Wikipedia "May" Like Me!

This is a follow-up to today's earlier post, I Like Wikipedia, but It Doesn't Like Me! You may also wish to read the final update to this post.

The moderators over at Wikipedia have responded to my comments, with some thoughtful questions and comments of their own. This is interesting, but I don't know how it will turn out.  Here are the latest discussions:

Wikipedia Moderator: "It seems that Tangient LLC (apparently the sponsor of ELW, correct this if necessary) is a normal, commercial business (again, correct this if necessary). Nothing wrong with business but it would be wrong for Wikipedia to serve as a conduit for traffic to Tangient's wikis. Cheers. -- Iterator12n Talk 20:54, 5 November 2007 (UTC)"
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My Response: "Hi ... Rich Hoeg here answering your two questions. Tangient LLC is the not the sponsor of the Engineering Learning Wiki, I am! I actually paid Tangient LLC $50 (per annum) to gain more services via their wiki service, and insure that they could not post advertisements on my individual wiki space. Just like individuals on the web who need various services for blogs, etc, I wanted to create a wiki which supports engineering education. If you Google "engineering wiki" you'll find there is not any resource like this content. I believe in providing free access to these kinds of service, and am willing to put my money where my mouth is! While I understand why you might not want a link to Tangient, it would have cost me far more money to rent server space and install my own version of Media Wiki. Essentially they are just a web hosting service."

It will be fascinating to see how this turns out. I invite you to watch from the sidelines by using this link. This is an intriguing case study of a blogger (me) who is using a paid wiki service (Tangient) to create content which I believe benefits the web at large. Some folks at Wikipedia may have issues not with my content, but with the fact that I used a competing commercial wiki service (Tangient 's Wikispaces).

If you wish to see the original post that talks about the wiki, and how it is a consortium effort, and not just me, please follow this link.

Finally, I'll get back to the European engineering learning blog posts after the Wikipedia situation plays itself out.

Comments

[Anonymous]

Ah, now I see who you are. And I think I see why your links were removed... perhaps because you added them to every article you could find with the word "engineering" in it? Now imagine what the external links section of those articles would look like if everyone with an engineering-related website the size of yours added a link to it on each of them. It would have thousands of entries and dwarf the article itself. Now, if it can't accept them all, it can't accept any of them, without being unnecessarily biased; for the purposes of the external links section on such general articles it has to stick to a small number of large, established websites. For more specialized topics the number of relevant sites is smaller and thus there is more room for smaller sites. If as in this case you happen to be in the position of wishing to promote a small site focused on a general topic the problem is really just that there are so many other sites out there. It's a good rule, however, not to try to promote sites on Wikipedia with which you are directly involved. It is not just seen as spamming but also as a conflict of interest -- discouraged for the same reason people are discouraged from editing articles about themselves or about organizations with which they are closely affiliated. If your site really is worth a mention, someone other than yourself will realize it and add it themselves at some point -- unless it's your own personal blog or something, in which case nobody cares. :)
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Rich Hoeg responds: This is interesting. I guess I can understand why Wikipedia might not want me promoting a site I helped create. As a fyi ... I never linked my own blog, just the consortium's wiki. If you are whom your anonymous comment implies (i.e. Wikipedia user Iterator12n), this answer makes more sense than your prior position (desire not to promote a competing wiki). If you want to take this discussion off-line, you have the means to contact me as I left my name and email address on your Wikipedia UserTalk page. I hope you might find that the wiki is an instance where this is more than just one person promoting his own site, and that the content is valuable to the engineering field.