![]() | This is an essay on the promotion policy, spam guideline, and the speedy deletion criterion G11. It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article, nor is it one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints. |
![]() | This page in a nutshell: Advertising aims to intentionally promote or sell an idea, product, or service. Articles that are blatant advertising typically contain content clearly intended to sell a product or service, include contact or sales information in order to distribute the product or service, and are written in the first person and by accounts that clearly violate Wikipedia's username policy regarding promotional usernames. |
Wikipedia is a popular and unique website due to its main purpose of being an online encyclopedia for anyone, anywhere to view, read, gain knowledge, and learn new concepts and ideas - completely free of charge or anything in return. Furthermore, Wikipedia's main principles allow anyone, anywhere, to edit any of its articles and content. Additionally, Wikipedia allows anyone – after creating an account and becoming confirmed or autoconfirmed – to create and start new Wikipedia articles, as well as create and edit their own user and user talk space. While this completely open forum is the main purpose behind its popularity and diverse array of articles and content, these principles also make Wikipedia an easy target for the creation of articles and pages for the purpose of advertising, spam, and promotion. These creations not only degrade the quality of the encyclopedia, but are fundamentally against Wikipedia's policy on this subject, as well as one of its founding principles of emphasizes the need to provide articles that are notable and acceptable, as well as any and all content that are verifiable, neutral, and strictly held to the highest quality and to the highest standards and policies and guidelines as possible.
To easily combat the creation of blatant advertisements, any editor can tag the page for speedy deletion by adding {{db-spam}} to the top of it. Only pages that clearly constitute blatant advertising can be deleted under this process. Depending on the content, situation, and different circumstances that can occur, it can sometimes be difficult to identify and discern articles or pages that constitute blatant advertising and meet the criteria for speedy deletion – from those that are good faith attempts to write content that need to be improved, rewritten, or re-worded.
The ability to properly and consistently identify pages that constitute blatant advertising require experience and knowledge of the kind of behaviors, article content, and other signs to look out for as "giveaways". As a recent changes patroller, this is a very important skill to understand and become proficient with. Improperly tagging articles for speedy deletion as blatant advertising not only takes time away from administrators who have to review and decline the deletions, it can also drive new editors away from Wikipedia if they believe that their time and hard work spent writing an article was simply tagged as an "advertisement" with a notice left on their talk page, and without any sort of offer of assistance or feedback given to them to help them learn the rules and improve their writing. Knowing the difference between blatant advertising and a good faith creation that needs improvement, as well as the proper and consistent tagging of articles and pages for speedy deletion – will keep blatant advertising off of Wikipedia, and provide opportunities for new editors to expand their skills and become long-term contributors to the project.