Steve Rubel posted a podcast this week on the role public companies should play (if any) in providing content for wikipedia. As Steve highlighted previously, wikipedia has a LOT of influence. The wikipedia entry for a company can quite often be one of the most highly ranked pages in Google on a direct search for that company. The podcast primarily discussed the following dilemas:
1) What if there's no wikipedia entry? Assuming the company is sufficiently notable, is it ok for a company to create a space for itself on wikipedia?It seems to me that as long as the article is purely factual, verifiable and presented with a neutral point of view then this would not violate the wikipedia NPOV policy.
2) What does a company do if it feels there is factually incorrect content about it on wikipedia?
Concensus here was that you go to the discussion tab associated with the article and prove the article is factually incorrect (using verifiable sources). Then leave it up to the community to do the rest.
3) What does a company do if there is negative but factually correct content about it on wikipedia?
Concensus here was that if the data is factually correct a company has no control over this and should not try to control it.
In some ways you can see how wikipedia can really create a headache for a companies PR firm and also why social content has the potential to be more disputed than more traditional factual entries.