--- Ray Saintonge <saintonge(a)telus.net> wrote:
I certainly do not consider that a
single link to a company's website in an article about
the company should be treated as advertising.
Nor do I. This has nothing to do with the subject at hand.
To alleviate possible confusion, this was not a link to a
company's (or person's) Web site from an article about said
company or person. Nor was the link for a citation.
The practical:
What could work is a bot that identifies
external links inside main articles (but outside the
citation/external space) and auto-removes them, or at
least
lists them so admins can easily identify and
check. I
don't know why a policy abolishing external links within
the content of the article hasn't already been set.
That's easy Because there's no rational basis for such a
policy.
The policy already exists; it's purely a matter of
application. Is stopping promotional links and SEO bombing
for fan sites related to an article and serving no
referential or citational purpose irrational? If the link
shifts the NPOV weight of the article by pointing to a
"fan" site or fake blog promoting the company, including
advertisements for products, is it irrational to remove
that?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wp:npov#Undue_weight
"This applies not only to article text, but to images,
external links, categories, and all other material as
well."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wp:npov#Bias
"Commercial advertisting...."
Outside of
making it a little less user friendly in a
few
instances, it would mostly eliminate a lot of
tedious
labor
and get rid of "fan" bombing. How do
you know the
"fans"
are not shills working for an athlete's
contract agent?
How do you know that they are? The good faith assumption
is that they aren't.
And the "rational basis" for assuming "good faith" is?
FYI, the same way you "know" something else is spam or an
ad or a bomb. The point is not to let any link to be added
for any reason simply because you want to feel good. As
noted above with regard to NPOV, it needs evaluation just
like any other addition or change. Do we assume that
everything is NPOV based on "good faith"? How do we know
it isn't NPOV?
In this
case, where they attend or are alumni of the same
university they are a "fan" of, they by definition have
a
[[conflict of interest]] and shouldn't be
contributing
[[WP:OR]], whether in the form of external links or
otherwise.
A preposterous proposal. For that to be
effective you
would need to
make it mandatory for everyone to state where they
attended university
or where they have worked.
No, just if they continue to be a stakeholder in the
organization where they worked, such as a retiree or
stockholder. By definition, alumni remain stakeholders in
their university. The reputation of the university affects
the value of the degree. Besides, there are sites for
inside, anonymous [[WP:OR]], of which Wikipedia is not one.
~~Pro-Lick
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/User:Halliburton_Shill
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pro-Lick
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Pro-Lick
http://www.wikiality.com/User:Pro-Lick (Wikia supported site since 2006)
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