On 10/22/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikispam(a)inbox.org> wrote:
I'm not sure I agree with the statement that
anyone using Wikipedia for
self-promotion should be shunned, but besides that I don't think that's
the
reason most of this information gets added. If I
didn't know it would be
deleted, I would have added information to Wikipedia about many of my
favorite indie bands. I wouldn't do this to promote them, but I'd do it
for
the same reason I add information about anything
else - I think it's
information that someone else might be interested in.
I really don't see how it promotes the band to write an article on
[[Willy
on Wheels Garage Band]] anyway. No one is going
to come across that
article
unless they search for "Willy on Wheels
Garage Band".
Perhaps this is even more clear with regard to the articles that I'd
write
about more often if I knew that they wouldn't
be deleted - software
programs. I'd love it if Wikipedia had an article on every single P2P
software program out there: big or small, good or bad, open source or
proprietary. I'm not doing it because I want to promote the software. In
fact, I think it's as important to have an NPOV article about software
that
sucks so that I can read it and know not to
bother downloading the crap.
Maybe that stuff doesn't belong in an encyclopedia. Maybe I should argue
for
freshwikimeat.com
<http://freshwikimeat.com> <http://freshwikimeat.com>.
But it has
nothing to do with
self-promotion or any other type of promotion.
Now, the average reader doesn't care about this problem because they are
> only interested in th quality of the articles they are actually
> searching for. Does that mean notability has nothing to do with
quality?
No, I
don't think so. But it doesn't mean it does, either.
- Ryan
_______________________________________________
It may not be effective promotion, but it's about the intent, not the
effect. Besides, any such article about a regular unremarkable band is
eating server resources. One wouldn't be a problem, but if you allow
one why not the other and soon we've got a whole bunch of them.
Keeping such bands would set a bad precedent.
--Mgm
I think you're wrong about the intent of most contributors, though. And if
keeping one article on an unremarkable band would set a precedent, and bring
more articles on bands, I see that as a good precedent, not a bad one.
One wouldn't be a problem, and neither would ten thousand. We've got
thousands of articles on unremarkable cities, and I don't see a problem with
that either.
Anthony