In the spirit of continuing our push for quality the following has been discussed with and agreed with our benevolent dictator @JackHerrick
. We will no longer be accepting articles that are cut and paste copies of articles sourced at the major content farms. These articles are in the majority created by affiliate marketers solely for marketing purposes. Genuine businesses who wish to share their content typically do so from their official sites and blogs. These articles are automatically detected by the CopyvioCheckBot and will be subject to the Speedy deletion procedure. The majority will be dealt with by the Copyvio reviewer, but of course all Admins may Speedy delete and Nabbers can flag as the same. I will be creating an initial blacklist of the most egregious sources and a template that can be left on the author’s Talk Page.
Wouldn’t these have been eligible for speedy deletion for being copyright violations anyway?
Generally not, Lewis. The marketers’ host their content at these sites and hold the copyright, they can and do, declare authorship under our current rules. It’s all about getting your article (and its links) in as many locations as possible.
Ah, gotcha. So if the copyright holders submitted it to wikiHow, but it’s also appeared on low-rent content farms, it’ll get nuked so we don’t look to search engines, and everyone else, like another low-rent content farm? Sounds good to me. This
might need some updating.
Right, the intention is to move ourselves away from that association. I’ll tinker with that article, thanks.
I made the change here
which is linked to from your article, does that work?
Here is a first draft of the blacklist page
.
Yes it does. I prefer this tweaked wording
, if I am understanding the policy change correctly.
Good choices.
system
10
I love it. I’m really enjoying the increased push for quality since I’ve returned.
system
11
Beaming off the subject for a mo - to distinguish/know if a wikiHow article or eHow article came first, go to the “View Page Source” of the eHow article and look for this in the meta information at the top:``I’m glad that wikiHow is making this move and direction concerning the content farm websites. The mission is highest quality, so it shall be it.
Here is a first draft of the Talk Page template
. {{copyviorfarm}}
Sure, here’s one: http://www.wikihow.com/Make-a-Slow-Fortune-in-Real-Estate
They can be fine to look at (mostly), but will have been submitted to many, many sites.
That’s great, thanks! It was a pain when they dropped the date from the pages.
@Davecrosby
: Could I add a “Review” section for the blacklist? To suggest sites to be blacklisted?
Sure, good idea. We’ll be looking for sites that are persistently used, it will be those that get added first, but all suggestions will be appreciated.
system
17
Million dollar question: Because we are no longer
accepting such content, how is going to be played with existing content? Removal or grandfathered? http://is.gd/Pl11wq
Good question, and one that hasn’t been discussed. My thoughts are that we are good guys and the content had already been accepted in good faith, so I would lean toward grandfathering. We have existing unreviewed copyvios that predate this announcement, I’m all for making those the last to potentially be accepted.
system
19
Grandfathering these articles in seems okay to me. I don’t think we’ve always grandfathered other articles in when we have created a new deletion policy (character articles, for example; political-based articles as another example). However, I think these situations warrant a case-by-case review. I support grandfathering in existing articles.
Which is fair, they should be judged under the current Deletion Policy.
