Wikipedia Editors Attempt to Delete Articles About Major SEO Personalities
Today, a set of Wikipedia articles about Barry Schwartz, Matt Cutts, and Ben Pfeiffer were moved into the Articles for Deletion list by Wikipedia editors.
The editors are removing them on the basis of a lack of notability. Of course, these editors are obviously not involved in the search industry; otherwise, they would immediately recognize that these three are household names to the industry.
In order for the editors to acknowledge the notability of these three, they need a set of news sources about each of these men and their contributions to the search industry. If you know of or can find articles mentioning or about Barry, Matt, or Ben, please post them into the discussion pages at the following Articles for Deletion pages:
I can’t note on Ben, but Matt and Barry deserve a page… I’ve said so on these up for deletion pages as well, and asked some friendly admins to step in to this discussion.
This isn’t terribly surprising; Wikipedia’s community of editors is closing in on itself similar to what Dmoz did a while back…attempts to become exclusive without providing a means of proof of exclusivity will result in a dying network.
SearchCap: The Day In Search, Jan. 5, 2007…
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web:……
Cool post Caydel! Barry and I started profiles just to have a little fun and figure out Wikipedia better. Our profiles were with good intentions. Turned into some nightmare as the editors jumped on us like white blood cells attacking a virus. I don’t care if they delete mine, but please keep Matt Cutts! LOL.
It’s great - I got shit for this post on my talk page. Apparently I am votestacking and trying to influence the process. Apparently only jaded Wikipedia editors are allowed to rally help for an Article for Deletion….
It’s really a shocking development. The attempt to delete famous SEO persons like Matt Cutts, Ben Pfeiffer and Barry Schwartz is a big blow to SEO market. These influential personalities must deserve places in Wiki pages.
Open Letter To Wikipedia Editors: Yes, Matt Cutts Is Notable…
Dear Wikipedia Editors: I came back from vacation today to discover that in (some of) your infinite crowd wisdom, apparently the page at Wikipedia about Google’s Matt Cutts might get deleted. Wow. It’s inept things like this that can instantly reduce…
The big problem with Wikipedia, IMO, is that too many editors want to edit topics they really have no knowledge about. The original SEO entry has to be a famous example.
At present, there appears to be just enough good editors to drown these people out - but the question is how long that dynamic can be upheld.
[…] Danny Sullivan har i dag et fantastisk godt indlæg, der er udformet som et åbent brev til Wikipedia. Årsagen er, at Matt Cutts, sammen med en række andre SEO-personligheder, åbenbart er markeret til sletning, fordi nogle teenage-fjolser på Wikipedia ikke mener disse mennesker er noget særligt. My God! Dette understreger igen (igen, igen!) hvordan Wikopedia er ved at udvikle de samme dødelige sygdomme som stort set har smadred ODP. […]
Great point Brian, that was my same conclusion. At one point with Barry’s page, the editors conceded and said they did not know of certain credible sources he mentioned and tried to apologize.
Not all those editors are bad… I invited a few friendly ones to comment, to make sure the articles would be kept. That helps a lot more than commenting with relatively new accounts…
The wikipedia deleting editor gods certainly know less about one subject that I know almost nothing about.
And after slogging it out with them for the past 5 days, not one of them has yet answered my few simple questions:
Who are you to be deleting my external link to my website about captcha (captcha.biz) ?
Have you ever implemented captcha to your website ?
Explain why the site content is not of your liking ?
All I have been getting is deletions, even of the new article topic ( captcha for beginners ) I created so as not to break their nuts too much under the main CAPTCHA section - and nobody who seems to know one iota about captcha has been involved.
It’s all bots, deletion lists, policies and algorithms.
No real human eyeballs or common sense involved in the wikipedia censorship.
In my opinion wikipedia is a great resource - but not free and editable by everybody - just managed by the selected few.
By the by - my website on captcha was created after I needed to implement captcha and couldn’t find any easy to use instuctions on the web on how to actually implement captcha after 2 days of googling and I don’t make a living from it apart from the few google ads to pay for the domain name.
According to the wiki gods the site is spam.
And has low quality content.
Not acording to the 50 thank you emails I receive daily from the actual webmasters who have read the site and used the offered captchas.
Last but not least - the site already has great google rank which is due to people like Matt Cutts and other seo Gurus from whom I learnt to seo web sites.
My suggestion on the notability of an seo person for the wiki devils = Bruce Clay (bruceclay.com)
But if they don’t know Matt Cutts ….. go figure
Pete