A dull but worthy topic you might think. Not one bit. Wikipedia is a top ranking site for search. It frequently takes the number one slot in Bing and Google search results, Alexa ranks it as one of the top ten sites on the Internet, and its credibility makes it a starting point for internet research.

Wikipedia is a community. As Julio Romo highlights PRs can register as contributors but must follow Wikipedia’s guidelines:

• Contributions or edits must have a neutral point of view and no conflict of interest
• Content must be verifiable
• Articles must not contain new analysis or synthesis

It’s the first issue: neutrality and conflict where the PR industry falls down.

Wikipedia has published guidelines for the PR industry. In its Social Media Guidelines published last year the CIPR advises that PR practitioners seeking to update a Wikipedia entry on behalf of a client should work with an editor to update the relevant page per the CIPR’s Social Media Guidelines.

This is social media at its most social. The ultimate arbiter is the community. If anyone makes a contribution that the Wikipedia community deems to breach the guidelines it will be removed. To misquote James Grunig or more recently Philip Sheldrake, it’s a platform for symmetrical communication.

But Phil Gomes and Stuart Bruce don’t think the existing Wikipedia guidelines are sufficient. Gomes cites company data and information that is out-of-date and Bruce reckons that the very community nature of Wikipedia is the natural playing field of activists.

In a response on Gomes’ blog Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales says that he has yet to hear a cogent argument for PR practitioners to directly edit entries. He says paid advocates don’t make good editors because they insert spin.

“The simple and obvious answer is to do what works, without risking the reputation of the client: talk to the community, respect their autonomy, and never ever directly edit an article,” he said.

Wikipedia agreed last Thursday to meet with representatives of the CIPR to develop clearer guidance on this issue. Ahead of that meeting Philip Sheldrake has, appropriately enough, developed a wiki page on the CIPR Social Media wiki to kick off the discussion.

“While I applaud [the inconvenient PR truth] initiative, I’m not totally convinced about either the approach or if it will work. It also fails to mention the elephant in the room – the media database companies.”

Perhaps we can learn from network theory? Media databases are a form of automation that promote mechanical networks. They enable PR executives to distribute press releases to lists of journalists with whom they have no prior relationship.

To follow the network argument through to its conclusion means building knowledge of the media that you’re targeting and forging organic relationships.

The rise of blogs and proliferation of traditional media means research and relationship building is more important than ever. The answer lies in balancing the efficiency of databases while maintaining relevance and building organic relationships.

(Also posted on The Inconvenient PR Truth blog).

Anthropologists and historians in the future looking back on the 21^st century will have an easy job. A cross section of life is laid out in blogs, Flickr Twitter, Facebook and forums.

We’re micro-blogging more than ever but are blogging less. Robert Scoble and Steve Rubel are among the A list bloggers that have switched from blogging to so-called lifestreaming.

Ged Carroll notes that Robert Scoble has seen a dramatic drop in readership since his move towards lifestreaming.

Little wonder. Lifestreaming is dull. Most people simply don’t have interesting enough lives. At best it’s a sequential record of random events recorded in a sentence or an image. To claim its anything else misses the point.

My use of Flickr is the closest I get to lifestreaming. To anyone outside my immediate network of family and friends my stream of images is boring as hell. But I make no apologies. It’s a personal record and it’s not intended to engage.

Ged reckons that blogging has passed through the hype cycle and is maturing. He’s spot on.

“Over the past ten years or so, we have seen blogging climb to what can be reasonably considered to be a peak of unrealistic expectations and it could be considered to heading towards a trough of disillusionment.”

Likewise Stuart Bruce says blogging – not lifestreaming – is the way forward if you want to develop thought leadership. He makes the point that blogs are far more Google friendly than micro-blogs.

Take note.