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@gmail.com wrote:
On 9/3/07, Durova nadezhda.durova@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@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l