[Foundation-l] Corporate vanity policy enforcement

[GerardM]

Hoi,
When people have been removed from Wikipedia with us providing a reasonable
alternative, we have taken the moral highground. When all we can do is
destroy, there is reason to be indignant. The solution that Yellowikis
provides us with is that we provide both a "reasonable" argument and a
"reasonable" alternative.

It therefore does solve a problem; it makes us seem reasonable.

Thanks,
    GerardM

On 9/29/06, daniwo59 at aol.com <daniwo59 at aol.com> wrote:
>
> That does not solve any problems. The problem is not that they want to be
> online. Many of them have their own websites which get considerable traffic.
> The problem is that they want to be on Wikipedia. That is all they want. And
> as long as they are not on Wikipedia, they will keep coming back, regardless
> of whether they are on Yellowiki or not.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: gerard.meijssen at gmail.com
> To: foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> Sent: Fri, 29 Sep 2006 3:15 PM
> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Corporate vanity policy enforcement
>
>   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 at 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 at gmail.com
> >  To: foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> >  Cc: bpatrick at 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 at 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.
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