[WikiEN-l] SEO

[David Goodman]

There are several hundred major university libraries, each of which
has significant collections on probably a few thousand of the topics
covered in wikipedia. Wikipedia is not WorldCat. Truly distinctive
collections are  another matter; I think we might well be able to
justify articles on some of the most famous. The strongest library
collections o=n a subject might well bean appropriate section of an
article or conceivably an article, but this should be done from a
subject point of view, with objective consideration of all the
libraries, not by the addition by individual libraries of its name
wherever possible. That's like a university adding its name to every
subject where it offers a degree--that's been tried as well.

Academic journals on a subject are listed in a page usually called
something like List of journals in chemistry (etc); they lists include
those thought important enough to be in wikipedia, for many of which
the articles are still being written. There will be a few cases where
a particular journal is worth citing as a whole as a key source of
information--there will certainly not be many. Probably not a single
one of the ones spammed would be in this exalted group. The
distinctive nature of a journal is that it is the individual  articles
that are relevant to a subject--when they are, the articles will be
cited among the references to a subject article--and so they are.  If
a section is to be prepared of the key journals in a subject, which is
certainly acceptable, then they must be selected by objective criteria
and not the random addition by commercial spammers.

In this particular case, I am working with the representative of one
of the companies to try to identify the spammer. The company was quite
startled that the activity was being done, and is instructing its
staff to never edit WP anonymously or without declaration of their
COI.



On 9/5/07, phoebe ayers <phoebe.wiki at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/3/07, Durova <nadezhda.durova at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> > Where were you shot down for trying to stop journals from spamming?
> > Although actual referencing is welcome, spam is still spam.  I favor a
> > softer approach with this sort of poster because there's a better
> > possibility that the individual will become a useful contributor, but I
> > also
> > recall a deliberate and rather baldfaced campaign by one university
> > library
> > to boost its site traffic by adding low quality links to Wikipedia
> > articles.
> >
> > -Durova
>
>
> Citation? I'm curious about the campaign you mention... Adding links to
> relevant online library collections in appropriate articles is something
> I've advocated for in the past; certainly having links to good resources
> (which libraries often provide) is good for Wikipedia. And while I do
> appreciate KP's de-spamming efforts, the "further reading" section has a
> place.... providing a list of academic journals on a topic as broad as "food
> safety" doesn't seem unreasonable. The contributor's actions seemed
> confused, but not necessarily like true spam. A new contributor wouldn't
> really know about the discussions that happen elsewhere, would they?
>
> -- phoebe
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


-- 
David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S.