Wikipedia:Corporations and the Community

This is an essay. It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article, nor is it one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints.

Sometimes, a corporation or public figure's desire to keep their Wikipedia pages up to date syncs with the interests of the Wikipedia community to keep information on articles as accurate as possible. Unfortunately, there are frequently issues with this:

• The corporation or public figure assigns an employee to make the corrections, without bothering to read Wikipedia's policies (particularly WP:Conflict of interest).
• The employee does as he is ordered, but is noted as having a conflict of interest because of his username or writing biases. Oftentimes he is unaware of the relevant policy.
• The community, through administrators, blocks the user but leaves him more or less in the dark about how to resolve the situation. This causes assumption of bad faith on both sides and puts the employee's job in danger.

This page is intended to be a brief primer for corporations, employees of same, and the Wikipedia community to resolve situations like this with as little mistrust as possible.