Wikipedia:WikiProject Consumer Reports/Organization outreach

For practical advice for editors who might have a conflict of interest, see Wikipedia:Plain and simple conflict of interest guide.

Are you a staff educator at an organization which provides free information to the public? If so, consider partnering with Wikipedia to fulfill your organization's mission to educate people! Wikipedia is the most requested, published, accessed, and consulted source of information in the world and it will continue to gain popularity in the future. It might be a good idea for your organization to consider its relationship to Wikipedia and related Wikimedia projects.

Overview

This page gives an introduction to what it means for an educational project to have a relationship with Wikipedia. Here is the summary of what this page says:

• Wikipedia has guidelines, and users who have a conflict of interest in following these guidelines are not welcome to participate in Wikipedia
• An organization who wants to have a Wikipedian in Residence should expect that this person commit a significant amount of time to learning Wikipedia culture. Perhaps no one comes to understand Wikipedia without at least 50 hours of training and 2 hours of activity per week for many weeks.
• Organizations who support the Wikipedia community can use Wikipedia as a platform to fulfill their mission to provide information to the public in a way which people like

Conflict of interest

If your organization can contribute information to Wikipedia in a way that supports Wikipedia, then the Wikipedia community welcomes your contributions!

Anyone is welcome to add encyclopedic content to Wikipedia. Anyone with informative, neutral content will get support from the Wikipedia community in sharing it. One way to briefly explain this is to say that information added to Wikipedia must be notable, verifiable, and written in a neutral point of view.

• Notability
• Verifiability
• Neutral point of view

A collection of writing exists describing content which is not welcome on Wikipedia. Here is an introduction to this.

• Conflict of interest
• What Wikipedia is not

Wikipedian in residence

A "Wikipedian in residence" is the title given to the staffperson in an organization who represents Wikipedia interests inside the organization and organization interests inside Wikipedia. The Wikipedia community has always insisted that contributions to the Wikipedia project be in the interest of Wikipedia and that editors should not have a conflict of interest.

Organizations which staff a Wikipedian in residence facilitate the sharing of their information with the most requested, published, accessed, and consulted source of information in the world - Wikipedia.

What is the process for appointing a Wikipedian in residence?

1. Find a Wikipedian
2. Convince them to spend time in your organization, supporting the addition of your organization's media to Wikipedia

Historically this has sometimes been arranged in collaboration with the Wikimedia Foundation or local Wikimedia Chapters. Anyone who would like to meet Wikipedians to discuss collaboration is certainly welcome to contact their local Wikipedia chapter and talk with participants.

Why should my organization engage Wikipedia?

If your organization provides information which people seek on the Internet then your organization may have a personal stake in the quality of information on Wikipedia articles. Whenever anyone performs a web search query on a search engine, a Wikipedia article is often among the first entries on search engine results pages because consumers like Wikipedia articles. If your information is of the sort that consumers want - unbiased, non-promotional, free, and informative - then consider the extent to which everyone would benefit if you supported the community in sharing information among themselves through Wikipedia.