So, you are in charge of your company’s Wikipedia page and someone decided to add some cleanup templates to it. The page has gone from looking pristine to something hacked-up and tagged, like it belongs in a garbage bin.
Well, don’t fret. This is common when dealing with Wikipedia. If you know the rules associated with cleanup tags, you will have an easy time cleaning up your company Wikipedia page.
Note; that is “if” you know the rules. That’s the hard part.
Thankfully, I give away free advice on my blog to people who have to deal with the frustrations of Wikipedia. After receiving hundreds of emails with questions about removing maintenance tags from company Wikipedia pages, I thought I would put together this guide to help everyone understand the process.
What Are Wikipedia Cleanup Templates?
Years ago, Wikipedia editors decided to create a system to both notify readers of potential page issues while at the same time notifying editors which Wikipedia articles need to be edited to meet guidelines. Through the years, more and more templates were created and now you can find them everywhere on Wikipedia.
Company pages are more prone to these templates than any other topic.
Why?
Well, Wikipedia editors believe that company pages are inherently promotional. After all, why would anyone post about a company on the platform other than for marketing purposes?
While this is true that people want to have a Wikipedia presence for their company, it does not mean all pages are promotional. However, editors are very subjective and apply strict standards to company pages. Therefore, it is not uncommon to find cleanup tags on your company Wikipedia page.
In July 2019, there were more than 20,000 pages with cleanup tags. This is a steady number from month to month. While some pages are cleaned up, others are tagged. It is a vicious cycle that keeps frustration levels high.
Cleanup tags are a part of life for Wikipedia. There will never be a time when all tags are gone. In fact, it is more likely there will be an increase in tags over time. The best you can do is focus on your company page and try to clean up any tags left by editors.
So many tags are placed on pages sometimes that Wikipedia editors created a “humorous” maintenance tag. While funny, it is absolutely true.
Now let’s take a look at some common tags you will find on company Wikipedia pages.
What are the Most Common Tags and How do you Remove Them?
Cleanup templates (sometimes referred to as cleanup tags or maintenance templates), can be found mainly at the top of Wikipedia pages. Some of the most common include:
- Notability – “The topic of this article may not meet Wikipedia’s general notability guidelines.”
- Advert – “This article contains content that is written like an advertisement.”
- Conflict of Interest – “A major contributor to this article appears to have a close connection with its subject.”
- Paid Editing – “This article may have been created or edited in exchange for undisclosed payments.”
- Bare URLs – “This article uses bare URLs, which may be threatened by link rot.”
- Lead Section Summary – “This article’s lead section may not adequately summarize its contents.”
- Additional Citations Needed – “This article needs additional citations for verification.”
- Single Source – “This article relies largely or entirely on a single source.”
- Additional Wikipedia Cleanup Templates
Cleaning up a company Wikipedia differs depending on the tag. Each tag has a specific set of things that need to be addressed on the page.
According to guidelines, you can remove these tags once you address the issue. However, if you are the creator of the article (or the tag was in reference to one of your original edits), it is not advised you remove it. Editors will likely re-add the tag and give you a warning in the process.
So, how do you get a tag removed that you do not remove yourself?
The easiest way is to reach out to the editor who added the tag. You can go to their talk page after making the cleanup edit and asking them if it is sufficient. If they do not agree with the tag removal, you can then request additional assistance on the talk page of the article or initiate a request for comment to get input from other editors.
The above are the most common ways to remove tags. A list of when it is appropriate can be found here.
As stated, each tag has specific things you need to address prior to removal. While there are more than 100 tags that could wind up on your company Wikipedia page, here are the most common that you could run into, with a list of things you can do to address each.
Notability Tag
Whenever an editor comes across a Wikipedia page they feel isn’t notable, they will likely add this tag. While you may think this is a bad tag to have on your company Wikipedia page, keep in mind the alternative – deletion.
Editors add this tag in lieu of recommending it for deletion. Sometimes they do not take the time to check for notability or are unsure altogether. So you need to be thankful that they only left a tag. Cleaning up a company Wikipedia page with a notability tag is easier than trying to save it through a deletion discussion.
So how do you address the issue to get the tag removed?
Well, notability must be established for a Wikipedia page to exist. Most times, the tag means you don’t have enough references. Or, the references you have do not show how the topic is notable.
First, I recommend you read and understand Wikipedia notability guidelines. They tell you that in order to qualify for Wikipedia, the topic must have significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the topic.
This is Wikipedia’s “golden rule”. Sources that talk about the topic in-depth are needed to establish notability.
The majority of the time, the issue can be addressed with adding sources. Remove some of the sources that only mention the topic in passing and replace them with sources that talk about it more in-depth. The more in-depth the better as these are the sources Wikipedia uses to establish notability.
The above is a great example of ref bombing. There is no reason to have six references to support a single sentence or paragraph. This can backfire as editors will think you don’t believe the article is notable either and are just including references to masquerade that fact.
Finally, don’t create a reference bomb (notability bombing). Sometimes editors try to add as many references as they can to show notability. Remember that notability is not about the quantity of the references, but the quality of the references. Focus on using those that are in-depth and not passing mentions. Otherwise, you could wind up with additional tags in addition to the notability tag.
Advert Tag
Outside of notability, one of the most common Wikipedia cleanup templates is the “advert” tag. This tag is placed on an article when it is written more like marketing copy and less like an encyclopedia entry.
So what does it mean when a company page is written like an advertisement?
Buzzwords are the first thing that can make a Wikipedia page read like an advertisement. Buzzwords are basically jargon used by businesspeople and marketers. They attempt to catch the reader’s attention and make things seem better than they are. If you listen to a motivational speaker, they use buzzwords throughout their talks in order to keep the audience’s attention.
“How can corporate America operate without buzzwords? They will be with us always because business organizations are a ready market for them.” – Questia
In connection with buzzwords there are two types of words and phrases that stick out as promotional with Wikipedia editors.
- Puffery – Puffery is the use of words such as legendary, leading, notable, famous, etc. These words simply are not needed when talking about a company. For example, don’t say that your company is a “leading manufacturer of ABC.” Instead, you just need to say that the company is a “manufacturer of ABC.”
- Weasel Words – Weasel words come in many forms but they are used to make something seem better than it really is. Phrases such as “it is widely known” or “according to many” are weasel phrases and need to be eliminated. When writing for Wikipedia, attribute things directly to a source. Instead of saying “many people say,” you need to write “according to ABC” which attributes the statement directly to the source.
The next way to make a page read like an advertisement is to include unnecessary information. By “unnecessary,” I am talking about information that consumers really don’t care about. When a Wikipedia article has information that only a company would want to talk about, this is a classic sign that the page is an advert.
When creating a company Wikipedia page, I always advise to leave out things like awards, extensive product lists, or “how-to” information on using the product or service. These are things that are better left to your website as they don’t belong in an encyclopedia. Truth is, people aren’t coming to Wikipedia to find out about these things anyway. Keep things factual and non-promotional and you should be able to avoid this tag.
Sometimes, editors will place tags in specific sections instead of at the top of the article. That means they feel a specific section, not the whole page, reads like an advertisement. Your cleanup needs to focus specifically on that section.
With the above in mind, cleaning up an advert tag can be as simple as removing puffery and unnecessary information. Remove awards unless they are major awards (no one cares about industry recognition). Don’t give specific details about your products (simply state what you make or offer, not how it helps the consumer).
If the Wikipedia page reads more like a company website than something you would find in a print encyclopedia, then the tag will likely remain until someone cleans it up.
Conflict of Interest Tag
Wikipedia hates when someone edits a page where they have a conflict of interest. Since they believe company Wikipedia pages are inherently promotional, they often tag the page with a COI tag if anyone adds positive information about the company. This can also happen if you edit with an account that primarily edits the same page or has very few edits outside of that page.
According to Wikipedia, “editors with a COI, including paid editors, are expected to disclose it whenever they seek to change an affected article’s content.” Wikipedia acts like they will work with COI editors, but that is one of the biggest fallacies of the site. In fact, I compare it to putting your head in a guillotine for a haircut.
If you decide to disclose your conflict of interest (and if editors already suspect you of a COI, I suggest you do), the proper way to clean up this tag is through a talk page discussion. You simply go to the talk page and disclose your conflict. After that, you can make suggestions on the changes you want to see on the page in order to get the tag removed.
Once you start the discussion on the talk page, you can use the {{request edit}} template to draw the editor’s attention to the request. The step by step instructions for the whole process are described above.
Now, what information needs to be changed in order to remove the tag? After all, starting a talk page discussion is one thing, but knowing what to request in that discussion is another.
There are primarily two things to correct when addressing a COI tag. The first is any advertorial wording. This was covered in the previous section. Request the removal of all weasel words and puffery; recommending how the content will look without them.
The second thing to address is neutral point of view.
Wikipedia requires that equal weight be given to all the information about a topic. That means you must include all the positives as well as negatives. You cannot try to emphasize one more than the other.
Some people who edit company Wikipedia pages try to add all the positives and remove the negatives. This makes the page unbalanced and it is no longer considered to be written from a neutral point of view. If you tried to remove a ton of negative information, request that it be added again (or reworded more neutrally). Same as if you added a ton of positive information.
Paid Editing Tag
Paid editing is a form of conflict of interest editing. I brought it up separately as it requires a few additional steps for when you ask for help on the talk page of the article. As I have said before, Wikipedia hates paid editing which makes this tag sometimes difficult to remove.
According to Wikipedia, “An editor has a financial conflict of interest when they write about a topic with which they have a close financial relationship. This includes being an owner, employee, contractor, investor or other stakeholder.”
This tag is mainly placed when an editor who has a financial interest does NOT disclose their affiliation. There are common signs that a person has a financial interest in a Wikipedia company page:
- The username is the same as the company name.
- Their username is that of someone who works for the company.
- The editor has very few edits and edits only this topic.
- The editor has created or made promotional edits that only paid editors without knowledge of Wikipedia guidelines would do.
So how do you get rid of this tag?
The first thing you need to do is disclose your interest. This should be done on the talk page of the article. Instead of just stating you have a conflict of interest, you must place a special template on the page which can be found here.
In addition to doing so on the talk page of the article, you need to make a disclosure on your own userpage.
For those who don’t know, your userpage is a personal space on Wikipedia that can be used for test edits, listing more about you personally (if you wish to publicly identify yourself), or keep track of your favorite pages on Wikipedia.
The process for tag removal follows the same as normal conflict of interest editing. The only difference is the disclosures above. Follow the advice from the previous section and good luck in getting the tag removed.
Bare URLs
Cleaning up a company Wikipedia page with bare URLs is an easy process. But first, what is a bare URL?
As you are already aware, Wikipedia can be difficult to edit. As such, many people don’t take the time to learn the process, including when it comes to adding references. Instead of using the correct code for citing references, people will often copy and paste a URL directly into the article.
Above is an example of what bare URLs look like in the reference section of a Wikipedia page.
The problem with using bare URLs is that it can cause link rot. This means that the link may eventually lead to a dead page. If that happens, there will be no other information on the Wikipedia page to show what the reference is. That is why it is important to provide as much information on the reference as possible.
This tag can be cleaned up once the bare URLs are filled. Here is how to do that.
The first thing is to make sure to properly cite a reference. Wikipedia has plenty of help for you in doing this. The first is built directly into the article and is the easiest way to cite.
First, click on the “edit” tab of an article. Once you go to the edit page, click on the “cite” tab and then choose the type of template you want; as shown in the image above. When you click on the citation template you want a popup box will be displayed; as in the image below. You can then fill in all the parameters and click on “insert.” The reference with all the entered parameters will automatically be filled and displayed properly in the reference list.
An even easier way to fill in all the bare URLs is through a tool called “reFill.” All you need to do is enter the name of the Wikipedia page and it will do all the work for you. It searches the bare URLs listed in the article and then fills with the title, date, author, etc.
However, not everything is flawless so you will find that sometimes the “reFill” tool does not take care of all the bare URLs. This is because it works through collecting the meta data from each site it visits. If a website does not contain the proper meta data (or include H1 heading tags for the article title), the tool will not work. You will need to go back to the previous method shown above and manually enter the parameters through the templates on the edit page.
Lead Section Summary
Wikipedia editors can be finicky when it comes to the layout of articles. If you don’t have the correct section headings or things are out of order, expect to see a tag at the top of the page saying so. One of the most common Wikipedia cleanup templates you will find with article organization is the “lead section” tag.
The reason this is one of the most common is because it is the easiest to see. Sometimes a Wikipedia page has numerous sections and there is only one sentence describing the page. This is a no-no as the lead section needs to be an accurate summary of everything in the body of the page.
Sometimes an article can have too much in the lead section, resulting in the same tag placed to notify readers of the issue; see above.
I cannot tell you how to write a better summary as each Wikipedia article needs to be evaluated individually. There is no way to know what information specifically belongs in a lead unless I see the article in question.
However, here are five things to keep in mind when looking to clean up the lead. All of these are from Wikipedia’s manual of style on lead sections:
- “Should stand on its own as a concise overview of the article’s topic.”
- “It should identify the topic, establish context, explain why the topic is notable, and summarize the most important points.”
- “The notability of the article’s subject is usually established in the first few sentences.”
- “The emphasis given to material in the lead should roughly reflect its importance to the topic, according to reliable, published sources.”
- “Significant information should not appear in the lead if it is not covered in the remainder of the article.”
Basically, you just need to summarize what the article says. Remember that people coming to Wikipedia will likely only read the introduction to an article so summarizing everything in the lead is important for them to get all the pertinent information on the topic.
Additional Citations Needed
If a Wikipedia editor feels there are not enough references to support the content of an article, you will likely find one of these notices at the top of the article.
This is an easy tag to fix. You simply need to add more references to support the content. Sounds easy, right? Well, not so fast.
Remember that you need to add reliable sources, not just sources. Many people try to fix this tag through reference bombing (adding too many references). Unfortunately, this can lead to problems as adding too many unreliable sources is worse than having an article that has too few sources.
When fixing the issues associated with this tag, I recommend removing any sources you find unreliable. Blogs, press releases, and general announcements about the company are frowned upon by Wikipedia. As such, replace these at the same time you add more reliable sources to other parts of the article.
By doing the above, there should be no issue with removing the tag.
Single Source
Continuing with sourcing issues, having a single source to support the majority of the content in an article is not a good thing. There are several reasons why.
First, Wikipedia is based on reliable sources. We all know that there are sometimes issues with sources. If we use a single source and it is not accurate, we are essentially spreading false information on Wikipedia.
There could also be biased issues with sources. You can obviously see this politically with mainstream media such as CNN and FOX. If we use one or the other, there will definitely be a bias in the Wikipedia article they are used for.
Finally, Wikipedia requires “multiple” sources to show notability of a topic. If only one reference is used, that doesn’t establish the notability of the topic.
Fixing this issue is easy as long as sources are available. Simply follow the same procedure in the previous section. Add secondary reliable sources that are independent of the topic. This one is really a no-brainer.
Primary Sources
The final sourcing issue I want to cover is that dealing with primary sources.
Again, this is an easy tag to fix. Simply replace the primary sources with secondary reliable sources.
In order to fix the tag, however, you need to understand what constitutes a primary source so you can identify and replace them.
According to Wikipedia, “primary sources are original materials that are close to an event, and are often accounts written by people who are directly involved.” For Wikipedia, these type of sources can be problematic. Wikipedia wants to document what others say about a topic, not what the people involved think of the topic.
Primary sources often lend a bias viewpoint. For instance, a company is not going to say anything bad about themselves on the company website. As such, using that type of primary source does not give any balance or neutrality to the Wikipedia page.
Always stick with secondary sources if you can. Primary sources can be used, but only sparingly and to note items of fact. For instance, you can use a company website to cite how many employees they have or the people on the board of directors.
For more information about primary sources and how to use them, Wikipedia editors put together a pretty good essay to help figure things out.
Additional Wikipedia Cleanup Templates
The amount of content already in this article could be placed into a book. In fact, the number of guidelines and policies surrounding each cleanup tag would take up volumes. While I am not going to cover them all here, I will link you to the page where all the cleanup tags are listed.
If you run into an issue with any of these tags and cannot figure out to apply it when cleaning up a company Wikipedia page, reach out and we can set up a telephone consultation to discuss.
What is Tag Bombing and What Can be Done?
I already discussed reference bombing, but what is tag bombing? Well, it is similar, but instead of someone trying to make a point about a topic being notable, an editor is trying to make a point that they don’t like the Wikipedia article.
Tag bombing is when editors place too many tags at the top of a page. Most of the time, this is done just to prove a point. It is disruptive and there is a remedy for it. You can see some of the tags are even similar so it wouldn’t require adding them both.
For instance, Wikipedia says, “there is no need to add {{citation needed}} tags to numerous unreferenced statements in an article when {{unreferenced}} or {{refimprove}} would state equivalent information.”
Tag bombing is considered disruptive editing in Wikipedia. Note that this is a behavior issue, not a content issue. While some of the tags may be justified, adding so many as to make the page look the way it does is uncalled for.
First, you should address things with the editor who left all the tags. Assume good faith as there is a chance they are unaware that it is disruptive. If you don’t get a satisfactory resolution or they act uncivil (as many people who tag bomb do), you can always bring the issue up at the administrators noticeboard where the editor could be sanctioned (including the possibility of being banned from Wikipedia).
On a final note, even though this is a behavior issue, you should be ready to clean up your company article so that any of the justified tags can be removed. For instance, if one of the tags is about using bare URLs, you should always address this issue prior to taking someone to a noticeboard. It is hard to call someone out for tag bombing if many of the tags are in fact justified.
Should You Even Try to Remove Wikipedia Cleanup Templates?
Why would I even ask such a question?
Well, keep in mind that many templates reside on pages in lieu of deletion. Here is what I mean.
If a notability tag is on a page, that means an editor feels it may not be notable for Wikipedia. There are times that a page is NOT notable but has remained in Wikipedia with that tag at the top. If you remove the tag, chances are an editor will come by and look at your edit. If they feel the tag removal wasn’t warranted, you could wind up with the page being deleted.
So, you have to ask yourself: Is a page with a tag at the top better than no page at all?
Final Thoughts on Cleaning Up a Company Wikipedia Page
First, remain calm when you see a tag on a page. This is simply a notification that something is wrong. If the issue is addressed, the tag can be removed and the page can go back to normal. You can remove Wikipedia templates yourself or request they be done once you address the issue. Just make sure that you disclose your conflict of interest in cases where such may generate more tags to the page.
Remember, this article is just a guide. Each page tag needs to be evaluated individually. There is no cookie-cutter template that you can use to create a perfect Wikipedia page. Sometimes Wikipedia cleanup templates are just par for the course and need to be tolerated, as these tags are better than having no page at all.
As always, you can reach out to me for a free evaluation on cleaning up your company Wikipedia page. Or, you can also contact me for a consultation to walk you through what can/cannot be done with your company page.