On Thu, Jan 5, 2017 at 8:33 PM Risker risker.wp@gmail.com wrote:
I do not know enough about how other Wikipedias handle such spam, although I have heard from some people editing on some projects that similar articles there would be speedy-deleted without a second thought. I do not think that it is likely that English Wikipedia will get to that point unless more people who feel strongly about spam actively participate at AfD.
AfD is one end of the problem; it is worth recognizing that the other end is English Wikipedia's notability policy, and specifically the General Notability Guideline ([[WP:GNG]]).
As you anticipate, some other wikis handle this sort of spam differently, and the first (and effective) line of defense is their notability policy. On my home wiki (Hebrew Wikipedia), for example, the notability threshold for commercial ventures of any kind (including even international corporations) is fairly high, so that a business needs to have created or achieved something notable, or to have been involved in notable events, for an article about it to be considered notable. This, coupled with the lack of the GNG in Hebrew (i.e. it is *not* enough to have two reliable sources independent of the subject to achieve notability), weeds out a very large proportion of the commercial spam that people attempt to introduce to Hebrew Wikipedia.
This is obviously not the venue to review English Wikipedia's policy, and I recognize that the thread's topic is a call to action by WMF, aimed at the board. But since Risker specifically identified "more participation at AfD" as a key to achieving change, I thought it worthwhile to offer context about another possible (and not necessarily easier to effect) lever of change, viz. notability policy reform.
Cheers,
A.