Let’s talk bias. Who deems something one-sided, slanted, and sometimes even libelous?

How about your press release? What’s that you just said about your CEO? Is your product really a “the world’s most advanced…?” (insert “battery,” “fiber optic solution,” “online file-sharing…”) Is your corporate blog verging on spin, and do you let people join the conversation?

And then there’s what you’d like to maintain on Wikipedia, if not for those pesky editors.

Solomon Trujillo’s PR people are not happy. You probably may not have heard of Mr. Trujillo, unless you were in the telecom space, or peeked behind the curtain on Wikipedia now and then. On the Wikipedia entry for the new Telstra boss, there is what we now call an ‘edit war’. Someone seems to have an axe to grind about Trujillo, going back a year. “It’s hard not to have a NPOV when he has not done nothing positive,” the person says. NPOV refers to Wikipedia’s ‘Neutral Point of View’ policy. Meaning, you cannot slip in hyperbolic statements or snide attacks. If they find out you get called out. In Wikipedia’s terms, the statement:

“This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia’s quality standards.”

It’s the equivalent of the scarlet letter that screams “Bias!” I have found many Wikipedia entries with these stamps of disapproval.

Two weeks ago Tarnya Dunning, a senior PR person at Telstra tried to fix the mess, staying away from the edit war mentality saying: “I’m here to contribute information that will improve the quality of Telstra-related pages. I am aware of Wikipedia’s policies and guidelines and I will abide by them. My edits will be restricted to talk pages, and I will not engage in editing directly any Telstra-related page. Instead, I would volunteer information on the talk pages, and ask for Wikipedians’ help.”

So far no one in Wikipedia has responded. Is Wikipedia the ultimate arbiter of what’s neutral, and what’s biased?

On the other side of the coin, Telstra has had its share of social media criticism. Its blog, Nowwearetalking, which encourages a “lively informed debate” is a moderated blog. They do have a wikipedia-like policy, though which says.

“If you object to a moderator modifying your posting then it may be rejected.”

Which sound a lot like “your post may need some cleanup to meet our quality standards.”