PRSA commends its colleagues at CIPR on their release of draft best practices for ‘PRs’ working with Wikipedia. The guidelines are a start toward helping public relations professionals understand the complexities of Wikipedia's policies and procedures and the ways to manage edits and engage the Wikipedia community.
While PRSA fully understands and supports the notion that public relations professionals must respect and follow the Wikipedia policies and procedures as they now stand, we also broadly support the movement for change that is currently underway, led by Phil Gomes, the CREWE Facebook group and other individuals. We believe that opportunities for change exist that will benefit not only the public relations profession, but that will provide tangible benefits to Wikipedia, Wikipedians and the public interest.
We look forward to working with CIPR on subsequent revisions to these draft guidelines and continuing our engagement with the Wikipedia community to achieve mutual understanding and respect.
Gerry Corbett, 2012 PRSA Chair and CEO