1

http://www.wikihow.com/Find-the-Ideal-Holiday-Destination This article’s title is not interchangeable with anything, so I’m a bit hesitant to nfd it, but it’s about finding the idead holiday destination in Sri Lanka, which we already have: http://www.wikihow.com/Find-the-Ideal-Holiday-Destination-in-Sri-Lanka , Thoughts?

2

Finding the Ideal Holiday Destination could be to a destination anywhere in the world, yet, the other one seems to be solely to Sri Lanka. It would definitely go against the Merge Policy since the two wouldn’t be interchangeable, and to NFD it for DUP is just the same way. Is there anything else that could make it an NFD (such as acc or inc or whatnot)? Check the articles.

3

Well I’ve seen articles before like this with a different topic. I believe the second to be more specific, as in “sri lanka” and the one you mentioned to be more broad and general. This just might make them similar topics, not duplicates; but I’m not entirely sure. Try looking over the merge policy:slight_smile:I hope I helped a little.

4

@Irishdancer25 . The the originator of this article is creating, on average, two articles per day and none of them fits the wikihow format. Each could be NFDd as not, yet no one has taken the time to coach the contributor on what needs to be done to bring the articles up to wikiHow standards. Though not blatantly commercial, I am fairly sure such articles are intended to pad the contributor’s wallet, so let’s call them semi-spammy. I do not think it wise to empower contributors who obligate the community to repair their semi-spammy articles on an ongoing basis and feel that there should be a mechanism to report such contributors. That way somebody could work with these contributors and guide them to fixing their own articles and properly formatting future articles. @Ttrimm , what do you usually do in such cases? *edit for clarity

5

In the best, I would format one of their articles (freebie) and then leave them a {{comformat}} template that I used to use, and then from then on, I would delete their articles. Would be MORE than happy to do that again.

6

Thank you, @Ttrimm ! I think we need something like that for this and similar contributors.

7

We could work on getting a policy to address these types of articles. I am not sure, but there might be some pages/information on making policies somewhere on wikiHow.

8

Yeah, there is a lot more “subtle spam” than there used to be. Travel, moving, SEO, software conversion… There has been some talking on the wikiHaus side about taking a more strict approach toward articles on topics like these and the ones suggested in this brainstorm . We already take somewhat of a more flexible approach to the merge policy when it comes to teen/kid topics (e.g. while two titles like “How to Be Popular in 9th Grade” and “How to Be Popular in 10th Grade” are technically not interchangeable, we do condense them into “How to Be Popular in High School”). How many articles about payday loans do we really need, when we know for a fact that this is a huge spam target that creates a disproportionate amount of work for our community? Would it make sense to have just a few awesome, comprehensive payday loan articles (maybe written by WRM or edited by editing fellows) and redirect new payday loan articles to those by default? Thoughts?

9

Yup, I have been seeing quite a few of those articles recently. I agree with trying to work towards a policy to address them. @Krystle , that would make a lot of sense. It would definitely make it easier on the community, and it would be easier for people to find good, informative articles. I find that in topics like that, there are only a few decent articles and the rest are mostly just borderline spam.