How is it that the article about Donald Gardner has survived in Wikipedia for nearly a year?

The article was created and tended to by a User named "Seotommy" (Search Engine Optimization Tommy), who apparently has a history of being scolded for inappropriate commercial exploitation of Wikipedia.

Wouldn't it be great if anti-spam Wikipediots could get in the habit of suggesting Centiare to Users like Seotommy, before they scold them? That way, admins could co-opt the spammer's efforts by actually helping them (or at least appearing to do so), while simultaneously protecting Wikipedia from commercialization. Too bad Wikipediots have more fun bashing spammers than trying to figure out creative ways to work with them to redirect their efforts elsewhere.

And now, a word from my sponsor:



Is it Wikipedia, or is it DonGardner.com?

Greg

Let's be fair. Wikipedia review is full of plugs for a site (I forget the name ) favoured by thekohser.

My more-than-occasional hawking of the Centiare wares is your cost of admission to gain access to all of my other free, entertaining, and informative Wikipedia Review posts.

I'm still digesting the Jason Scott podcasts (well, recorded speeches, technically), but one thing he said seems relevant.

He talked about the gap between the inclusionists and exclusions (including such amusing consequences as the Cookie Monster fiasco). In defining inclusionism, he extended it to include the idea that everything has a place somewhere, since there's so much room. The only question becomes how to separate stuff into relevant groupings so that, for example, someone searching for reliable reference information doesn't find themselves reading a puff piece that would be at home on Centiare but not on WP.

The obvious answer is to set up competing wikis with different standards, and that might work for some things. A more subtle solution is to flag things for what they are. Consider that an bio of George Washington is going to contain a synthesis of secondary sources with some references to primary sources, and has little room for editorial input. There's so much academic writing about George that the personal musings of some random nerd are irrelevant. In contrast, a list of Serenity episodes with summaries and an explanation of how they came to be necessarily consists entirely of what some random nerds put together themselves from their DVD collections and various postings by Joss Whedon.

Both have some value and should be included somewhere, but they're not the same sort of thing at all. Here, relegating the fan article to WhedonWiki is overkill, but letting it rub elbows with Geo's bio is ridiculous. The analogy that comes to mind is the Sunday edition of the New York Times, which includes a mini magazine, whose contents depart somewhat from what is appropriate for a newspaper. Perhaps WP would suck less if articles were color coded for the type of topic they cover. Let the now-famous hogtying article exist, but in the red light district of WP, while the Serenity list goes into the Pop Culture section and Washington's history is, well, History.

Is this enough? No, WP still needs to fix the basic problem of conflict resolution. But this may be a start, as it enables different levels of RS requirements.

Al

I wonder what kind of treatment a WP editor would receive who politely pointed editors of "inappropriate" commercial articles to Centiare, citing WP acronyms about notability, COI, self editing etc? My guess is they they would be attacked as spammers or sockpuppets of banned users, even though they are doing nothing but advancing WP policies and avoiding conflicts by providing the "inappropriate" article writer additional options. Maybe if they did it derisively, as in "Hey buddy what do think this is Centiare or something?" they might be seen as bona fide Wikipedians.

That level of hostility is perfectly acceptable for admins, but mere mortals would be occasionally slapped down for violating the mysterious WP:CIVIL.

Al

Well, they do have this page of "Alternative outlets", but it doesn't get a hell of a lot of use on Wikipedia (about 125 wikilinks). Spread across the 24 alternative sites listed, that's like 5 "encourage them to go elsewhere" mentions for each site. Whoop-dee-doo.

You'll note that Centiare is mentioned in the directory list of alternatives, put there by User:DragonHawk. And, no, that ain't me.

Greg