Nov 16

Wikipedia Is Link Nazi Of 2006

Posted by Jaimie Sirovich on Nov. 16th, 2006. 14 comments — voice your opinion.

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No Links For You!

I wrote the Wikipedia page on Link bait a few months ago — only to have it mercilessly edited and destroyed by a bunch of editors who naively see every blog as unfit to be quoted.  Let's see.  Which group actually understands the concept of link bait best?  Could it be bloggers?  Ding!  I quoted:

1. Matt Cutts (http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/)
2. Rand Fishkin (http://www.seomoz.org/)
3. Aaron Wall (http://www.seobook.com/)
4. Me in My Book (http://www.amazon.com/Professional-Search-Engine-Optimization-PHP/dp/0470100923/)

In fact, the original content was based off drafts of my book.  I know blogs are sometimes full of misinformation; but in a field like search marketing, you are not going to find current information in a stuffy academic marketing book.  And the same very sources were good enough for the editors of my book.

In Wikipedia all sources were removed.  The examples of link bait were also removed, despite being extremely useful examples.

So, the result now is that all of the information is unattributed and vague.

I spent quite a bit of time formulating the beginnings of that page.  Why should I, or anyone contribute if editors enforce bureaucratic rules that hamper the quality of the content?  Everyone, for the sake of God, please edit my contribution back to something useful?  Don't get the Fourth Reich of Link Nazis take over Wikipedia.  Thanks.

 

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"14 Wise Comments Banged Out Somewhere On The Internet ..."


Jeremy Luebke

Don't even get me started. I treat Wiki with the same respect they treat me and my contributions. In other words, the only they are good for now is massive link spamming.

If they weren't such nazis, maybe I would play nice nice.

rxbbx

Perhaps its just the topic you write about, you never know who added info / edited / deleted it. I can imagine that Link Bait is a "hot" topic. I have no problems at all with wiki contributions. I Just have other topics.

Robert

Wikipedia is a very useful source, though.

For instance, they list these facts about the person you chose to illustrate your post:

* Mr Hitler was responsible for a "genocide of approximately eleven million people, including about six million Jews" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Hitler).
* Mr Hitler was a major participant in a war resulting in the deaths of over sixty million people (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II).

Comparing any "random wikipedia editor" to this person, even taking into account whatever harmful actions this editor has done to your Wikipedia article, might require a second thought for both this post's title and illustration. Imnsho.

Jaimie Sirovich

* Mr Hitler was notorious for having no sense of humor.

Joost de Valk

You're so right in dubbing them link nazi's Jaimie, i've had my share of fights with them as well… Blogged your article here: http://www.joostdevalk.nl/blog/wikipedia-link-nazis/

Ben

I agree, I stopped linking to them and don't contribute any more, they have become nazis.

Benjamin

For me as german it seems like u dont even fuckin know who hitler was. i dont think its funny to call sum1 a nazi only because of some stupid links oO
yes the editors are fags and shame on them but why did nazis in the 3rd Reich edit Wiki entries? i dont get it..

but probably u'r average american with rly NULL knowledge bout the world abroad. oh.. okay… the mexicans , "wetbacks", i read about some weeks ago. shame on you.

Jaimie Sirovich

Seeing as "Mr Hitler" killed 2/3 of my family in the 1940s, I'm pretty well aware of who he is.

It's a play on the "Soup Nazi" from Seinfeld and a ballsy jab at Wikipedia. Honestly, I don't see it as so offensive to anyone except the editor. If I can joke about it 50+ years later, you should be able to as well. I even have photographs of whom "Mr Hitler" killed in my family.

I apologize if I offended anyone reasonable, but responding with expletives doesn't make your case at all.

SEPguy

I added 'search engine prominence' and got a roasting from some guy who seemed to just cruise around looking for stuff to be vitriolic about. In the discussion some girl said "

"Search engine prominence" is not (yet) really standard terminology, so I wonder if an article is justified. A Google search on the phrase returns only 542 hits, compared with over 36 million for "search engine optimization" and over 23 million for "search engine marketing". Are there source references, or would this fall under (Wikipedia's policy against original research)? –IslandGyrl 22:32, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

It took me 2 attempts at reinclusion and several attributions to get this back in - and I still dont know if its going to stick.

the other issue is the inconsistant ways in which these posts are edited. Its a real problem and as someone else said on this, its eroding the goodwill contributors feel towards wikipedia. I'm almost in the camp of "spam 'em all"

rxbbx

I now have to agree with you, coming back to my first comment.. They nazified everything "rxbbx" related, also good links and info :). Perhaps because of my earlier comment :). Doesnt matter.

Nicholas

So I want to know does any body else use wikipedia and what for?
what was the most informatibve artical you found there?
What was the wierdest one you found?
I use wikipedia mostly durring my lunch time at work to just read up on stuff. the most informative artical I found was on the mineing and refineing
process for copper (because I learned about the job I have, and got to show off to co-workers ;p) the most interesting was probably on cheese witch I
actualy e-mailed to my self so I could finish reading it after work.
oh well, got wiki?

Millicheech

Have you ever tried posting an image to Wikipedia? I'm 0 for 8 so far. On the last one an editor helped me cite the correct copyright info, only to have the entire thing pulled by a different editor weeks later.

Wikipedia Link Nazi’s - SEO and Webdesign Weblog - Joost de Valk

[...] Jaimie of SEO Egghead has a wonderful post on Wikipedia editor being link nazi's, with a wonderful picture to illustrate just what he means with the term "nazi" as well. His experiences with the editorial team of Wikipedia: he wrote the article on link-bait and quoted Rand Fishkin, Matt Cutts, Aaron Wall, and linked to all three of those, and himself in his book, linking to the Amazon page for his book. Guess what? All those links were removed…Now to me, this sounds familiar, people who actually know something about the subject they're writing about getting modded down by the admins of Wikipedia, IMHO correctly dubbed link nazi's by Jaimi. All his sources, as well as his examples were removed, leaving a bad article. Sigh… Will they ever get it? You can't build an online encyclopedia without having links people… That's how the web works… [...]

5 Reasons Wikipedia is doomed !

[...] 5. ever heard of a wiki nazi? with any society, when the 'police' get out of control it turns ugly. I think of my personal wikipedia experiences HERE and the laughable case of the linkbait page where all the references to Matt Cutts the google engineer and blogger were savagely culled. They were only reinstated after uproar from the SEO community. Fools. So in conclusion, I see too much power with too few. fast erosion of goodwill. open day for the spamming community. dictatorship with a community front. Too many things on the boil at one time. And the core principles of 'give and take' being eroded with Wiki. All this will probably come to an unhappy ending much like DMOZ [...]



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