User:Herostratus/Articles about extant organizations

There's been some discussion over paid reputation-management editing. It's a complicated and contentious issue, and if I'm understanding the debate correctly, PR firms are offering the following types of cases where their intervention is needed or useful:

• There's derogatory and false (or at any rate unsourced) information about their client in their article. Their client doesn't know how to engage Wikipedia effectively (e.g. OTRS, edit within our rules, etc.) and so they need professionals to fix this.
• There may not exactly be false information, but the article is slanted and looks rather like a hatchet job. Our client simply wants a neutral and fair article (which is what Wikipedians should want also). Again, a professional is best suited to fixing this.
• And some clients would like to have a Wikipedia article, and believe that they are sufficiently notable, but there's no article; and they don't want to wait years (or forever) for some random person to create the article. And if they are sufficiently notable then an article would enhance the Wikipedia, which should meet the desires both of our client and Wikipedians generally.

It'd be silly to take this entirely at face value (because for one thing "neutral and fair" depends on your point of view, and it's only human for one's point of view may be influenced by who is cutting one's paycheck). BUT, these are valid concerns and, when they do occur, serious problems (the first two anyway). Because they are valid concerns and serious problems, these are good reasons (or excuses if you prefer) for PR firms and paid reputation-management agents to claim a moral right to edit the Wikipedia and a practical need to do so.

For my part, I'm against paid reputation-management agents being allowed to edit the Wikipedia. (There is the question of whether as practical matter it's better, tactically, to allow this as opposed to driving it all underground; that's a different issue and outside the scope of this page.) So, is there another way, rather than allowing or welcoming paid reputation-management agents, to address these concerns?

Yes, possibly, and I have some concrete suggestions. This is not going to happen right away but it's something worth talking about, maybe. What I'm proposing is:

• As the main proposal, creation of an "Articles about Extant Corporations" policy similar to Biographies of living persons (BLP).
• As a secondary proposal, perhaps looser notability requirements for WP:CORP.
• As a secondary proposal, the deployment of a template which is essentially the converse of {{advert}}.

Details below.

Articles about Extant Organizations ([[WP:AEO]])

Articles about Extant Organizations. (The general thrust here is to cover corporations -- this would include non-profit organizations and almost all businesses, even single stores and restaurants, since those are almost always incorporated. But not states or their arms, industries in general, and some other entities.)

Various details to be worked out but the basic thrust would be similar to WP:BLP. Corporations and similar organizations aren't exactly like people so there'd have to be some changes from WP:BLP, but it could be expressed with a similar summary:

With a corresponding tag for article talk pages:

This implies the creation, manning, and efficient operation of a "biographies of extant organizations noticeboard", which seems doable. The Foundation would possibly (maybe) take a hand in promoting and perhaps even monitoring this effort if it gains any traction.

Reform of WP:CORP

While this remains on the table, it's secondary and peripheral, and is a distraction from the main point, so we've made it less visible. Discussion remains open though.

Loosening notability requirements

WP:CORP could be made less stringent. Perhaps something along the lines of requiring just one reliable independent ref, and the requirement only proving that the entity exists, and maybe that other material from the article could come from non-independent sources -- the company's web site, for instance. Or something like that.

This would be helpful to corporations, especially corporations whose Google profile is not so good, since the Wikipedia article would likely rise to the top or near and per WP:AEC it would probably be reasonably positive, usually.

Since proof of existence is a simple bright-line test, this would also obviate a lot of contentious discussions about whether a particular entity is or is not notable, which discussions probably sometimes draw in in covert or overt paid agents, which is what we're trying to avoid.

Granted "being helpful to corporations" isn't really part of our core mission, but remember the point here is to get the PR industry off our case and out of our Wikipedia, and this helps this by removing both a philosophical argument for their involvement and a practical reason for same, to some extent.

{{Hatchetjob}}

While this remains on the table, it's secondary and peripheral, and is a distraction from the main point, so we've made it less visible. Discussion remains open though.

Converse of {{advert}}

We have {{advert}}, which says

But we don't have the converse, something like this:

With the matching category Category:Articles with a derogatory tone (or something) as the converse of the existing Category:Articles with a promotional tone.

A step beyond this but arguably necessary would be the deployment of corresponding warning templates on the order of

Welcome to Wikipedia. Everyone is welcome to contribute constructively to the encyclopedia. However, please do not add unwarranted derogatory material to articles or other Wikipedia pages. Scandal-mongering and using Wikipedia as investigative journalism are against Wikipedia policy and not permitted. Take a look at the welcome page to learn more about Wikipedia. Thank you.

on up to

This is your last warning. The next time you use Wikipedia for unwarranted vilification of organizations, you may be blocked from editing without further notice.

and beyond.