Wikipedia and the Kitchen & Bath Industry

Wikipedia is the successful online encyclopedia that has had an enormous impact on how people find information. Have you considered what your customers will find if they look for information about your company or your products on Wikipedia?

Wikipedia is the seventh most popular Web site globally, ranking behind only Google, Facebook, YouTube, Yahoo, Live and the Chinese language search engine Baidu. On an average day, 12% to 14% of all global Internet users will visit Wikipedia at least once.

A Wikipedia article will almost always show up at or near the top of Google search results for any keywords that correspond to an existing Wikipedia article. With over 3.5 million English language articles, and versions available in over 250 languages, its influence is truly global.

Anyone can edit Wikipedia, which leads some to the mistaken conclusion that it is unreliable. Actually, Wikipedia’s accuracy compares well to traditional printed encyclopedias, but it is vastly larger in coverage. Although anyone is free to participate, most of the writing and editing is done by a worldwide team of volunteers. Quality control is based on a set of policies and guidelines intended to improve the accuracy and usefulness of the encyclopedia and to speed the deletion of flawed articles.

About 18 months ago, I decided to join the team of Wikipedia editors, and since then, I’ve written 30 new articles and significantly expanded about 70 others. I’ve learned enough about Wikipedia’s policies to be able to offer advice about how to avoid pitfalls in editing to provide better information about companies and their products.

Wikipedia’s purpose is to provide neutral, factual information, not to advertise or promote anything. If a neutral, accurate article about your company is something you would find useful, then working on a Wikipedia article is worth considering.

Five Pillars

There are five basic principles of Wikipedia, commonly referred to as the “Five Pillars.”

1. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a forum for advertising or self-promotion. Accordingly, articles must be about notable topics and based on reliable sources, completely independent of the subject of the article. If you want to have an article about your company, begin by gathering articles about your company from newspapers, magazines and professional Web sites. Amateur blogs don’t qualify. You will need to prove that your company is notable by Wikipedia’s standards – not just your own. Major manufacturers should qualify easily, but dealers, distributors and fabricators may have a harder time.
   
2. Wikipedia is written from the neutral point of view, representing in a balanced way what all reliable sources say about a topic. Experienced editors will remove or rewrite promotional language on sight. If a magazine article praises your company, it is acceptable to quote that praise, but you aren’t allowed to write the praise yourself.
   
3. Wikipedia is free content. The text is licensed as freely available for re-use by anyone. Copyright infringements, even use of material from your own Web site or literature, are not tolerated, with very limited “fair use” exceptions. Copyrighted material must be freely licensed for use by others before adding it to Wikipedia.
   
4. Wikipedia is a collaboration among legions of volunteer editors, based on respect and civility. If other editors ask questions, answer them. If your article is criticized, do your best to improve it in response to the criticism. Be aware that other editors may make changes. You don’t own a Wikipedia article just because you start it.
   
5. Always focus on improving the encyclopedia. This doesn’t mean that the rules are irrelevant, but they should be thought of as guidelines leading toward the goal of improving the encyclopedia.

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