Banana republic? Communist regime? Fascist regime? Which descriptor suits best Wikipedia? In any case, don’t be a dissident. Or you may just disappear. Wikipedians don’t like dissent.
In August 2007, a courageous dissident (ShawnRog) wrote an article on Talend Open Studio. And then in August 2009, another dissident (Jim380) added an article on Talend, the company. But neither ShawnRog nor Jim380 are apparatchiks. Nevertheless their contributions remained published for a little while.
Then a real Wikipedia apparatchik, Ihcoyc, decided that enough was enough, and who were these people who dared write about products and companies he did not know himself. Ihcoyc is a real Wikipedia expert specializing in religious content, and also an attorney from Indiana (per his profile). He actually wrote an essay The presumption of non-notability for Internet related, computing, and services businesses, in which he proclaims:
I presume that a business or product is unlikely to be notable if it:
- Relates to technology, software, computing, or the internet;
- Is a service or publicity business; or
- Provides goods or services to other businesses rather than the general public.
So here goes Ihcoyc, who cannot tolerate stuff he personally does not know about, and he slams the two Talend pieces with a request to delete:
The page is here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Talend
His claims: that references like eWeek, PCWorld or InfoWorld, or even Gartner, do not count. If it does not appear in the Indiana Bar Association Gazette, it isn’t relevant to the Wikipedia readers.
Now comes another Wikipedia apparatchik, Mukadderat, the same one who decided to delete the article on Expressor (for the same bad reasons), and strangely enough, he concurs with a terse:
delete nonnotable; one of many.
You will notice the clear explanation that Mukadderat offers.
A few dissidents then chime in. But they will not be heard, because they are Untermenschen or “SPA” – read Single Purpose Accounts, i.e. people who are only interested in one subject – IT in this case. And are tagged as such by the apparatchiks on Talend’s deletion page.
Just to make sure, the page is now tagged with an explanation: “Wikipedia is not a democracy, you can say what you want but we will do what we want”.
Another apparatchik, ThemFromSpace, got several changes of heart. He first said to keep the articles (“Keep the SPAs put in enough references to evidence that the article has the coverage to meet WP:N“). Then to merge the two articles. And finally to delete. Was pressure applied? Did he get scared to loose his editor privileges by siding with dissidents? Who knows…
The story is not over. I doubt Wikipedians will read this blog (after all, they are not interested in IT), and even if they do, it will only unnerve them more. After all, who are mere mortals to question the power of the Wikipedia self-proclaimed gods?
There is a high chance than the articles on Talend get soon deleted by a courageous Wikipedia administrator, like the aptly named “secret” who annihilated Expressor from Wikipedia (even the history of the deletion is nowhere to be found now, unless you bookmarked the page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Expressor. It was still visible last week on Expressor’s page – these guys try to clean their tracks).
Apparently this happens to many small companies. Teresa from Telesperience summarized it well in her post Is Wikipedia discriminating against tech firms?
So – banana republic, fascism, or communism?
The first two types of regimes usually rely on a strong “leader” (whether he be a former sergeant or colonel from a colonial power, or a Führer or Duce – they are all the same) and use repression as a mean to avoid any challenge to their regime. If there is any ideology, it’s always rotten at the core.
Whereas communism started with a generous idea – provide for all members of a community. Of course we all know what happened to this idealism and to which excesses communism has led.
Is Wikipedia like communism? A possibly great idea, but now so corrupted that it only serves its apparatchiks and kills dissidence? 20 years ago, the fall of the Berlin Wall marked the beginning of the end for communism. What will happen to Wikipedia?
Yves
** UPDATE December 23, 2009 **
The deletion debate is closed, reason prevailed. A number of Wikipedians did not support this ludicrous call for deletion, and pointed to other abusive cases made by Ihcoyc. They actually found some good references that I had never even noticed. Proof that not all Wikipedians are corrupt. Thanks to all who supported us.
One last word: let’s remain cautious. Corruption is insidious.
As always the trolls of Wikipedia will win the skirmish but as the numbers have shown they are losing the war. Wikipedia is quickly losing its reputation and position as a “Trust Agent” on the web. The shallow intellectual pool of the new editor regimen consistently causes more problems with content than it solves. The inability to apply common sense to the content will surly make Wikipedia irrelevant as users go to other more democratic and trusted sources. The power of crowd sourcing has been corrupted here and won’t be fixed anytime soon. I am a SPA Single Purpose Account editor because I can bring a unique and well qualified look at content from my vertical adding value to Wikipedia this should not be a limiting attribute it should be a value designator but it appears that the egos in play aren’t interested in content just wielding there power from mom’s basement before running off to play Dungeons and Dragons with their buddies. I’ve written many pieces for Wikipedia through my Shawnrog account and anonymously in the early days I’m sad to see that such a great resource has turned into this mess.
Yves,
I totally agree with your comments and have been baffled and bewildered by the way Wikipedia editors have been treating us. There is no way to have a logical debate or interaction with these guys. And there is no logic why some vendors (e.g. Apatar, Syncsort, and many others) are allowed to be listed and others aren’t.
Have you noticed that they are now in the process of deleting the Pentaho entry because of “non-notable software advertisement” – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentaho. Who’s next? What a mess!
Michael Waclawiczek
VP, Marketing, expressor software
Hi Yves,
I would be the last person to say that removing corporations like Talend and Pentaho is a Good Thing(tm). However, please don’t be so quick to attribute to malice when this riddle can be answered by sheer incompetence.
However incomprehensible this may sound to a Talend Marketing Manager, I’m sure there are relatively very few people on the planet that know Talend (or Pentaho for that matter) even exists.
It’s not unlike the problem I faced at FOSDEM a few years ago. Even though the “Open Source BI” community spans hundreds of thousands (and by now millions) of people, it’s still easier to give airtime and support to something like “Ada” or “FreeDesktop”. That is simply because business software simply is unknown in certain circles. In this case I’m thinking primarily of academic and OS development circles.
Almost by definition, to get to know business software like ours, is that you have a job for example. A person that knows about Talend/Pentaho (whatever circle *that* is), is probably not the type of person that has hours of time to waste on futile Wikipedia page deletions and argumentations.
At the same time, I can’t remember ever having looked up Pentaho or Talend on Wikipedia and couldn’t for the life of me figure out why anyone would want to search Wikipedia for corporate information.
Then again, I’m not a marketing guy
Happy holidays Talend community!
Matt
Hi Matt,
Thanks for the comment. Yes I agree, our companies may not be household names. Still, why do these Wikipedia editors and administrators feel the urge to remove these entries, simply because they don’t know our space?
And then why don’t they remove articles like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peacefrog_Records, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EBG_Systems or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Baseball_Factory_Field_at_UMBC?
Best wishes for the holidays!
Yves
User:Themfromspace here. Nope, I had no pressure to change my opinion. My first glance of the article was too hasty and I misread the sources. If you want the article to stay, you should provide evidence that Talend has been covered in significant detail by multiple, reliable, third-party sources. Blog posts and press releases don’t cut it. Newspapers and other such periodicals, as well as scholarly journals and the like, are the typical sources used to prove notability. By the way, this blog posting is inappropriate “canvassing” of supporters. You aren’t allowed to selectively recruit “meatpuppets”, or other editors who share your opinion, to participate in Wikipedia debates. Go to the Wikipedia search feature and type in “WP:CANVASS” without the quotes to see the policy which I am referring to.
-TFS
@Themfromspace: if you don’t consider product reviews by eWeek, PCWorld, InfoWorld, or Gartner to be “multiple, reliable, third-party sources”, I don’t know what will cut it for you. And if you had read these pieces you would not qualify them of “blog posts and press releases”.
You may call this blog posting what you want, but the fact is that it was made after most of the contributions to the AfD page occurred. So it does not qualify as canvassing under your “democratic” rules.
Yves
It is not about Wikipedia “regime”. You guys are trying to use Wikipedia for business purpose such as advertising your company or services. Sorry to disappoint you but it is not ethical on Wikipedia
@Jasper Nah: by “you guys”, do you mean the Wikipedia contributors, completely independent from Talend, who thought they could provide useful content?
Of course, as the marketing guy for Talend, I am happy to see content on my company there. And I have the right to complain when some uninformed apparatchik wants to remove it for ludicrous reasons.
the deletionist vs. inclusionsist debate on wikipedia is nothing new, of course. (btw, i came here via a link at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Tothwolf/Evidence – which is an interminably long discussion of a few editors whose proclivity for deleting software related articles is under review)
in my view, any article that can be backed up with some fairly reliable sources is good enough for inclusion on wikipedia. what’s a good source depends on what the article is about. the debates at Article for Deletion actually focus on only a sliver of wikipedia’s 3 million english entries, which are often on marginal topics (and by marginal, i don’t mean not worthwhile!), so they are more likely to be debated.
For example, the article on Rachel Uchitel (the 1st of Tiger Woods’ mistresses to be outed) was recently deleted (i preserved it here: http://milowent.blogspot.com/2009/12/rachel-uchitel-wikipedia-article.html ) — Is it really life or death for wikipedia to have an article on her? Probably not. (she does have a passing reference in Tiger’s article). People don’t nominate things like World War I for deletion.
I am not a techie and i have found that wikipedia is biased in that it has MORE coverage of tech-related organizations and software than other fields. This bias is probably natural because of editors’ interests. But before you weep about the debate on Talend, consider that there are large companies in other fields that don’t even HAVE articles because apparently no one is interested in writing about them. you guys mention Pentaho above (whatever that is!), yet it does have an article which escaped deletion. But, for example, HCP, Inc. and Ventas, Inc. (huge Healthcare real estate investment outfits) are companies in the S&P500 and they don’t even HAVE wikipedia articles. I’m not saying people interested in software company articles shouldn’t defend them, I am just noting that you should expect more deletion discussions in that area because of the wealth of articles in that subject area.
AND, that all being said, there are many cranky editors on wikipedia. hey, its the internet.
Any corporation’s profile on Wikipedia IS an advertisement…erase the whole corporate domain from Wikipedia…yihaa!!!
I’m an avid Wikipedia user and a user of Talend’s suite of data integration products. I’ve seen some odd behaviors from the WP gnomes but trying to police off-site discussion of their decisions takes the cake.