In our blog entry entitled “Volunteer Editors Control Your Online Reputation” published August 26, 2009, we attempted to warn readers about the double-edge sword of Wikipedia, and its potentially damaging effect on your reputation.

Since then, a few more examples arose, but we are only highlighting two today. 

People waking up on the east coast this morning learned that conservative radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh was in the hospital suffering from chest pains, unless they were on Wikipedia, and were therefore informed of his untimely demise. (He’s currently “resting comfortably.”)

Another example also came to light today.   The reputation of WorldNetDaily’s Editor Joseph Farah was defamed on Wikipedia by some his detractors.  While it is understandable that some people may not agree with the content at WordNetDaily, the information published on his entry was far from accurate or objective as Wikipedia professes.

Farah’s site has an Alexa Traffic Rank of 2,603, which means that there are millions of visitors daily to Mr. Farah’s site, most of whom we can assume like what he and his writers publish. 

Again, this is proof that live persons are more at risk from the poor oversight, bias and volunteer editors at Wikipedia.   As stated earlier, Wikipedia is a double-edged sword whereby leveraging its high SEO ranking, you can cause people to learn about you, your brand and all of its greatness.  But then again, if you leave this oversight to the folks at Wikipedia or your competitors, or your enemies, don’t expect others to find your online reputation in good form.

 

When Wikipedia rolled out their “flagged protection and patrolled revisions” program in August, they lead the public to believe that 7,500 new volunteer editors would do a better job patrolling the biographies of live persons, but clearly this program is not working in your favor, at least not while you’re alive.

 Click here to read the article at WorldNetDaily regarding Mr. Farah’s Wiki page, which has since been corrected.