[Foundation-l] Free advertising on Wikipedia

Sun Apr 30 22:10:50 UTC 2006

Over the past few weeks, OTRS has seen quite a few messages concerning  
companies that are putting information about themselves onto Wikipedia for  
advertising purposes, insisting that it is their right to do this. An article in  an 
online SEO (search engine optimization) magazine described how to mine  
wikipedia to get web traffic. We have had emails from such diverse groups as  talent 
agencies (we will take the copyright off our own website, as long as it  is 
included in Wikipedia), a Dominatrix, a vaporizer (I have no choice but to  
keep inserting my links on your site so as to fend off the competitors), and  
many others. In fact, this appears to be a growing trend in Wikipedia, as is  
evidenced by similar phone calls to the office (I did not write the article  
about my, my PR firm wrote it, and I paid them good money so you can't take it  
off). Shoppingtelly.uk has written that as long as we allow links to the BBC,  
they will insist on their "rights" to put links to their site on Wikipedia. 

This is a worrying trend on the English Wikipedia which raises issues of  
POV, notability, and verifiability. Ironically, we do not allow paid  
advertising, but we are buckling when people use our site in order to get free  
advertising. 

I do not know the solution to this problem--several have been raised, but  in 
my mind none is completely satisfactory. I am simply posting this here in the 
 hope that it will elicit discussion and, perhaps, a real policy decision to  
counter this worrying trend. 

Danny