Pharma needs to make the most of Wikipedia - but not in an unstructured manner
This article by Ben Atkins co-lead of the digital practice at Chandler Chicco Companies offers advice on "someone" [inside pharma, I assume] should consider "if asked to edit a healthcare-related Wikipedia page."
The advice includes:
1. Monitor Wikipedia pages
To start, monitor the pages relevant to your company, your products and to the diseases you treat.
2. Set parameters for engagement
As part of your social media policy and governance, define and agree the parameters your company will follow to engage Wikipedia.
3. Work through the talk page, and avoid editing the page directly
Wikipedia frowns upon any perceived conflict of interest. The safest approach is to recommend an edit, additional text, or a new section, by using the 'talk' page.
4. Stick to the facts and don't be promotional
5. Recommend edits and don't seek to rewrite entries
Taking the extra step of providing a rewrite vs concisely correcting specific inaccuracies or by sharing a link to the PI as a potential new reference may be perceived as influencing content.
6. Use judgement
Regulatory guidance remains to be clarified; this means there remains an element of uncertainty.
I think Atkins forgot one important piece if advice.
The missing piece of advice is my friend, Dr. Bertalan Meskó (@Berci) wrote in an open letter to pharma back in June 2012 (here):
Dear Pharma Companies,
The place of Wikipedia in the dissemination of medical information online is indisputable now. If you want your customers to access information about your products from the quality perspective and in the simplest way, you have to deal with using Wikipedia.
Based on the pretty negative past encounters between pharma employees and Wikipedia editors (pharma employees trying to edit entries about their own products in a quite non-neutral way), we advise you to employ a Wikipedia editor if you want to make sure only evidence-based information is included in entries about your own products. Appointing someone from within your company as a “spokesperson” in Wikipedia who would perform all edits on behalf of the company is an excellent way to update those entries.
For more details, please see our open access social media guide[see my review here].
But basically, we, Wikipedians, are more than open to starting a discussion about this with you.
I’m looking forward to working together.
Dr. Bertalan Mesko
Webicina.com
In other words, not just any pharma employee should willy-nilly take on the task of editing Wikipedia articles, but some FTE designated by upper management and adequately TRAINED should represent the entire company's response to correcting misinformation on wikipedia (and perhaps in other online sources of information).