THANK YOU, AND GOODBYE!
Wikitruth thanks you for your years of support!

A Commercial Failure

From Wikitruth

On the first glance, this seems like a pretty logical and just call for assistance. Vandals! Overrunning! Many times a week! People must work together to stop these vandals and work hard to keep them away! Hijacking! Battle! Losing battle! Help!

But then, after a few belts of scotch, you might look over this letter and start to think some of the things we have.

This is Wikipedia's lawyer. Why is he spontaneously deciding to send out policy rules? Isn't there a mechanism for this?
What if you're not in the mood to be reading the mailing list?
What makes a "company, organization and marketing" non-notable? When they haven't made a product? When they haven't made a lot of a product? When someone who has barely gotten out of his parent's basement decides the company isn't all that big?
For that matter, what does "organization" mean? Charities? Non-profits? 10 people standing in a room? The Wikimedia foundation has less than a dozen paid employees, last we checked... are they notable?

This is also an interesting letter because Brad Patrick is saying that Wikipedia's "community-created" policies, consensus and work is not effective when the chips are down, and don't scale. It's a call to vigilantism, with fat Batman-suit clad finger-pointers running through Wikipedia's corridors "shooting on sight" anything they don't quite get, anyone that references anything they don't like. It's going to be a mess. A wonderful, glorious mess.

From: Brad Patrick <bpatrick@wikimedia.org>
Date: Sep 29, 2006 9:53 AM
Subject: [WikiEN-l] Corporate vanity policy enforcement
To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <foundation-l@wikimedia.org>,
WikiEn-l@wikimedia.org, wikipedia-l@wikimedia.org

Dear Community:

The volume of corporate vanity/vandalism which is showing up on
Wikipedia is overwhelming.  At the office, we are receiving dozens of
phone calls *per week* about company, organization, and marketing edits
which are reverted, causing the non-notable, but self-aggrandizing
authors, to scream bloody murder.  This is as it should be.  However, I
am issuing a call to arms to the community to act in a much more
draconian fashion in response to corporate self-editing and vanity page
creation.  This is simply out of hand, and we need your help.

We are the #14 website in the world.  We are a big target.  If we are to
remain true to our encyclopedic mission, this kind of nonsense cannot be
tolerated.  This means the administrators and new page patrol need to be
clear when they see new usernames and page creation which are blatantly
commercial - shoot on sight.  There should be no question that someone
who claims to have a "famous movie studio" and has exactly 2 Google hits
- both their Myspace page - they get nuked.  Ban users who promulgate
such garbage for a significant period of time.  They need to be
encouraged to avoid the temptation to recreate their article, thereby
raising the level of damage and wasted time they incur.

Some of you might think regular policy and VfD is the way to go.  I am
here to tell you it is not enough.  We are losing the battle for
encyclopedic content in favor of people intent on hijacking Wikipedia
for their own memes.  This scourge is a serious waste of time and
energy.  We must put a stop to this now.

Thank you for your help.

-Brad Patrick
User:BradPatrick
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.

[edit] ...with a few exceptions

Notable among the exceptions to this new draconian ruleset is a company called "Schwartz Communications". The company website proudly lists the Wikimania foundation among its "clients". As a result, if you go browse the Wikipedia entry for Schwartz Communications, there's nothing particularly "special" about the company to require notability. This was brought up in the discussion page for the article, where, most notably, the Queen Bee jumps in to say there's no way to know details about the interaction between Wikimania and Schwartz Communications.

One thing is obvious, however: the page has definitely been edited by Schwartz Communications itself. (And they've done nothing else.)

But, after all, friends of Wikimania get a little more freedom, don't they?