On 8/9/06, Kirill Lokshin <kirill.lokshin(a)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