Wikipedia:The spam fallacy

Users with a conflict of interest may want to add external links to Wikipedia articles. They may also desire to create a new Wikipedia article about their non-notable company.

The reason they want to do so is Wikipedia's reputation as a trustworthy encyclopedia. People tend to believe what they read on Wikipedia, and the number of readers is huge.

When deciding to add promotional content to Wikipedia, an editor may think:

"If I add an advertisement to Wikipedia, many people will read it."

This is only half of the truth, and a logical fallacy. Wikipedia is only trusted by many people because of its strict policies:


 * Verifiability
 * Neutral point of view
 * No original research
 * No undisclosed paid editing
 * No advertising or promotion

Editors with a conflict of interest should consider that Wikipedia is only interesting to them because volunteers, every day and every night, are investing their personal free time to defend the encyclopedia against biased, promotional and disruptive edits. Paid editors must respect the volunteer nature of the project and keep discussions concise.

Editors with a conflict of interest should never forget that the fundamental reason for their edits, to be honest, is exactly the strict adherence to Wikipedia's principles that they may be complaining about.