How we work

One rule runs through every engagement: we work with you, and you post your draft or your suggestion for community review. Neither of us edits an article directly, ever. It is the reason our work is welcome on Wikipedia, and the reason it lasts.

Sources decide

Content enters an article only with independent, reliable sourcing behind it, and it leaves only when its citation fails. Press releases, company bios, court dockets, and interviews the subject arranged can all verify a fact, but none of them can establish that a subject deserves an article. For that, it takes journalism.

The same rule protects you. Well-sourced criticism stays in the article, and a request to remove it would cost you credibility with every reviewer. What we do instead is add the sourced context and the aftermath, and argue for proportion where the coverage supports it.

We never edit on your behalf

WikiBlueprint does not touch Wikipedia during an engagement, which means no article edits, no Talk page posts, no replies to editors, and no requests filed in our name. We do the deep research, the strategy, the analysis, and the drafting with you until you are comfortable. Then you submit the draft for review, or post the suggested change on the article's Talk page, under your own account and with a disclosure of your affiliation, and engage with the community under our close and constant guidance. Volunteer editors decide what goes into the article; neither of us edits it directly. We are on a video call when you click submit, and we stay beside you through the end of review.

This is what Wikipedia's conflict-of-interest guideline asks for. It also leaves a public record your organization controls and can stand behind, in your own name, with nothing hidden.

Jake explainsNeutrality

0:52

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Wikipedia works on controversial subjects. So you would think that Barack Obama would be either swayed really far left, or maybe there'd be huge pushback and it'd be really far right. But there was an academic study that showed that the articles on Bush and Obama were some of the most neutral, by political science standards, of all articles, period.

And how do we explain that? Well, I use this analogy of a flagpole. There's not a perfectly neutral person on high who just puts the flagpole in straight. The flagpole gets pushed on one side by somebody, and then on another side by someone else, and then 300 or 400 people push on their sides, and it stands up straight because of that dynamic equilibrium.

Jake explainsConflict of interest

0:47

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Don't write about yourself. Don't write about your company or organization, and try not to engage in outright advocacy of any kind, but especially if you have a personal and financial stake in it. And by personal, I mean like my brother is running for city council, or my best friend started this company. So that's my kind of just caution.

Conflict of interest is something that needs to be handled very intelligently and thoughtfully. And it can be done. There's good guidance about it, and there's rules for how to be responsible with a conflict of interest. You basically just disclose it and say, yeah, he's my brother. And then you go do what you're going to do, and people give you extra scrutiny because of it.

What we control, and what we do not

Ours

The quality of the draft, the strength of the sourcing, the completeness of the disclosure, and the conduct in every exchange with editors: these are what decide whether a proposal is accepted, and we take responsibility for all of them.

Wikipedia's

When the review happens, and how it comes out. Volunteers work on their own schedule and weigh coverage differently from one another, and pushing them to move faster works against you; patience and policy are what move a request. That is why the fee pays for the work and the process.

Jake explainsThe community

1:20

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Wikipedia is a top-ten website in the world, and the only nonprofit, by far, in the top ten. So how could this work? How could this possibly work? Because Wikipedia, anyone, anywhere can edit it. Any page, almost any page. In spirit and in theory, it's open to everyone.

And I want to emphasize that Wikipedia is, well, there's different analogies for it. The one that I used most recently was: it's like an enormous freaking beehive. And any bee can join. And once you're there, you're all getting little jobs. Some people are getting pollen, and some people are puking up honey, and some people are making honeycomb. And the result is this nectar of knowledge.

But what it means is that it's self-organizing; it's emergent organization. It's not ruled by fiat; there's no dictator. There are very few people with advanced powers in the community. I'm one of them, but it means nothing.

And so you have this ecosystem, this network, this thriving beehive. And the beehive protects itself against outsiders, and the beehive also protects itself against insiders who are not doing the right thing.

Bright lines

A short set of rules we hold without exception, so you know what you are getting and can rely on it.

We do not edit Wikipedia on a client's behalf. We work with you; you submit drafts and suggestions for the community to review, and nobody edits the article directly. Undisclosed paid editing leads to deletion, to account blocks that follow the company, and in exposed cases to press coverage that becomes its own crisis.
We do not write promotional copy. Marketing language is the fastest way to get a draft turned away, and reviewers compare every proposed sentence against its source.
We do not remove properly sourced criticism. Wikipedia is not a reputation-management service, and treating it as one breaks a client's standing with every reviewer.
We do not promise outcomes or timelines the community does not control. Review timing and outcome belong to the volunteer community, and they are out of our hands. Editors review on their own schedule and weigh sources differently from one another; a consultant who guarantees a result is selling something the rules do not allow. The fee pays for the work and the process.
We do not use AI to write Wikipedia content for publication. Every edit has a human author who stands behind it.

We work inside Wikipedia's rules because articles built any other way do not last. We do not edit without disclosure. We do not write promotional copy. We do not promise outcomes the community would not endorse.

The difference a consultant makes

Plenty of services offer to create a Wikipedia page for a few hundred dollars, and many people come to us after trying one. The trouble is not the price; it is that an article built outside the guidelines gets deleted and leaves a record that makes the next attempt harder. What helps is time spent inside Wikipedia's community and a habit of working within its rules. We are a founder-led team by design: veteran editors and administrators, an academic librarian who runs research, and two engineers, and the people whose names are on the work are the people doing it.

Two essays say more:

We have accomplished projects that would have been impossible to complete without him. Jake has a way of bringing out the best in people, pulling people from varying backgrounds and perspectives and getting them to work together effectively.
James Heilman, Wiki Project Med Foundation

Jake is an exceptional open knowledge advocate, practitioner, and strategist. He doesn't just walk the talk, he inspires and supports entire communities as he does so. Jake is keenly able to put both technical and non-technical folks at ease.
Anasuya Sengupta, Whose Knowledge?

If this is how you would want to be treated, we should talk.

Send the name of the company, person, or institution and we reply with a short set of questions, then a notability analysis or a scoping call.

Get in touch