Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/2020-06-28/Opinion

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• Unfortunately (or, fortunately, depending on your viewpoint) it only takes one editor to publish a BLP but it takes about a dozen editors to get one deleted. I'm involved in one AfD biography right now where the page creating editor has persistently challenged the deletion votes and has managed to get the discussion extended another seven days for further consensus. And if there is no clear consensus to delete the default will be "keep". In a nutshell, it takes a lot of time an effort to remove these paid editing biographies. Yes, vanity biographies do indeed hurt Wikipedia. When somebody's name is ran through a web search their Wikipedia biography is usually a top result. Instant credibility. I'm not sure what is the solution. Perhaps a separate BLP patrol from the general New Page Patrol? Blue Riband► 00:24, 29 June 2020 (UTC)
• Wikipedia is not a reliable source. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 21:21, 29 June 2020 (UTC)
  • @Davidwr: I certainly don't trust a Wikipedia article on a small or medium sized business or on a business person who is not well-known by the general public. There's way too much advertising for me. If I want advertising, I can just go to the company's website. At least that way I know for sure who is piling on the BS. If a majority of editors felt the same way I do, Wikipedia would have to quit accepting those types of articles and spend a tremendous amount of time cleaning up the old ones.. The disclaimer that Wikipedia is not a reliable source, is not however, an excuse for us to accept such garbage. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 00:21, 30 June 2020 (UTC)
    • @Smallbones: Despite the garbage, these articles can be useful for canny readers who can discount the puffery and seize on any critical points that are made, especially if the subject has been convicted of a crime or been officially censured. Of course, one worries that many readers may not be canny in that way. How much do we know about how people read and use Wikipedia? Mrmedley (talk) 01:30, 1 July 2020 (UTC)
      • @Mrmedley: I don't know how much we really know about our readers. Somewhere there must be readers by country for e.g. Enwiki. I assume it's fairly similar to editors by country, which has some info referred to here (with more readers than writers proportionately from countries where there are many people who speak English as a 2nd or 3rd language, since it's a lot easier to read than write a foreign language. Somewhere I think there is a survey of readers, but not so many as to tell much about them. If anybody has specifics on our data on readers, please let us know. But beyond that all i can say is the very obvious - they are a very diverse group. Probably ranging in age from 10 to 100 (I know a 90 y.o. editor and a long time ago I met an editor of maybe 12 y.o.). Probably including anybody who can afford a computer and internet connections (and quite a few who can't who use school and library computers) as long as they have a minimum literacy level. Just incredibly diverse.
      • Given that, many readers can probably read between the lines and know BS when they read it. Others will be taken in by slick PR presentations. One touchstone is some work I did on binary options articles. IIRC an article like Banc de Binary was getting something like 300 page views per day, in all language versions, but they where spending huge amounts of money or staff time for paid editing, e.g. $15,000 for a short/medium term contract was reported on-Wiki. The thing to remember is that they only needed a few victims to scam. Press accounts start at an estimated average (or median) $20,000 loss per victim. So if they only got 3 new victims per day through Wikipedia, they were still taking in very good money. So if only 1% of our readers are not sophisticated enough to see through an obvious scam like binary options, we're still doing a great disservice to our readers.
      • Sure most readers can see through most scams like that, but that is no excuse for letting those types of article in the 'pedia. Other types of PR or even just simple bias have their own costs to our readers. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 04:00, 1 July 2020 (UTC)
        • I don't think there is evidence been presented that canny readers can see the difference. I think it is the reverse, although I don't have any research to back it up, more so from my own experience. The reason that so many people are scammed on their own computers, is that the scammers responses fit the expectations of the scammed, and even those you expect to notice it, those in IT and IT security, still get scammed and it is the same kind of experience that is happening here. The type of articles that are being written by these folk, since about 2008, are getting more and more fluid in their response. It is a natural evolution, and it gets commensurately harder to spot them. I suspect that the number of folk that see them for what they are and extract value from them, is very small and those that do, are in that industry. I think the majority takes an honest approach and reads as it is. For me it is a regular occurrence to work on articles that have are subsequently speedied, Afd'd or whatnot, that I thought were genuine.scope_creep^Talk 07:47, 21 July 2020 (UTC)