TORONTO – With Cybernet Expo a few short months away, it seems outrageous that in 2009, the adult industry has failed to form its own core users group on the popular online encyclopedia Wikipedia.With that in mind, perhaps the most important task at hand for attendees this year is to get their heads out of the sand and begin the process of including an increased focus on Wikipedia and Wikimedia associated websites. If you’ve been under a rock for the last five years, Wikipedia is the world’s largest encyclopedia – and good news for webmasters – it is both free to edit and uses open-source. Free as in beer and open-source as in a user-friendly version of PHP. That’s a pretty sweet combination for any webmaster.

Despite the fact that the adult industry comprises a considerable portion of the world’s economy, the business itself is under-represented on Wikipedia. With everyone and their mother snagging encyclopedic space and the credibility associated with being the first to create a new entry, it seems unlikely that normally astute and trendy adult webmasters would fail to see the opportunities available through good Wiki recording.

Now I first struck out to begin research on another article for YNOT by thinking that most adult industry news sites, affiliates and webmasters would have already carved out an important presence on Wikipedia. To my surprise, even YNOT News was unlisted on Wikipedia. So where to begin? Bang, I called up Darklady and Connor Young and joined the YNOT crew to crank out the first entry for the team at Wikipedia – found at YNOT News on Wikipedia.

Then I began to mull things over a bit. Why not expand the presence of the adult industry on Wikipedia by tenfold? There are legions of individual webmasters and original Web concepts that have been born exclusively to the adult industry and go unreported in an encyclopedic format. There is no good reason why the sex industry Wiki should remain scientifically boring.

So after fine tuning a few other sites and pushing out the aforementioned YNOT entry, I created a new WikiProject – that is – a place for collaborators to discuss and create new entries into WikiPedia. You can find that entry at WikiProject: Adult industry.

Now it would probably behoove many webmasters to at least join the project and begin their own interpretation of what I hope will increase the legitimacy of this business. Sure it’s one thing to be as gung-ho as I am on this end, but as the saying goes – it takes two to tango. That said, sit back for a moment and consider some of these concepts before unleashing yourself on Wikipedia.

Wikipedia is not for advertising. Right off the bat, you’ll be banned if you enter in anything resembling blatant advertising for your company or website. You can’t simply enter “website.com” as an entry and expect it not to be deleted within an hour. Wikipedia is made up of thousands of administrators and hundred of thousands of members who pay attention to a crucial, if not sometimes annoying, belief that all entries should be specifically encyclopedic. Understandably, that creates a bit of a conflict sometimes.

Wikipedia is easy to use. Simply use the search box to search for an entry. If it isn’t found, find the section of the page in big bold letters that says “create the page”, you’ll most likely want to start with a fresh username, and don’t use a website name to designate your editor nickname. Wikipedia is made up of a limited source code that is mostly reconstituted plain English PHP and a WYSIWYG editors box. Just by observing another entry through the “Edit This Page”, you can get the feel of how your entry should look. Find an administrator if you’re having trouble, but keep in mind that most won’t be friendly to adult webmasters, so pick and choose who you contact with a grain of salt. You can create an easy entry without template boxes or infoboxes (more on those options later in this series), but make sure you include some references via the tags in order to verify the source material. You should also make sure to include a “See also” link and an “External links” subtitle to allow your listing to exxxpand naturally and appear the same as other entries in the encyclopedia.