As far as I can tell, journal publishers have been using Wikipedia
since 2005 to promote obscure journals, and some notable journals (one
of the Trends journals is more notable by far than the others), by
using IPs or creating single purpose accounts, generally multiple
similarly named, single purpose accounts all on the same day or in a
couple of days, to edit Wikipedia articles, mostly along the lines of
inserting links to the journals, or wikilinking to articles that
contain multiple links to journals, and creating crappy articles on
the journals to buffer the internal editing. I've found 3 instances
of groups of these groups of sock puppets, leads on others, and I know
how to look for more.
It's hard for me to believe that this has ever been good for
Wikipedia, being used to send readers to specific journals when there
are other more important journals and equally important journals on
the topic. And it is hard for me to believe that my making a big deal
out of this, and of finding and deleting them is a bad thing.
But again, it's pounce on the established editor to give the spammer
and vandal every single benefit of the doubt. I'm getting tired of
being told I'm trolling because I have no tolerance for Wikipedia
being used in this way, take a chill pill, learn how to do follow the
idiotic instructions, drink tea, I'm stupid because I followed the
idiot instructions, basically I'm a worthless piece of shit editor
compared to the valuable trolls and vandals.
Really, all I do is add carefully selected references to scientific
articles--and that's some useless shit.
But I've been told it enough times now to see that I clearly am in the
wrong and am in the minority. I wish Elsevier all the luck, because
they've been invited to do as much sock puppetry as they want, while
Wikipedia administrators call those old crap non-noobie editors trolls
and run them off.
Next time someone says that articles need more references, they ought
to figure out a way to actually value editors who add
references--because as long as editors who add references are of no
value to Wikipedia compared to entrenched trolling techniques and
groups of sock puppets, it's a lie. Adding good references is not
easy, it's not fast, and it requires me to read tons of technival
literature to find useful references. In fact, it often takes me
hours to add a single reference, because I don't want to add crap.
But I should be adding crap, because people would run to my defense
rather than telling me I'm trolling.
This SEO article is too late. It's been done for years, and it's
obviously worthwhile enough to keep doing it. And nofollow doesn't
matter in the least bit, because if it did, Elsevier would not have
upped their level of spamming.
KP