Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't have them to hand, but I've certainly come across WP articles where it was pretty clear somebody just entered a company's sales-brochure more or less directly... (and if I was marketing director at a company, I'd definitely try to have a presence on Wikipedia of some sort). This isn't a diss against WP though. I've found such questionable articles to be very rare, and despite Wikipedia's flaws, it's an amazin…
Just one example would be useful.
Wikipedia Will Fail in Four Years (2006)
41–50 of 52 posts
Re: Wikipedia Will Fail in Four Years (2006)
#42Earlier 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?
This illustrates precisely why wikipedia is actually fairly robust.
Because anyone can edit an article, generally, there's a catch-22 for things like spam entries. If nobody sees it then it can stay around for a while, but then again nobody is looking at it. But if a lot of people see it then the problems tend to be addressed either because mods take notice or because individuals edit out the spamminess.
Re: Wikipedia Will Fail in Four Years (2006)
#43I 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.
I don't know what this particular person does, but wikipedia isn't zero sum. It's entirely possible for businesses an wikipedia to have mutually beneficial relationships, just as many do with open source software.
On the other hand the Gibraltar thing was an embarrassing abuse of the system.
Re: Wikipedia Will Fail in Four Years (2006)
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
This analysis is off in a couple ways. First: the incentives to spam Wikipedia remain enormous ; Wikipedia has incredible search mojo. The kind of spam he's talking about is of a kind with Wordpress comment spam, but the kind of spam Wikipedia deals with in reality is more sophisticated, and involves entire bogus articles. Second, flagged revisions are a tool that suppresses edit wars, and are used on (last I checked…
Agreed I wasn't endorsing the link, just put it there for completeness. FWIW I think the formula to beat wikipedia is obvious: mirror it, get rid of notability, get rid of anonymity and hire the most prolific editors. It would require a huge investment of course but I'm shocked it hasn't happened yet. I mean you could kill Facebook with the same site.
I think you can beat wikipedia by focusing on its weaknesses, but anonymity is not one of them, per se (at best it's a weakness as well as a strength).
Notability: a dumb policy that is more harmful than good.
Mod/admin power tripping: this is where anonymous edits might be a weakness because they validate the existence of mods who think they contribute more to the site than they actually do. Maybe some sort of gamification/karma system would be workable.
Weak sourcing constraints: wikipedia's criteria for a good source are basically "some notable entity believes it". A site that invested a significant amount of resources in valuing and even hosting and validating primary sources and more rigorous sourcing of facts would be a tremendous complement to wikipedia.
Clumsy formatting: wiki markup is definitely holding back wikipedia, there are other ways to present data and there are opportunities for competitors to take advantage of better presentation systems (not just prettier or easier but more usable and practical).
Re: Wikipedia Will Fail in Four Years (2006)
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Jesus fucking christ learn to google - these are trivially easy to find.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incisive_Media) -- (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Jstapleton) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Jstapleton#Professio...)
> This is an automated message from CorenSearchBot. I have performed a web search with the contents of Professional Pensions, and it appears to include a substantial copy of http://www.incisivemedia.com/corporate/products/professional.... For legal reasons, we cannot accept copyrighted text or images borrowed from other web sites or printed material; such additions will be deleted. You may use external websites as a source of information, but not as a source of sentences. This message was placed automatically, and it is possible that the bot is confused and found similarity where none actually exists. If that is the case, you can remove the tag from the article and it would be appreciated if you could drop a note on the maintainer's talk page. CorenSearchBot (talk) 15:51, 4 March 2008 (UTC)
Re: Wikipedia Will Fail in Four Years (2006)
#46Anonymous editing is a real problem for Wikipedia. There are already numerous "edit wars" by anonymous editors - mostly on ideological/political issues, but also celebrity people changing articles about them to remove criticism, for example. These abuses/debates will likely continue to get worse. That's why we at phdtree wiki project ( http://phdtree.org/ ) don't allow anonymous editing. What Wikipedia needs is a goo…
Blah! Shameless plug. PR firms employ real people to edit web content to reflect clients favorably.
They do, but no surprise that they do.
Had a really interesting conversation the other night about sites that offer consumers an honest ranking of things such as a place to eat. When they monetise through businesses that care little for the honest rankings and only desire strength for their own personal ranking, there is a conflict of interest. When power is placed completely in hands of consumer, power corrupts them too as they demand a free meal otherwise leaving a bad comment despite recieving good service. I have talked to hotel managers who have been threatened with bad comments despite no problem in service and had no choice but to not charge for the room due to the dishonesty.
The big question here is how do sites generate a site that is honest providing a good service that can be monetised successfully and cannot be gamed by either business or consumer. Any good examples?
Re: Wikipedia Will Fail in Four Years (2006)
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
Example.
Jesus fucking christ learn to google - these are trivially easy to find. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incisive_Media ) -- ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Jstapleton ) ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Jstapleton#Professio... ) > This is an automated message from CorenSearchBot. I have performed a web search with the contents of Professional Pensions, and it appears to include a substantial copy o…
Did you even read the thread? That's not a good example of what we're talking about at all.
Re: Wikipedia Will Fail in Four Years (2006)
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
> FWIW I think the formula to beat wikipedia is obvious: mirror it, get rid of notability, get rid of anonymity and hire the most prolific editors. I would mirror the 100,000 most important articles. I'd then fact check them vigorously. Emphasis would be on truth, not verifiability. I'd keep anonymity, but I'd throw out the Wiki - editing would be done by paid employees from "suggested improvements" made by visitors.…
There's no reason the ideas aren't compatible. I'm all for having different editing standards for the top X articles (senior edits can freely edit, edits from plebes have to wait Y hours or be ok'd) and the less notable articles. If you wanted to run with the FB idea you could even have special privileges for the "confirmed user" for certain parts of their own bio page. If I don't know you and go to your page I see a…
Encarta, Britannica and Citizendium have already proved many other approaches and/or management styles substandard.
Getting rid of notability: Are you talking about something like Wikia? Currently the largest network of gaming sites (30M unique views/mo.), but overall progress has been surprisingly slow since the start in 2004. Jimmy Wales as a founder and 11M raised less than a year ago.
Re: Wikipedia Will Fail in Four Years (2006)
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
What's spammy about it?
This illustrates precisely why wikipedia is actually fairly robust. Because anyone can edit an article, generally, there's a catch-22 for things like spam entries. If nobody sees it then it can stay around for a while, but then again nobody is looking at it. But if a lot of people see it then the problems tend to be addressed either because mods take notice or because individuals edit out the spamminess.
The problem is, search engines are looking at this content, and they are pushing spam links up their listings as a result.
Re: Wikipedia Will Fail in Four Years (2006)
#50Earlier 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?