In 2013 we discovered a number of administrators from India who secretly had conflicts of interests and were using Wikipedia for PR. Today, we reveal another.
I’m guessing how that goes is you pay them, they do actually make you a page, it gets quickly deleted for not meeting Wikipedia’s standards, and then they go “sorry no refunds”. Step 0 to getting a Wikipedia page about yourself is to be notable enough for one, which >99.9% of people are not.
And even if technically notable enough, you still need some objective sources for any claims made, even simple things like profession, even if your works speak for themselves. And what the mods deem an acceptable source seems arbitrary.
I listen to a lot of indie music or local smaller bands, and often, even though they gig a lot and have several albums practically on every digital platform, I can’t find the bands in there, nor any of their members.
Often there’s a red page there with some contributor discussions where they argue with each other about these things.
Seems so wonky to me, since I just came from their gig, having listened to them for 10+ years.
You can ask me about sources. We probably all know what “reliable” means, and claims may cite any reliable source (even sources written by the subject of the article if the fact is uncontroversial). However, for an article to be included in Wikipedia, and mainly so that it’s possible for the article to be improved so that it conforms with Wikipedia’s guidelines, articles must pass “notability” (a misnomer, see efforts to change its name); the biggest component of notability that’s most often failed is that there is enough coverage in reliable sources not written by the subject, and that’s precisely so that we won’t have an article that’s entirely the subject’s own puffery that turns out to be false or egregiously biased. (Not an admin because I probably have too short a temper, but nonetheless experienced.)
I’m guessing how that goes is you pay them, they do actually make you a page, it gets quickly deleted for not meeting Wikipedia’s standards, and then they go “sorry no refunds”. Step 0 to getting a Wikipedia page about yourself is to be notable enough for one, which >99.9% of people are not.
And even if technically notable enough, you still need some objective sources for any claims made, even simple things like profession, even if your works speak for themselves. And what the mods deem an acceptable source seems arbitrary.
I listen to a lot of indie music or local smaller bands, and often, even though they gig a lot and have several albums practically on every digital platform, I can’t find the bands in there, nor any of their members.
Often there’s a red page there with some contributor discussions where they argue with each other about these things.
Seems so wonky to me, since I just came from their gig, having listened to them for 10+ years.
You can ask me about sources. We probably all know what “reliable” means, and claims may cite any reliable source (even sources written by the subject of the article if the fact is uncontroversial). However, for an article to be included in Wikipedia, and mainly so that it’s possible for the article to be improved so that it conforms with Wikipedia’s guidelines, articles must pass “notability” (a misnomer, see efforts to change its name); the biggest component of notability that’s most often failed is that there is enough coverage in reliable sources not written by the subject, and that’s precisely so that we won’t have an article that’s entirely the subject’s own puffery that turns out to be false or egregiously biased. (Not an admin because I probably have too short a temper, but nonetheless experienced.)