With some trepidation, I notify the WikiEN-l list about this blog post. I do so in the interest of some interesting Wikipedia analysis, and fair play (feel free to rip me a new one in the blog's Comments section). Here is the blog post:
http://mywikibiz-com.blogspot.com/2006/09/gaping-void-in-wikipedia.html
Kindly,
Gregory Kohs
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Gregory Kohs wrote:
With some trepidation, I notify the WikiEN-l list about this blog post. I do so in the interest of some interesting Wikipedia analysis, and fair play (feel free to rip me a new one in the blog's Comments section). Here is the blog post:
http://mywikibiz-com.blogspot.com/2006/09/gaping-void-in-wikipedia.html
Kindly,
Gregory Kohs
'Wikipedia is not an advertising service. Promotional articles about yourself, your friends, your company or products; or articles created as part of a marketing or promotional campaign, may be deleted in accordance with our deletion policies. For more information, see Wikipedia:Spam.'
In other words, your company's business model is inherently flawed, because any articles written as part of a promotional campaign (which is what your company does) will be immediately deleted.
Cynical
On Sep 19, 2006, at 5:51 PM, David Alexander Russell wrote:
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Gregory Kohs wrote:
With some trepidation, I notify the WikiEN-l list about this blog post. I do so in the interest of some interesting Wikipedia analysis, and fair play (feel free to rip me a new one in the blog's Comments section). Here is the blog post:
http://mywikibiz-com.blogspot.com/2006/09/gaping-void-in- wikipedia.html
Kindly,
Gregory Kohs'Wikipedia is not an advertising service. Promotional articles about yourself, your friends, your company or products; or articles created as part of a marketing or promotional campaign, may be deleted in accordance with our deletion policies. For more information, see Wikipedia:Spam.'
In other words, your company's business model is inherently flawed, because any articles written as part of a promotional campaign (which is what your company does) will be immediately deleted.
Umm... see how your quote from policy says "may" be deleted, and then the paragraph where you try to drive a contributor off jumps up to "will be immediately deleted?"
That's the part where you got it wrong. In reality, deleting NPOV, verifiable content on notable subjects because its creator didn't touch third base is destructive to Wikipedia, and anyone involved in it should be arbcommed. And if I'm ever made directly aware of it, they will be arbcommed.
-Phil
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Phil Sandifer wrote:
That's the part where you got it wrong. In reality, deleting NPOV, verifiable content on notable subjects because its creator didn't touch third base is destructive to Wikipedia, and anyone involved in it should be arbcommed. And if I'm ever made directly aware of it, they will be arbcommed.
Don't hold ArbCom as a threat over the heads of other editors; it doesn't work and it's not a good tactic.
And as for NPOV articles ... if someone is being paid to write articles on these businesses, it isn't going to be NPOV, but it's going to be POV in a way that you could only establish it as such if you were intimately familiar with the subject matter, or were prepared to do lots of research. That's why we have the general prohibition against publicity articles; they tend not to be NPOV, and even when they do appear to be, they likely aren't.
For instance, I could write one hell of a POV article about hypernovae that would totally discount one of the two major theories in the field as to how they occur, and yet simply by reading the article you would never know it, and it would only be after doing some in-depth study on the subject that you would realize that what I wrote was utterly not NPOV.
- -- Ben McIlwain ("Cyde Weys")
~ Ubi olim vita, nunc vita ~
On Sep 19, 2006, at 7:40 PM, Ben McIlwain wrote:
Don't hold ArbCom as a threat over the heads of other editors; it doesn't work and it's not a good tactic.
Don't threaten to remove valid content. It's an even worse tactic.
And as for NPOV articles ... if someone is being paid to write articles on these businesses, it isn't going to be NPOV, but it's going to be POV in a way that you could only establish it as such if you were intimately familiar with the subject matter, or were prepared to do lots of research. That's why we have the general prohibition against publicity articles; they tend not to be NPOV, and even when they do appear to be, they likely aren't.
Actually, all we have is a vague admonition against autobiography. It's "considered proper." Nothing else. Consider the [[Cyrus Farivar]] case - the article was started by him. But he's a notable figure, and we kept it. Likewise, if the company is notable, and nobody can find anything wrong with the article, we assume good faith and keep it.
For instance, I could write one hell of a POV article about hypernovae that would totally discount one of the two major theories in the field as to how they occur, and yet simply by reading the article you would never know it, and it would only be after doing some in-depth study on the subject that you would realize that what I wrote was utterly not NPOV.
You're right! We should make sure that people who know anything about physics topics aren't allowed to, because they'll probably just advance their own pet theories.
-Phil
On 20 Sep 2006, at 01:18, Phil Sandifer wrote:
And as for NPOV articles ... if someone is being paid to write articles on these businesses, it isn't going to be NPOV, but it's going to be POV in a way that you could only establish it as such if you were intimately familiar with the subject matter, or were prepared to do lots of research. That's why we have the general prohibition against publicity articles; they tend not to be NPOV, and even when they do appear to be, they likely aren't.
Actually, all we have is a vague admonition against autobiography. It's "considered proper." Nothing else. Consider the [[Cyrus Farivar]] case - the article was started by him. But he's a notable figure, and we kept it. Likewise, if the company is notable, and nobody can find anything wrong with the article, we assume good faith and keep it.
The important point is that enough people are editing an article to keep it neutral. If the only editor is a PR company, then there is no independent scrutiny.
I think products are easier to keep on track than companies, because more people use a product outside a company and can then independently edit.
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Phil Sandifer wrote:
Umm... see how your quote from policy says "may" be deleted, and then the paragraph where you try to drive a contributor off jumps up to "will be immediately deleted?"
That's the part where you got it wrong. In reality, deleting NPOV, verifiable content on notable subjects because its creator didn't touch third base is destructive to Wikipedia, and anyone involved in it should be arbcommed. And if I'm ever made directly aware of it, they will be arbcommed.
-Phil
Clearly my suggestion was not to delete NPOV, verifiable content but to delete content that is written as part of a promotional campaign. It was merely an assumption (based on previous examples) that an article being written by someone in the employ of the subject is unlikely to be NPOV.
Cynical
On 9/19/06, Gregory Kohs thekohser@gmail.com wrote:
With some trepidation, I notify the WikiEN-l list about this blog post. I do so in the interest of some interesting Wikipedia analysis, and fair play (feel free to rip me a new one in the blog's Comments section).
In terms of holes it isn't to bad. There are entire cities we don't include yet.
Gregory Kohs wrote:
http://mywikibiz-com.blogspot.com/2006/09/gaping-void-in-wikipedia.html
I suppose I should respond on the blog, but I'm a lazy bastard, so I'll do it here instead.
| So, tell me, then... what is inherently so evil about the | business model of MyWikiBiz.com?
Perhaps nothing, but I would counter with: "Is there anything inherently wrong with the fact that Wikipedia's coverage of individual corporate entities is not, as yet, as complete as (for example) the coverage of those entities by media devoted to the task?" And I would say, "No, absolutely not."
(In other words, while there may well be a void, is it "gaping"? I don't think so.)
On 9/19/06, Phil Sandifer Snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
On Sep 19, 2006, at 6:16 PM, Steve Summit wrote:
(In other words, while there may well be a void, is it "gaping"? I don't think so.)
Well, sure... but if we have someone willing to fix it, why would we turn them away? Are we only allowed to fix the gaping holes?
Of course not. But I think there is good reason to be suspicious when people contract Wikipedia entries to companies (for better or worse) -- it looks like a path down a road to PR firms and people using their full-time jobs towards editing agendas into Wikipedia. "Sure, there are more of us than there are of them," one could say, but then again, most of us only edit Wikipedia as a hobby.
The appeal to only the not-for-profit companies makes it sound very innocuous but if we're talking about firms, politicians, etc. it suddenly looks a little more questionable.
In the end, though, the money will find one way or another to work on Wikipedia. If Wikipedia continues to have such a high pagerank and is one of the few sites about sites that can be modified, it will no doubt become part of a standard PR campaign to slip some edits into Wikipedia, and no doubt people will be more subtle about their POV pushing as time goes on. I doubt it will ever become a place to just plaster advertisements—those are easy to spot and easy to kill—but I'm sure some sort of edits-for-hire must already be going on outside of MyWikiBiz and I'm sure there are more to come.
FF
On Sep 19, 2006, at 6:29 PM, Fastfission wrote:
I'm sure some sort of edits-for-hire must already be going on outside of MyWikiBiz and I'm sure there are more to come.
Of course there are. On top of using us to host an ARG, for political campaigning, etc. Shit happens. The thing is, we've got all the policies we need in place to deal with this - if you offer NPOV, verifiable material, we keep it. If you don't, we scrap it. No matter who you are. Thus we can stop worrying about why people are editing and just assume good faith.
This seems to me almost necessarily easier than trying to divine the intentions of all of our editors.
-Phil
--- Gregory Kohs thekohser@gmail.com wrote:
do so in the interest of some interesting Wikipedia analysis, and fair play (feel free to rip me a new one in the blog's Comments section). Here is the blog post:
http://mywikibiz-com.blogspot.com/2006/09/gaping-void-in-wikipedia.html
You have a point about the lack of business/organization depth as compared to the huge amount of fan articles, relatively few of which qualify as either [[WP:NPOV]] or [[WP:V]].
If, however, you (or another wiki business) are receiving money to give a company/organization a presence on Wikipedia, you are working as an agent of that company, making it as much a conflict of interest as if they had hired any other PR or ad firm to do it.
I don't know if this is fixable. Businesses want to make money. And so do the businesses that report on businesses. So the people who are capable of filling in the gaps actually have a motivation to decrease the amount of useful information in Wikipedia. Or, of course, not add to it.
That leaves it up to each business itself. Does it want to spend time and money including itself in Wikipedia or would it prefer to spend it on search engine manipulation and their own site. There was a clear answer to what the current preference is (i.e., not WP) elsewhere in this mailing list recently.
I think Wikipedia needs to spend some time, and donation money, on actively promoting users to go out and research and add more business articles. That or wait for market forces (like Pokemon cartoons involving coal) and the Associated Press to make each business an item of popular interest.
~~Pro-Lick http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/User:Halliburton_Shill http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Pro-Lick http://www.wikiality.com/User:Pro-Lick
--spam may follow--
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On Tue, 2006-09-19 at 17:40 -0400, Gregory Kohs wrote:
With some trepidation, I notify the WikiEN-l list about this blog post. I do so in the interest of some interesting Wikipedia analysis, and fair play (feel free to rip me a new one in the blog's Comments section). Here is the blog post:
http://mywikibiz-com.blogspot.com/2006/09/gaping-void-in-wikipedia.html
Kindly,
Gregory Kohs
This is completely off-topic, but did anyone else think of the numerous goatse vandalism incidents upon seeing this message's subject line?