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Wikipedia Will Fail in Four Years (2006)

blog.ericgoldman.org

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Re: Wikipedia Will Fail in Four Years (2006)

#31

Post by rwmj »

rosser wrote: post #22
diminish wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

on WP, some whole articles are carefully crafted artworks of spam, where vanispamcruftisement movement learned the encylopedia language and you never notice. One day someone will write "vanispamcruftisement manifesto" , why spam is a positive moment of western civilization. Spam techniques of once become mainstream ad types with non-relevance diminished and design improved and cost increased. Many social media are fl…

Examples?

Took me 1 minute to find:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawn_sweeper

Essentially, pick a topic which isn't totally mainstream (and hence getting lots of editor attention), but covers something that people buy for themselves / their house and where they might visit "review" sites to help them purchase the item.

Re: Wikipedia Will Fail in Four Years (2006)

#32

Post by etherealG »

tedsanders wrote: post #3

I know a guy who's a "Wikipedia consultant." He's a longtime editor who now sells his services to companies and people looking to polish their image. I'm glad the practice hasn't spread.

why not report him to the wider wiki community. it seems prudent to crack down on this kind of behaviour for all our benefit.

Re: Wikipedia Will Fail in Four Years (2006)

#33

Post by Kiro »

rwmj wrote: post #31
rosser wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Examples?

Took me 1 minute to find: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawn_sweeper Essentially, pick a topic which isn't totally mainstream (and hence getting lots of editor attention), but covers something that people buy for themselves / their house and where they might visit "review" sites to help them purchase the item.

What's spammy about it?

Re: Wikipedia Will Fail in Four Years (2006)

#34

Post by Kiro »

DanBC wrote: post #29
ghshephard wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just one example would be useful.

It happens. It's usually found and fixed - either deleted or made more neutral. Sometimes the new editors are welcomed to the project and given help with COI. They're told about the licencing problems of just copying content from a corporate website. Sometimes they're bashed by vandal patrolling twinkle users. (Does that still happen? I think WP made efforts to stop it from happening.)

Example.

Re: Wikipedia Will Fail in Four Years (2006)

#35

Post by andybak »

Kiro wrote: post #33
rwmj wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Took me 1 minute to find: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawn_sweeper Essentially, pick a topic which isn't totally mainstream (and hence getting lots of editor attention), but covers something that people buy for themselves / their house and where they might visit "review" sites to help them purchase the item.

What's spammy about it?

Maybe the 'brands' section that was just removed: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Lawn_sweeper&diff...

Although it mentioned several brands so it seems a bit of a weak case for being a spam article.

Re: Wikipedia Will Fail in Four Years (2006)

#36

Post by rwmj »

Kiro wrote: post #33
rwmj wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Took me 1 minute to find: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawn_sweeper Essentially, pick a topic which isn't totally mainstream (and hence getting lots of editor attention), but covers something that people buy for themselves / their house and where they might visit "review" sites to help them purchase the item.

What's spammy about it?

Check out the links in the References and (the second link) in the External Links section. Do those really add to the article or are they content-free "comparison" sites? The fact that you don't think the page looks spammy shows how subtle this game has got.

Edit: stable link to the page I was discussing since hopefully someone will remove the spam links soon: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Lawn_sweeper&oldi...

Edit#2: Since I used to work in "whitehat SEO" (thankfully no more) let me explain what's going on here:

A long-lasting link from a Wikipedia page is like gold to search engines. It's far more valuable than if you linkspam a comment on someone's blog. It indicates that this page is very relevant to the topic. So when people search for "lawn sweepers", those links appear nearer to the top. The spammers monetize this by filling these essentially content-free pages with affiliate links to Amazon and other sellers.

There's no motive here apart from money. This doesn't make Wikipedia, Google, the web or even lawn sweeper sellers any better. It just benefits the spammers.

Re: Wikipedia Will Fail in Four Years (2006)

#37

Post by [deleted] »

rosser wrote: post #22
diminish wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

on WP, some whole articles are carefully crafted artworks of spam, where vanispamcruftisement movement learned the encylopedia language and you never notice. One day someone will write "vanispamcruftisement manifesto" , why spam is a positive moment of western civilization. Spam techniques of once become mainstream ad types with non-relevance diminished and design improved and cost increased. Many social media are fl…

Examples?

[deleted]

Re: Wikipedia Will Fail in Four Years (2006)

#38

Post by mjn »

rwmj wrote: post #36
Kiro wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's spammy about it?

Check out the links in the References and (the second link) in the External Links section. Do those really add to the article or are they content-free "comparison" sites? The fact that you don't think the page looks spammy shows how subtle this game has got. Edit: stable link to the page I was discussing since hopefully someone will remove the spam links soon: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Lawn_sweeper&o…

This is particularly prevalent in geographical articles. I recently spent a few hours clearing spammy links out of articles on Greek islands (and towns, and beaches, ...).

One strategy spammers are using to try to make their links in Wikipedia "stickier" is to insert them as citations instead External Links. Wikipedians will (rightly) think more carefully before removing references than external links, since refs are supposed to be providing justification for part of the article, not just a nice-to-have extra. But in most cases they are not really legitimate citations, in the sense of any kind of reliable source for information (either the information isn't even there, or it's copied from a better source like an official website, in which case the original source should be cited instead).

Re: Wikipedia Will Fail in Four Years (2006)

#39

Post by unimpressive »

etherealG wrote: post #32
tedsanders wrote: post #3

I know a guy who's a "Wikipedia consultant." He's a longtime editor who now sells his services to companies and people looking to polish their image. I'm glad the practice hasn't spread.

why not report him to the wider wiki community. it seems prudent to crack down on this kind of behaviour for all our benefit.

I'd guess because this man is his friend, and he doesn't feel any particular desire to cause trouble for him.

Re: Wikipedia Will Fail in Four Years (2006)

#40

Post by cayblood »

deskglass wrote: post #16
trysomething wrote: post #8

Separately, Jimmy Wales reportedly said that 0.7% of Wikipedia's users have made 50% of all Wikipedia edits and 1.8% of users have written more than 72% of all articles, and he was quoted in the New York Times in June as saying “A lot of people think of Wikipedia as being 10 million people, each adding one sentence...But really the vast majority of work is done by this small core community” of about 1,000 Wikipedians…

His analysis was better than mine in that he weighed content by persistence. Still, for what it's worth, I found that when edits were weighed by length, the 1000 most frequent editors dominated.

Depends on how well you calculate length. Miniscule edits can produce enormous diffs.
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