Date: Wed, 08 Nov 2006 14:16:26 -0500 From: Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] WP:COI violation

Gregory Kohs wrote: Seriously, I know I'm trolling, but come on -- can anyone else see the hypocrisy here?

Hmm, a user banned for spamming wikipedia with pr puff pieces admits that he is trolling in making a silly complaint about nothing? Yeah, I think I do see the hypocrisy.

--Jimbo

I still maintain that the Wikipedia community, in its DRV discussion of the needless delete of [[Arch Coal]] -- an article that nobody paid for at any time, since it was just an experiment (ha ha!) in testing Jimmy Wales' previous agreement with MyWikiBiz that content could be written off-Wikipedia, then scraped in by independently-acting, volunteer editors (which is exactly what happened) -- strongly suggests that the article was NOT a "pr puff piece". Why would independent editors in good standing describe the original article as:

"The content was legitimate and the article was neutral"

"The article is written in what appear to me to be neutral terms. The company itself is a shoo-in for WP:CORP, if the article is accurate, and if this had been posted by any other editor we would surely never have noticed it"

"It sounds partially like a paragraph at the end of press releases, but those do not necessarily 'plug' the company, in fact are often quite factual and NPOV"

"I've seen the article, it was a short informative and neutral article (didn't exactly have enough length in it to be POV pushing) of an obviously notable company. ...I thought that for that length, that it covered the most important aspects of the company. I know I can't have been the only one to think that the article was adequate"

"I'm not sure I'm even looking at the right article... looks like a perfectly acceptable Wikipedia article on a company to me. As for spam... what, am I gonna go out and order a million tons of coal from them to feed my power station because I've seen this humble piece on Wikipedia? Erm, no."

See for details: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Deletion_review/Log/2006... Are each of the above quotes from people who are temporarily insane, or something?

Therefore, Jimmy's ban may be illegitimate; but typical, nonetheless, of someone ruling by fiat and unwilling to listen to the community. In my estimation, Wales is simply acting pious about Wikipedia being for non-commercial use only, while he quietly supports all kinds of commercial exploitation of the domain, as long as it goes into his pocket, or that of his for-profit company. Citing the various examples here would be a waste of my energy.

I admit, I have been a royal pain since October 5th. But, if you stop and think, can you exactly blame me? You may all consider this my parting shot for the year, because there's apparently no intelligent way of getting most readers of Wikien-L to see that there has been a very poor handling of a potentially controversial subject; when, in reality, with some cooperation and a lot of transparency, MyWikiBiz could have done a great deal to help Wikipedia become a better encyclopedia. I honestly don't think that's the main mission any more. I think most of you feel Wikipedia is a "good enough" encyclopedia now, and the new mission is an elaborate game to "protect" it from evolutionary forces.

<On a Wikibreak until 2007>