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Posted by: SnottyWong

There's an AfD running currently that is attempting to delete about 10 articles, which I feel is being somewhat railroaded by inexperienced WP editors. I'm definitely not asking anyone to come and vote the way I want you to vote, but I feel that this AfD would be quickly resolved if it got the attention of a few experienced editors. If you're up to it, have a look:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Bose_stereo_speakers

Thanks.

Posted by: A Horse With No Name

The gig is up, Wong -- the RCMP came riding in to expose you as an unrepentant canvasser: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Bose_stereo_speakers&diff=322372551&oldid=322371127

Posted by: Apathetic

He may yet repent. =)

Posted by: SnottyWong

Jeez, sorry. I figured that since I wasn't asking for people to come who only share my opinion, nor did I even express my opinion or any details of the case, that I wasn't doing anything wrong. I was just looking for some more attention from experienced editors. Anyway, can I just delete this whole topic or what? It's only been up for 20 minutes... What's the best course of action from here on out?

Posted by: Somey

The question is, will it have the reverse effect from what he intended...?

Personally, I would have to say that Bose speaker technology and design actually is innovative enough to deserve its own article (in addition to the one about the corporation), though maybe not separate articles for different models of speakers. Their headphone technology is supposed to be highly innovative too, but I have no personal knowledge of that (i.e., I haven't read anything about it in relevant audiophile publications - I just haven't been into that stuff much since my hearing started to deteriorate).

So it would seem reasonable to me to distill the eight articles down to two, three at the most. Merging is usually a good compromise in these situations, isn't it?

Posted by: A Horse With No Name

No problem, Wong. All you have to do is go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Deletion_review/David_Shankbone and vote "Endorse -- We don't need crappy articles about amateur pornographers." Then sign your name. If you want, you can add a P.S. from me that says "Horsey wishes you a Happy Halloween." This is an acceptable way to make amends.

Posted by: Somey

We could delete it if you're seriously worried about it. But since that almost never happens, people might think you're actually me or one of our other moderators, which would be even worse for you. I realize that's a Catch-22 situation...

I wouldn't worry so much about it, personally. It's not a BLP, and most people here have a fairly reasonable attitude about articles that would seem to promote products or corporate entities in general - if anything, we're probably more likely to disagree with you than the average Wikipedian who reads the site anonymously.

Posted by: CharlotteWebb

Yeah headphones are headphones to most people.

Of everyone here, I'm pretty sure http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?showuser=5066 would be the one to ask about this.

Posted by: Apathetic

Don't sweat it...

Best course of action...don't canvass =)

Posted by: SnottyWong

I'm fine with people who disagree with me voicing their opinions on the AfD. In fact, I encourage it. I'm not in this to "win", I'm in it to get it right. I believe my opinion is correct, of course, but I'm open-minded to listening to other people's opinions as long as they're based on WP policy and cited with examples.

But whatever, I'm probably just doing myself more of a disservice by posting more on this thread, so I guess I'll keep my mouth shut and wait for the AfD to get decided. Thanks for your help.

Posted by: A Horse With No Name

Better course of action...don't get caught!

Posted by: thekohser

I wish that someone would point out in the AfD that all of these articles are welcome on Wikipedia Review.com:

* Bose stereo speakers
* Bose headphones
* Previous Bose headphones
* Bose computer speakers
* Bose Lifestyle Home Entertainment Systems
* Bose 3-2-1 Home Entertainment Systems
* Bose wave systems
* Bose digital music systems

Posted by: Somey

Is it really canvassing if he explicitly says "I'm definitely not asking anyone to come and vote the way I want you to vote"? I should think not.

You're probably thinking that Mr. Wong figured that "experienced editors" is a code-phrase, synonymous with "rabid haters and deleters of corporate product-spam." Am I right? Because it looks like you're violating the "AGF" rule somewhat in this case, not that you're likely to be criticized for that here of course.

Posted by: Apathetic

He can say that, but http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Binksternet&diff=prev&oldid=322334623 (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Binksternet&diff=322376888&oldid=322334623) from them casts doubt on the belief that he's come here just to get people from all sides of the spectrum to participate.

Posted by: Somey

Maybe... but he hasn't made any secret of his own preferences in that regard. He's the nominator, after all...

It's just that I wouldn't use the term "canvassing" to refer to this WR thread - a one-word verb for "drawing general attention to" would be more accurate, like "advertising" or "promoting" maybe. But even advertisers can usually choose their target demographic more precisely than a WR poster can - there's really no way to know who's going to read a thread here, what their reaction will be, and (most importantly) whether or not they'll act on something like that.

And let's face it, it is quite possible that Bose has a number of employees, retailers, and contract PR people operating on their behalf, on WP and elsewhere. In fact, almost any company that does direct sales and long-form TV advertising is likely to have that.

Posted by: Apathetic

canvassing is WP-speak for "drawing attention to", the guideline makes it clear that canvassing may be appropriate in some cases, inappropriate in others.

In this case, http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk%3ASnottywong&action=historysubmit&diff=322380675&oldid=322372116 that it is inappropriate - YMMV.

However, I realize that S-Wong is somewhat new-ish to Wikipedia and thus realize he may not have been well-versed in the guideline so am fully-willing to extend him a pass on this one.

Posted by: GlassBeadGame

Moderator's note: The original title of this thread was "Important AfD could use attention from experienced editors." This was changed to "Bose Afd..." in deference to those among our readers who lack a specific interest in articles related to audio products.

Well at least Mr. Snottywong seems to using WR to break a WP rule which is at least a slight improvement over the usual Wikipedian nonsense. I do think the word "Important" in the title is misleading.

Posted by: Somey

Maybe "Bose AfD" instead? Or would that just make the situation worse, advertising-wise?

Anyway, if they're going to use the word "canvassing" to refer to almost any kind of general announcement (and I can't imagine anybody thinking we have some sort of official preference for Bose speakers here), then they're mangling the English language. "Canvassing" in the internet context should refer specifically to direct communications with targeted individuals (or groups thereof) to encourage people to act in accordance with the canvasser's wishes.

For example, an e-mail to WikiEN-L might be "promoting," but would only be "canvassing" if the person knew who all the subscribers were and had a fairly good idea that none of them would react by doing something other than what he wants. The same should hold true here, generally speaking. Whereas, an e-mail to the Infinity or JBL or Boston Acoustics corporate mailing lists (or forums, etc.) presumably would be "canvassing," and of course that should be discouraged if at all possible.

Posted by: thekohser

I have reviewed this content, and I have determined that it is verily ripe for abuse by Google AdSense purveyors and the like.

I vote delete.

http://www.wikipediareview.com/Directory:Bose

Posted by: Doc glasgow

MY biggest problem with SnottyWong's post is not the canvassing but the time wasting.

I mean "Important AfD could use attention from experienced editors" led me to the assumption that this AFD was IMPORTANT, hence I read the thread.

Now I discover it is just someone promoting corporate crap on Wikipedia, which is a run of the mill occurrence that no person should care about.

This is not important, not a bit of it.

Posted by: Somey

OK, I've just changed it to "Bose AfD" instead...

Would you say your estimation of the importance of such AfD's is generally held by most "experienced editors"? I'd assume it's important for people who work for Bose, and Bose is by all accounts a fine company with many fine employees who do many fine things for their numerous fine, happy customers. (Their putative Wikipedia-related activities aside, of course.)

Posted by: Doc glasgow

I suspect by "experienced" I read "those with the wisdom of experience". My opinion is that those who have become wise by experience of Wikipedia will:

1) conclude there are important social and ethical consequences flowing from Wikipedia, and what corporate crap it includes or removes isn't among them.

2) probably have ceased a long time before to give a shit either way on such facile dilemmas.

Of course, my error is in equating experience with wisdom. There are plenty of counter examples around wikipedia.

Posted by: thekohser

Dang it, it looks like they're heading toward keep. I want them deleted!

Posted by: tarantino

All the audiophiles I know would never use anything Bose. Most of the reasons for this are encompassed in this review.
http://nyet.org/bose/

Posted by: Krimpet

I clicked on this thread assuming that the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satyendra_Nath_Bose of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bose-Einstein_condensate was being hatchet-jobbed.

Posted by: Milton Roe

That would be boschaft indeed!

Posted by: Somey

Yikes!

Maybe it's a good thing that my hearing has started to deteriorate. To be honest, though, I've never been all that impressed with 5.1 speaker systems in general. Also, uhh... let's just say I don't listen to much classical music.

Posted by: GlassBeadGame

Phil Spector had the right idea before he began the bad hair day that will not end. Make music that sounds good on crappy equipment. Back to Mono.

Posted by: EricBarbour

You rang?

Ooh, baby, I could rant for hours about Bose.
Audiophiles hate them, publications hate them, and even service technicians hate them.
http://nyet.org/bose/ is a good beginning summary.

Did you know that Bose was the first company to successfully sue, and win, against
Consumer Reports magazine for a negative review? Amar Bose (who, for your
information, is supposed to be a very arrogant and aggressive man) was trying
to market his sound systems to General Motors in 1971--he told them that Consumer
Reports (as well as various hi-fi magazines) had negatively reviewed the 901 speaker,
so they referred him to their favorite defamation lawyers, who specialized in silencing
criticism of consumer products.

The decision was overturned, but the pattern was set. One reason Bose can sell their
crummy, overpriced speakers and compact stereos is very simple: Bose can advertise
like hell, and not worry about being badly reviewed by any audio publication--
because they tend to find Bose products inferior and costly, but don't want to be
sued, so their solution is usually to not review Bose products at all.

Bose did psychoacoustics research, and discovered the little tricks to marketing
sound equipment to elderly people. Old folks usually have significant hearing loss above
5 kHz, so why bother putting tweeters of good quality in the speakers? Or any tweeters,
as in the 901? And old folks don't listen to music with a lot of bass, like rock or R&B, so
one can skimp on the subwoofer too. Plus, distortion up to 5% is acceptable, because
elderly ears have trouble detecting harmonic and especially intermod distortion. (This is
starting to change, as baby boomers replace the WWII generation. They tend to like rock
and not be fond of "elevator music". But Bose is already well-established, so
the company will be around for a long time.)

Major advertising conduits for Bose: magazines that cater to elderly people,
like Reader's Digest and AARP.

Plus, Bose uses the Buy American Act to sell specialized audio equipment to the
US government, especially the military. They are among the last audio manufacturers
to have "American made" labels on their products, even though all their parts and
major subassemblies are made overseas. Their speaker drivers have long been
notorious for low cost Chinese manufacturing and, shall we say, average quality.
Unlike JBL or Polk or other sound-reinforcement manufacturers still in the US,
Bose's managers spent the last 30 years making friends at the Pentagon.

(PS, don't be surprised if it turns out that Bose employees or marketing firms
employed by Bose are editing their WP articles.)

Posted by: Kelly Martin

In the circles I run, an anti-endorsement of a product by audiophiles is grounds to consider using it. There's a reason we call them "audiophools", after all. (Ever http://www.clairvoyantcables.com/id73.html?)

That said, Bose equipment is, well, not worth it. They're primarily for the Sharper Image market: spiffy looking box but no innards worth mentioning. Just like most of the other stuff Sharper Image sells.

Getting back to the original topic: I'm sure the AfD was very important to the guy who started this thread. After all, those articles are his advertising campaign; if they're deleted he's going to have hell to pay back at the office.

Posted by: Lar

If so, he's running some sort of double blind or something as he appears to be arguing for deletion, he's the nom of that packet of articles. I think.

Posted by: Kelly Martin

Grah. I need more coffee.

Posted by: CharlotteWebb

Yeah, I figured you'd have something to say about this.

As for myself, when I go to buy headphones it's because my last pair is broken or missing. So I generally look for the cheapest thing on the shelf of... well, y'all know where I shop.

Hell I can't tell the difference between the bit rates of my MP3 files. Or between Evian and the water from my kitchen faucet but I digress.

Anyway thanks for commenting on how much they suck (!) but I was really wondering whether you felt about the AFD, whether the products are "notable" enough for WP to write about, etc.

Posted by: Somey

Well, I'd just like to apologize to all audiophiles who might be reading this thread for having been fooled into believing that Bose products were "innovative." I could've sworn I read some glowing reviews of their bookshelf speakers back in the 80's, before 5.1 systems were popular... However, I do also recall that they always had a propensity to make their ads look like regular magazine pages.

Still, Bose Corporation has never caused me any personal distress, so hopefully they won't sue me for saying any of that.

Posted by: tarantino

My mind starts to wander whenever I listen to audiophiles, but the point I took away is that you can get more reliable equipment with a better linear frequency response for less than half the price from a company that won't sue you if you write a critical review.

Posted by: Kelly Martin

The real question on my mind is, if you put Bose and Monster Cable in a fight to the death, which would win?

Posted by: Lar

With or without cable burn-in?

Posted by: Achromatic

More fun is http://www.audioholics.com/news/industry-news/blue-jeans-strikes-back.

Posted by: A Horse With No Name

Self-promotion on Wikipedia? I think Claude Rains got there first:

Posted by: EricBarbour

Let's put it this way. If Wikipedia can't be bothered to have individual articles about MY products, which HAVE been reviewed in major dead-tree music gear magazines......then why should Bose enjoy such special treatment?

Especially since hi-fi magazines today basically means the Stereophile/Absolute Sound audiophile maniac fringe----who would never in hell review those Bose products?

Another example: look at the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moog_Music. They are far more well-known than Metasonix. Where are all the individual product articles for their products, like the Little Phatty synthesizer? In fact, why is the Moog Music article so pathetic and lacking detail and references? Because wiki-dorks don't care about music gear, but do care a great deal about, what.....Ayn Rand?

I could say the same about most other synthesizer company articles, from Doepfer to Oberheim to Alesis to Nord, to you name it.

(Oh, well, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roland_Corporation products are well-represented on Wikipedia. How do we know these were not posted by company employees? Well??)

I suspect these Bose articles are probably being authored by company shills. They are just taking advantage of WP's dysfunctional "process". Something more companies ought to do, I suppose.

Until those Wikishitheads enact a consistent process for handling articles about commercial businesses, and stick to it, this kind of crap will keep happening in the background.

It's not an "encyclopedia" of anything. It's a joke.

Posted by: Alison

The Juno-6 is conspicuously absent, as is the System-700 and the TR-707

http://www.synthmuseum.com/roland/rolsys70001.html is a kickass Roland machine, http://www.rolandmusic.ro/juno-di.php is not.

Posted by: Gazimoff

If it's any consolation, I wouldn't go for Bose either. My headphones of choice are almost always Sennheiser.

Posted by: CharlotteWebb

The what, and the what what what?

Most editors (I think?) aren't above writing about things they've never heard of, if they can find sources. Hopefully someone should give these topics a try.


Could be an education thing. I know in school they expected me to read (and write an essay about) either of two Ayn Rand books (not that I actually did). The only eh… music gear they expected me to use and be familiar with was this piece of shit:

See I was supposed to take it home and practice with it (not that I actually did).

Posted by: Moulton

Ah yes, the dreadful 4th Grade song flute.

Proof positive that I had no musical talent whatsoever.

Posted by: The Joy

As are mine. An HD 202, to be precise.

Posted by: Krimpet

Some of which would make for entertaining reading, too.

"This article is about the Scrotum Smasher guitar pedal. For the tool, see [[emasculator]]."

Posted by: Gazimoff

I'm using a pair of HD 497s. I've had them for about four years now but they still work perfectly.

Posted by: Somey

A LOT of these articles from audio and pro-musician gear manufacturers are probably written at least partially by company employees and PR people. Check out this extract from the bottom of the http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Korg&oldid=307753703#Timeline_of_major_products (you have to scroll down a ways):

I'm sure it's a fine synthesizer and I'd love to own one (if only for the internal clock, which I hear is super-accurate), but that's a little outside of what might be deemed the "NPOV" range, isn't it?

Posted by: thekohser

This is going into my upcoming book. Thanks, Somey. I haven't seen a more self-infatuated bit of text on Wikipedia since Elonka Dunin's biography!

Greg

Posted by: Somey

Admittedly, that's one of the more egregious examples. But this is ultimately a maintainability and consistency issue. There's really nothing wrong with being positive about a musical instrument, or musical instruments in general, or any class of companies and products as long as all of them are treated fairly in relation to others, but Wikipedia just isn't set up for that. Popularity and cultishness (towards companies/products that is, not necessarily Wikipedia-cultishness) always wins over science, expert review, adherence to sourcing guidelines, etc., etc.

Of course, it isn't just inconsistency from one company to the next, either - for example, an article like the one on Yamaha's Tyros 2 (T-H-L-K-D) digital workstation is clearly taken almost directly from marketing literature, but does not carry a tag that says "This article reads like an advertisement." Whereas, the article on the Yamaha Motif (T-H-L-K-D) does have the tag, but doesn't read so much like an advertisement at all - there's even a http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Yamaha_Motif&oldid=322532971#Applications_and_audience that some might even consider back-handed criticism.

I can't claim to have read all the relevant articles of course, but I don't think the problem is anywhere near as bad on things like cars, weapons, and heavy machinery, to name three examples off the top of my head. Nor is it really all that bad, most days, on computer products and video games, paradoxically because of all the edit-warring that goes on. It's mostly on things like musical instruments, satellite/cable set-top boxes, mobile phones... things that many geek-types use, but don't quite understand the inner workings of quite so much. (There are a whopping http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Nokia_mobile_phones on individual Nokia mobile phone models alone.)

Another interesting case is Incat (T-H-L-K-D), a not-especially-prominent Australian builder of large, powered catamarans. I don't believe any other boat manufacturer has a http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Incat_high-speed_craft devoted to their product line. Compare their article to something like Chris-Craft Industries (T-H-L-K-D) or the Brunswick Boat Group (T-H-L-K-D) - obviously someone from Incat is very keen on using Wikipedia to promote that company, while other boat manufacturers are all saying, ehh, we don't really need to worry about that demographic. So they haven't - and nobody else has either, because as everyone knows, geek-types don't buy boats.

The standard WP inclusionist reaction to this is, "the encyclopedia isn't finished yet," or "why don't you get cracking and write all those missing articles about different Brunswick boat models?" (As if!) But of course the solution that might theoretically be workable is not more individual-product articles for companies that don't already have huge numbers of them - the solution is to develop a consistent, fair approach and apply it across the board, ideally one which doesn't involve a huge unmaintainable mass of separate articles.

Posted by: Kelly Martin

And this is an example of how Wikipedia's stochastic process creates undue weight bias. Incat is, in the boat industry, a nobody, especially compared to someone like Chris-Craft or Zodiac Aerospace (whose article on Wikipedia is so out of date it doesn't even have the right name). There's no encyclopedic reason why Incat should have this much coverage—but as we've noted many times, Wikipedia is not an encyclopedia.

And of course the same thing happens within articles as well: the aspects of a topic that interest Wikipedia's readership get more prominence, and more attention, than the ones that don't. I bet you could put flatly idiotic financial data into a lot of business articles and it would stand unmolested for months, because very few people on Wikipedia care about financial data. (As an aside, most of Wikipedia's articles about finance were added by people trying to sell their latest investment book or gimmick anyway; don't trust anything you read on Wikipedia about finance.)

Posted by: Happy drinker

On a broader note, there's a lot said on this site about BLP. In law, a company is a person. Shouldn't BLP protection extend to companies, and shouldn't editors here be as opposed to creation of articles on companies as they are to creation of articles on living humans?

You may say that if there's a mistake in a company article it's not going to hurt "real people". Not true; if a company is damaged it affects the employees, the shareholders and pension funds that invest in it. Further, an article on a company might well refer to the actions of individual directors of the company. If people are worried about deliberate vandalism or insertion of false data, isn't that more likely to happen to a company article because a company is more likely to have detractors or business rivals, and vandals are more likely to think "it's only a company, I'm not hurting anyone"?

Also, I suspect that articles on companies that are "vanity creations" by employees or agents of the company outnumber "vanity bios" written by the subjects themselves.

So should there be a policy of not having articles on companies, and "default to delete" on AfDs?

Posted by: CharlotteWebb

Probably, but I'm not sure to what extent.

I suggested something vaguely like that whilst trying to delete some category of companies "linked to" the holocaust.

Oh what, you mean like IBM?

Never mind that the employees of that era are all retired or burning in hell, etc. I think I compared it to sorting most white folks in the south under "Category:Descendants of slave-owners" (which BLP would hopefully discourage even as a clear statement of fact) at which point attendees suspected me a troll, a holocaust denier, a covert agent for Steyr, and so-on (with varying degrees of subtlety).

This is probably too extreme an example. I don't know how far into the normal run of things such principles should apply. Maybe somebody else can philosophize about that.

Posted by: Somey

It's a fair question, but the idea that a corporation should be treated as a person is a legal construction that doesn't hold in all countries, and of course many people (including myself) find this idea repugnant.

Nevertheless, your point about people being negatively affected does hold - Overstock.com being one of the better examples of large companies that have been targeted for "POV" revenge attacks by WP'ers, and IIRC the Coca-Cola Company and a few others. The "default to delete" rule for articles about companies seems perfectly reasonable, if you ask me.

The main thing is that I would, of course, strongly object to any of this being used as a rationale for not applying such rules to help protect the privacy, etc., of individuals.

Posted by: thekohser

I gotta say, though, I don't ever recall seeing a boat http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:HSV2.jpg being floated by Brunswick or Chris-Craft.