Why not make it a bit more difficult for them to do their foul play? Maybe
enwiki needs a stricter rule enforcement system for sources in articles
about promotion-worthy entities like living people, existing
businesses/organizations, etc. Just allow only external, reliable, and
confirmable sources and throw everything else out. Even if it is plausible.
No exceptions. Of course, someone would need to go through all articles in
question... And check the noteworthiness of the entities while you're at
it. :) It's some work, but I think it's worth the efforts.
Why not make it an event, maybe even with a little prize for people who
throw out the most unsourced statements in such articles. ;) But jokes
aside. Seriously, there could be (and I guess is) a large number of
paid-edited promotional pieces of text in enwiki (and certainly other
language versions, too). Get rid of it the hard way, otherwise the problem
won't go away, but grow by the day.
Th.
2015-09-03 2:07 GMT+02:00 James Heilman <jmh649(a)gmail.com>om>:
Yes some interesting comment by Trillium. Where the
articles mainly
promotional? Yes very. A number of them were copied and pasted from press
releases by the companies in question.
Were a number of the editors from the developing world? Also yes. This is
because they are willing to work for less and Orangemody was hiring from
sites like Elance.
I guess the fundamental question is, is Wikipedia a workspace to provide
employment for those in the developing world who are willing to do PR piece
work for some unknown PR firm? Or is Wikipedia an encyclopedia.
--
James Heilman
MD, CCFP-EM, Wikipedian
The Wikipedia Open Textbook of Medicine
www.opentextbookofmedicine.com
As of July 2015 I am a board member of the Wikimedia Foundation
My emails; however, do not represent the official position of the WMF
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