Wikipedia… Free?
Loading ...In my research I’ve hypothesized that it would be possible for people to potentially make money off of wikipedia by posting their own links as resources for an article. Of course, after growing use of admins controlling the content on wikipedia and of course the use of nofollow links has done a noticeable job of preventing this. After listening to several opinions I could gather some many believe that reputable sources (link) should be noted on pages since people do a job of posting them. After the nofollow link, many people were enraged that they couldn’t follow the link they wished to “promote” perhaps. This leaves the question, why do or why would people post on wikipedia? Was it because they could post their links for pageranks?
Since the idea of Wikipedia is to have a free source for everyone, then its user would understand they shouldn’t advertise their link. However, since it’s a free source, shouldn’t the people have the right to do so as they please? But then would there be a limit to how much garbage would be found in Wikipedia?
This, of course, will always remain one of few reasons why Wikipedia cannot be used as a source in a college essay.
Using that argument however, shouldn’t ALL links used in Wikipedia use nofollow? It may be impossible for all users to comply and of course admins to cover all ground and of course adding a “Did you forget to nofollow?” might violate the meaning of wikipedia.
In the case of people getting paid to contribute “accurate” information on wikipedia, yes there is evidence that shows that companies are willing to pay to defend something they believe in.
A new article I ran into about a German government agency funding accurate articles brings up the issue of experts getting paid to, well, basically deal with other Wikipedians and also sums up the argument in an interesting paradox:
“Try to make Wikipedia 100% perfect, and you’ll need to remove the “edit†button… a point at which the system becomes very far from perfect, very soon.”
I would suggest that in order to post anything on Wikipedia, you have to have an account, and if you spam, your name will be banned and if your ip address continues to spam with new names, then an IP address could be suspended for the time to prevent spam. This process is only implemented partially. You don’t need a username to edit on most articles, however for certain articles that are subject to abuse because of its editing history (say it’s info on a upcoming movie), you do need a name. I have experimented with this by purposely spamming an article….
Here’s the evidence of my erasing approximately 1/3 of the south park article and replacing it with “poop shit”
Of course, my user page got a nice little message that claimed my post was an act of vandalism and something called “Cluebot” automatically reverted it.
Sounds like Wikipedia has some new tricks up their sleeve.
I will have to do some further research on Cluebots I suppose.
Comments
No comments yet.
Leave a comment