Wikipedia talk:Bombardment

Wikipuffery

Same thing? If so, would you consider merging this article into Wikipedia:Wikipuffery? / edg ☺ ☭ 17:49, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

Similar essays

• Wikipedia:Bombardment – placement of a large number of references in an article in hopes that this will prevent it from ever getting deleted.
• Wikipedia:Wikipuffery – exaggerating the notability of article subjects to avoid deletion of the article
• User:Beeblebrox/Adding sources as a tactical maneuver – adding inconsequential sources to win a deletion discussion

Perhaps writers of these essays can combine efforts. / edg ☺ ☭ 10:31, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

3 or 20 cites

Maybe this is too rare to use as justification, but in one article, to make the point that a certain view is by far the prevalent view in the field, I listed 20 or so citations consecutively. This has survived edits by various editors. Generally, however, I limit to 3 for a point; if I want to keep more, I look for what distinguishes them and make additional statements or discard the additional citations. Some would argue that even 3 are too many for some points, but sometimes I find it useful when people want to challenge content entirely, e.g., as allegedly fringe. Nick Levinson (talk) 17:34, 17 January 2013 (UTC)

what you call "carpet bombing" is really "airdropping"

I know this is an essay article (not an official wp guideline) so I want to submit an alternative view here on the talk page rather than putting a rebuttal in the article itself. I have found that some overeager editors (Bless their hearts!) are quick to "speedy delete" new articles if they do not see any references and they are not familiar with the subject. One way to ensure you don't have to go through a time consuming afd is to front-load the new article with references that establish notability. I do agree that multiple refs to the same AP article is annoying and should be disparaged, but I think that is a separate issue. In one way of looking at it, what you call "carpet bombing" is really "airdropping"... of humanitarian supplies (reliable information sources) ...that will enable future edits to be made to the new article. IMHO. Peace, MPS (talk) 14:53, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

Hallmark of paid editing

Although one would be hard-pressed to find a contributor who admits to being paid, everyone knows that paid editors are a scourge here on WP. I've noticed that those contributors who have been strongly suspected (and frequently accused) of being paid editors all seem to have one thing in common: bombardment. Indeed, I would say that while not all articles with bombardment are paid articles, all paid articles do have bombardment. I think it should be employed as a tell-tale sign for further investigation. Jhw57 (talk) 12:58, 21 May 2014 (UTC)

Actually, paid editors do frequently declare the fact and we should treat them courteously when they do. I don't think you can say even most articles with bombardment are due to paid editing, they are just one small subset. There are two main groups that do this. One is inexperienced editors who do not understand our requirements for sources. This is just immaturity, nothing underhand is intended. The second group is editors writing an article of dubious notability. An individual editor can belong to both groups at the same time of course. Many of this second group are simply writing about something that interests them but sadly has no real notability (school band etc). A subset of this group are COI editors (eg non-notable charity) and a subset of those are paid editors (eg company marketing department). It is COI editing that is the scourge here, not paid editing per se, although admittedly they are often found together. SpinningSpark 13:53, 21 May 2014 (UTC)

Without seeing some actual data, I'm not sure I would agree with the proposition that paid editors "frequently" declare their status. But in any event, yes, it is the COI editors I am referring to. Note I specifically said not all bombardment articles were the result of paid/COI editors, but such editors almost always employ bombardment, apparently as a defensive measure. Jhw57 (talk) 20:26, 22 May 2014 (UTC)

Potential deadlinks

I have removed this sentence:

It may also be useful to provide multiple URLs leading to the same source in the event that one becomes a dead link one day, that the other can back it up.

This is a very bad practice and hence bad advice to have in the essay. If multiple cites all come from the same source, they should all be cited to the same source and the link(s) in the reference should all go to the same place. Our recognised ways of protecting against deadlinks are primarily to give the full citation of the source (not just a url) so that later editors have enough information to find it if it goes dead. Additional links in the same reference entry that can help protect against deadlinks are:

• WP:Convenience link
• {{doi}} digital object identifier, and {{bibcode}}
• An ISBN, {{ISSN}}, {{OCLC}}, {{LCCN}} or some other catalogue number. ISBN is a magic word that will automatically generate a link and templates exist for the rest.
• A link to an archived copy of the page such as {{WebCite}} or {{Wayback}}

SpinningSpark 23:53, 22 May 2014 (UTC)