Is This Ethical?

Here's a scenario, your writing a paper on, oh lets say... velociraptor attacks and you need a good, well respected, reliable source for perfectly accurate, totally non-biased fact. So where do you turn, Wikipedia where else. Ok, not entirely accurate, but I am not here to debate the finer points of open source information database legitimacy. Sufficed to say people are increasingly willing to trust Wikipedia. Now with such a large, all encompassing, easily editable just about anyone can make an entry, about nearly anything.

For instance an innocent Dell computer programmer could log on to Wikipedia, only to learn that someone has accidentally misconstrued that Dell company as being slightly imperfect, naturally a problem that must be fixed. Or maybe some disgruntled Pepsi fans suddenly find out that Coke has been misconstrued as and equal beverage. Hey even the CIA is getting in on the action.

Now this may seem a tad unethical, but think about it, the fact is that Wikipedia is an incredibly inexpensive advertising tool (ok, I guess it is more like PR), to the point where it is almost stupid not to use it. All questions of ethics aside (because since when has advertising been perfectly ethical) there are fewer more cost effective ways to improve your companies image and reputation.