[WikiEN-l] Accusations of 'advertising'

[phoebe ayers]

On Mon, Jun 2, 2008 at 5:02 PM, Matthew Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
> Going through AfD today, I was struck by frequent accusations of
> 'advertising' being thrown at articles about companies and commercial
> products, and contributors to those articles.  (The case I especially
> noticed was [[Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Roland System-100]], but
> that's only one specific example; it's an endemic problem).  I think
> this is a problem, an assumption of bad faith, and an unnecessary
> biting of newbies.

Interesting example. I have a dear friend whose first (and only,
AFAIK) articles on WP were about specific pieces of Roland equipment.
(There's actually a rather impressive collection of similar articles
here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Synthesizers_by_manufacturer).
It would have doubtless been pretty demoralizing for my friend, who is
a hard-core free software and free culture enthusiast as well as a
techno artist, if he'd be accused of "advertising" with his articles.
We actually talked about it a bit and I assured him that I thought the
subject was notable enough for an article.

This is truly one of those cases where the articles primarily exist
for the enthusiasts, and where we should remember that Wikipedia
exists for a specialist audience (in this case, electronic music
geeks) as well as a general one. Articles like this are probably not
the most "important" encyclopedic subjects we have; but they do make a
great entrypoint for a hobbyist or professional who might not
otherwise start editing. Besides, we might as well have the best
online encyclopedia about synthesizers, along with everything else!

-- phoebe