What does the article mean “Juniper Networks, despite being a “Good Article”, is also mostly PR”? It seems like a fine article to me, and as the article mentioned, Tinucherian disclosed his COI and appropriately sought review for edits in this case (though as the article also mentions, he’s edited other articles the wrong way).
What does the article mean “Juniper Networks, despite being a “Good Article”, is also mostly PR”?
It’s all part of their various horseshit attempt at making something which is pretty simple an innocuous into something that it isn’t.
Within the last few days, it looks like someone raised the issue on this guy’s page, the arbitration committee is getting in touch with him, and he’s saying he’ll get back to them. Presumably there’s a minor conflict of interest and they’ll look over the article and make sure he didn’t do anything slanty to them and then tell him to stay away from COI-like articles in the future.
There’s absolutely nothing sinister here, and they are stringing together a bunch of misleading stuff (like “mostly PR”) to make a mountain out of a molehill to discredit Wikipedia. I’ve noticed a bunch of people doing this, presumably there is some organized campaign which actually is sinister in the way they’re implying WP is, that is trying to make people think badly of them.
Both things are technically true: the article is primarily made up of content literally written by the company or people contracted by them for PR purposes, and it is a Good Article (Wikipedia jargon for having passed a review of certain quality standards around writing, coverage and sourcing, but not the higher standard required to be classed as a Featured Article).
How much of a problem this is probably depends on the subject. Does Juniper Networks have any bad practices which the article omits because the people who researched it (i.e. Juniper Networks) didn’t think they needed to go in the article? You’d basically need an independent observer to research anything that potentially should be in the article but isn’t there, but how many people that aren’t getting paid are invested in researching a corporate networking business?
There’s absolutely merit to Wikipedia having articles that are written by people paid to write them by their subjects, because a lot of it would otherwise be missing from Wikipedia entirely. But it’s also good to know that many articles are not necessarily written by impartial authors.
How much of a problem this is probably depends on the subject.
I think it also depends on the extensiveness. Basically every corporate page on wikipedia is PR, right? It means a huge chunk of the website is just commercials. That tracks with my experience - especially on corporate pages and similar.
What does the article mean “Juniper Networks, despite being a “Good Article”, is also mostly PR”? It seems like a fine article to me, and as the article mentioned, Tinucherian disclosed his COI and appropriately sought review for edits in this case (though as the article also mentions, he’s edited other articles the wrong way).
It’s all part of their various horseshit attempt at making something which is pretty simple an innocuous into something that it isn’t.
Within the last few days, it looks like someone raised the issue on this guy’s page, the arbitration committee is getting in touch with him, and he’s saying he’ll get back to them. Presumably there’s a minor conflict of interest and they’ll look over the article and make sure he didn’t do anything slanty to them and then tell him to stay away from COI-like articles in the future.
There’s absolutely nothing sinister here, and they are stringing together a bunch of misleading stuff (like “mostly PR”) to make a mountain out of a molehill to discredit Wikipedia. I’ve noticed a bunch of people doing this, presumably there is some organized campaign which actually is sinister in the way they’re implying WP is, that is trying to make people think badly of them.
It’s not happening in a vacuum. Elon Musk has made an enemy of Wikipedia.
Both things are technically true: the article is primarily made up of content literally written by the company or people contracted by them for PR purposes, and it is a Good Article (Wikipedia jargon for having passed a review of certain quality standards around writing, coverage and sourcing, but not the higher standard required to be classed as a Featured Article).
How much of a problem this is probably depends on the subject. Does Juniper Networks have any bad practices which the article omits because the people who researched it (i.e. Juniper Networks) didn’t think they needed to go in the article? You’d basically need an independent observer to research anything that potentially should be in the article but isn’t there, but how many people that aren’t getting paid are invested in researching a corporate networking business?
There’s absolutely merit to Wikipedia having articles that are written by people paid to write them by their subjects, because a lot of it would otherwise be missing from Wikipedia entirely. But it’s also good to know that many articles are not necessarily written by impartial authors.
I think it also depends on the extensiveness. Basically every corporate page on wikipedia is PR, right? It means a huge chunk of the website is just commercials. That tracks with my experience - especially on corporate pages and similar.