly taken down. Don’t look at Wikipedia articles created a decade ago and ask why that person got away with less; it is a brave new world, and these rules are much more strictly enforced now. 

A few more notes:

• Language on Wikipedia can never be promotional or sound like it was written by a marketing team. A company can be an “industry leader” if that is borne out by a source, but “America’s best-loved brand” type-language would not pass muster. A company’s mission statement belongs in a section describing its marketing efforts. 

• Images need to be copyright free – since the rules of Wikipedia state that anyone surfing the internet can use the image. It is essential that whoever holds the copyright has released their rights to compensation for re-use on Wikipedia and elsewhere on the internet. (There are different types of licenses with different limitations and requirements, for instance, to mention the photographer’s name, or to not be able to change the photo in some way, but the crux of the matter is giving up the main copyright for compensation in order to reuse.) There are exceptions to this, most importantly regarding logos. A company’s logo can be used in a Wikipedia article without the company relinquishing copyright. This is justified based on a fair use rationale – the company still owns the copyright, but the logo may be used on Wikipedia anyway.

If you find yourself challenged by these rules, you are not alone. Even future Nobel Prize winners are not spared this indignity! We explored the notability guidelines, and their sometimes curious effect of barring truly notable individuals from the door, in this article about the physicist Donna Strickland.

Of course, if you are having trouble traversing this strange landscape, you can always turn to us, your trusty guides, for advice and direction.