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© 2009 Digitas Health 100 East Penn Square|Philadelphia, PA 19107phone (215) 545-4444 |fax (215) 545-4440 |digitashealth.com 
Wikipedia POV
April 21, 2009
Analyst
—
Bruce Grant, SVP / Business Strategy
 
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Wikipedia is a widely consulted and increasingly influential source of community-generated information thatenjoys extremely high prominence in most health- and medical-related searches. Its conflict-of-interestguidelines and requirement for neutral POV make it unsuitable as a channel for marketing messages. Butapproached as an indirectly influenceable channel
—
with a corporate/medical-affairs mindset and a willingnessto work
 pro bono
 
—
it can be a venue for maximizing the reach and influence of truthful, balanced information
about pharmaceutical companies’ medications and the conditions they treat
. Familiarity with Wikipedia policiesand culture, careful planning, clear policies, centralization of contact, flexibility, and patience are all requiredfor success.
BACKGROUND
Wikipedia is the 8
th
most trafficked website in the US,visited at least monthly by one out of every five onlineadults and at least weekly by nearly one in ten, linkedto by over 110,000 other sites, and visited by more than9.5% of Internet users worldwide on a typical day.
1,2
Insearches for a broad range of health- and medication-related terms, the relevant Wikipedia article appears inthe first three search results 63% of the time.
3
 In Europe, Wikipedia is the #1 online source of health information for consumers in Germany and Spain, the #2source for consumers in Portugal and The Netherlands, the #3 source in Italy, and the #4 source in France.
4
 In light of the high visibility and influence of Wikipedia with many of its key customer segments, thepharmaceutical industry is increasingly interested in assessing the opportunities, risks, and feasibility of pharmaceutical participation in this arena and to provide recommendations for action.
RELEVANT FACTS
Wikipedia is a major repository of health information, with articles on nearly 14,000 medical subjects and over3,500 drug-related terms,
5
as well as articles on most major biopharmaceutical manufacturers. Virtually all of the conditions and therapies in
most pharmaceutical companies’
portfolios are currently referenced in articles inboth the English and German versions of Wikipedia.
6
In addition, both language versions contain entries for mostleading pharmaceutical companies themselves.Although Wikipedia articles can, in principle, be created and edited by any user, in practice informal governanceof major subject categories is exercised by self-organizing editorial boards, known as WikiProjects. For healthand medical articles, oversight in English is exercised by WikiProject Medicine
7
and in German by RedaktionMedizin.
8
Oversight of medication-related articles is exercised in English by WikiProject Pharmacology
9
and inGerman by Redaktion Medizin. These groups take responsibility for fact-checking and improving the quality of existing articles; for developing and publishing style guides for articles in their subject area; for soliciting andvetting suggestions for new articles; and for recruiting new editors. While anyone can join these volunteerbodies, professional and/or educational qualification in the subject areas and a willingness to work areexpected.
 
 
April 21, 2009 Wikipedia POV Page2 of 4
In addition to the detailed oversight provided by these groups, the Wikipedia community as a whole takesresponsibility for Wikipedia Policies and Guidelines
10
 
—
a broad set of standards reflecting community consensuson matters considered essential for the good of Wikipedia and its users. Among the most importantconsiderations for companies to be aware of are
—
 
Neutral Point of View
. A
ll Wikipedia articles “must be written from a neutral point of view, representingsignificant views fairly, proportionately, and without bias.”
11
Wikipedia regards the NPOV policy as
“absolute and non
-
negotiable.”
 
Conflict of Interest.
Contributing to Wikipedia
“…
to promote your own interests or those of other
individuals, companies, or groups,” constitutes a conflict of interest (COI) which
is regarded byWikipedia as incompatible with its aim of producing a neutral, reliably sourced encyclopedia. TheWikipedia Conflict of Interest Guideline,
12
while not absolute, strongly advises those with a COI to
“avoid or exercise great caution”
 
in “e
diting articles related to you, your organization, or itscompetitors, as well as projects and products they are involved with
,” as well as “linking to theWikipedia article or website of your organization in other articles.”
 
Posting content that breaches Wikipedia’s NPOV and/or COI sta
ndards is generally futile, as it is usually edited ordeleted promptly. In addition, even an attempt to make biased or self-interested edits is highly transparent andcan subject the violator to unwelcome and damaging public scrutiny.Using the publicly searchable WikiScanner
13
database, Wikipedia edits can easily be linked back to the IPaddresses of originating companies. Shortly after WikiScanner was released in August, 2007, a rapid succession of blog and mainstream-media stories revealed, on the basis of WikiScanner searches, that individuals at bothAstraZeneca and Abbott Laboratories had made anonymous edits to Wikipedia articles relating to reflect morefavorably their products. According to the advocacy group, Patients Not Patents, over 1,000 edits to Abbott-related Wikipedia articles were made from Abbott computers.
14
 
IMPLICATIONS
The intent of Wikipedia’s policies and guidelines is not to exclude companies from participation. Indeed,
Wikipedia publishes a FAQ 
15
explicitly advising businesses on how to participate constructively and avoidcontroversy. Clearly, however, business participation in Wikipedia calls for a new approach to exerting influence.
Exercising indirect influence over content, according to Forrester Research, “requires that companie
s exercisetraditional media relations in a different way that seeks to sway the opinion of a small, interested community to
make…changes to an article.”
16
Among these indirect avenues of influence, Forrester advocates
—
 
Using the discussion/talk pages.
Every Wikipedia article has its own attached discussion page, wheresuggested changes and improvements to the article can be offered and discussed. Parties with apotential COI are particularly urged to use this venue to request changes or additions to existingarticles, providing verifiable sources for their suggestions, and to rely on other, more neutral,Wikipedians to make the actual changes. Before participating in discussion, new community membersshould read the Wikipedia Talk Page Guidelines.
17
 
Creating referenceable content.
Along with NPOV, one of Wikipedia’s key content policies is
verifiability. One way to expedite the verifiability of suggested content changes and/or additions toarticles is to aggregate and post supporting content on your corporate website, then provide a link to itwithin the discussion pages.
 Sharing expertise.
Participation in WikiProject Medicine and WikiProject Pharmacology by appropriatecompany personnel (e.g., medical affairs or clinical development staff rather than marketing or PR)offers avenues for companies to improve the quality of non-product-specific Wikipedia content withintheir broad areas of disease and basic-science knowledge, as well as to bring new topics in need of articles to the attention of the community. It should be noted, however, that influence within theWikiProject communities is generally commensurate with willingness to work broadly on matters of common interest to the community.
 
 
April 21, 2009 Wikipedia POV Page3 of 4
Sharing resources.
Wikipedia editors and users appreciate articles enriched with relevant images,diagrams, logos, audio, video, and other media. Most biopharmaceutical companies have a wealth of such media assets. If they are willing to make these assets freely available under the GNU FreeDistribution License (GFDL)
18
they can upload them to WikiMedia Commons
19
then make their availabilityknown on the talk pages of relevant articles.
Correcting simple errors.
Editors from industry can build trust with other community members, whilegaining valuable experience in the Wikipedia editing process, by correcting grammatical mistakes,misspellings, punctuation errors, neutral errors of fact, and other simple copy edits. To be sure you
adhere to Wikipedia’s markup and style conventio
ns, consult the Editing Help page
20
before starting.
RECOMMENDATIONS
Engaging with Wikipedia comes with a definite learning curve; requires an ongoing investment of time and aclear risk-management strategy; and delivers a softer ROI than many marketers are used to. Not engaging,however, with this highly visible, influential, and rapidly evolving source of health information
—
at least on aminimal level
—
carries its own risks and costs and is, in our opinion, an unacceptably missed opportunity.For those companies that choose engagement, Digitas Health recommends the following best practices
—
 1.
 
Name a single point of contact.
While multiple individuals within your company can and should beaware of Wikipedia content relevant to their professional responsibilities and interests, only one personin your organization should be empowered to interact directly with Wikipedia
—
or to delegate to othersand supervise them in doing so. Given the culture of the Wikipedia community, and its vigilance inrooting out promotional or otherwise self-interested content, it is highly desirable that the Wikipediapoint person not come from marketing but from a more neutral function, such as corporate affairs orinvestor relations, that is accustomed to providing information for use by external media and/oranalysts. For areas where special expertise is required, delegate to individuals from non-commercialfunctions, such as medical affairs, clinical development, or drug information.2.
 
Create and promulgate a clear policy.
Every employee
—
and every external marketing and PR agencyworking on your business
—
should know exactly what the rules of engagement are and who they shouldcontact if they have questions, concerns, or suggestions.3.
 
Audit your company’s editing history.
Use WikiScanner to identify any individuals who may have, in the
past, edited Wikipedia articles on your company’s behalf,
and make them a priority for educating about
your company’s new policies.
 4.
 
Monitor your sphere of interest.
 
Every Wikipedia article has a “Watch” tab, which logged
-in users canclick to place the article on a watchlist, which summarizes all changes made to that article. Identify allof the therapeutic categories, drug classes, conditions, corporate executives, products, and trademarks(your own and those of your competitors) for which articles already exist, and place them on yourwatchlist to be sure you are aware of all developments in the highly fluid Wikipedia environment. Alsokeep a regularly updated list of relevant topics for which no articles yet exist.5.
 
Document inaccuracies and provide evidence.
If you find information you believe to be factuallyincorrect or incomplete, make careful note of it, then assemble the evidence to rebut or complete it.
Wikipedia’s guidelines require that articles be based on “reliable, third
-party, published sources with areputation for fact-checking and accuracy
,”
21
and articles with inadequate sourcing are subject tochallenge and deletion.6.
 
Be transparent.
Wikipedia policy does not permit company accounts, and evidence of account sharing isgrounds for blocking the account. Create separate, identifiable, accounts for all individuals in yourcompany authorized to participate in Wikipedia (as direct contacts or WikiProject participants) and
declare their affiliation prominently on their profile pages. (Wikipedia’s username policy disallows
usernames including company names or website addresses, but strongly encourages declaration of affiliation in profiles.)
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