180: The Real Scoop on How to Get a Wikipedia Page

Did you know that one of the top search topics on Wikipedia is people seeking out other people, especially when they die, right? There is so much to learn about Wikipedia. Welcome to the Indestructible PR Podcast where we use current events and tested media and PR strategies to help prevent or manage a crisis and build an indestructible reputation. This week let's get the scoop on a site we all visit but likely know very little about. What are the inner workings at Wikipedia? This past week I checked out the page when William Hurt died, the actor he was in broadcast news. He was an Academy Award winning actor and one of the reasons why I checked it out is because I came across an interview and with his former girlfriend, his former partner, Marlee Matlin. She starred with him in Children of the Lesser Gods. She won an Academy Award and they were dating. Later in a book, she recounted their relationship and the abuse that she received at the hands of William Hurt. I found an interview that she did when she was walking the red carpet at the Critics Choice Awards. I saw it on TikTok, I took the clip and put it on myself because her response to his death I found to be quite interesting. Really it was kind of an ambush question on the red carpet. He had just died and the interviewer from ET Canada asked her the question, you know, what is your response to William Hurd's death? And her first words through a sign language interpreter were, you are the first person to ask me the question, which tells us that she was a little thrown by it. And what followed was this eloquent and thoughtful and measured response to acknowledging his death and acknowledging his career and that he, as she said, he was a one of a kind without having to mention what she went through at his hands and without having to soil his reputation upon the news of his death. Why this matters to Wikipedia is when I was putting this TikTok together, I went to the William Hurt Wikipedia page immediately. I wanted to see what the news was on his death because if anyone goes to the site, as I said, that's one of the most searched topics is when someone dies. I like seeing. It's interesting to see the news updates happening in real time. And that's what I did. And I also wanted, before I posted on TikTok, I wanted to confirm did she say that he abused her? I wanted to make sure I was saying something accurate. And it was, it was in her book. But it goes back to how we use Wikipedia. How do you use Wikipedia? I always use it when I'm researching stories When I'm researching people. And the reason I go to it is because it's sourced material, which is why I like it. But I have to admit, I don't know much about it. So that's why I wanted to find out more information about this page. And so when I found out about my guest, I said, oh, he's coming on and he's answering some questions for me. So this week we get the scoop on a site we all visit, but, you know, we just, we don't know much about it. You know, have you wondered, like, who gets a Wikipedia Wikipedia page? How does someone get that? Who's worthy? Who's wiki worthy? So in this episode, let's get the complete rundown about Wikipedia from an expert who helps his clients negotiate the site. Andrew Burnett is a co founder of the communications firm Luminal Digital. Andrew understands Wikipedia's rules and guidelines intimately. So take a listen to Andrew explaining and revealing the real scoop behind getting a page on Wikipedia. Andrew, I'm excited to speak with you on the podcast because it seems as if a lot of my guests are more my generation, you know, Gen X and above. But you come in hot as a millennial, I assume.

Yes, a millennial.

A millennial who is a co founder of a very cool business that I love that specializes in creating the Wikipedia page for people like me. We don't know our way around it. So welcome to the podcast and I can't wait to hear about you and your business and Wikipedia pages.

Oh, well, I can't wait to talk about it. Where do you want to start?

Well, let's start first of all, just briefly, tell me about your firm. Why did it come together and why you decided to specialize in creating or maintaining Wikipedia pages.

Absolutely. So I've been working relating to Wikipedia for clients for about five years now. Definitely not something I thought I would specialize in. But all of a sudden you get in there and it's such a niche and you just get deeper and deeper. I'm actually, although I would consider myself very proficient in it, my partners have been doing it for eight years, 10 years respectively. Basically as long as it's been around and serviceable for a client. But really the whole reason that it became a service is to your point, they're so big, they pop up the first thing on search, people want Wikipedia pages or they want to edit their Wikipedia pages, but then they get into all this trouble. They don't know the rules. And so we've really tried to stake a claim here as personal Professionals, but also as Lumino, our firm as like the one stop ethical Wikipedia firm that follows the rules, help people. We're not doing anything shady. We're never going to help you break a rule. And at the very least, even if it doesn't make sense for your client or whoever it is, will at least inform you so that you know, you know the trap doors and you don't get yourself into trouble.

You are a white hat firm that has create, that has found a niche that people I think, don't know, they need it, but once they hear it's that it's available to them and there's firms out there that do the work, they probably get excited. And that's. You can see it in me. That's why I wanted to speak with you. I want to learn about this as well. Now, you're absolutely right about Wikipedia pages, where they fall into my work and my realm is I notice when I'm working with, whether it's a client or following a, you know, a breaking story, I, like many people, go to Wikipedia and I notice sometimes in real time, the Wikipedia page is changing faster than the news story. So I know there's someone behind the scenes not manipulating the page, but creating narratives as the story breaks. So tell me, here's the first question here. Who does write a Wikipedia page? Is it someone on their own or do they have to go to a firm like yours?

I'm glad this is the first question because it's going to be a good setup for everything else we talk about. So I think the best way to think about Wikipedia is because they have not done a great job of making everyone understand how they work. They kind of sold themselves to their tagline of the encyclopedia. Anyone can edit. That's not true. It's true up until you have a conflict of interest and then a whole bunch of rules fall into place, which is what we help people work within, what we help educate people on, as far as who maintains the site. Wikipedia is technically run by Wikimedia, the company here in San Francisco. But all that company does, that nonprofit, is keep the servers on, keep the lights running. Every rule, every bit of content you see on the site is maintained by volunteer editors. They're just totally random people in their homes who are passionate about this. They're the types who, like in the old encyclopedia would write, probably write in a little piece of paper of a definition, but now they're doing this. They are the people who make the articles and they, assuming they have no conflict of interest, manage the site. If you have a conflict of interest, like some of the things you might be talking about here, and what we'll definitely get into on this call is when you have a conflict of interest, you should not be editing. And I can get into that more. What you should be doing is talking and working with volunteer editors requesting changes, saying, hey, I have a conflict of interest, I'd like to make some requests, but I know I can't edit myself. And then volunteer editors will review your requests.

Essentially is a conflict of interest, just another way of saying a first person going in and editing their own Wikipedia.

Page, typically financial is the biggest one. So if it's you personally and it's your own page, conflict of interest. If it's like your employees, likewise any agency you hire, all of these would fall under conflict of interest if you're an employee of a brand too. This is where it gets the most tricky. But I don't want to go down a real rabbit hole is like sometimes you're at a big brand, the communications department might know how Wikipedia works or has worked with a firm like ours and knows their specific rules not to touch it or how to work within it. But then you have some random employee who doesn't. And like you know, you have 10,000 plus employees. So how do you like work? Yeah, essentially, if you have a conflict of interest in any way, the rule distills down to two things, which is you must disclose your connection. And two, you should never directly create or directly edit articles. Instead, you must always propose and work with volunteer editors on various talk pages and they review your requests. And if they're good and correct, they would ultimately make the change. That's ideal.

Okay, so to dispel a myth out there, someone can't just log into a Wikipedia page, start typing away and making a change, hit send, and then that change is made. You're saying that has to go through a process, an editing process, to be able to get published. Correct.

I'm saying that's how it should work. So Wikipedia has. And that's how we would work and that's how we would counsel people. So Wikipedia has very strict rules. What they do not have is regular enforcement of those rules. Unfortunately, there's maybe and these numbers I would need to check up on, but maybe about 15,000 active editors to millions of pages. So what you'll see happen a lot that brands do because there's this misconception of some people think I can't get involved on my page, or I need to hide involvement, which again is not what editors want you to do. They want to know if there's a conflict of interest. But you can easily go make an anonymous account and you can go directly edit and then you will get your edit instantly to your point, you'll have it same day, same moment. The question is matter of time. And there's so many more articles and editors. It might go a few weeks, it might go a few months unnoticed and you might be successful with this kind of fly by night direct editing. However, the moment it is noticed, it's going to be a touch apocalyptic for your page. All the content removed, the accounts blocked. You'll see those warning banners at the top of the article you've probably seen before. And that's kind of when it goes into this kind of state of disrepair. But it can be quite a while before it gets noticed.

The Wikipedia page, when I notice it being dynamic, is when something is actively happening. More often is during an immediate death. So someone dies, you go to a Wikipedia page, it's already updated. Almost nine times out of ten, someone has already updated that page to reflect the death of the person. What is happening there that it happened so quickly?

There's a few things that could be happening. First of all is I feel like this is the part that we can never like sleep on too much, which is the passion of the volunteer editor. So some of these people are truly just and some of them kind of have their own kind of self assigned beats. So maybe they just look for tech news or maybe they just are into a certain sport, but they're keeping up with it so much and they're editing. They almost see it as their realm to edit on Wikipedia. And that there's definitely those types of passionate volunteer editors. The other thing that could happen that you might see in a state of change and this may not just be a death, it might be like a company and like a real sketchy or crisis situation. One of two things might be happening if you're seeing it just wildly moving. One is maybe the company is doing this sort of direct editing that they shouldn't be doing and maybe editors are noticing it and there's this whole concept called an edit war that is kind of happening back and forth and like every article you can go and see like the revision history. It's not terribly user friendly, but if you know where to look and how to look at, you'd see it. And you can definitely see that at play. That could be the more combative version. If the company is trying to get involved in not doing A graceful job. The other thing would maybe be to my point of these articles sometimes will go unnoticed for so long is maybe nobody looked at the such and such tech company article for two years because nobody was that interested until their founder exploded and suddenly everyone's looking at the page and maybe it's like the editors are saying, oh, not only do I need to update this, but this page has bad sourcing. How did this page come to be so it might be a state of change just because it has eyes on it, but those are reasons.

Okay, so let's go back to the volunteer editor. It sounds like that's where the magic and the movement is happening with these people. What is the credential of a volunteer editor? How does someone become that?

For Wikipedia, you're hitting all the greatest questions. So a volunteer editor truly can be. Anyone can sign up. I think this is another myth that's good to dispel, which is there isn't really a hierarchy to editors. This is one of the things that Wikipedia firms who are kind of hoping to take advantage of a client who are a little more black hat perhaps will say like I have a senior Wikipedia editor on staff or I know senior Wikipedia editors or administrators and they are hoping a brand will be like, oh, what's that? And get really into it. There are administrators on Wikipedia, but to be clear, they don't have any more editing power than anyone else. They're more like just kind of a maintenance role again. And as far as like these different editors, anyone can sign up. Now where it does get kind of where volunteer editors will scrutinize each other is and this is often how they tell conflict of interest editors. For example, like if someone from a company came in, made anonymous account, you could go look at that user page. It came into existence randomly and the only pages that's edited is, you know, X tech company and that company CEO. Well that looks pretty questionable. But then you may have someone else who's been on the site for five years and edits just anything. So that person's edits are going to be more respected. The other person will have a sort of a questionable glare on them. But. But again, there's no hierarchy. But you can definitely tell their activity.

Andrew, I'm going to come in with my Gen X brain though. I'm going to talk in a millennial level here. Maybe you could even say Gen Z at this point is Wikipedia seems like the same arena, like a Reddit. People put information out there, but there's a lot of self censoring the community will censor each other and the, and the community will be able to spot when someone is not following the rules. Is it somewhat like that as well, that environment?

Yeah, somewhat, for sure. I, I mean, you're kind of hitting on something that we say a lot, which is we always tell a client to think of these as more like a community engagement project than like a, than like a website creation. Like, you're not really in control of it, you're lobbying, and you can do a good job and a bad job at that, but that's what you're doing. Ultimately. You're working, you're making requests and you're working with these people, to your point. And they do that same thing to each other. Also to your point, the biggest thing is Wikipedia really wants to be a reliable source. Everyone remembers from professors and whoever else saying, like, you can't use it as a source. Teachers in school, et cetera. And so Wikipedia's more active group of editors who make the rules have made these super strict rules, which we'll keep talking about, I'm sure, during this whole call, sourcing notability, who gets an article, et cetera, because they want it to be something everyone can use as a source. But to my earlier point, there's just not enough of them to police it well. So we are trying to be some of those people to help brands do this the right way and not run afoul of these. So editors have to keep cleaning things up. I veered a bit from your point, but essentially, yes, it is all a community and working together.

You answered it. You answered it. So the, the ecosystem of Wikipedia with the ED is like a Reddit forum in the sense that it's very community driven and there's a hierarchy there, and that hierarchy is based on knowledge and facts and who's getting it right and, and who, who's updating it, obviously, time as well. But because they are a source of truth and they want to be the online encyclopedia version, that truth matters with them, they want to make sure that they get it right. Because then that's a stain on the brand of Wikipedia, obviously, if they get it wrong.

Yeah. And similar to Reddit, there is a big focus and value and kind of anonymity of the people. I mean, you make a username and such, but like, there's a whole bunch of rules, as there should be, about like not putting out identifying information, even if you can guess who the person is. There's a few times where I'm like, oh, that's the same Last name as that VP at a PR firm. You can't say that. Yeah, but no. So they place a lot of the same value on that. And similarly, now granted, Reddit I'm a little bit less familiar with that would be a different member of our team. But they do have admins on both. But again, they're more like kind of peace seekers and rule followers more than they are like I have more say than you. The only difference really is the purpose. Reddit is so much more discussion based in a way that is great and can bring a lot of visibility to things. But Wikipedia has a more defined goal, I would say, whereas it's not just loose discussion or purpose driven discussion. It's much more we are fixing up and or creating this article, you know.

Well said, well said. Andrew, what are some of the misconceptions about Wikipedia?

Well, we already hit don't, you can't just edit yourself. And this is always going to come from a CEO type role who's like, I was looking at my Wikipedia today and I'm just not happy about it. And they'll tell their marketing manager or their corporate comms VP or whoever and that poor person is then going to get saddled with having to find out all the stuff that we're talking about and then going back to that CEO and being like, no, this is not saying, I'm sorry, we cannot do this tomorrow. We do not own this channel. I think that's the biggest disconnect. It's about you or it's about your company, but you don't own it. That is one of the first things to grapple. The second is now I'm veering a bit. But the biggest one I would say is I feel like there's this really big misconception we come into a lot of I can't touch my article. They've heard versions of these rules we're talking about, but then misinterpreted it in some way as I can't get involved. And then the sub variant of that is I can't get involved so I have to hide my involvement. And then these bad actor firms are definitely propagating that idea too, because that's kind of what they like. Their benefit. If you end up talking with one of these, you'll know you're talking to them very quickly because they won't bring up the conflict of interest rule and they will tell you things like, oh, we can get that done in two weeks. But when you're talking about a Wikipedia project, you're talking about months, probably. And progress is going to be incremental. You're going to request one update. After you get that done, you're going to move on to your next update. So I would tell anyone who's thinking about it like, it is a slow process. It's a community engagement process. You do have a place at the table, but you need to take the time to learn what that looks like.

Oh, understood, Understood. Okay, here's a question that I know a lot of people wonder who has the credibility to have a Wikipedia page. I understand businesses do, but what about a person? When does Wikipedia determine that a person is a person of interest as opposed to just being a regular person person worthy or not worthy of a page?

Totally. This is a tough one. I just had one of these calls yesterday. So to give you just a 30 seconds of background on our business, we probably get a ton of, and have for years tons of these inbounds and requests for getting a page. I would say this is a very high volume request. And yet the majority of our work is working on existing pages. And the reason for that is, you know, an existing page, once it exists and it clearly has made it through the rules, it's not really going anywhere. It's in a state of change, perhaps, but it's not going anywhere. They are a better, more viable source of business and a better project for a company to get involved in. However, creating a page, everybody wants one, but they have made these super strict rules on who gets one. It's called the notability guideline. If you just search Notability guideline Wikipedia, you probably find it pretty quickly. It has subsections for basically every kind of topic, including several types of individuals. Are you a business person? Are you an athlete, are you an Olympian even, are you an academic, etc. It all because I was just talking to someone yesterday and they're like, and they were, they're super nice. They were a CMO and their CEO wanted a page for themselves. And they're like, but he's done so much and he's done it so young and he's donated so much money to charities and it's like, yes, but being a rich, good, philanthropic person may make you exciting in every other realm of your life. But in Wikipedia, another thing to come back to is Wikipedia editors in all of their rules and definitely the notability guideline for what gets a new article. They don't want to make a judgment themselves and they don't want you or I to make judgments. They don't want anyone who's on the page to make a judgment that this person's notable. They want to outsource that fully to journalists. So it all comes back down to sourcing. And there's variations of the rule we can get into if you want to, but the biggest one is really it needs to be third party journalistic sourcing by a staff writer. This is also true for any contents on an existing page. You can't use things like blogs, press releases, even if it's reprinted, press releases, even if it's in forms but it's a contributor piece since that doesn't have the same editorial oversight. No go even things. This is one that always trips people up. Interviews are a tough one. You would think an interview would be great in most other PR instances, but Wikipedia doesn't value it because they see it as direct from the person. But if at the top the journalist wrote, here's where I interview so and so so and so CEO who did this, that and those that little bit you can use because a journalist wrote it, but the interview chunks you can't. So they have these very strict rules and Sorry. All this to say what you would if you are wondering if you are eligible for a Wikipedia article, I would give you this quick exercise which is look at all your stuff. Is it written by a staff journalist? Even if it's in trade publication, but ideally regional or national, look at all your press. If you're just pulling out bits from that copy and pasting it, not adding any fluff at all, does it tell a coherent story of your life? Does it tell who you're married to, where you went to school, your history? Or is it just that you kind of came into existence one day as a CEO and you have no background written about you prior to that? If it's the latter, you probably aren't eligible. If you feel like you can piece together a semblance of a life story just using coverage, you might be eligible.

Oh, that's a good explanation. So it's more than just being a blue checked name like on social media, like a Twitter or an Instagram. The currency is in the sourcing. If other people have written about you and they feel that you are newsworthy, then Wikipedia will find you newsworthy because there's sourcing that they can use.

You said it quicker and more eloquently than I did, but that's exactly what Wikipedia editors have done when they made this rule. I they're saying I as an editor, volunteer editor, cannot decide this person's important. You me as conflict of interest, editors can't decide if this person's important. Journalists, if journalists are writing about this person and writing about their whole life important, let's get them a page.

Andrew, what is the 22nd statement that you have to say when you're on the phone with someone and you have to, you have to let them down and tell them that they are not Wikipedia worthy? How does that go? What are the buzzwords?

Luckily, I'm rarely talking to the actual person. I'm often talking to someone on their team. So I'm more like coaching them for that conversation.

What do you tell them to say to their boss that they're not worthy?

I would say that the biggest thing is that again, it doesn't depreciate any of your things in any other realm of life. But if this is a main goal, if Wikipedia is a main goal, then the biggest thing we can do, and we can help people do this too, is reorient your PR efforts. Because some of the things that in the PR world, as you know and probably a lot of your listeners know, that are great practice and interview being one of them, like that's a high value thing to get usually. But if you're, if Wikipedia is this guy's main goal, you probably need to refocus your efforts on what Wikipedia prizes and then come back to it in six months. Because better to do it when you're ready than to do it when you're not. And it's just not going to be a very fruitful process.

Right. So you amp up. You use a different form of public relations. It's. It's the public relations about the person. Are you newsworthy? And you could also. This is probably a whole new topic, but you would have to ask what is the value system of an organization? Do you want it about you, the leader, or do you want it about the company? And make your company newsworthy? And that newsworthy piece is what gets people and the Wikipedia people, editors talking and excited.

And you're hitting on a great part of this, which is. So we do this little. I'm not going to make too much of a plug here, but one of our services is helping people figure out, or companies figure out if they are eligible. That's just kind of a small initial project we'll do. And if they're not, we like show them exactly what kind of coverage they're missing to give back to their PR firm or whoever. It's very helpful in these instances and it helps cushion the blow of what you were just asking about. Telling them we're like, no, but here's some instructions. But what often happens is we'll look through this coverage. And to your point, their PR team has rightly so been focusing on the company for however many years. And so all their coverage may be here or there. It says like and so, and so is the CEO, but the coverage is really about the company. And so if you're not the subject of the coverage, you're just kind of a passing mention. Very unlikely. You need to be the subject 100%.

Okay, okay. So let's then move into the right way to do Wikipedia. I mean, certainly hiring. Would you say the only way really to go about it is to work with a firm?

I would say that it's. You're going to be much more successful if you work with a firm. And it's only because Wikipedia has not made their rules super clear. And I feel like if a Wikipedia editor is listening, I'm sorry, you probably hate that I said that, and you probably think they are super clear, but the truth is they're not very easy to find.

And well, maybe that's by design.

Do you think that would be an interesting thought? Because you would think the. And now we're getting a little existential, but you would think the editors would want to have brands understand this. Like, that's our whole mission is like, hey, I realize you totally don't understand how this works. Even if we don't work together, let's at least educate you to the point you won't mess up. But no, that doesn't. Those resources, while, while they exist, don't feel as readily available as they should. So because of that, I think that for your first time, you should at least do some degree of working with a firm. And even if that's just training and education and not them hand holding you through the whole process because there are so many hitches. Everything we've talked about here is like hitch number one. Do you have good sourcing? If you're trying to update an existing page, are you notable? If you want to create a new page, these are just the entry point. Because let's say you are notable. Great, you pass that test, but you still have to propose an article that they'll accept with sourcing. They'll accept and it has to be written a certain way. Then once you propose it, you then have to work with the volunteer editors. What happens when they ask you a question about some niche rule you've never heard of? And you're just a brand new agency so your Process is going to be slower, clunkier, and you're probably going to get no's from editors more. So I think you can do it. And I've seen some really goodwill efforts where I'm like, you really tried and I'm so proud of you for that. But you will be more successful quicker with a firm.

It sounds like it, it's, it's like going to a dentist. Are you going to work on your teeth yourself or are you going to go to dentist?

You may actually, you may have a concept of where to poke around in your mouth, but I don't know, I'd recommend it. Yeah, right.

It could be painful. Exactly. And not helpful at all. All right. So Andrew, I mean normally you don't. You know, I never want to tell anyone who works in communication that they have to outsource, but clearly this piece of it is so niche you almost have to outsource it. If you want to get into the world or have your leadership or your brand be a part of Wikipedia, it's.

Something to outsource, at least at first. So I have two kind of sub answers to that. So a big goal of ours is typically like if a brand comes to us to update their page and that's a four month or six month or on the project is we work with them. But at the end of that we are leaving an employee of theirs with a disclosed Wikipedia account. We've given them all this training. So at the end they do kind of have all the tools that through osmosis and through direct training, they've kind of learned from us enough. They could probably do copy our work enough to attempt this small request on their own. So we are trying to arm companies to have a person in house. But the other side is that probably about half of our business is from PR agencies big and small because it doesn't make sense for them to hire a full time Wikipedia person. So they outsource this a ton of to like us essentially. And in that case, I'm not even sure if half the time the company knows that they have someone working on it. But yes, generally you outsource it just because you're not going to need Wikipedia all the time. And creating an infrastructure internally or at your agency for it, I mean, it's up to you, but it does feel like a big effort.

Okay, I understood. Understood. Okay, Andrew, so this is a left field question that I have for you, but I was watching it in real time and I am curious and I needed a Wikipedia expert on this. Are you Familiar. I don't want to insult you, and based on your age, but are you familiar with Alec Baldwin, the actor?

Yes, yes, yes.

I just wanted to make sure. Yeah. Well, out of curiosity, how, like, how would you know 30 Rock, his movies?

I mean, probably SNL, before 30 Rock, I was late. I was late to 30 Rock. So I just got over. That was a Covid kind of run through for me. Right.

But of course, snl, Trump on snl. Okay. I was watching when Alec Baldwin was going through the. Just the crisis of the shooting on the set of the film Rust. As that happened and as that news was spilling out, I immediately went to his Wikipedia page and I had noticed a very quick scrub of all of the Alec Baldwin stories, because I've written about Alec Baldwin before. And I went back to Wikipedia and it talked about his wife, hilarious Spanish. You know, her Spanish, her false Spanish Spanish background story. Talked about his altercations with the press. It talked about, you know, his, you dirty little pig. With his daughter Ireland, when that was on the voicemail. So all of the deeds were there. Right? And they were, they were sourced and they were truthful. But all of a sudden, the day of this breaking news, if anyone wanted to get that backstory on Alec Baldwin, all of it was scrubbed and it only talked about the good side of Alec Baldwin. So what happened there?

That is a great question. So I pulled up the Alec Baldwin page. To go through revision history would be not boring. It would be so boring to your listeners, it'd be like listening to someone eat. But based on what you were saying, it is likely. I mean, now he's going to send someone after me. But it is entirely possible, I should say, not likely, but it's entirely possible that someone was hired. Or maybe he wasn't even involved in it. But like, I'm sure he has a wealth of PR firms and similar people who kind of tend to think they have this capability and whose first, as it should be, their first instinct is crisis control and online image. But obviously Wikipedia and its rules and its whole setup don't play nice with that. And Wikipedia is meant to be this kind of historical encyclopedia of everything that's ever happened to your point. So you could have been witnessing something like that. Likewise, like I said earlier, it could be that some of those things, even though they definitely could have or did happen, maybe they weren't in a Wikipedia approved source, maybe they were in something more tabloidy, or maybe they were in, you know, Wikipedia is so picky about their sources that it could have been that these things got removed and they actually didn't have the Wikipedia sourcing to be there. However, the maybe more interesting thing here, I would say is, so if you were to go to the Alec Baldwin article, Dear Listener.

Yes.

Up left, where there's the logo, it says article. You can click on talk right there. Have you ever looked at these pages?

No.

This is where a lot of our work. This is where a lot of our work takes place. This is where you, as a confident interest editor, you go to the talk page, everyone who's listening, and you would say, hey, I'm so and so, I have a conflict. Finish this topic. I'd like to make some requests, but you can see. So this has a ton of archive ones because it's been around forever. But you can see just if you go down. So just so you know, as you're looking at this, the first thing you'll see is actually the older one and the bottom is the most recent. But you can see the whole discussion about the manslaughter charge. You know, oh, this is a legal concept, but, like, it hasn't been proven yet. And like, basically all these different editors having these really nitpicky discussions about the contents of the article.

So these are the editor's notes, in.

Other words, these are the editor's notes. Yes.

Oh, my gosh. So anyone listening? If you go to Wikipedia, everyone goes to the article. It defaults to the article. But if you click right next to that to talk is where you're seeing the footnotes in the editor's toolbox, so to speak, and what they've done. That's interesting. So now you can see the story. The negligent discharge of a prop gun. Manslaughter in the U.S. should. Should the current incident be mentioned in the lead? This is.

This is where it's happening. Yes.

Yes.

So we've now opened. We've revealed the curtain. We've got little O back there. Yes, yes.

And cranking it. But I'm also noticing behind the curtain, I'm not seeing anything about him and his daughter, about the voicemail. I've not seen some of the more scandalous stories about Al Baldwin that have been in the press. But okay, but that's interesting. So thank you for sharing that. So there are people, Wikipedia people passionate about entertainment, passionate about law, passionate about gossip. So they're gonna. They know where to find the information and either edit it, not edit it, though. I am going to tell you, Andrew, it feels like someone knows someone somewhere in a story like this.

Yes, I Mean that's probably true. Like I feel like a lot of people due to all the reasons we've discussed on this call so far, get away with quite a bit on Wikipedia. But I just would never encourage it because it is always a temporary band aid and that's what we always say. It's not a matter of if you will get noticed, it's just when. And it could be tomorrow or it could be in truly two years. So like that's. That is the risk. As far as this, I don't know if what is what you were insinuating, but I will say this too because we have seen a few people who are like, but I know like an actual like employee or like the CEO of Wikipedia or Wikimedia that will get you nowhere fast. Like so Wikipedia editors are very averse to anything like that.

But okay, interesting, interesting, interesting. Okay Andrew, this has been fascinating. I thank you so much for for going in the back door on Wikipedia.

One more little basis I'll say because you'll see it mentioned on that talk page if you look and everyone else at the bottom. Are you familiar with protected status at all?

Protected status.

This is definitely a behind the scenes one. But yeah, Wikipedia articles when they are in these massive states of change like this one was and there's something like examples would be like the Trump page is kind of always in a protected status because people have these really strong opinions and there's always constant news. So essentially what that does is it creates. There are several types protected and I'm not going to go too in the weeds, but depending on which one it is, it creates basically where you have to have been on the site and have a certain number of edits in order to even be doing anything on there. So you could still post talk page things and be like I feel xyz. But you can never directly edit unless you have been like around for a month and done 500 plus edits and it's their attempt to avoid people like a weird sketchy PR person just creating an account day of and editing. So that's the point of protected. It still has its flaws. I mean if you were really a sketchy PR firm you would just have made an account years ago that you keep up to be able to get around that. But that would obviously not be cool.

I'm probably getting more into the Godfather s type of pain. Someone like having someone on the payroll. But you're absolutely right at what you to your point like looking on the sourcing for the Alec Baldwin story there's someone who was putting opinion in there and said he literally killed someone.

Yes.

And that's where someone is editing that information out. Like, and they have WP colon, gossip.

Or W. Not specific little rules they're citing. Yeah.

Yes. Okay.

That's so interesting to your way earlier question, you're like, can you do this without a firm? You can, but what do you do? The minute that an editor does that and says no because of WP gossip, you're going to be like, what the hell is that? So there's always. Yeah, okay.

All right, Andrew. Oh, my gosh. So helpful. In every podcast, I always leave a tip, an indestructible tip for someone to leave behind. An easy to remember tip about Wikipedia pages. What could you share with the listener now that they'll never forget? An unforgettable tip.

It is better to do nothing on Wikipedia than to do it wrong. Take the time, learn the rules, whether you hire someone or not. But if you just go in there and rush in like you would anything else, you are going to create a bigger mess. And I get it. Your team or whoever, or maybe even your family, they want you to do it. They want you to edit it. They want it to seem different because it's on the front page of the Internet. But if you do this poorly, it is going to just collapse in on itself and be even worse. Take the time. Learn to do it right.

Excellent. That's exactly what I wanted. Oh, my gosh. Andrew Renat, thank you so much. How will any listener, if they want to learn more about Wikipedia pages, how can they find out about you and your business?

Yeah. Luminodigital.com so luminode l u m I n o digital.com we have a monthly webinar for Wikipedia where truly anyone can join. And we give you all the basics in more detail than we got to discuss here. It's about an hour long usually, granted, some of that's Q and A. We've got a newsletter. It's eight parts, so it's more of just like a set amount of newsletter. So for eight weeks you'll get all the good tips and just on our website, if you go to the Wikipedia tab, we've got some top resources. So we are a wealth of education. It's definitely a part of our passion. So get on there and learn about it and book a call if you want to.

Oh, Andrew, you are a wealth of education. And I'll be sure to put all the information how they can contact you on the show notes. But thank you so much.

This is.

This was enjoyable. Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me.

Oh, thank you. I really enjoyed it. And I mean, if you have any ever have a question, you know where to find me, Please reach out. I hope we get to talk again.

Absolutely. All righty. Bye, Andrew.

Bye.

My thanks to Andrew Burnett for giving us the scoop on Wikipedia. If you need help creating a Wikipedia page or want more information about it, you can find Andrew and his team at Luminode. Digital contact information is located in the show notes. That's all for this week on the podcast. Thanks for listening. Bye for now.