Hoi, By saying that we are big and they are small, it must be clear that it is NOT a solution right ??. So the solution is to be blunt and destroy all the effort that these people did put into what they hoped to be acceptable for Wikipedia.
By moving it to Yellowikis, Yellowikis gets content that it wants to have; their content is GFDL as well so there is NO problem in doing exactly this. By providing an alternative we give less of a reason to complain and we provide Yellowikis with the content that is what they are there for. What you could appreciate is that by having such a teflon strategy, we will be better able to ruthlessly remove from Wikipedia what is not encyclopedic in the first place.
Thanks, GerardM
daniwo59@aol.com wrote:
What Gerard suggests is NOT a solution. There are reasons people are spamming Wikipedia and not adding content to Yellowiki. We are the fourteenth largest website in the world, while Yellowiki does not count in the top one hundred thousand. We have a consistently high google rating and our links ensure that they will have a high google rating, Yellowiki does not. We can offer some modicum of respectability, while they cannot Compare these two statements: "Look at me! I'm in the encyclopedia!" v. "Look at me! I'm in the phonebook! "
The fact is that they do not want to be on Yellowiki, which no one has ever heard of. They want to be on Wikipedia, which is a household name. And for that we need real solutions.
Danny
-----Original Message----- From: gerard.meijssen@gmail.com To: foundation-l@wikimedia.org Cc: bpatrick@wikimedia.org Sent: Fri, 29 Sep 2006 1:48 PM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Corporate vanity policy enforcement
Hoi, There are two issues that may be addressed. There is an apparant need for organisations to be VISIBLE. They want to use Wikipedia for that while we do not consider them to be of relevance in an encyclopedic setting. The content that they created would be of some value to Yellowikis. This is where this information is welcomed.
By moving it sideways, we do exactly what is current practice for other content that does not fit Wikipedia. We are not as confrontational as we could be, but the teflon quality of our projects would be increased and this may lead to fewer angry people in our projects as well.
PS I am totally behind the notion that we should not have non-encyclopedic content in Wikipedia.. for me it is a matter of strategy.
Thanks, GerardM
On 9/29/06, Jeffrey V. Merkey jmerkey@wolfmountaingroup.com wrote:
Brad,
One very easy solution to all of this is to segregate the live edited wikipedia site from the published site scraped by the search engines.
In other words, setup the community server "anyone can edit" at something like draften.wikipedia.org and publish reviewed dumps of the community server to a read only external server for scraping like I am doing at Wikigadugi. I have ZERO vandalism problems , ZERO content dispute problems, and ZERO vanity page problems and I host the entire English wikipedia as well as several other languages.
Very simple solution. People won't waste the time creating vanity pages when they know they may not get published in the "official" external official site.
Jeff
Brad Patrick wrote:
Brad Patrick wrote:
Dear Community:
The volume of corporate vanity/vandalism which is showing up on Wikipedia is overwhelming. At the office, we are receiving dozens of phone calls *per week* about company, organization, and marketing edits which are reverted, causing the non-notable, but self-aggrandizing authors, to scream bloody murder. This is as it should be. However, I am issuing a call to arms to the community to act in a much more draconian fashion in response to corporate self-editing and vanity page creation. This is simply out of hand, and we need your help.
We are the #14 website in the world. We are a big target. If we are to remain true to our encyclopedic mission, this kind of nonsense cannot be tolerated. This means the administrators and new page patrol need to be clear when they see new usernames and page creation which are blatantly commercial - shoot on sight. There should be no question that someone who claims to have a "famous movie studio" and has exactly 2 Google hits - both their Myspace page - they get nuked. Ban users who promulgate such garbage for a significant period of time. They need to be encouraged to avoid the temptation to recreate their article, thereby raising the level of damage and wasted time they incur.
Some of you might think regular policy and VfD is the way to go. I am here to tell you it is not enough. We are losing the battle for encyclopedic content in favor of people intent on hijacking Wikipedia for their own memes. This scourge is a serious waste of time and energy. We must put a stop to this now. Thank you for your help.
-Brad Patrick User:BradPatrick Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.