Please Act Now: Firefox extensions Wikipedia issue

Post by **Daifne** » May 15th, 2007, 8:09 am

Agree, Douglasawh. This is not spam in Mozillazine even if he was asking us to "spam" Wikipedia.

Veinor · Post by **Veinor** » May 15th, 2007, 9:02 am

OK, a few points here:

First off, I have to disagree with sebastain.wain regarding their belief that Wikipedia is using this as a coping mechanism. The core <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:N">notability</a> criteria is existence of multiple secondary <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:RS">reliable sources</a> that are free of conflicts of interest; forum posts are not reliable sources due to the lack of fact-checking that goes on. Basically, it makes sure that we can actually find sources for everything in the article.

Second, I did indeed find CookiePie after seeing one of Sebastian's comments in another discussion: when they called me and other users "ignorance dictatorships" <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Spy_Studio">here</a>. I checked their contributions, saw CookiePie, and decided to search for 'Nektra' to see if there's anything else. I found some pages, and put those up for deletion as well. No malice was present here.

Third, I believe that inclusion on a list requires being suitable for an article. Otherwise, I could add myself to a whole bunch of lists (list of mathematicians, list of physicists) and so could everybody else, and we'd have no way to stop them, as long as they can point to their PhD in whatever.

Finally, I do agree that making a forum post asking people to go vote on a debate is a bad idea and against Wikipedia policy, but I don't think that it's deletable as spam. It seems to have started an interesting discussion.

Post by **Daifne** » May 15th, 2007, 9:30 am

Thank you for dropping in Veinor. Interesting that sebastian.wain did not include that discussion in his post. Very telling.

sebastian.wain · Post by **sebastian.wain** » May 15th, 2007, 9:44 am

Daifne, you have not read my first post, it says clearly:

"The issue can be tracked and contributed at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia: ... /CookiePie and it's included in a bigger discussion related to other software we have."

Phil Bridger · Post by **Phil Bridger** » May 15th, 2007, 11:54 am

OK, seems like the initial consensus is that this doesn't constitute spam, but I think that sets a dangerous precedent. Should Mozillazine really be used as a vehicle for encouraging spam to other sites? How would we feel if Mozillazine users used other forums to ask users to post here in contravention of our policies?

old zmanzero · Post by **old zmanzero** » May 15th, 2007, 12:16 pm

*interesting... provocative... well seasoned... why is this thread here? nevermind... at least i learned about the Snowball clause*

Phil Bridger · Post by **Phil Bridger** » May 15th, 2007, 12:28 pm

I have posted http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=549418 in the Mozillazine Site Discussion forum about whether posts should be allowed to encourage spamming of other sites, because it is a more general issue than this discussion.

Thumper · Post by **Thumper** » May 15th, 2007, 12:49 pm

I haven't felt so confident in an AfD for ages. It's not often that an article which passes no criterion for inclusion and passes every criterion for exclusion lasts so long.

- Chris

johann_p · Post by **johann_p** » May 15th, 2007, 1:01 pm

I have voted to delete the article from Wikipedia a while ago.

However, I wouldn't go as far as to call the OP an "encouragement to spam Wikipedia". sebastian.wain has a different opinion about whether or which extensions should be listed on Wikipedia, maybe he does not understand enough what "notable" and "independent sources" mean, but raising this issue on a forum that is related to extensions is quite legitimate in my opinion. Obviously it also had a desirable effect: he got confronted with the opinion of others here, some of them maybe extension authors.
Not that bad a thread after all, when compared to many others, in my opinion.

Veinor · Post by **Veinor** » May 15th, 2007, 3:10 pm

sebastian.wain wrote:Daifne, you have not read my first post, it says clearly:

"The issue can be tracked and contributed at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia: ... /CookiePie and it's included in a bigger discussion related to other software we have."

I believe Daifne was talking about <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Spy_Studio">the discussion for Spy Studio</a>, which you did not mention in your original post.

sebastian.wain · Post by **sebastian.wain** » May 15th, 2007, 3:19 pm

Veinor, the discussion thread is very complete and everyone reading it will understand the whole picture, there are a lot of links to navigate from there to the other pages.

Post by **Daifne** » May 15th, 2007, 3:26 pm

That is what I meant, Veinor. Thanks. That is a very important part of the big picture here.

sebastian.wain · Post by **sebastian.wain** » May 15th, 2007, 3:30 pm

Again Daifne, everyone reading the complete discussion can jump to the other problems with our pages and that what I asked for in my first post.

Veinor · Post by **Veinor** » May 15th, 2007, 3:51 pm

I believe what Daifne was referring to was more specifically your comment (the second one that starts with "Keep"):

All you guys doesn't know a bit about reverse engineering just are Vigilantes and <b>Ignorance Dictatorships</b>. The tool was released for free after months of hard work and most in the reverse engineering community will share our thoughts about their usefulness. Since you didn't understand anything about this stuff, you use the notability concept to cover your lack of knowledge in this subject.

sebastian.wain · Post by **sebastian.wain** » May 15th, 2007, 3:56 pm

Veinor, don't change the facts, Daifne has been clear he referred to Spy Studio.