I received an email from Carsten Cumbrowski while jetsetting in China:
Jonathan Hochman (aka Jehochman) was spending a lot of time on cleaning up the article about SEO at Wikipedia. It is now in the review for becoming a featured article candidate.You would probably agree that it would be a good thing, if SEO gets featured one day on the Wikipedia homepage to raise awareness among the normal people about the industry.
Carsten is hoping that some experts from the world of search marketing will help to join in the discussion about making the article on search engine optmization featured. I used to be conflicted about the SEO article at Wikipedia (link condom applied as I don't editorially vouch for that page) - in many ways it seems like helping to make it more accurate and higher quality is the right thing to do. After all, when most people search for SEO or Search Engine Optimization, that's the first thing they'll read. It's not a great introduction by any means. Bill's criticized it in the past and even put in some of his incredibly valuable time trying to improve it. Aaron Wall's lashed out against it, too. Now, it's my turn.
The article is not, at this point, terrible. However, like any content on Wikipedia it's subject to the "prevailing winds" of attitudes and publicity about SEO. This week, for example, it appears that it's no longer part of the Wikipedia series on spamming, but if a big media outlet decides to frame the discussion another way, we're all up a creek. This is just one of Wikipedia's many weaknesses.
Another big one that's highly evident in the discussion page is the bias towards traditional media as more knowledgeable, legitimate and trustworthy than blogs, industry resources or online-only media. Here's poor John fighting with a tragically uninformed Wikipedian on the subject:
Before you review featured article candidates, SandyGeorgia, I hope that you will at least read the articles. From your edit history I see that you probably spent less than five minutes looking at Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Search engine optimization. I can't imagine how that would be enough time to give a thoughtful review. I don't treat other editors that way, and I don't expect other editors to treat my efforts with such disregard. This is the first time I've tried to elevate an article to featured status, and your review has made me feel both foolish and unwelcome
I'm sorry my comments made you feel foolish, but it doesn't take more than a few minutes to review sources and find blogs, Usenet and personal websites were used to source the article. It shouldn't be too hard to replace those with reliable sources if you know the territory well. Best regards, SandyGeorgia
I love what Jon said (BTW - The personal website she refers to is Matt Cutts' - as though the irony needed highlighting). He's dealing with the same problem the SEO community experiences in every unfriendly web community - ignorant, self-important blowhards favoring uninformed prejudice over logical investigation and honesty. Here's how it should work:
- Read something about SEO on Wikipedia
- Think to yourself - huh, I wonder if that's accurate
- Investigate the author a bit - are they reliable, generally honest, trustworthy, experienced?
- Investigate the subject matter - spend some time in the popular, well-regarded SEO blogs, forums and read some industry resources
- Come back and re-read
- If you still disagree, consider bringing it up in the discussion and be sure to mention that you're not an industry expert, cite your sources and be respectful
- If you think you've got a real point, go ahead and make your edits
Here's how it actually works:
- Read something about SEO on Wikipedia
- Note that it doesn't match with your prejudiced, pre-conceived notions of SEO as spam
- Make a bunch of edits and deletions
- When pressed by industry experts, dismiss their sources as lacking credibility
- When pressed further, find Wikipedia rules that work in your favor - since you can't argue from experience, use your powers of derision and dismissal combined with bureaucratic wordplay to frustrate and demoralize your opposition
- Find other inexperienced people with similar biases towards SEO and recruit them to your cause
This isn't just how its done on Wikipedia, or with SEO. Those who are familiar with message boards in the political arena, or the operations at DMOZ, or attitudes at web forum communities will get an eery sense of Deja Vu. This is what I despise about these sites. I've never gone into a message board about venture capital and spouted off about how it's all a dirty scam run by idiots, yet when this happens to SEOs, there's inevitably a chorus of cheers from the peanut gallery.
To my mind, Wikipedia is undeserving of many of the rankings and visibility it achieves, though I certainly concede that there are many truly excellent resources on the site. The fundamental problem with Wikipedia is one of trust - the trust that might be applied to one page there cannot be applied to the whole, yet by Google's ranking algorithm, this is certainly the case. Google (and Yahoo! and MSN) treat Wikipedia as though it were a single publisher, spreading the trust, authority and link love across the entire site, even though each page is basically its own site (and should, thus, be judged individually). Granted, the editorial process at Wikipedia does provide some basic level of review, but it's not even as high as something like YOUmoz, where Rebecca reviews and approves, edits and denies entries. At least there, you know you're getting some consistency with the SEOmoz brand.
I have to respect what Jill Whalen said (in the comments) on this subject:
That awful SEO page has pretty much made me not trust a thing I read on Wikipedia.
I can certainly appreciate what Jonathan's doing to try and make the Wikipedia page better, and he's working the system from the inside, as a trusted member and editor at Wikipedia, which is itself not only honorable, but wise. However, I can't provide much more support other than to say "good luck." It's not a battle I'd wish to fight, and the Wikipedians are adversaries I'd elect to simply ignore. Better to have the page fall into inaccuracy and disrepute and let something else take its place than to risk the article achieving even more strength and publicity and then turning into the latest rubbish when a senior editor decides that their prejudices are more important than what the experts say.
I can't tell you how relieved I was when WIkipedia re-instituted nofollow. It's a great burden off my shoulders to know that we don't need to hypocritically create an account at Wikipedia, play by their rules and follow their biases in order to have the freedom to add & remove links. I appreciate the site for what it is, and I respect folks like Jon, who make a real effort there, but I can't condone it or endorse it - to my mind, any efforts made there simply serve to legitimize what is fundamentally illegitimate.
Of course, I'm very much looking forward to some disagreement in the comments :)
Reminds me of the old addage (which goes something like) you don't realise how bad newspapers are until they write about something you know about.
It's not until they cover something your familiar with that the inaccuracies of wikipedia / the guardian / new york times etc are so obvious - and I suspect there are many thousands of articles out there in all of these publications that are on equally dodgy ground.
This same issue occurs for lots of wikipedia articles. In many instances they rank far above sites with better content and greater content depth.
I think that the juice to wikipedia needs to be manually cranked down by the Search Engines.
i recently had the chance to be a guest speaker for an internet marketing class at a local university. I couldn't bring my self to say no to the opportunity, especially after noticing in their syllabus that the reference information source the class was using was the Wikipedia article on SEO.
Like or dislike the article, or the value that it seems to have with the search engines, the fact is that many do rely upon it as a resource, and it colors the perceptions of a lot of people.
And that would be a good reason to help improve the article. Regardless of how any of us feels a lot of people are going to use it as a source of information so it might as well be as accurate as possible.
Personally I can't find it within myself to contribute my time and hard-earned expertise to a project that not only allows but encourages know-nothings to overwrite my material.
The trouble with Wikipedia is that there currently isn't any viable alternative to it (online, anyway). Every expert in a field has a slightly different take on their own subject, but what we have currently is one monolithic reference source which is supposed to represent 'THE TRUTH'.
I do think, though, that Wikipedia gives an amazing insight into how opinions form. If the wider world thinks we SEOs are scumbags then that's going to be relected in our Wikipedia entry. We won't change that opinion by editing Wikipedia. When the opinion changes, the SEO entry will change with it.
That's a very valid point about changing opinion Chris. However, I'm not holding my breath in particular.
Everything I'm hearing about Wikipedia these days makes me less certain about the site - from nofollowing outbound links to their taking top 10 positions even for ridiulously basic search terms to their passing PageRank to their commercial sister sites.
I'm watching this one with interest.
If any truth than truth about human nature. The content can only be as good as the consolidated (non-reverted) edits together.
Most articles are in the state of stub, a lot are a good start, a lot less are okay and only a few are really superb.
The latter ones were only stubs when they were created, then looked promising, then okay and eventually become excellent.
If that happens to a very difficult article, 100x more (or more) was talked about the article content than the article has content itself. That the article will not be perfect is natural, nothing is perfect and if it is not a subject where different opinions are virtually impossible, then you will find plenty of people who think that it is crap, experts, semi-experts and amateurs and idiots who don't have a clue and just talk crap, because that's what they do.
That is how we are. People suck and disagree with each other and and are biased and intolerant. Yeah, what else did you think before? The sky is blue, the water is wet and people suck and can't agree on anything. Cope with it. Welcome to the real world. :)
The problem is, though, that there are a lot of users who think of Wikipedia as an online encyclopedia. Because of its increase in popularity and its high search engine rankings for any given subject, there are a lot of people (high school students, college students, parents, etc) who just take whatever is written at Wikipedia as the truth.
So, in that respect. The truth becomes whatever the popular opinion is.
I agree 100%...
Lots of people like wikipeida and value its contents. The number of these people grows everyday. I believe that it cuts into the number of people using search. Why search? Just go straight to Wiki. Search volume for informational search will take the hit.
I predict that search engines will lose market share to the big content sites. If you like WebMD and trust it... why search and see sites you don't trust and possibly some MFA sites that have $2 articles about your query? Go straight to WebMD.
"The truth becomes whatever the popular opinion is."
Isn't that what the "truth" is anyway? Truth is to 99% opinion. Even if all items available to you are proven, documented and unskewed facts, does it not make it true, because you don't know if all items that are available to you are all items there are.
The leaving out of a fact can change the "truth" in an instant. No lie or biased comment necessary.
True enough, Carsten (at least in my opinion). I imagine the parts of the British history books about the American Revolution differ from those in the U.S.
brevetoxin said:"I imagine the parts of the British history books about the American Revolution differ from those in the U.S."
I am from East Germany and still have some history books from East Germany I got from school. So I did not just throw in some "conspiracy theory" phrase when I said what I said. I have some prime examples right here.
There are lo lies in those books. The facts and figures are perfectly fine. They only missed a few events and numbers here and there, but listed events and numbers, which you can't find in the history books students in Germany (including East Germany) use today.
People tend to "forget" the things that are not favorable for them, because it would add even more "white" to the "black" and "black" to the "white" and harder to distinguish between the two shades of gray that are the result of it. It complicates things and hard to separate things into "them" versus "us".
It also eliminates most "Heroes", which are so helpful to simplify things for the general uneducated population.
Well, the problem with Wikipedia (and DMOZ) is that the truth is what an enthusiastic minority of mostly American and mostly amateur editors says it is likely to be (and, yes, I know, I know, there are editors in both organisations from all over the world).
Truth be told, the inner workings of community organisations online remind me of the machinations inside political parties at a local level, where the wrangling takes so long and is so compromise-filled, that most normal enthusiasts have to leave to put the dinner on and the final input is then controlled by the remaining hard-core.
If 99% of people say 2+2=5, does that make them right?
I'd say 2 + 2 + 4 no matter what the majority say, but at times throughout the course of history scientific truth was that the earth was flat or that it was at the center of the universe.
Of course those truths and subsequent changes of truths weren't about majority vote.
That's a good point Carsten. Throughout history the victors have always been the ones who inevitably write 'the truth' of what happened. And then future generations rewrite that history sometimes for their own agenda.
The truth often has a tendency to change over time. It doesn't make me value Wikipedia more as a source of information, but it is a good point.
That's why are the core rules "Neutral Point of View" and "no original resource" so important. An encyclopedia is about facts, not interpretation. Neutral point of view means that facts that could be interpreted as negative have to be included as much as the facts that could be interpreted as positive.
The interpretation of all the facts and make it out to be something good or something bad is not the purpose of an encyclopedia. If you take the same set of facts today and look at them again in the future, the interpretation might changes from good to bad or the other way around due to changes in society and people's values.
That's the idea, but that is harder to do in reality than it sounds when you say it. People are people and the only thing we can do is trying. If the try was good or bad is a question of interpretation again. Ironic, isn't it? :)
Absolutely. Somewhere along the way through my years in college I earned a history degree and it was interesting to see how events were interpreted immediately after and then interpreted differently the next generation and then again one more generation later.
Most facts change frequently over time. I had never really thought about that in relation to the Wikipedia, but I will be now.
I think most of us will look at more than one source when doing research of any kind. At least I hope so. Everyone presents facts with their own bias and even the best sources of information need to be looked at critically. In the end we all have to decide for ourselves what is and isn't truth.
A slightly different take on a subject is not only acceptable, it's necessary for informational diversity. But blocking people on the basis of personal differences is not acceptable and it's important to find a way past this kind of issue in order for Wikipedia to fulfill it's potential. Doncha think?
The domain strength of Wikipedia is apparently insane - but that's only because it exactly fits the Law that Google Hath Lain Down: human edited, frequently updated, heavy natural backlinks, huge media profile... so it now ranks for anything and everything under the sun. That much we all have to live with.
Ultimately I think the importance of Wikipedia's SEO article is ni danger of being overstated anyway. If you've got a client and you're doing well for them then that's the only audience that matters. If everyother sucker under the sun thinks that SEO blows and have formed that opinion from Wikipedia then more fool them.
Personally I think the article's an interesting snapshot of the debate and nothing more.
Other people than just clients might read it and have influence on your business in a different way. You never know. Things happen in a chain of events and coincidences that are "just strange", to say the least.
In the interest of giving credit where credit is due, I want to point out that Raul654, perhaps the second most influential Wikipedian after Jimbo Wales, has accepted our position that blogs and online resources can be reliable sources.
The SEO article has been promoted, and is now a featured article. The Wikipedia user who I flamed, SandyGeorgia, responded with great poise and helped me get the article promoted. I hope everyone who despises Wikipedia will reconsider their opinion in light of these developments.
Half of us are just jealous because we can't outrank Wikipedia even though our sites deserve to.
As for the rest, I have no problem with people thinking that I'm a scumbag. Many SEO companies are. (usually the ones that find you on Google and then call to say that your site can't be found on Google)
The less people know about SEO the better. Makes my job easier. Savvy clients know the value of search rankings. The ones that don't, I probably don't want to work with.
So let Wikipedia do whatever they want. The less we pay attention to it and talk about it, the less strength it will have. Linkcondom or not.
I'd rather focus on my work. And SEOmoz should focus on giving us more great content. I frankly couldn't care less about the SEO page on Wikipedia. I have paying clients to deal with and their referrals are the best form of advertising. I'm not going to get any business because someone read the Wikipedia SEO page.
Seems a bit of irony here... I guess it all comes down to perspective.
Facts by democracy... of course we know there are many "levels" of democracy. This is the challenge we face in this new world, whether it is Wikipedia or a social networking site, there are not enough checks and balances in the system and perhaps too hard for most people not to be swayed by their own personal interest.
But this also seems to be a love-hate relationship on both sides of the fence, and one could just as easily swap out "Wikipedia" with other sites of choice and see similar effects... can you digg it?
Unfortunately, too many people associate black hat and link spamming as the work of SEOs... as if by the very nature of performing these acts, one must be or would become an SEO.
Perhaps we need to create a secret handshake to make it just a bit harder to join the club?
Having done quite some work on Wikipedia myself, I've deliberatly stayed away from the SEO page. Consider the fact that most Wikipedia admins see SEO as the cause of their incredible spam problems. They have a hard time separating the "good" SEO's from the "bad", if they're even as far as thinking that there is such a thing as a "good" SEO.
Rather than saying Wikipedia is bad, and I do agree that it is sometimes, I would think we as SEO's need to be even more aware of the bad reputation we as SEO's have. I myself and I think Carsten as well, have had to fight this bias a lot amongst the admins...
The SEO community as a whole should do more about our reputation in the outside world, once we've done that, we might get a "decent" Wikipedia article as well.
Aside from the whole Wikipedia argument, the fact of the matter is in the general "non-SEO" market, many people do see SEO as a scam - because many have been trapped by the false promises and expectations of the "bad" SEOs.
Coming from an outsider site owner and web developer of 10+ years (who is not currently providing SEO/webdev services but stays on top of it for sites I own) - I've been approached I can't say how many time by "SEO experts" guaranteeing a top 10 placement in Google. Every time I laugh, tell them "OK, prove it" and even if they have some they were linkbombed or using another inappropriate tactic.
My point is, over these years, every single person that has approached me about SEO has been full of BS. I haven't had one person ever approach me and give it to me straight, SEO takes time, attention to detail, a lot of work, etc. Which is why I decided just to learn the "best practices" myself and stay on top of it all - I didn't know who to trust and I couldn't afford those that actually knew what they were doing.
Obviously, there's a large gap between many of you honest SEOs, and the "others" who use SEO as a gimmick to bring in some business. I tell everyone who ever asks me about SEO (typically friends, business associates) to be careful becuase that it is the biggest scam people use to get your business. They have to do their research about the company to make sure they're legit, or ask me first, as I can tell the good from the bad (for the most part).
Most people don't know the difference, fall into the scam, pay some chunk of change and don't see the ROI in it. Most of them don't realize it is hardwork, it is expensive if you pay someone to do it, and takes a lot of time. My opinion is, since Wikipedia is geared to the general public that it should at least state some of these facts to address what a majority of people seem to think about SEO. Despite many of your honest efforts - of which I am a true believer - I think a majority of "SEO's" out there unfortunately take advantage of many people and businesses, thus giving the entire industry a bad rap.
I think you've identified part of the problem, that too many people take anyone's claims at face value.
Unfortunately, this seems to be especially heightened in SEO, perhaps because so many have jumped on the bandwagon, but this is certainly not limited to SEO. As one who has come from the webdev industry, you of course know all to well that many people suddenly become web designers or developers for hire after they've slapped together their first great "web masterpiece."
Of course, education and knowledge is one issue, but no industry is without their scam artists... whether we are talking about web design, SEO, roofing, auto repair, financial planning, etc.
I guess it is a rite of passage for all legitimate industries to overcome... the defense and legitimacy of credibility.
Very good comments... Imagine the "churn" that is happening... Naive website owner decides to try SEO, hires somebody, gets poor results...... hires somebody else, gets poor results.....
Lots of money being wasted... or maybe they conclude that SEO is pure BS after throwing $X0,000 at the beast twice with no result.
I think you're right. I also think a certain degree of contempt for the industy is bred by bosses who know they need SEO, but don't really understand it.
They resent the expense and then go crazy when they realise the shady firm who promised to 'GET YOU TO #1 ON GOOGLE!' only got them ranked for 'inverted martian perambulator' (and quite rightly!)
While it doesn't guarantee success... one could still "pick" a bad SEO or pseudo-SEO, but perhaps there is a notion that good-SEO doesn't come to you, you go to it.
In other words, site owners could probably safely discard every "SEO" who approaches them. Better to spend their time doing a little self-educating and then seek out SEO services.
You can't help but wonder how many of these SEO horror stories originate from a site owner who received an unsolicited email from a supposive SEO promising too-good-to-be-true results.
Or I wonder how much time is spent researching the purchase of a $200 digital camera compared to researching an SEO purchase?
Many of the so-called SEOs I run into are more on a personal level. Someone knows someone, I meet someone who claims to be a self-proclaimed SEO expert, friends or business associates working on a website are in talks with someone about SEO, etc. My instant reaction when someone tells me they do SEO is BS, prove it. I'm not only looking for proof in results (quality results) but also in general discussion about their methodologies. Usually, in about 30 seconds I can tell if they know what they're doing or not. One of the questions I ask is what SEO blogs/websites do you subscribe to/follow. They better know a few of the more well-regarded industry sites without hesitation.
The difference is however, that I am an informed consumer at this point. Most small business owners, website owners, etc. are not. Nor do they have the time to find out. The reason they're looking to hire this out is because they've already identified the value in SEP, but don't have the time, resources, or knowledge to do it. So, they have two choices, learn it themselves, or hire someone - depending on what is their most available resource - time or money. However, just by paying someone to do it takes a lot of time learning the basics of it first, and unfortunately for them, if they have the money and not the time, they're not going to do the research required to find a good seo company. This is where the "other" seo companies prey, the naive business owner who doesn't know better, doesn't know SEO or have a background in webdev.
The article in Wikipedia only demonstrates the perceptions of a lot of people out there, they don't trust SEOs. And why? Becuase of this. I enjoy "screening" SEO companies for people I know, I actually like being able to test someone of their knowledge and practices and call them out if they're full of it - or better yet acknowledging a credible source. What's the solution? Like identity suggests maybe this is a right of passage for a relatively new industry - this is not specific to SEO but a generality in most sectors, if someone doesn't do the research when making an investment, they're going to get ripped off....
I agree, but it's still indefensible for the wiki editors to allow subjective matter to be continuously included on an academic subject. SEO is SEO. If it is abused by 'bad' SEO's I'm sorry for 'someone's' personal financial loss, but then they should do research to find out if someone can deliver - just as they would if they were buying any other service - compare, question and get an understanding of what should be provided - there are plenty of resources out there. The wiki is a resource. If you KNOW something about SEO and what it is and how it works, then go for it, as with any other subject. ( if you don't know who Matt Cutts is, you don't qualify as an SEO expert.) if you FEEL something about SEO and know you've had a bad experience with a provider, that does not mean that the entire field is out to get you and are a bunch of money grabbing unethical bums. The current page has a definite negative bias. It shouldn't have. The page on abortion doesn't have - and that is of far more importance - just mho...
Outside of being a webmaster my training and previous work was in another field. To practice in that field requires a license from the State and to get that license a person must... 1) obtain a degree in that field, 2) work under a licensed professional for a few years, 3) pass a knowledge exam given by the state, 4) have three licensed professionals sign statements that you are of good ethical background and do quality work. To maintain the license continuing education is required and you must never be convicted or plead no contest to felony level crime.
The State has a strict set of rules that regulates the profession. You must have a license to practice and if you break the rules you can get fined, lose the license, go to jail.
Do you think that SEO should be licensed profession? Similar to physicians, nurses, vetrinarians, engineers, pilots.
it's a nice idea, i was wondering myself, so have actually put a little thought into it :-) but I do't believe that anything on the internet can be regulated to that degree. I can't see how it possibly be 'policed' effectively - those in the know would know who was legit, but that is pointless to the those who need seo services. And how can you prove your licence? The government certainly won't give support to an SEO cause - it's not life-threatening or anything - and i don't think bad SEO could be classed as fraud either (unfortunately)... There's a bit of a way to go on this one I think... =(
ok, licensing is one thing, but a self-regulating, standard-setting, member-vetting, code-of-conduct-writing, member-supporting, public-awareness-raising professional association doesn't require life-threatening status.
Not sure if the red-tape and stuffiness that probably comes along with this is really worth it. Read somewhere else in these comments that need to match "weapon" with "adversary".
negative bias? as in prejudges? If that is what it feels like after most of the content was pieced together out of facts or the closest thing you could get to it (in this subject).
Then removed all the hype, positive and negative, which has no even somewhat reliable backup, which would support the claims made enough to make them at least plausible.
If what is left looks a bit negative, then it must be, if you look at it overall, not such a peachy subject and a lot of crap must go on. if there is anything good about SEO, then I hope that the article points them out as well.
If it allows people to get a better understanding of the subject and that SEO is no pixie dust and a lot of things to consider and to watch out for, then it is a good article. Some might even turn away from SEO, if they consider all the pros's and con's and probably do so rightfully. It's not a must for everyone. Some of the basics of SEO are important for everybody. The hardcore stuff however is may too heavy for most businesses and also not needed.
You don't have to kill the birds with a missile. One a few birds require this type of heavy weaponry. :)
Don't confuse negative aspects and facts with bias. SEO has a lot of dirty clothes in the closet. Some is out, but not all of it.
Joost said:"I myself and I think Carsten as well, have had to fight this bias a lot amongst the admins..."
The admins are ones I am the least worried about. And you have no idea with what you have to deal with. If you get addressed as "these people...", you know the debate will be "fun".
The tough cookies are the ones that are sneaky and spent great time and energy on "sock puppetry" with a level of sophistication that would even make a hardcore black hat SEO blush. Creating a fake account and build it to look perfectly normal. At the same time avoid anything that would make the server and referrer logs look suspicious.
Don't overlap the puppets activity too much with your real account. Make it look like you stumbled across each other, then helped each other a little, but never make it look like you are buddies. Save the real "helping moments" for the special occasions.
I hunted down without access to the logs more than one sock puppet and unveil the bad faith and hidden agenda. It's sad to see people wasting time and energy on that kind of crap. When I first encountered it and talked to a admin friend of mine, I was shocked.
I am myself not sure were this leads to at the end. One voice says that it will all go to hell and become a user generated content graveyard, the other voice says that a lot will break, but at the end it will just turn out to be the cocoon that burst to let the butterfly out.. So on a day to day basis are both voices active and I am in the middle and understand not a word each of the voices is saying hehe.
The joys of building an empire just to live under a tyranny... :(
This "power" issue is universal. To see a real-time example of it join any popular IRC channel. /kick+ban!
I don't think there's a fix for this issue as it comes down to human emotions, I previously thought wikipeadians pretty mechanic in nature, at least in aggregating and presenting content.
I'm with you Rand in how wiki has become the be-all/end-all of introductory topics. If this Featured article issue is really that important can't we just pay the damn wiki moderator? ;)
Indeed, it's the emotional trigger that makes people click "edit" and make prejudiced changes. We're all guilty of it, but when it comes to a page whose result often appears in the top spots, we should exercise a bit more restraint...
Rand, thank you for quoting me in your original post. However, I must clarify that the comment of which you quoted was written before Jonathan and Bill (and others) had done their extremely great job of cleaning that page up.
Last I checked it was much more accurate, and it has indeed given me faith in Wikipedia as a genuine resource.
I just wanted to set the record straight on that.
Jill
The problem with the SEO topic is that every SEO has a blog, is highly opinionated, and obsessed about links.
Even if the wiki article about SEO is completely unbiased and pure, SEO's as businesspeople will always try to maniuplate Wikipedia, and this is what worries the Wiki editors.
covos, we all have our flaws and biases. Even the people who say that they are not biased, including me. At least I learned to accept somebodies input who is biased in a different way or may be even not biased when it comes to that particular subject.It's strange how people see things differently if they are not involved with the stuff you do all the time. Children also tend to be good at that on a different level.I disagree of course, but that is because I am biased and naturally have to disagree. I probably even know better, but that does not change the perception of the general masses of people out there.
That is what they see and what they base their decisions on. Decisions that have impact on what I do or can't do. They don't want to get involved to the degree that they become themselves as biased as I am. Thanks god they don't. :)
"The problem with the SEO topic is that every SEO has a blog, is highly opinionated, and obsessed about links."
There are many good SEOs out there without blogs...
I have some similar feelings about Wikipedia. First of all I think it is a great resource. They have built a great empire and I often reference it. Many times, however, uninformed admins make decisions that are bad for the community.
One that I have personal experience with is Wikipedia's treatment of OmniNerd. A couple years ago an overzealous OmniNerd admin (not site owner) added links and got into a pretty big tiff with some Wikipedia editors. Although he later realized the error of his ways this has resulted in a permanent site ban. Not a user ban, a site ban. I don't want to get into it more here (I get tired just thinking about it) but I posted about it on WikiHow many months ago. Anyone have ideas on how to rectify this situation?
Tom you're highlighting just one aspect of the difficulties with Wikipedia. information that's not as accurate as it might be also gets past some of those editors. It's very disappointing because Wikipedia has the potential to be an amazing resource.
I consider that this isn't a problem with wiki, it's a problem with our current Zeitgeist as humans, which is a hugely amplified by the "power" of wiki.
Of your "Here's how it should work" points, it all falls down horribly for me at step 2 "Think to yourself - huh, I wonder if that's accurate". I find that people don't apply that step in a lot of areas. The facebook viral hoax about sale of data to 3rd parties is an example of how blind acceptance can be amplified by a system (facebook in this case, wiki in others).
I'm in Lebanon for a project at the moment, so naturally I keep an eye on the news. Reading random news articles about Lebanon teaches an automatic respect for the potential bias of news agencies. I was reading an article about a huge US-conspiracy to do all manner of amazingly evil things. Didn't take too many paragraphs for me to look up the background of the news agency (not just to ignore it because it didn't gel with me viewpoint) to understand what their take was. Aha! Based in Tehran - not an automatic "ignore" indicator, but certainly suggested that a healthy dose of scepticism was required!
So if it falls down at step 2, it all goes totally pear-shaped from another current human trait - not being afraid to have your own, independent (good so far) totally unjustified, bigoted xenophobic, reactionary, inflammatory opinion.
I gave up trying to edit articles on wikipedia. Between spammers and the editors, it isn't worth the time.
It's hard and I saw a lot of people give up. I was close to do that myself, but then did the Aries, the Ram, in my came out and took over for a moment to get over it. The Ram is back chewing grass again and does whatever Rams do if they don't ram through something.
You might want to let your Ram out and try it again, it might works, even if your zodiac is not "aries" :).
It's already a good article, Michael. If you want to make a specific list of changes, with references to reliable sources, I am more than happy to merge that material into the article.
Hi Jon,
I made Rand (kind of) the same offer :)Good to see you here. Cheers!
Michael, you forgot to sign your comment. I added the unsigned template as replacement to make it easier to sort it out later.
I also removed the opening s tag (strike), because the closing tag was missing. I think it was not intended, because the addition was done in one edit.
Why would you strike out a comment you did not even made yet, right?
SEO, like the internet, is a new industry. Those site owners who commit 8 hours a day to search engine optimization priorities will do well.
Wikipedia is a good source for any knowledge building. If a subject is popular, it will be listed at Wiki.
On editing Wiki: I contributed to the Search Engine Optimization page. It turns out half of my edit was deleted within 24 hours. From this editing, I now know the background behind SEO.
The current 'featured article' version is by no means perfect but it infinitely better than the spectacularly messy and useless article that is used to be.
Good work to everyone involved in tidying up a spectacularly messy article and good luck in keeping the article 'real' in the future.
Well done!
Talking about bias, Wikipedia has an internal project that does nothing else than addressing the issue of bias, especially bias from within Wikipedia itself, namely editors.
The details can be accessed via the Wikipedia short cut WP:BIAS (also nice to throw at a biased editor during a discussion :) ) or via this direct link to the WikiProject "Countering systemic Bias" (WP:BIAS).
I thought that might be interesting read, because it is not only relevant for Wikipedia, but any other "objective" source of information as well.
Cheers!
You'll get no disagreement from me on the general thrust of the post, but I do find it somewhat ironic that you say
when Wikipedia is the poster-child for the untrustworthiness - or should that be lowest-common-denominator information & prejudice - that bedevils many online community and social sites.
If you are an advocate for social media, community participation and internet democratisation, then unfortunately you have to submit to the views and prejudices of the common herd (as expressed by sites like Digg burying posts, for example, and Wikipedia entries catering to the prevailing wind), however uninformed you may consider them to be.
("You" here referring generally to the recent complaints of various "social media optimisers" and not to Rand specifically...)
Three more things. Yes, Wikipedia is full of politics. If you are interested in the crap that goes on behind the doors, check out wikitruth.info
It's no surprise that Jimbo Wales himself got the whole site banned from Wikipedia and the article about it deleted.
It has enough material to rant and blog about Wikipedia for months and if you want something to laugh, check out Jason Scott's presentation about Wikipedia at Notacon3 in 2006.
To hear the hard code wikipedians talk about what is going on, check out the podcast Wikipedia Weekly.
Put you will notice something. The article about WikiTruth is back and available at Wikipedia. The site is un-banned. Jason Scott still edits Wikipedia and even the hard core Wikipedians seem to show normal human reasoning from time to time. Listen to the first and last podcasts.
If you want to know how you end up calling yourself a wikipedian, check this out. It started with "spam" so watch out hehe.
Cheers!
Carsten
p.s. the "strike" feature of the comment editor (here at the blog) does not work. It does not save the formating.
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I wonder if there are any good ways to raise the profile of SEO among the masses?
Sure; and they write this and this and this and also this
What do you make out of that? Schizophrenia? :)
To be viable as a reliable resource you'd need to instigate a fairly complex monitoring system for Wikipedia contributors. As things stand you never really know for sure if you're getting good info when you go to Wikipedia.
"you never really know for sure if you're getting good info when you go to Wikipedia."
Replace "go to Wikipedia." with whatever you like and it will still be correct.
you never really know for sure if you're getting good info when you "rough up a small-time drug dealer".
Another good point Carsten. It's always better to get your information from a variety of sources anyway and in the end each of us has to decide for ourselves what is good info and what is bad.
Personally I don't find the Wikipedia to be a good source of information for anything but what's close to the surface. I'll grab a quick definition from it or possibly corroborate a date that I think I already know.
I think it has it's value though I'm afraid too many people don't understand the idea that they have to look critically at what's there. As you correctly say that's true of most everything so the issue may lie less with the Wikipedia and more with our understanding of how to interpret information.
And here is the funny part. If you see a fact missing and if you can proof it (verifiability), go ahead and add it to Wikipedia? Why? Because you can, something you can't at other encyclopedic publications.
That is the reason why I criticise the critics. If you found facts missing, why did you not simply press the "edit" button and add it? Instead you go off and write a piece of original content to complain about the fact that it is missing.
The critic does not have a problem that something is missing if he does not change the fact, if he has the opportunity to do so. "No Time" is a BS excuse, because he miraculously found the time to write original content about the fact that something is missing, which takes more time than to just add it to the Wikipedia article.
This tells you a lot about the motivations and interests of that critic. He is all happy that there is something missing to gain personally from that. How good or bad is that?
I can understand that. I can certainly understand why Rand wouldn't want to spend the time working on the page. It is an investment in time and knowing someone else could easily come along and delete his hard work is a good reason not to want to spend the time.
I agree with your point. There are many people who will spend more time complaining that something is wrong than it would have taken to fix it in the first place.
I've generally not used Wikipedia, but it has more to do with the depth of the information. I don't think the Wikipedia was intended to be an in depth source on the topics it covers. Same for printed encyclodpedias. Neither is the way I like to get my information, but that's me and not the source of information.
I think there is a lot of good in the Wikipedia. You can get a certain level of information and I do go there for certain things that don't require heavy research on my part.
As someone who generally likes and approves of Wikipedia, I find the SEO article to be very weak. If I didn't know anything about SEO and came to this page, I would still be confused. The SEO page should strive to be like the Bob Dylan page which is well-written, comprehensive, and well-annotated.
By the way, the social media optimization page is pretty wide-open...not my speciality, but perhaps the good folks who know social media better than I can save it from the same fate as the SEO page.
Hey West of Willamette,
The call was made repeatedly. "Bob Dylan" did not show up. He had better things to do than putting great content on somebody else's domain and maybe even get corrected by "Mike Oldfield" in some of the details. No thanks.
At least "Nena" and "311" made it. "Milli Vanilly" showed up too, but was send home, fortunately. Oh, "Nena" had to sing English and "311" had to get used to the piano in the background.
It turned out alright. People probably got a general understanding about rock music and what it is and what it is not out of it. Some might even got the parts you should not mix or do at all. :)
I have not read all the comments yet, but I wanted to comment on your post. I agree and disagree with you (dah, surprise) :).
I must say that I did only little edits to the article itself, since I am not a professional SEO. I helped out with some details and resources and references and mainly helped out in the discussions.
You have to understand that anybody can join a discussion, even anonymously so you will find a lot of garbage there, which has no impact on the actual article at all. If you look at any SEO forum you will know what I refer to. I think it's called "noise".
The article is not perfect, but what is perfect after all? There is so much disagreement within the SEO community itself, what would you expect outside the community. At least do most of the people that oppose anything related to the article state that they don't know and don't do SEO. This often also helps, because you have somebody without heavy bias look at the thing and tells you what he makes out of it.
Regarding Matt Cutts blog. Everything was sorted out, with the article about Matt Cutts and Matt Cutts as reference. Regarding the debate about the sources and the bias towards blog. Guess what, you can do something against that as well. Jonathan started discussing the guideline about "Verifiability" and the reliability of Blogs in this day and age. I joined the discussion to support adjustments to 1-2 guidelines that cover the subject of reliable sources and verifiability.
I started working on a collection of Wikipedia resources for newbies and people that are interested in becoming a Wikipedia editor. Search is only one subject that is covered poorly. I just extended and cleaned up the article to nofollow which included some incorrect statements and way too less information to explain what it is. It's still not perfect, but everybody can be my guest and fix and extend it further.
The coverage of affiliate marketing is even worse. I did a major rant about that earlier this month. I was barely able to get the undeletion of the article to ShareASale (affiliate network) through. See the links to the 3 debates on the articles talk page.
Anyway, a lot needs to be done. Educating people outside the industry what the heck we are doing is among those things, don't get me started about what needs to be done internally (in affiliate marketing). Everybody has the choice to help out or not. There is no immediate gain, but I believe that the reward will come in the future and make it all worthwhile. Indirectly, hard to measure, but we don't get that done right with what he do every day already, so what's different?
P.s.
The article came a long way since Jill commented on it about one year ago. You can pull up the old article from back then in the history.
If my spelling and grammar is worse than usual then it is because I am emotionally a bit aroused ;)
Cheers!
Carsten
Damn, that email to me was mass generated, Carsten? :D
SEOs have a distaste for Wikipedia because:1) Wikipedia is S.P.A.M (site positioned above mine).2) You can't exploit Wikipedia (at least not directly)
3) Wikipedia bashing is popular. (gotta keep your audience in mind when you write these things)
Wikipedia makes many other sites look like a joke in comparison.
Tetsuto, no it wasn't See here. :)
Ok that makes me feel better :)
Nice post, great comments. I think that Wikipedia as a project is praiseworthy. It's free but also human "amateur" edited. I don't think that a priori something that you pay must be better but my opinion is also that people searching for information often neglect that fact. Especially when they see Wikipedia in, let say first five, results on Google. Humans by definition aren't altruistic, we are all driven by our own interests. Don't have to mention the companies. And we can't solve this problem. Only thing that we can do is focus on our work and try to be better.
Coming from the South, I totally can empathize with this article.
Brilliant!
As many know, we've had our own running spat with Wankerpedia, and I'll no longer allow links to it from my site.
NICOclub vs Wikipedia
Well-said, Rand. It's high time they abandon the ill-advised mission to monopolize information.
Message to aspiring Wiki Editors: One entity cannot be an expert on all things.
Amen!