On Mon, Jun 2, 2008 at 5:02 PM, Matthew Brown morven@gmail.com wrote:
Going through AfD today, I was struck by frequent accusations of 'advertising' being thrown at articles about companies and commercial products, and contributors to those articles. (The case I especially noticed was [[Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Roland System-100]], but that's only one specific example; it's an endemic problem). I think this is a problem, an assumption of bad faith, and an unnecessary biting of newbies.
Interesting example. I have a dear friend whose first (and only, AFAIK) articles on WP were about specific pieces of Roland equipment. (There's actually a rather impressive collection of similar articles here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Synthesizers_by_manufacturer). It would have doubtless been pretty demoralizing for my friend, who is a hard-core free software and free culture enthusiast as well as a techno artist, if he'd be accused of "advertising" with his articles. We actually talked about it a bit and I assured him that I thought the subject was notable enough for an article.
This is truly one of those cases where the articles primarily exist for the enthusiasts, and where we should remember that Wikipedia exists for a specialist audience (in this case, electronic music geeks) as well as a general one. Articles like this are probably not the most "important" encyclopedic subjects we have; but they do make a great entrypoint for a hobbyist or professional who might not otherwise start editing. Besides, we might as well have the best online encyclopedia about synthesizers, along with everything else!
-- phoebe