Wikipedia:WikiProject For the Record

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Welcome to the For the Record WikiProject on the English Wikipedia! We are a group dedicated to responding to coverage of Wikipedia in the news media. If you would like to join us, please feel free to add your name to the list of project members!

This group exists to address factually inaccurate or sensationally misleading press. This includes stories that carry blatantly misleading headlines, or even flatly incorrect reporting. The goal in these cases is to contact the reporter and either have the mistakes formally corrected or, at least, ensure that they won't be repeated in future articles.

Dealing with the press requires a delicate balance. We must be prepared to respond to news stories quickly to be effective, but not at the expense of common courtesy and thoughtfulness in our responses.

This project inspired by, and much of its ideas taken from, Blake Ross and the similarly named For the Record project for Mozilla Firefox

• Andre (talk)
• Audacitor (talk)
• Pheonix15 (talk)
• Neranei (talk)
• Lando5 (talk)
• Sobar (talk)

• Digg News
• Google News
• Slashdot News
• Wikipedia Signpost, "In the News" section
• Yahoo! News (RSS feed)

Reporters are people too! They make mistakes, but they don't do it maliciously, and they don't deserve rude responses when they do. We ask you to consider the following points when contacting reporters:

• Be polite. The goal of this effort is not just to fix one-time mistakes, but to build a friendly rapport with reporters and encourage them to cover Wikipedia in the future. Remind yourself that everyone makes mistakes. Find something in the article that is accurate and balanced and consider thanking the reporter for doing his or her homework on that point.
• Be genuine. The point of this team is not to construct an image of public support ("astroturfing"). The guideline here is simple: If you don't believe that something is true, don't try to convince a reporter that it is. The other point here is that unlike actual astroturfing campaigns, there is nothing secretive about this effort. We are taking Wikipedia public relations into our own hands, and we're proud of it. At the same time, it doesn't benefit our cause to needlessly advertise this in e-mails to reporters.
• Be tactful. "I think you may have been mistaken when you wrote that..." goes a lot further than "Uh, what were you thinking when you said that ...".
• Use common sense. This includes the things that shouldn't even have to be said: write with proper spelling and grammar. Be respectful. Consider what sort of e-mail you'd like to receive if you were rushing to make 19 deadlines by close of business.

Stories which have already been responded to may be listed here, so to avoid redundancy in responses.