[WikiEN-l] Accusations of 'advertising'

[Chris Howie]

On Tue, Jun 3, 2008 at 1:38 AM, Stephen Bain <stephen.bain at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 3, 2008 at 10:02 AM, Matthew Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> I think that Wikipedia being constantly bombarded by genuine spam has
>> put us in an overly defensive mindset, which is also fed by the
>> free-software anti-commercial attitude of some contributors.  Spam is
>> when an article is created to garner publicity or hits.  It's not
>> documenting anything anyone cares about, it's instead trying to give
>> false respectability to something our readers don't want to see.
>
> Yes, in the same way that "vandal fighters" start to see vandalism
> everywhere, especially in well-meaning but in some way malformed
> contributions.

This is a very good point.  Maybe it's related to the phenomenon that
as soon as you get a new car you start seeing it everywhere...

Anyway, for the first few months it was this way for me too.  One of
the biggest helps was watching current-event articles develop.  I'd
see edits that I thought were vandalism but I'd wait and see what
happened.  Most of the time someone else would come along and salvage
some content from the edit and incorporate it.  Fascinating to watch,
especially in real-time.  It really helps you see how important
AGF/BITE are.

-- 
Chris Howie
http://www.chrishowie.com
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Crazycomputers