[Foundation-l] Free advertising on Wikipedia

Mon May 1 06:06:18 UTC 2006

daniwo59 at aol.com wrote:

> 
>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. 
>
Thank you for sharing this problem with us.

"Vaporizer" sounds too much like a Dalek; "You will be exterminated" :-)

Not even dedicated and recognized Wikipedians have a "right" to dictate 
content, so someone who is wotking through a PR firm shouldn't expect 
any better.  If the firm told him such a thing there are issues that he 
will need to work out with them.

The falacy in shoppingtelly's arguments is based in the fact that the 
BBC does not itself add links to itself.  If shoppingtelly has anything 
useful on its site someone someday will make a proper unbiased link 
there.  It's just unlikely to be to their advertising material any more 
than it is to advertising material on the BBC.

The premise in your inquiry is that we are dealing with clear cases of 
spam.  There is probably no one way to identify this stuff ahead of 
time, and most links will still take exploring to learn what's going 
on.  I don't see any need to "buckle" when the spamming is obvious.

Ec