[WikiEN-l] How Sabotage Wikipedia, for SEO spammers

[Jay Litwyn]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Skyring" <skyring at gmail.com>
To: "English Wikipedia" <wikien-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
Sent: Wednesday, November 26, 2008 9:07 AM
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] How to sabotage Wikipedia, for SEO spammers


> On Thu, Nov 27, 2008 at 2:18 AM, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>> http://www.bluehatseo.com/how-to-overthrow-a-wikipedia-result/
>>
>> What an odious person.
>>
>>
>> - d.
>
> Well, it depends on your viewpoint. From his point of view, the idea
> is to rank a Wikipedia page down so a given page rises above it, and
> he provides tactics on how to do this. The fact that this damages
> Wikipedia is irrelevant.

I'm glad they're not manipulating the ratings themselves. I'm more than 
happy to put a project's rating template in and give it the best of my 
judgement, and I've never argued with someone else's rating, except upward. 
I did not add the CompSci template to [[gossip protocol]], and I am not 
finished with it, either. It won't get a high rating for importance, because 
it is only theory.

> In fact, within Wikipedia you get a lot of similar activity from
> POV-warriors. Their aim is to present polemic rather than information.
> A minor example of this can be found at Alex Jones (radio host). The
> guy's a nut of the first order, but he's got a string of defenders,
> often anons, who remove any criticism of their hero. Of course
> Wikipedia is part of the conspiracy to discredit him and these guys
> are just setting the record strait.

There is so much of a record in a radio host that won't matter in two years 
that I wouldn't pay much attention. Shock jock, newscaster, opinion 
columnist -- don't care. That guy who does "The Rest of The Story" will 
persist beyond his death.

> I'm sure everyone on this list has their own favorite example article,
> where POV ducklings nibble away at objectivity, hoping to remain under
> the radar.

Weasel words [[ad populum]] and other stilts (clues about POV) go in and out 
of [[prion]], and there does not seem to be much to know about prions. A 
great many people can conceive of self-modification with only protein. I 
cannot, and it is out of my field, so I do not really know. Maybe I should 
get Brown's book. I wonder if it's in the library. I got into wikipedia, 
because of [[prion]] in the Oxford dictionary of Phrase and Fable. I want to 
take out every mention of "hypothesis" from [[prion]], except ones in a 
section header.