Austin Ryan is a Marketing Analyst at ThreeWill. Austin is certified in Google Analytics, Google Adwords, Hootsuite Social Media, and has experience SEO optimizing WordPress websites. He also creates and packages content for the website and ThreeWill’s social media channels including podcast post production.
Introduction
Recently, I received a task by my sponsor to make a Wikipedia page for our company. Actually what happened is I asked him why we didn’t have a page on Wikipedia and he said, “Good question. Why don’t you make this happen?”
Little did I know it was going to be a journey.
Feedback from Wikipedia
A couple of days ago, I got feedback from the Wikipedia editor that had the task of telling me if my article was up to Wikipedia standards. Sadly, my article for ThreeWill was declined. The problem was that I didn’t have enough third party sources backing up what information I was writing. This is the main reason why it’s hard to get Wikipedia articles up for small businesses.
Reasons articles are declined
Here is a list of common reasons why articles are declined from Wikipedia.
1. Wikipedia should not be used for original thought
- This idea also ties into why articles need third-party sources. The information that is published in Wikipedia needs to be reliable. This means cited from a reputable third-party source.
2. Wikipedia Articles should not be used for promotion.
- Wikipedia is designed to be a source of information, an encyclopedia, for users to discover information about topics in a neutral viewpoint. Without neutrality, these articles lose their reliability as a source of well-rounded information on a subject.
3. Wikipedia is meant for everyday people to understand
- Articles should be written in a way that not just the individuals well-versed in the subject should be able to understand.
Conclusion
Overall, for Wikipedia to maintain its integrity, it sets rules about how articles are written. I’ve learned that, as a result, my company may have to try something like reach out to scholarly third-party websites to have articles written about us that we can then cite. By doing this, I will hopefully be able to publish my Wikipedia article in the near future.
What’s been your experience with getting content into Wikipedia? Feel free to leave pointers in the comments.
1 Comment
dannyryan
@austin - Your sponsor sounds like a smart guy... Seriously, thank you for taking the time to write this up. I'd love to see a follow up once you get some coverage and hopefully the wikipedia page done.