User talk:Shirik/Archives/2014/March

Systematic disruptive editing by sockmaster on global wikipedia

Hello Shirik, I would like to bring to your attention that user:HistorNE, who was blocked by you last year for sock activity and has probably attempted several more sock attacks on English Wikipedia (including last week), has lately begun a systematic campaign of disruptive editing on multiple interwiki pages - wikidata, Es, Pt, Mk etc. (he is so far blocked only on English wikipedia). I would love your opinion at Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/HistorNE on this problematic case. Thanks.GreyShark (dibra) 22:10, 1 March 2014 (UTC)

Unfortunately I am currently on a military deployment and thus have almost no network access. If this case is still open in a few weeks I will be glad to check it out, but I trust the clerks and check users to appropriately handle this case. --Shirik (Questions or Comments?) 22:46, 1 March 2014 (UTC)

Checkmarx

Hello,

Some years ago I wrote an article on Checkmarx, and it got deleted. You were one of the users/administrators that I tried to discuss with when it happened, this is why I'm writing to you. I think that by now, Checkmarx is a notable company in the Source Code Analysis area. It appears in the RSA conference, reviewed by Gartner 2-3 times, appeared in Deloitte's technology fast 500, and just got the Cyber Defense Awards 2014 for a security company. It doesn't say it's a major company, but I think it's notable enough to appear in Wikipedia. On the other hand, I'm no Wikipeia person, AND I still work in Checkmarx, so I don't think it's a good idea if I try to get into this project again (I think that someone did in-between, and failed again). Since Wikipedia is not a profitable place, and we don't pay someone to write such a page (I think), how can I find someone that might want to write such a page (or at least check seriously if it's a good idea), and be able to do it in an appropriate way?

Thanks in advance, Adar.

PS: Also a "nothing I can help you with" answer will be appreciated. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Adarw (talk • contribs) 13:07, 9 March 2014 (UTC)

Sorry, I've been on travel without internet access for the past few weeks. I'm finally getting back to civilization now. There is technically a place I could tell you to go to "recommend" a page be created, but to be perfectly honest with you, that area has so many different articles there that it would probably take something closer to 15 years before someone came across it there.

My recommendation would be to try using the articles for creation area instead. This will allow you to create the article in a sandboxed environment and get some vetting from the general community before going live. I honestly don't think that deletion discussion got a proper chance (only one other editor even commented on it) but to be fair, nobody made an argument for its inclusion either. By getting a few other editors to agree that the issues have been worked out, it will have a lot more chance to survive.

Hope that helps, Shirik (Questions or Comments?) 15:13, 13 March 2014 (UTC)

I'm afraid I have to disagree with Shirik here. Checkmarx has been one of the most persistently spammed brands on Wikipedia. Since 2007 over a dozen(!) promotional articles have been created for it, and links to them have been spammed into other articles by a small army of sockpuppets. The article titles have been salted and external links have been put on spam blacklists. Whatever goodwill your company may have had on Wikipedia has long since dried up. At present neither you nor anyone else connected with Checkmarx has the remotest chance of disclaiming or working around your conflict of interest, and any article on Checkmarx which you create is highly likely to be deleted and salted along with the others. But do not despair: if the company really has become notable, then soon enough an uninvolved editor who has the trust of the community will come along and create a neutrally written and reliably sourced article. —Psychonaut (talk) 16:07, 13 March 2014 (UTC)

Your assertions may or may not be true, Psychonaut, however I would appreciate that if you do not AGF you would simply stay out of the conversation. You, yourself, are not being neutral right now, regardless of whether or not Adarw is. --Shirik (Questions or Comments?) 16:13, 13 March 2014 (UTC)

I'm sorry if it came across as though I was accusing Adarw himself of disingenuity; that was not at all my intention. I was only trying to say that Checkmarx has lost the trust of the community here through a very long history of organized spamming and sockpuppetry. Therefore any article written by someone connected with the company, no matter how noble their intentions, is going to be viewed with suspicion and even (as comments in recent AfDs have demonstrated) hostility. In conclusion, Adarw's best chance of seeing a viable Checkmarx article is not WP:AFC, but rather to wait for someone unconnected with the company to create it. —Psychonaut (talk) 16:27, 13 March 2014 (UTC)

Thank you (both!) for the honest replies. I'm sorry, Psychonaut, to hear what you think. Especially since I understand it's not only YOUR opinion. Unfortunately, there has been some trouble with Checkmarx - starting with young and eager people of a new company trying to fight the world (and the Wikipedia managers, who thought differently from them), continuing with multiple tries to add this company, that is a major player in its field. As one who tried twice (out of many others) to add it to Wikipedia, I'm really frustrated to read that this is what ended up. Yes, maybe once or twice people tried to write what seemed to them a "proper" article and to you (among others) it seemed promotional. The sad point is that even when trying to copy other companies' article, and just changing the word to "Checkmarx", it was still removed. Yes, people in the company struggled a lot to get into Wikipedia. But on the other hand there was a feeling that competitors were also doing their best to get it out of Wikipedia. It could be that it's all my imagination, and nobody was against Checkmarx, but the bad starting created (as you, Psychonaut, wrote) some spamming feeling, and from that time, for some people - every time they saw "Checkmarx" was enough to get it down. Which is understandable, as well as sad - for the company and for Wikipedia. I do not want (and don't have to ability) to fight for this. I also know that I am not neutral in this conversation, this is why I was hoping to find a better way to do it. From what I currently feel, the chances to succeed, if I do it this straight-away method, are low. I feel there no simple way to "clear" the name of the company in Wikipedia. Unfortunately, Checkmarx is not, and will not be, Microsoft. At least not in the next few years. So the chances that someone outside of the company will write an article (and defend it, as it seems will be needed) is low. Again, thanks a lot for the fair advise. —Adarw — Preceding undated comment added 08:37, 16 March 2014 (UTC)