Want to keep tabs on when your (or a competitor’s) Wikipedia page’s accuracy is edited? WikiAlarm.com is a free new service to allow brands and people who have Wikipedia profiles to monitor changes to their Wikipedia pages via email.
Users of WikiAlarm.com can monitor as many pages as they choose and also have the choice of adding the email addresses of colleagues so team members get the alerts as well.
WikiAlarm.com says that they are considering SMS text updates in the future if there is sufficient demand.
Why keep tabs on Wikipedia edits? Bloggers and journalists are using information from Wikipedia every day and any inaccurate information posted can be very damaging if it’s not removed immediately. If not removed, the end result could be negative Wiki Circularity. Wiki Circularity is the “self fulfilling prophecy” of the interwebs that works as follows:
- A competitor or upset former customer edits your Wikipedia page to say something bad about your company.
- Left unedited for a few weeks the information is picked up by a lazy blogger or journalist doing research for a story.
- The story then appears on a well known blog or website & the author doesn’t mention they researched the story on Wikipedia
- When you find the inaccurate article and try to edit the information on Wikipedia you find that the Wiki moderators refuse to remove it
- To add insult to injury the Wikipedia page is updated to include a link referencing the inaccurate blog or newspaper article
Furthermore, negative Wikipedia editing or Wikipedia page sabotage is a common practice in the competitive business, search and online reputation management world. I have worked with numerous clients who have been battling this phenomena for years, WikiAlarm.com fast tracks the monitoring of these edits.
