User:GreenReaper/Village pump discussion of Stardock and WikiFur

This is a copy of a discussion on Wikipedia:Village pump (policy). It was previously archived on 26 December 2005. If you wish to discuss the issues raised here further, my talk page is always open. GreenReaper 01:53, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

What is/can/should be done about people aggressively promoting their own websites and employer's products and websites?

Most of User:GreenReaper's edits (contribs-500) seem to be intended to promote their WikiCities websites[1], [2], [3] [4] and/or their employer[5], including inexact disamb pages[6] (especially given that according to google, "desktop pet" is a common generic term, of which the Stardock version (released yesterday) is but one of many?), but are otherwise completely legit. I think allowing someone to use Wikipedia for personal financial gain is a bad precedent to set, and counter to the spirit of Wikipedia, but I don't know of any written policy that it violates. Ideas? Comments? 24.17.48.241 17:41, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

The relevant policy is at Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not#Wikipedia is not a propaganda machine. -- Rick Block (talk) 18:08, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

Where there is a clear basis for my actions: Advertising. Articles about companies and products are fine if they are written in an objective and unbiased style. This has always been my objective. GreenReaper 03:37, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

And Wikipedia:Spam and frequently Wikipedia:External links... These actions are pretty clear cut and an abuse of this project. If you need help undoing his damage, or think a more strong warning is in order, let us know. DreamGuy 02:07, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

Hi there! A fellow contributor dropped me a link to here - I'm surprised you guys didn't yourself. :-) I disagree with your position, but let me explain a bit first:

It's true that a large proportion of my edits on Wikipedia are to do with Stardock. A large proportion of my work life revolves around it, too. However, probably only 1/10th of my wiki contributions are on Wikipedia - the vast majority are at the wikis I founded, Creatures Wiki and WikiFur, both of which have been featured on Wikicities (Creatures was the first featured, and WikiFur is currently featured).

Wikicities is run directly by Wikia, the for-profit "sister company" of the Wikimedia Foundation founded by Jimmy Wales. It is operated on a day-to-day basis by Angela Beesley (User:Angela). All money from ad revenue on the side goes to them. I do not believe they actually make a significant amount from it yet (that is, not enough to even cover costs), but I could be wrong. I am certainly not making a penny from it. No profit goes to me. When I link them, I am interested in increasing the usefulness of articles on both sites by linking to related information.

In fact, I created WikiFur specifically because certain groups on Wikipedia felt that some articles related to the furry fandom were unencyclopediac. As a result, we have created these on another website, and naturally we have our own versions of the articles mentioned above that have remained on Wikipeida - if they were considered important enough for here, they are definitely important enough for us! Where this is the case, and where WikiFur has more or unique information about the topic (because, for example, we have biographical information on the people involved that would be deleted here), I have inserted wikilinks to our articles for those interested in learning more. We also link back to Wikipedia in such cases - in the cases where there is more information at Wikipedia, we tend to link to Wikipedia and not back to ourselves.

According to Google Analytics, Wikipedia is the source of around 10% of our visitors - so obviously people are actually clicking on those links. Moreover, they view an average of five pages after the initial page. Does this not suggest that it is useful to them? I view WikiFur as providing somewhere where people from the fandom can create articles without annoying everyone here who wants to make a general encycloepdia - now, consider, if they cannot find WikiFur, will they not just keep starting articles here? :-)

As for my company, I think Stardock's programs are useful, and I do not see the harm in making such articles. Most of these articles were not started while I was in Stardock's employ, I might add - I started working at the company on July 8th, whereas I have used their programs for the last 5 years (which is why I consider myself one of the best people to write about them). I like to think that the articles I write are of use to the people who come across them, particularly the Object Desktop page and Stardock itself, both of which contain extensive history which is hard to find elsewhere. I have not and do not have any intention of aggressively spamming external links to Stardock into other pages, nor do I feel I have been abusing internal links. Generally only one or two pages are appropriate to link to new pages, and so that's what I do. I invite you to inspect my edits and judge for yourself as to their worth.

Relating to the specific article mentioned - I was more than aware that desktop pet was a generic term. That was why I created it as a disambiguation page, and created the Desktop Pet (Stardock) article for the one I wrote instead, to encourage other additions of desktop pets (and linked it to digital pet, which they might have meant).

But, to sum up - are these articles and links not useful? Do they not provide relevant information to people in an appropriate manner? Are they badly written, or phrased in a biased tone (if so, why not go ahead and correct them? :-). In short, what's the harm? If you have problems with a particular page, I would suggest you discuss them with me either in talk or on the specific page's talk page. I do watch pages I created, so I will be sure to reply and work with you to improve the page. GreenReaper 03:12, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

I see no basic problem with the Wikia cross-links, they seem relevant, topical, and reasonably placed in the See Also sections of the articles I looked at. I do think you should tread lightly with respect to Stardock however. As an employee it may be hard for you to hold on to neutrality, and there is a direct profit motive for advertising. For example, you created a template with spaces for the entire Stardock product line, would uninvolved editors regard all those products as encyclopedic? Wikipedia:Autobiography discourages editors from writing about the organizations they are directly connected with. I would suggest you should limit your work in this area to improving those Stardock related articles that already exist and not try to add new articles or introduce Stardock material into additional articles as such actions are likely to be percieved as spamming, even if you do have the best of intentions. Dragons flight 04:55, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

The template is a story in itself — in fact, I created it on the advice of another, as it seemed to them to be a better way to organize the Stardock-related articles than to rely on links in the lead section, which were rather spammy. As you can see from the template, I refrained from adding information on many Stardock products, because I myself felt most of them to be less-deserving of wikification at that time — I included them mostly for completeness, and for future use if deemed appropriate by myself or others.

The Desktop Pet was added because I knew a lot about it and because there were already various articles about other digital pets, but I accept in retrospect that it may have been ill-advised to add it so soon. I still think it's a reasonable article — and a reasonable title, as that is its official name — but I accept others might judge it differently (others: go look for yourselves :-).

I think that perception of my intent is ultimately less important than the actual content of the articles, which is why I've tried to make them ones I would want to see written about any products, trying to avoid puff phrases and include relevant criticism. I'm a geek - I hate those articles that sound like press releases, too! However, I am more than willing to bear the above comments in mind when editing on Wikipedia. I will in particular be careful to ensure that any links from other articles truly improve the original article and aren't there as a means to get more traffic to the Stardock-related pages. My objective is a good article that can be a source of information for other articles, not an ad driving traffic to Stardock; we already have all the traffic we need, anyway, as virtually everyone seems to wants something different from Windows XP's garish blue skin. *grins*

As for new articles: I don't have any that I intend to add now, but I might want to in the future . . . though probably not one day after initial release. I still believe that I'm one of the most qualified editors in resepect to writing them. Is there perhaps some mechanism whereby I can submit Stardock-related articles for review by others, before or after posting? I have always disliked the view that those closely involved with a subject are undesirable as editors, as it discourages people who really are experts on a topic from contributing. After all, anyone can review my information for NPOV (and I encourage them to!), but only I can add it. GreenReaper 05:41, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

I see no problem with you editing Stardock articles as long as you stay neutral. A good example here is the Podcast article. This article was edited by a number of people who were mentioned in the article. It only became an issue when Adam Curry started making NPOV edits. As far as I can tell, GreenReaper has made reasonable edits, and the template is fine. Jacoplane 05:48, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

I actually have a major problem with cross-links to Wikifur... The guy himself admits that the entire site was created because he didn;t like the Wikipedia articles and then wants the wikipedia articles to link to his new version... this is about as clear cut an example of WP:FORK violation as there is. Furthermore, he admits that a huge percentage of his traffic is from the Wikipedia link, s he clearly has self-promotional goals as well. To allow the link there would just mean we'd be encouraging anyone with any view that can't get consensus on any article to go off and write their own and link to it. This is clearly bad policy. And the Stardock thing is definitely a no no. DreamGuy 08:30, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

I think you are misrepresenting what I said. WP:FORK is irrelevant, as it is about complete or significant forks using Wikipedia content. Wikipedia:Content forking comes closer to what you're suggesting, but again, it's not really our objective — we use the NPOV policy as well, because it encourages discussion of all sides of an issue. Instead, WikiFur is a place for articles about topics that simply would not be permitted here because they are of local interest to the furry community - things such as biographies of normal members of the furry fandom that would rightly be deleted from Wikipedia, as they are not of general interest or notability, but which are of interest to us. These kind of "local interest" articles form the bulk of our pages, and if you surf the site I think that's fairly clear. It's something like a transwiki-type process, although we don't actually intend to move articles, but provide a place where they can be created and remain.

Rarely (currently ~80 pages of 2427), we do copy existing pages from Wikipedia. Our policy is that if you want to do that you should be willing to immediately add some furry-specific content. When we do copy existing pages, they get WikiFur:Template:Wikipedia put on them for proper attribution. WikiFur is a GFDL site and we welcome copies of our content to Wikipedia as well, where considered appropriate by Wikipedia editors. I have personally deleted several pages on WikiFur that just copied Wikipedia, changing the internal links to those articles to go to Wikipedia instead. Really, the only case I'd be truly happy with that sort of copying would be where the original/main author of the Wikipedia article is a member of the furry community and specifies that they think it's fine to have it at WikiFur too (or add it themselves).

Regardless, these make a relatively small proportion of those articles I link. More commonly, I link articles that are directly related to the Wikipedia article and have been independently created and have significant additional or differing information to the Wikipedia article. For example: Yerf and WikiFur:Yerf, FurryMUCK and WikiFur:FurryMUCK, and especially Babyfur and WikiFur:Babyfur. I would submit that many Wikipedia editors would consider those articles of inappropriate detail/length/tone to be on Wikipedia . . . and yet that they are of use to those that do want more information, and contain links to even more relevant information, such as biographies of the founders. This is what I mean when I say that WikiFur contains articles that could not have been created on Wikipedia — they simply would not have the large body of extra furry fandom information to draw on, because that information is not of general interest. The issue for these is not consensus on content, but consensus on notability. I would submit that the "perfect article" on these furry-related topic cannot exist on Wikipedia, because they require information on people and topics that are not welcome as articles within Wikipedia.

As for the traffic . . . 10% is indeed significant — and we certainly welcome the visitors, as they tend to be those interested in the same objectives as we are — but I'd hardly call it huge. Heck, we get over 1/4 that from just a few articles on Uncyclopedia. :-) We're talking less than 100 visitors/day from Wikipedia, and we give just as many back; probably more, considering almost every articles has some reference to Wikipedia on it, even if it's just a place name or the name of a prominent person outside the fandom. Most of our hits come from personal references on LiveJournal and google hits from random content (typically not the pages linked from Wikipedia), which is how it should be. GreenReaper 17:07, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

So.... we've determined that not only are you a spammer, but that you are unrepetent and long-winded about it.... greattttt.

"I would submit that the "perfect article" on these furry-related topic cannot exist on Wikipedia, because they require information on people and topics that are not welcome as articles within Wikipedia." I would submit that you are clearly a POV pusher unwilling to accept concensus and thus created your own competing project and expect us to drive traffic to you.

I repeat what I said earlier.... this actions are clearly against several major Wikipedia policies and any of your edits doing those kind of behaviors need to be stopped. DreamGuy 17:16, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

We tolerate links to Memory Alpha, Star Wars Wiki, and a number of similar projects that incorporate content judged not suitable for Wikipedia. Even things like Wiktionary and Wikinews more or less fall in that class. What distinction do you see here? Dragons flight 17:23, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

In my opinion, the links are fine, but they should go under the External links section rather than the See also section, which is more for links within the wikipedia community (in which wiktionary falls). The links are not commercial, and while they are linking to another secondary source, their project's mandate is similar enough to ours that I don't think it's an issue. --Improv 17:39, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

The main reason I have tended to put them in See also is that I do feel we are in the same community. As I've said before, the main reason WikiFur's articles are on WikiFur in the first place rather than Wikipedia is that they weren't deemed suitable for this site, just as quotes, dictionary definitions and huge amounts of Star Wars trivia were moved off it. Wikicities are still community projects under the GFDL - they're simply dedicated to particular topics (Wikispecies could easily have been a wikicity, for example). I think the reason they're not in the Foundation is that people are more willing to donate towards projects of interest to a large general audience than to smaller communities, and this lack of revenue is why the ads are there, instead. Note that Wikicities did promote the Wikimedia fundraising drives (at WikiFur we also put it in our sitenotice).

Over at Wikicities, we tend to view Wikipedia (and other wikicities - they are technically separate sites) as just other parts of one big wiki community. Most of the successful wikicities are run by people who have also contributed significantly to Wikipedia and other projects. Wikipedia is simply "the general reference wikicity", and so we link to it and to each other in See also as we're used to doing here. I'm pretty sure I've also seen links to MeatballWiki and WikiWikiWeb in that format (that's where I got the idea to do them in the first place).

I continue to believe that they and other wiki links should be in See also, as I think that more closely matches the category of link, but if others really think that they should go in External links I'd be willing to go along with that. GreenReaper 00:28, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

I do believe that they belong in the "External links" section rather than the "See also" section. Courtland 01:35, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

I'm unrepentant because I honestly believe I'm doing the right thing for the community! :-) Put simply, you will have to convince myself and others that it's not, and I do not think you will be able to do that.

It's been said before that sometimes the best way to add to a wiki is to remove something from it. I feel safe in saying that meticulously detailed information about the furry fandom (or Star Wars, or Neopets, or whatever) over a certain level is disliked by a significant proportion of Wikipedia editors. That is why articles without sufficient notability are removed from Wikipedia, and why others are trimmed down to remove "unimportant" information. I don't necessarily agree with this, but that is how things are.

However, this information obviously is of interest to some people, otherwise WikiFur would not have been the success that it is today. Therefore, if it's not going to be in Wikipedia, it should at least be linked from Wikipedia so that these people can find it when they look for it. This is a compromise that everyone seems willing to live with - separate communities get to expand without restrictions, and Wikipedia gets to reap the rewards of a more managable article base and fewer conflicts over importance (always a contentious term), while retaining the ability to link to more details on topics that do have articles here.

Ultimately, I think it's important to consider why such policies are made: To prevent people artificially inflating the importance of their personal websites. But we are not. The information presented on WikiFur and on other wikicities is highly relevant and of interest to the reader. Wikicities are community sites founded on similar ideals, and are not intended to make a profit for those creating them. Linking to the articles adds rather than detracts from the utility of Wikipedia as a general-purpose encyclopedia. It gives our users a better experience, just as it does when wikicities link to Wikipedia, and that is the prime objective of Wikipedia policy. GreenReaper 00:28, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

I would hope that by your phrasing you're not stating that you will ignore consensus if you are personally not convinced. It is important that, no matter how you interpret goals of the projects, you not violate policies of any of the wikis that you regularly deal with. No matter how the wikicities people view wikipedia, they are expected to act within the spirit and abide by consensus of Wikipedians while editing here. --16:00, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

Of course not. That would be stupid! I can't ignore consensus on the wikis I founded myself, let alone Wikipedia. :-)

I do believe that this is an area which is not fully covered by the policies — which is perfectly understandable, as Wikicities is only a year old and few of its wikis have reached maturity yet — but that if the spirit of the policies is examined, I'm doing the right thing. I think that several Wikicities contain many quality articles that are of use to the people reading the Wikipedia articles, and so should be linked from them. My aim is to convince you of that, too, which is why I've gone into my reasoning in such detail. GreenReaper 17:49, 18 December 2005 (UTC)