Is this Wikigate?

We recently posted a company profile on Wikipedia that was removed yesterday after this article appeared in MarketingSherpa. How to use Wikipedia for Lead Gen - 6 Steps to 18% Higher Conversion Rates.

Prior to the appearance of the MarketingSherpa piece, our company profile was approved by Wikipedia editors because it was straightforward content including descriptions of our product line, technology and company. We adhered to the guidelines. No hyperbole. No false claims. No competitive superiority boasts.

The listing was no different from these company descriptions.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_Apart

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlassian

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook

You can decide for yourselves. Here's a screengrab of our posting.

On our associated product category pages we even included our competitors.

Wikipedia is theoretically about respect for expertise, openness and integrity.Who knows more about the company, its technology, associated products and applications than the people who live and breathe it every day. The irony is that Attensa has its listings removed through the actions of one individual because we were transparent and telling the truth about the process.

We simply told the truth in a discussion with MarketingSherpa about how we worked with the Anvil Media team to list Attensa on Wikipedia and what happened as a result.

The reality is that Wikipedia has countless company product and other commercial listings. There are even listings describing upcoming movie releases. These are posted on Wikipedia for a simple reason - Discoverability. Believe it our not, people looking for information find these commercial content listings useful, as evidenced by the results of our case study.

I'm not sure I understand how a self-appointed truthiness hit squad make up of one self-described "notorious Wikipedia troll" has the power to determine what gets listed on Wikipedia and what doesn't. There's not much transparency there.