User:Akradecki/nospam

Corporate policy on spam
Our marching orders

Why this campaign
While I fully endorse WP:NOTYOURS, in some sense I feel, and we all should feel, a personal attachment to the spirit that is Wikipedia, and thus feel a strong sense of indignation when someone comes along to hijack it for the purpose of promoting their busienss or their product.

This was predicted by Raul's Law #6:
 * Wikipedia's steadily increasing popularity means that within the next year or two, we will begin to see organized corporate astroturfing campaigns.
 * Prediction confirmed, August 28, 2005 (9 months after prediction was made) "One anonymous reader contacted Boingboing telling them he worked at a marketing company that uses Wikipedia for its online marketing strategies. 'That includes planting of viral information in entries, modification of entries to point to new promotional sites or 'leaks' embedded in entries to test diffusion of information. Wikipedia is just a more transparent version of [online meeting place] Myspace as far as some companies are concerned. We love it.'"

And so we have the Spam guidelines, and WikiProject Spam, of which I'm a proud member.

As an admin, when I go to work CAT:CSD, the first place I dig into is the spam category...hijack the encyclopedia? Not on my watch!

Spam give-a-way list
It's not uncommon, then for the contributor of a deleted article to come asking why their page got zapped...so here's a few of the give-a-ways that tip me off (admins...if you want to add to this list, by all means do so!):

For articles:
 * 1) The article starts out with a web link
 * 2) The article is written in the first person and talks glowingly about "our" product or service
 * 3) The article contains testimonials
 * 4) The article is written for the subject rather than about the subject
 * 5) The creator's and/or principle contributor's user name is the same as the article's name
 * 6) The contributor whines in the hangon message that other similar companies or organizations are allowed to maintain articles on Wikipedia (Microsoft being a favorite example).
 * 7) The contributor says in the hangon message that she wrote the article for her boss, and that it has his full endorsement

For links:
 * 1) The contributor just dropped the same link into five or more articles, and those are his/her only Wikipedia edits
 * 2) The creator's and/or principle contributor's user name is the same as the website in the link
 * 3) The linked site's sole purpose is to sell you the product in question

Caution template
Given to users whose user name is clearly a corporate name:

Use: This template needs to be subst'd, with the format: article name, if applicable Results in:

Conflict of interest note
By your user name, it appears that you represent a company or organization. Please read our conflict of interest guidelines as well as our FAQ for businesses. We welcome your contributions here, but please refrain from writing about your own company's services and personnel. Thanks, and happy editing!  AK Radecki Speaketh  02:00, 29 June 2007 (UTC)