On 8/9/06, Kirill Lokshin kirill.lokshin@gmail.com wrote:
I would argue that this goes back to that whole "bringing the project into disrepute" thing that's come up a few times now. It may very well be that his articles are perfectly fine (although I suspect that many are quite borderline in terms of either reliable outside sources or notability); but the issue is the *appearance* of impropriety more so than the contents of the articles themselves. We cannot afford to leave the public with the impression that certain articles are in Wikipedia only because money has changed hands to keep them there; the way MyWikiBiz was being advertised gave precisely that impression -- regardless of whether he was actually following notability guidelines or not! (Indeed, promises like "If your organization is deemed non-notable, your payment will be immediately refunded" are probably *more* problematic, as they are likely to be interpreted as giving a pretty obvious motivation to make sure that the article sticks around.)
-- Kirill Lokshin
But this is a poor argument for indef blocking a user, appearances is. If we cared about appearance more than substance, Wikipedia'd never have been a wiki in the first place. I really doubt that the public cares whether certain articles may've been kept because of money when they are more concerned about the quality of articles to begin with (and then about stability and then about features or aspects of the community or then... heck, when it comes to appearances, people are far more concerned about vandalism - now there's something that really can change the apperance of Wikipedia, quite literally).
~maru