Ttrimm
1
There have been a lot of NFDs placed on an author who has done a VERY good job with writing about the software and fitting wikiHow’s guidelines. The NFDs are for ADV and I believe that they shouldn’t be placed. I am currently in the process of saying so on the articles, but wanted to get some input from others. The user is http://www.wikihow.com/User:Janestanley
could you give us the articles?
Chris_H
3
These articles seem to conform to all our guidelines regarding commercial topics. As far as I can tell, this writer is making helpful articles and isn’t creating a mess for the community to clean up. I think that NFDs are unwarranted here.
system
4
Someone should contact the tagger then… ADV is his pet peeve and this will need to be addressed directly with him to avoid future difficulties.
Melwade
5
Isn’t that why we have the review period where others can comment on NFDs? What am I missing here?
Ttrimm
6
I did contact him. Heard nothing yet.
I usually advise authors that the NFD process isn’t a bad thing. If all is ok they will survive deletion and cannot be renominated without a different reason being given.
I’m going to agree with the deletionists based on the following observations. First of all, advertising aside, there’s a lot of duplicates in her article list. *Download Yahoo Videos With RipTiger *Download and Convert Facebook Videos With RipTiger *Download Free Anime With RipTiger *Download Metacafe Videos With RipTiger *Download Dailymotion Videos Using RipTiger *Download Videos from Hulu Using RipTiger *Download Online Video with RipTiger OK, I get it, Riptiger captures streaming video which a lot of sites use. But do we really want potentially thousands of articles of the form “Download foo videos from bar Using Riptiger.” They require no special configuration and the instructions are almost identical other than changing step 2 to read “Go to www.bar.com
and find a foo video that you want to download.” and a little keyword stuffing. Second, there are a lot of misleading links such as download Hulu videos
and copy DVD to iPad
. At least one such link per article, sometimes more. This, especially combined with the title flooding, is a clear sign these are just part of a SEO campaign and are not really intended for human consumption. Third, while we probably can’t use this as grounds for deletion, you might like to head over to cnet and read the reviews
of RipTiger. I found it especially interesting how similar the many 5-star reviews were, the dates they were submitted, and what those reviewers had to say about the other product they reviewed. Again, not really actionable on this site, but gives some insight into what type of company we’re dealing with. I’m sorry, but if this is indicitive of an industry’s best effort to promote themselves the right way, it’s a pretty sad industry. The babies to bathwater ratio in this field is low enough that I wouldn’t even mind explicitly mentioning them in the speedy deletion policy.
system
9
I’ve asked the author to consider condensing the multitude of titles into a few articles about said software (e.g. How to Download Videos with RipTiger). My concern is not so much with the advertising, but with the duplicity of these titles. In most cases I can use my imagination and try to envision what an article might look like one day if the content eventually reflected the uniqueness of the title. In cases where the *only* possible difference would be which URL you type into your browser, I’m hesitant to consider that distinct.
Hi all, Since I’m the ‘author in question’, I just wanted to say a couple of things regarding my articles. When I started writing on wikiHow, I was not much aware of it’s brand name guidelines and as a result my first articles got NDFs. Since I had no intention to violate the community rules, I did my best to make my articles fit to the brand name guidelines and external links policy, and articles survived the nomination (many thanks to Krystle and Teresa, who always were very helpful). After that I tried to write all further articles in accordance with wikiHow rules and standards, and everything seemed to be ok. Moreover, several of my articles got Rising Star - and I did appreciate that a lot. These are the main reasons why recent NFD nomination of the majority of my articles was, frankly speaking, totally unexpected and confusing. I did try to write them within the scope of wikiHow rules. Concerning the similarity of some articles - well, they do have a lot of in common. But at the same time, very often people are looking for quite specific things, and my aim was to cover the wide range of popular queries with relevant specific articles. Anyway, I do want to believe that in spite of the ‘commercial bias’ of my articles they might be helpful for wikiHow readers. And, as far as i can see, people do read them. Once again, I neither intend to breach any of wikiHow rules, nor want my articles to be a useless and blatant spam. That’s why I’m always open to cooperation. And I want to thank everyone who supported and helped me despite me being a ‘commercial author’ - I really appreciate that. Jane
Melwade
11
Janestanley, Thanks for your being open and frank. I certainly appreciate that. Just a question… While the list of articles (listed by King Peter the the post above) may technically fit the commercial guidelines, why 7 articles when one would have sufficed? You stated that you didn’t want your articles to be blatant spam but you write multiple articles where one concise one suffice. This is just an example. I see that you have written 28 articles. Can many of them be consolidated so the don’t appear as spam?
I’d support deletion in most of these. If an article can be written without brand names (least of all obscure brand names) then it should be written without brand names (especially in the title - if the instructions are generic).
Melwade, I’ve tried to explain my intentions concerning this issue in the previous message - I did that to cover popular queries of potential readers. I surely agree that if person is looking for a way to download online video, he or she will definitely figure out how to perform that task with any website from a single article of the same name. But at the same time, very often people are looking for quite specific things, e.g. download Youtube videos or download from Hulu - such queries are very popular, you can see it if you google. Actually, that’s why I wrote all those articles - each of them addresses a potential specific query. And that’s why I’d prefer to keep them. Still, as I’ve already mentioned, I don’t want to violate wikiHow by no means, and if the current state of affairs is against the rules - I’ll take it for granted and will act according to the community decision.
I do apologize, but in the brand name guidelines it’s clearly stated that “Brand names used in article titles are generally acceptable and are generally encouraged for pages talking about specific brands”. It follows that articles about specific products (brand names) are not prohibited, and there are lots of them on wikiHow.
system
15
Hi Jane et al, Just an observation that perhaps what we’re looking at here is too much of a good thing? I mean… I like pie and all… but 7 pieces? of the same pie? While each of your articles may be fine by itself, you’ve written many articles that are very similar to each other. Frankly? it looks to me as if your desire to get your name out has overridden good sense and has stretched wikiHow commercial guidelines to the breaking point. I’d be in favor of consolidation, and if that is not acceptable, deletion.
Melwade
16
I think this brings up an issue we haven’t addressed fully in our brand name guidelines. Where is using a brand name acceptable and where does it cross the line into spam or blatant advertising by introducing multiple variations of an article with different keywords in the title. Jane, please understand that this isn’t anything personal with what you have done. Please accept my apologies if it as appeared otherwise. This is a challenging issue. We welcome your input into the discussion but do ask that you honestly look at all sides of the issue. One of our challenges here are people who just dump spam/advertising into the system just to get free advertising. Free advertising is not the purpose of wikiHow. On the other hand, reasonable instructional material that is useful to individuals is what wikiHow is about and that sometimes involves use of brand names and specific product references. I’ve been involved with web development for over 10 years. I understand the role of keywords in driving traffic to one’s web site. In the case at hand, the software doesn’t work any differently whether you are using Hulu or YouTube. The point multiple articles is to drive more traffic to the RipTiger web site and to sell more product. Yes, there’s a free version and the download is directly linked, but it is crippleware - only some features are included in the free version and there is strong incentive to buy. For a small start-up business, wikiHow is a no-brainer. The more you can get yourself on a high traffic site like wikiHow the more traffic you get. The more variations of an article you can write with different keywords the better. The wikiHow article will come much higher in the search rankings than the companies own site. And the more links you have to your site the higher your ranking will rise compared to your competitors. This is especially true in crowded markets like video downloaders - hence the plethora of articles we get from “the multitude” of video download software sites. In the case at hand, Jane has even stated:
So we come back to the question, “When does appropriate brand name usage cross the line and become spam?” Personally, if multiple articles are written where one would suffice, I would consider that spam - and taking advantage of the brand name guidelines.
Melwade
17
system
18
That’s a discussion we need to have as a group… where and how to draw the line on these types of articles.
system
19
I have an opinion to offer here, but first let me make the comment that this is the type of discussion both in content and tone that helps to define what meets wikiHow’s community standards, so regardless of the outcome of the discussion or the intent of one author, the conversation has raised a number of important points and may help clarify the policy in question. My comment is simply this. Anyone can tag an article nfd for any reason, and if there is a legitimate reasoning behind the tag, it can and should remain until the issue is resolved or the community reaches a consensus. The discussionpage of each article in question is where the rubber should meet the road, and if the consensus is for saving the article, save it, if it is for deletion, delete it. Regarding my opinion on the articles themselves, my understanding has always been that if an article topic could be covered in a generic way, (bleach rather than Clorox), the generic should be used. Conversely, if the specific product is unique to the subject, that dictates the use of the specific product name or brand. My inclination, after reading the discussion is that the rules are bending in favor of brand priority articles, which I do not support, and I certainly do not support external links unless they are a source of the actual article content.
system
20
The topic of downloading videos is tricky, because generally there is no way to download videos *except* with software. So if someone wants to know how to download videos from Yahoo! for example, ideally when they come to wikiHow they should encounter several different articles, one for each software. Otherwise, they won’t find any articles at all, which I don’t think is consistent with our bigger mission. After letting my thoughts sit on this for a few days, I do think we should allow these articles to stay. Technically, they do abide by our policy. Yes, seeing a whole bunch of these articles published in a short period of time with only slight variations does make us feel used…but ultimately I do see how these articles could be useful to people, regardless of the author’s intentions. Do a Google search for “how to download metacafe videos” for example. All the stuff that comes up looks like junk. It’d be sweet if wikiHow came up in those results, because unlike all the rest of the results, our pages can be edited, and people can discuss - without restriction - the merits of the program in that article. You can’t do that on most other websites.
