Talk:PC-Doctor

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[edit] Definition of Advertising

This is getting to be ridiculous. PC-Doctor has now tried umpteen revisions of this page to satisfy the definition of a factual page. It almost seems that any information beyond companyname-address-productname is considered advertisement, which makes absolutely no sense.

Isn't wikipedia meant to disseminate information about matters of interest? Advertising is usually content-poor (or -less) flapping of lips, but I have read through the revisions of this page and this hasn't been the case.

What's more frustrating is the fact that the same requirements are not applied evenly to other companies. What is the basis for speedy removal or big-time editing here, seems to be no reason for the same for companies the likes of Novell and Microsoft. For example the Novell page uses headings such as "Your Linux is Ready", which is advertising-speak.

So please, either let PC-Doctor discuss the many important technologies that are used by millions of people every day, or relegate this whole website to one that can't handle the discussion of relevant information if it has the name of any company attached to it that isn't so big it can't be ignored.

PS. Thanks a lot for standing up only for the big guys. We little ones don't need any help anyway. NOT. Aki Korhonen 23:37, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

Actually, Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, and not an indiscriminate collection of information or a vehicle to "disseminate information" (which sounds like a euphamism for advertising). Also, please read WP:VAIN. Finally, if you feel that other articles are in need of editing, please feel free to make those changes. Wikipedia is a wiki, so anyone can edit almost any article by simply following the Edit this page link at the top. You don't even need to log in (although there are many reasons why you might want to). The Wikipedia community encourages you to be bold in updating pages. Don't worry too much about making honest mistakes — they're likely to be found and corrected quickly. If you're not sure how editing works, check out how to edit a page, or use the sandbox to try out your editing skills. New contributors are always welcome. Leuko 00:10, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Dear Leuko, if I had intended "disseminating information" to be an euphanism for advertising, I would not have defined advertising as "content-poor (or -less) flapping of lips". I also never stated or implied that wikipedia should provide "indiscriminate collection of information". That you nevertheless made those connections tells me volumes about your mindset when it comes to the topic at hand; which is how a company can describe what it does. Based on the "editing" I have seen here so far, for smaller companies name-and-address is it, regardless of their background, long history, significant impact on the industry, or anything of that sort.

As to contributing, I already have, I've seen much of it deleted (even though there is hardly any way to argue that it was "advertising"), I've seen nobody provide a replacement for the deleted content, and I have come to ask why I would bother when any contribution is potentially going to be summarily deleted by some yahoo somewhere? Life's too short for that sort of gamesmanship.

I surmise that it's just too bad that those neighborhood editors don't spread their nitpicky attentions evenly accross all the company descriptions, but somehow keep coming back to some, but not all. From my perspective it comes down to double standards, which will ultimately be the achilles heel of wikipedia. It's a great concept, but it gives too much destructive control to a few individuals with the intent to disrupt the work of others.

It seems that sooner or later the primary content on wikipedia will be topics of no interest, of radically specialized interest with few who can disagree, and of content that is acceptable to some activist editors who are happy to cut, but can't seem to add their own data. This will ultimately marginalize wiki. I'm sure it'll continue to exist, but who can trust its content, or bother to add data?

On an ironic twist the mentality of cutting and destroying content might also lead to a scenario where a large portion of contributions will come from groups with ulterior motives well beyond knowledge sharing. A primary group that comes to mind is marketing and advertising for large corporations, who have the resources to keep adding fluffy 'data'. Thus the actions of some attempting to nitpick small companies like PC-Doctor might ultimately lead to wiki having the information I outlined in the prior paragraph, and lots and lots of thinly veiled advertising marketing material with statements like I quoted from the Novell wiki, and that can be found on the pages of many other large companies.

I doubt that's what the "editors" had in mind, but I can see how this ship is headed there.

Aki Korhonen 10:58, 23 October 2006 (UTC)