Talk:Citizen Watch/Archives/2012

Removed citation sourcing Citizen's sponsorship ad page
Deleted the citation referencing the sponsorship ad on the Citizens company website. The nonprofit organizations that run those events each have their own websites and will very likely have a page listing the companies which are sponsoring the event or events. Those pages would make excellent citations for that part of this article. They do not have a financial interest in being promoted on the web.

Marketing/sales materials don't make credible sources
Advertisement's, even when only announcing a sponsorship, are financially promoting a company. That is in direct conflict with being a credible source. As a general rule of thumb, advertisements or other forms of marketing or promotional material are non-credible and usually don't make good material for citations or references for Wikipedia articles because they don't meet the standards for credibility and reliability. Please make sure the citations that are put into Wikipedia articles meet the definitions and standards described in the Wikipedia policy article on verifiability. The shortcut to that page is on the right hand side of this section.

SEO Link SPAM
Another problem with using advertisements or business' own promotional material for a citation is the hordes of hired SEO-agents promoting businesses on the web. Many, (if not most), of those agents will use Wikipedia to promote their client/company. They do this mainly by trying to create links from Wikipedia to their clients business or websites. A Wikipedia reference that cites a business website from a Wikipedia article makes that business much more visible in search rankings. When this is done, John Q's Public's eyes will believe that business is much more trustworthy and has better products, generating more sales for the business. And the SEO spammers will have successfully turned Wikipedia into a sales tool.

When Wikipedia is even partially used as sales and marketing system, it erodes Wikipedia's credibility and reputation for quality. Eventually that can discourage Wikipedia editors. Over time it could cause some editors to quit. That can turn into a self-feeding loop which emits more discouragement every cycle, eventually corroding the moral of the editors to the point where some leave. Which in turn affects others.. etc and can snowball into large numbers abandoning Wikipedia. To prevent all the problems described above links from Wikipedia to businesses need to be carefully considered before being added, to prevent Wikipedia from being damaged or from being used as a promotional or marketing tool.

WP will link to businesses.
Of course Wikipedia will always have some links to businesses. How could it not? Wikipedia has tons of articles on businesses, and each article will probably have a link to its subject. Just most of the time it probably shouldn't be a citation or reference. There's a substantial conflict between Wikipedia's purpose and goals, and a business' purposes and goals. If a business is allowed to edit WP to achieve their goals, it pushes WP farther away from its own purposes.

The same applies to the links to all of Citizen's regional and national headquarters. Does their presence make the article better? One link to the list at Citizen's web site would be enough.

Businesses bid to become sponsors because it's a great way to advertise. Marketing departments know from experience how much sales will increase from the advertising it allows them to do. They know their donation will return many times over in increased revenue. The business' Sponsorship announcement is part of the media campaign to associate their Brand with the exciting/elegant sporting event. Businesses produce sponsorship advertisements to market their products and brand. In the past that companies have claimed sponsorships which they did not actually have and used small media campaigns to promote their fake sponsorship. Ambush_marketing

perspective shift: more certain and less intent.
I've been looking at the list of external links at the bottom of the original article. Most of them are links to online stores that sell watches. One of them was an ad for watch over at YouTube. And it it was a really good ad too. As I have gone through and been exposed to the material that is linked to from this article I am slightly more convinced than ever that the material was gathered by a search engine optimizer who is working for citizens watch companies The majority of links at the bottom are pushing people to be exposed to very slick advertising, be where they can also buy a watch. I have to say it's effective. I'm now lusting after a Citizen's eco-Drive, in titanium.

This is coming from who loves Timex triathlon watches, because they're cheap and indestructible. I buy a new one every 3 or 5 years. And I don't worry about it at all in the meantime. I have had really nice watches in the past and I found it to be a pain trying to protect it all the time.

I am going to go find the group of people who are in the watches project and see if I can discuss it with them.

In the meantime I'm going to stop editing this article.

This talk page entry was composed with Dragon NaturallySpeaking, using the blind speech stream of consciousness method. There may be errors in the transcription which have not been noticed by the author. Unfortunately the techniques required to achieve an accurate transcription for this author means that he cannot see the text while it is being transcribed. Jjk (talk) 18:57, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

Merger proposal
I suggest that the information in the article, Independent Watches would work better as a section of this Citizen Holdings article. It does not appear that "Independent Watches" is particularly notable outside of the context of a discussion of Citizen Watches / Citizen Holdings. Pugetbill (talk) 21:16, 19 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Upon further review, I now notice / realize the contents of Independent Watches is already included in this Citizens Holdings article in the Contemporary watches section. So effectively, there is no need for a Merge request but rather a "deletion" proposal for Independent Watches is probably more appropriate.  Independent Watches could simply redirect to Citizen Holdings.   Pugetbill (talk) 21:23, 19 July 2012 (UTC)