User talk:Eastlaw/Not all business articles are spam

Oh, Well Done!

Good enough you should have done it three years ago! Would like to see a mention that any deletion nomination, much less speedy deletion is both a weighty and important decision for it automatically creates and adversarial relationship and a hostile environment and is very off-putting. Basic decency and respect for others suggest that if someone feels strongly enough that something needs to be deleted, they ought to assert some effort respecting the other persons time and effort first. Ditto that "hostile environment" creation for not posting a notice to contributors talks with a question on the article and one's concerns before hanging any such tag is really very discourteous. SD can wait to see if you get an answer... and one cannot rely on a article talk post (not everyone watches watch lists... relying on such is foolhardy), but such should be made in that place AND the user pages of contributors. Hardly any reason to rush. Other than such tie ins, very well done indeedy! Best regards // FrankB 04:52, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

Not quite right.

This sums up my earlier point quite succinctly. If the article makes some claim to notability, however distant or unlikely it may be, it is not an appropriate candidate for speedy deletion.

That's not quite right. You misquote the entry, because you omit the headings it lies under, specifically the statement on the beginning of the list, ie. the list says things that are not speedy reasons, and the statement is under the specific heading of notability. As it stands it simply says something abouth when lack of notability fails to be a reason for speedy deletion.

Specifically an article on a perfectly notable firm can be spam, and if purely spam can and should be deleted as such. But only if (1) The page exlusivly promote some entity and (2) the page would need a significant rewrite to become encyclopedic. What this amounts to in my interpretation is that db-spam can only be put on articles when it would be easier to create an article from scrathch than by modifiying the existing article.Taemyr (talk) 07:48, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

Some suggestions

I like the idea. I seem to wind up declining enough G11s to suggest that the essay is useful. :) One thing that does concern me, though, is that though the essay is about spam, the contents primarily discuss notability. I have to admit that I find this one a puzzle. I think clarifying WP:CSD#A7 is a fine idea, and probably appropriate within the topic of the essay, but I wonder if you wouldn't want to expand on the primary criterion you're discussing? Say, "Since this essay is focusing mostly on spam, let me refer you to" WP:CSD#G11? An article may be on a notable topic, but still spam. For that reason, for example, checking to see how frequently an article is linked may not give much guidance as to whether or not the article warrants speedy deletion. As Taemyr indicates above, the acid test of G11 is not the notability of the company/product, but the intent of the article and the feasibility of revising it to remove promotion. I've run into more than a few G11 tags which could be "saved" by removing a phrase like "See our website for information on where to buy our services." Remove that phrase, and the article is saved. When an article is written like a press release, that may not be so easily done. Joe's Diner may have been profiled in all the best magazines/newspapers in the world, but if the text boils down to "Eat at Joe's Diner!" it's still a G11, even if not an A7. There may be 100 incoming links to Joe's Diner, but if the text boils down to "Eat at Joe's Diner!" it's still a valid candidate for speedy deletion.

A few smaller points:

• "The benevolent dictator-for-life of Wikipedia and his well-intentioned minions were wise enough to create procedures to help eliminate spam from Wikipedia."
  • This seems to me to to overemphasize the role of admins in shaping policy. Admins implement these policies, but all contributors are able to shape them. I've been hanging out at WT:CSD for quite some time, and I see a lot of non-admins there.

• "If the article makes some claim to notability, however distant or unlikely it may be, it is not an appropriate candidate for speedy deletion."
  • I question the strength of this conclusion. I agree with you in basic principle, but "however...unlikely" does not mesh with the language of A7, which says "a reasonable indication". There must be a point where unlikely becomes unreasonable. :)

• In "Better means of detecting spam", you say, "it can give you some idea of how important it is to the person who created it, and how potentially valuable it could be to the project." I'd like to note that it can also be a tip-off that the contributor is a professional, paid by the company to promote it. Polish in presentation doesn't necessarily relate to the question of spam. (I'm all for treating contributors courteously, though; even if they're paid professionals, they may not yet understand the nature of Wikipedia and may be contributing in good--if misguided--faith.)

I agree with your basic idea and a lot of what you say. My biggest and most global suggestion would be to reshape some of the essay to discuss the "spam" criterion rather than focusing quite so heavily on the "notability" criterion. I think you might want to make A7 supplemental here rather than primary. I'd cut back some of the material you have here and go into areas you don't cover--for instance, alternatives to handling spam. Wikipedia:Spam could be helpful here, with its suggestions of various "improvement" tags that may address issues less dire than to require speedy deletion. If this were my essay, I would probably also discuss Wikipedia:Conflict of interest. I have noticed a knee-jerk reaction on the part of some editors to tag for deletion articles in which clear conflict exists, but that guideline does not flatly forbid COI. I'd probably point out that even if the company wrote its own article, it isn't spam if the article conforms to guidelines.

Good luck with it. :) --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 12:49, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

close

You might want to take explicit account of the presentation at our Business FAQ -- done by Durova, and the guide I learned from her to follow with such material. It deals very well with the problem of COI--after all, I'd guess most of our articles on people and organisations have been mainly written by people with considerable COI. Public relations professionals can learn to write good objective articles, if we tell them how, and remind them that professionalism means learning about the medium they are writing for and follow its standards. The PR amateurs are unfortunately sometimes unteachable.

And I agree with MRGirl about notability--that's another point entirely, and notability for companies is something we will have to deal with, but not too many problems at a time. DGG (talk) 22:25, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

Comments

Hey User:Eastlaw. This is a well-intentioned essay, but I'm concerned that it starts out on the wrong foot - in particular, the tone is disparaging to deletionists and encourages the ongoing false dichotomy between the two positions (I don't think they would agree that their "attitudes" are "unfortunate"). You should also avoid any argument that would apply equally against deletion of any article at all, because deletion itself enjoys wide consensus. In particular, the argument that deletion discourages contributors is mostly true but never sufficient reason to not delete something; rather, it emphasizes the need to treat authors gently and not insult their contributions with accusing labels. It's also frequently useful to suggest other ways in which they might promote their whatever, and to tell them what rough conditions their whatever should satisfy before inclusion would be merited.

However, I think the section "Better means of detecting spam articles" is quite good; I am myself a staunch opponent of A7 and G11, and would like nothing better to see them both repealed, but failing that I would like to see them interpreted narrowly and the author given the benefit of the doubt when the relevant assertion of significance is implicit or depends on expert knowledge. Dcoetzee 03:24, 3 August 2008 (UTC)