In other words, we're going to have to patrol Thai geography articles for promotional language and how-to sections. Great. On Feb 6, 2008 7:13 AM, Waerth &lt;waerth(a)asianet.co.th&gt; wrote: > Whole story: http://www.bangkokpost.com/Business/06Feb2008_biz51.php > > > > - The Wiki Mission for Thailand will attempt to involve travellers in > improving and editing all of the information about Thailand on > Wikipedia.org and Wikitravel.org.The TAT also aims to help members of > the local travel and tourism > <http://www.bangkokpost.com/Business/06Feb2008_biz51.php#> industry by > allowing them to post details of their travel products, deals and > related information online. More details are available at the TAT's main > online portal, http://www.tourismthailand.org > _______________________________________________ > Wikipedia-l mailing list > Wikipedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l >

Knowing a little bit about TAT practices I do not know how happy we would be ;) Waerth _______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l

Florence Devouard wrote: That what I would call the optimistic view. But I have seen the first edits yesterday - three out of four editing the wrong article, the one about the town instead of the province which they planned to do, and all the text sounds like it comes from a tourist brochure, with very POV statements. So I had to reword (and thereby shorten) the text completely, work it into the existing text to remove duplicates, as they did not care at all that there was other text before. I am talking about [[Petchabun Province]], the other three misguided edits went to [[Pathum Thani]], [[Narathiwat]] and [[Songkhla]]. Also, many of the photos uploaded seem to be copyright violations, or at least uploaded without understanding the license stuff at all. The worst - I have tried to talk with each of the new contributors, and they all seem to either not understand at all what that yellow bar "you have new messages" means, as they just continued despite my revert and notification. BTW - they did hire students for doing the edits, it is not done by TAT employees directly, though I wonder if anyone at TAT ever tried to edit before making this press release, or they are ignorant on how Wikipedia works and just know that "everyone can edit" and thought that'd be a good idea for spreading their brochure texts. I have sent an email to the contact listed on the TAT announcement page http://www.tourismthailand.org/news/release-content-466.html yesterday to offer my help in making them edit without disrupting, cleanwashing articles or turning encyclopedic articles into tourist brochures, so far I did not get a reply yet. But I still hope that if handled correctly the TAT could really help to contribute on the articles. Andreas Hoerstemeier --- [[User:Ahoerstemeier]] http://tambon.blogspot.com _______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l

J.L.W.S. The Special One wrote: Of course I try to work them into what we already have. But if I add something into the article on New York City about a place in upstate New York, which is already covered in that article, then it can be simply removed - which is what I did for the three town articles. For those texts about the national parks in Phetchabun, I rewrote them completely as they are IMHO salvageable in the way they were added. I guess it'd help if you first look into the editing histories before just giving the standard answer. I worked on the articles on Thai topics for several years already, so I think I know what I am writing about... Andreas Hoerstemeier ---

BTW - they did hire students for doing the edits, it is not done by TAT employees directly, though I wonder if anyone at TAT ever tried to edit before making this press release, or they are ignorant on how Wikipedia works and just know that "everyone can edit" and thought that'd be a good idea for spreading their brochure texts. I have sent an email to the contact listed on the TAT announcement page http://www.tourismthailand.org/news/release-content-466.html yesterday to offer my help in making them edit without disrupting, cleanwashing articles or turning encyclopedic articles into tourist brochures, so far I did not get a reply yet. But I still hope that if handled correctly the TAT could really help to contribute on the articles. Andreas Hoerstemeier ---

Waerth wrote: I wasn't expecting much, but apparently this time they are more aware, because I received a reply from the person in charge. He is also editing on Wikipedia as [[User:Borndistinction]]. Those edits I suspected to be the beginning of this WIkiMission are in fact not from TAT, it was just a coincidence that at the same time they did that press release something like a school project starts. But I'd need quite some help to sort out the mess from that project - most photos uploaded are probably copyright violations, the new texts have to be completely reworded, duplications removed, etc. But back to the TAT WikiMission. They plan to add stuff about the tourism-related topics only, they don't plan to delete criticism (which was the most serious worry) or insert any commercial things. The whole project is just in its beginnings, they are still gathering the information and anyone who would like to help them "doing the right thing" is invited to contact the above mentioned user - I certainly volunteered already to give my input. It seems to me that the press release from TAT was somewhat premature, maybe it would have been better to contact Wikipedia before and then make sure the press release deals with the anticipated points of concern. I am now much more optimistic this can become something which will help both the Wikipedia coverage on Thai topics as well as TAT's mission to have Thailand well-presented on the web. [[User:Ahoerstemeier]] _______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l

they can now ask for funding from TAT for bringing out this sort of knowledge.

Steven Walling wrote: And what is the difference, compared to yesterday? This sort of initiative is something we must expect at all times from tourist agencies, marketing bureuas, political think-tanks, religious cults, ... from everywhere. That hasn't changed one bit. The real difference from yesterday is that the TAT *annouced* their initiative so that *we can know* about it. That is an opportunity for us to bring out information about how one can work smoothly with Wikipedia, educating marketing people about our licenses, guidelines, policies and ethics. If there is a Thai chapter of the WMF (is there?) they can now ask for funding from TAT for bringing out this sort of knowledge. -- Lars Aronsson (lars(a)aronsson.se) Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se _______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l

>they can now ask for funding >from TAT for bringing out this sort of knowledge.

You're saying it's okay for local chapters to take funds from promotional agencies for improvement of specific articles? Not okay. Donations are fine. But with paid contributions we lost any credibility we had with the public.