Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2017 March 18

18 March 2017

Timeline of Twitter – G11 speedy deletions overturned. The articles can be nominated at AfD by anyone inclined to do so. I am only restoring the articles mentioned in the review request because only they were the subject of substantial discussion here. –  Sandstein  13:26, 28 March 2017 (UTC)
The following is an archived debate of the deletion review of the page above. Please do not modify it.
Timeline of Twitter (talk|edit|history|logs|links|watch) (restore) Also see Timeline of Facebook, Timeline of Instagram, Timeline of Pinterest, Timeline of Snapchat, Timeline of LinkedIn. These are all improper applications of CSD by JzG, because CSD is meant for unambiguous cases. At least two admins Anachronist and DGG have already informed JzG that the material is not unambiguously promotion and the application of G11 was improper, but they refused to undelete and asked me to take it to DRV. CSD is not meant as a tool to bypass consensus; it would be fine to list these articles at AfD if so desired. See also the recently closed CSD here for Givewell, which was also CSD'ed by JzG. There is already a section on WP:COIN which deals with many similar articles. Kingsindian ♝ ♚ 12:42, 18 March 2017 (UTC) These articles were created in return for payments that were not, as far as I can tell, properly disclosed on Wikipedia, and they were stuffed with links promoting sites associated with the person who paid for them. WHOIS and SEO tag checks have shown this (see WP:COIN for more). The articles themselves read to me as obvious promotion, the principal source other than Vipul's SEO was press releases form the companies. They read as pure PR and were part of a major paid editing and promotion ring. That meets the definition of G11 for me. Wikipedia is not a bureaucracy. Guy (Help!) 17:06, 18 March 2017 (UTC) Gonna need either a restoration (in draft space if desired) or some other way to see the articles. Also evidence of undisclosed paid editing would be useful. Hobit (talk) 18:11, 18 March 2017 (UTC) Restoration in draft space would be good, but in the meantime, here's the archive.org page. The part about undisclosed paid editing is, at the very least, badly misleading. Vipul's userpage has links which list all payments made, in gory detail. See this, for instance. The other accusations are out of place here; if JzG wants, they can pursue the matter at ANI or ArbCom; in the meantime, they should stop repeating these allegations. JzG is free to think whatever they want, but they do not have the right to flout rules and bypass consensus by citing WP:BURO. I repeat: the page has to be unambiguously promotional for the CSD to be applicable. Failing this, AfD is the right venue. Kingsindian ♝ ♚ 19:31, 18 March 2017 (UTC) List at AfD. Probably this material should be deleted, though some of it may be useful. it is the self-admitted product of a ring of undeclared paid editors, but opinions vary on whether it was a a operation to add inappropriate material, or an altruistic project, or some combination. We don't have to decide that here, and this is not the place for me to give my opinion on either question. I do not think such a decision , or the question of whether wee should keep an article from that group, should be up to any one admin. Even were we certain that it was intended commercially, it is not such obvious promotion of anything specific that it falls within G11. To delete an article at Speedy even if it is absolutely certain to need deletion but it does not fall within any of the provided criteria may in some circumstances be a valid use of IAR, but it never a valid use to delete when one knows or ought to know that there is likely to be opposition. It is certainly not a good idea for an admin to insist on this deletion after they do know there is opposition from good-faith established editors. I know JzG does not like to deal with appeals from his decision, and to avoid conflicts he has previously given me a general OK to overturn them if I think necessary--I have used it a very few times. (He and I have very similar views on what ought to be deleted, as can be seen from the many messages of support he has posted on my user talk to assist me in dealing with complains. I consider him a valued ally in dealing with the flood of spam. ) When I informed him I did not agree with these, he insisted on keeping them deleted. I have the ability as does any other admin to restore nonetheless, and bring the matter to an suitable discussion board, such as this. I'm very conservative about such things so it's here for discussion in a different way. (I am going to use the ability to temp restore so non admins can see this. I almost always do at Deletion Review when I think it helpful and the article isn't a copyvio or major BLP problem) DGG ( talk ) 01:03, 19 March 2017 (UTC) KingsIndian, is this a formal appeal for all the ones listed--should I undelete their histories also, or is this representative one sufficient?) DGG ( talk ) 01:09, 19 March 2017 (UTC) @DGG: It is meant as a formal appeal for all the ones listed. However, they are all available from archive.org, if anyone wants to see their state before deletion. So I don't really care one way or another. Perhaps temporarily undeleting one more: Timeline of Facebook should be sufficient for purposes of discussion. Kingsindian ♝ ♚ 03:31, 19 March 2017 (UTC) List at AfD I imagine I'll be !voting to delete, but this should be at AfD as it doesn't look promotional at all to me. Just seems like a WP:NOT issue. Hobit (talk) 12:43, 19 March 2017 (UTC) Question: Except for the manner of its creation, just what is wrong with it? Press releases from a company are good sources for straightforward facts about its history, tho some of the more interpretative material needs 3rd party sourcing. Some of the paragraphs need to be shortened, because a timeline should read like a line, but that's not all that difficult. Similarly for Timeline of Facebook and the other articles. DGG ( talk ) 19:44, 19 March 2017 (UTC) It was created by the evil paid editing ring I'm a part of, of course. That makes people suspicious, and together with the SEO accusations, Guy went ahead and deleted a subset of the technology timelines (about 10 articles). DGG, if you look at my user page, you'll see that I've written a lot of presidential timelines. I wasn't paid to write them, and it couldn't have been SEO optimization or advocacy or whatever, because they have very few references in them. I wrote them because I'm interested in politics, and I got the idea for writing the timelines by knowing of all the timelines that the evil Vipul ring has written, and because I saw that the Obama, Ford and Kennedy timelines already existed, so there was a precedent for it. Maybe the timelines weren't written maliciously? Hmm... Oh well. Ethanbas (talk) 20:52, 19 March 2017 (UTC) Ethanbas, as one of the paid editing ring, you should step very carefully here. There is a strong body of opinion that paid editing actually is evil, and what you and the rest of Vipul's paid editing SEO enterprise are doing is a serious problem. The fact that you do not realise or accept this, is obvious. That doesn't change anything: it's still a problem. Guy (Help!) 08:45, 20 March 2017 (UTC) Sigh. Seeing that Riceissa now has an indef, and that Vipul's project is suspended, I'll stop defending them any longer. Ethanbas (talk) 15:10, 20 March 2017 (UTC) Being packed with SEO spam links, basically. Guy (Help!) 08:39, 20 March 2017 (UTC) What link target(s) is/are the issue here? Who are they advertising for? Hobit (talk) 11:20, 20 March 2017 (UTC) JzG, there are only links to the companies it acquires and to ones it has significant partnerships with, and the affiliations of major investors. I don't regard them as spam--I regard them as necessary content and links. The typical spam links in a company article are links to companies it has sold something to or had some minor affiliation with, e.g. "Among our customers are the following 20 leading companies: " or the prior companies of minor executives.--that's not spam in the sense of inflating importance. As another type of spam, some of the articles from this source link to one and only one organization that has evaluated them--they may not be there in the current version in all cases,because I have been removing them. DGG ( talk ) 17:17, 23 March 2017 (UTC) Discuss at AFD for all, since it is controversial. The topics are actually suitable for Wikipedia, it is the content (in references) that is not. So if anyone is prepared to change all the references, this would avoid SEO benefit. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 00:06, 20 March 2017 (UTC) Send to AFD. Not obviously advertising or promotional. And list them all separately because I can see the Twitter one being more notable than, say, Pinterest. Stifle (talk) 11:50, 20 March 2017 (UTC) Related AfD: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Timeline of Amazon.com. Cunard (talk) 07:02, 21 March 2017 (UTC) Restore the articles and initiate AfD discussions if desired to obtain a broader community consensus. North America1000 07:19, 21 March 2017 (UTC) Restore and make it absolutely clear that G11 does not care about the purpose of or payment for promotional articles, and that it is NOT to be used as a weapon to fight paid editing battles. In a nutshell G11 is not G5, which is the ONLY CSD criterion which functions based on the status of the editor who created the article. Jclemens (talk) 06:10, 23 March 2017 (UTC) It's not a reason by itself for speedy, but it can assist as an indication for identifying promotional articles--as over 90% of such articles are in fact promotional in content. . I ageee if it is not clearly G11 without it, it needs AfD. I would also favor introducing such a speedy criterion, except for that 10% or so of false positives, such as this one. DGG ( talk ) 17:20, 23 March 2017 (UTC) Comment: These pages were listed in the DRV nomination: Timeline of Twitter (talk|edit|history|logs|links|watch) (restore) Timeline of Facebook (talk|edit|history|logs|links|watch) (restore) Timeline of Instagram (talk|edit|history|logs|links|watch) (restore) Timeline of Pinterest (talk|edit|history|logs|links|watch) (restore) Timeline of Snapchat (talk|edit|history|logs|links|watch) (restore) Timeline of LinkedIn (talk|edit|history|logs|links|watch) (restore) These pages were not listed in the AfD nomination: Timeline of Monsanto (talk|edit|history|logs|links|watch) (restore) Timeline of GitHub (talk|edit|history|logs|links|watch) (restore) Timeline of Airbnb (talk|edit|history|logs|links|watch) (restore) Timeline of online advertising (talk|edit|history|logs|links|watch) (restore) I recommend restoring the timeline pages not listed in the DRV nomination because the consensus above applies to them even if they were not listed here. These redirects to the timeline pages should be restored if the timeline pages are restored: User:Simfish/Timeline of LinkedIn (talk|edit|history|logs|links|watch) (restore) Twitter timeline (talk|edit|history|logs|links|watch) (restore) History of Twitter (talk|edit|history|logs|links|watch) (restore) Instant Personalization (talk|edit|history|logs|links|watch) (restore) Facebook timeline (talk|edit|history|logs|links|watch) (restore) User:Simfish/Timeline of Monsanto (talk|edit|history|logs|links|watch) (restore) These talk pages of the timeline pages should be restored if the timeline pages are restored: Talk:Timeline of GitHub (talk|edit|history|logs|links|watch) (restore) Talk:Timeline of LinkedIn (talk|edit|history|logs|links|watch) (restore) Talk:Timeline of Instagram (talk|edit|history|logs|links|watch) (restore) Talk:Timeline of Twitter (talk|edit|history|logs|links|watch) (restore) Talk:Timeline of Facebook (talk|edit|history|logs|links|watch) (restore) Talk:Timeline of Monsanto (talk|edit|history|logs|links|watch) (restore) Talk:Timeline of online advertising (talk|edit|history|logs|links|watch) (restore) Cunard (talk) 07:10, 25 March 2017 (UTC)
The above is an archive of the deletion review of the page listed in the heading. Please do not modify it.