Wikipedia Links: Removal of Links by Over Zealous Users

Wikipedia is beginning to get a bad reputation for over zealous users. These users usually have some pet peave and go about eliminating that pet peave with a single minded focus. These aggressive users removed a bunch of edits and links I’d posted to Wikipedia (my experience). Obviously Wikipedia does no one any good if it becomes a link farm for spammers. However, I feel that these users are chasing away quality content with their over zealous removal of others’ edits. Especially in technical fields they know nothing about.

Wikipedia Links: Removal of Quality Links

Wikipedians that followed my links were on my site for an average almost 3 minutes and viewed approximately 3 pages.  Many of my current user list are Wikipedians that followed my links.  I feel like my site stats justified my links on Wikipedia.

Wikipedia Links: Getting around over zealous Wikipedia users

So I’ve decided to help you get around these irritating users.  If you have a quality site with quality content using the following steps for posting Wikipedia links:

1. Create multiple users for posting links – harder to remove all of your external links
2. Create templates for you external links – consider incorporating the Extlink template into your link posting template – this hides your external links from over zealous users
3. Post some text before and after the external link – this makes it harder for those previewing you posts (contributions) quickly to see that you included a link

Wikipedia Links: Guidelines for external link posting

Guidelines:

1. Post no more than 3 links per each of your user per day
2. Do not post from each user each day
3. Post external links to content on your site that directly relates to the Wikipedia page you are posting to – someone will get angry, for good reason, if you just post to a generic page
4. Since you are limited in how many quality links you can really provide think carefully about which pages will serve your purposes best and only post once on these targeted pages

Wikipedia Links: Link to honest, quality content

If you link to a link farm or to garbage then word will get around.  You external links will go down before you can post another one.  Your site will get a bad reputation.  Your multiple users will immediately be recognized as sockpuppets.  You can’t get around 1000s of people looking to remove any sign of your existence from Wikipedia.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is popular search topic on the web.  This is because your natural, or organic, search results – not the paid search ads – are based on your page rank (this is a Google term but something similar applies to the top 3 engines).  These organic results are the best and easiest way to drive traffic to your site.

Whether you are selling stuff, making money from your site through ads or donations, or just want people to read your blog you want traffic.  The more the better.  For years now the “gurus” have told new people to engage in link marketing.  In essence you, as the new site owner, goes to related blogs, forums, and wikis that established and you make meaningful contributions that include a link to your site.  After a while sites starting catching on that these links to other sites were lowering the page rank of the established site.  The result is that established sites started using the NO FOLLOW tag.  The link on an established site can still drive traffic to your site but it won’t improve your page rank so long as the NO FOLLOW tag is there.

Wikipedia started implementing a NO FOLLOW tag sometime back.  This was before I had a site or cared about SEO so I didn’t get too worked up about it.  However, a lot of people on the web made the argument that Wikipedia was the behemoth that it was because so many established sites included links to its articles – without the NO FOLLOW tag.

I started my wiki because I wasn’t happy with the content or organization of Wikipedia or the Wikibooks.  Neither site, in my opinion, was appropriate for advanced topics or examples.  I’ve made quite a few contributions to Wikipedia pages that I thought I could improve without wholesale re-write.  Now I’m having some of my edits backed out because of the external links to my site.  Admittedly these were edits solely to add links to related topics on my site.  However, my site includes exampels and MATLAB code not just the theory.

The Wikipedians argument is that I should just rewrite my content on Wikipedia.  I guess I’m selfish, I see no possibility of an upside for me and plenty of potential for a downside should I accidentally write something on Wikipedia I shouldn’t have – i.e. something my current or future employer doesn’t appreciate.

This reverting of edits by people who never bothered to judge my links in context and certainly are not subject matter experts has just pissed me off.  This on top of the NO FOLLOW tags and articles on the Edge makes me seriously question the utility of Wikipedia.  And the arrogance of many of the users.  Especially for subjects such as Engineering where you really do need subject matter experts and peer review.

I think my contributions to Wikipedia are over.  I will be making my contributions to places such as Knol.