Corporate Representatives for Ethical Wikipedia Engagement

Corporate Representatives for Ethical Engagement (CREWE) is a Facebook group started by Phil Gomes, senior vice-president at Edelman Digital, in January, 2012. Composed of public relations professionals and some editors, A truly serious conversation needs to happen about how communications professionals and the community can/must work together. Since recent events have thrown this issue into sharp relief, I'd like us to have an open, constructive and fair discussion about the important issues where public relations and intersect. after John Cass of NewLogic Inc. recommended the idea to him. and industry trade association the .
According to Gerard F. Corbett, CEO of PRSA, CREWE is based on four principles: It also details 's conflict of interest guidelines, best practices for editors with conflicts of interest, and controversial issues. Another page documents the CREWE PR Plan and a proposal for a pilot project that would allow PR representatives to edit articles.
Among the organization's goals are to get Jimmy Wales to change his opinion about paid editors directly editing articles (he argues it shouldn't happen) As of March 8, 2012, 's conflict of interest guideline "strongly discourages" direct editing of articles, but encourages use of article discussion pages, by editors with a conflict of interest.
Reception
After the group started, conversation on Twitter and elsewhere ensued between group members and Wales. Wales wrote:
no one in the PR industry has ever put forward a cogent argument (and seldom bother putting forward an argument at all) why it is important that they take the potentially (especially if I have anything to do with it) reputation damaging step of directly editing entries where they are acting as paid advocates. The simple and obvious answer is to do what works, without risking the reputation of the client: talk to the community, respect their autonomy, and never ever directly edit an article. There are many avenues for you to make simple factual corrections, and these avenues actually do work...What I have found - and the evidence for this is pretty comprehensive - is that people who are acting as paid advocates do not make good editors. They insert puffery and spin. That's what they do because that it is what paid advocates do.
Forbes contributor and PR/media strategist Peter Himler wrote of CREWE, "Let’s keep an eye on this, especially since Mr. Wales appears to have listened and may be poised to make some concessions to the PR industry."
Around the same time CREWE was created, a separate on- group called WikiProject Cooperation was started to provide education, oversight, assistance, and collaboration to and with paid editors.<ref name=socialfresh/>

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