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Posted by: thekohser

Talk about http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Comcast&curid=303749&diff=299413732&oldid=299401849.

I thought this was an "encyclopedia", and thus the aim is to convey the important accumulated knowledge about the subject.

I suppose I'm not allowed to edit the Comcast article in Wikipedia, right?

Posted by: LessHorrid vanU

If you ask nicely, I am prepared to ban you from any and all Hicksville articles.

Posted by: Somey

The last three paragraphs of that section should be removed, shouldn't they? Or are we assuming that any time a cable or satellite company doesn't include a particular sports channel, that's definable as a "controversy"?

I mean, if there were a lawsuit or something over it, maybe then I could see it. Otherwise it's just angry customers using WP to "stick it to the man" - not quite as bad as BLP revenge-grabbing to be sure, but it's based on a similar impulse.

Posted by: thekohser

Somey, about 60% of the article text falls under the "Controversies" heading. In contrast, Halliburton doesn't even have such a heading. This is NPOV at work, though, Jimmy Wales assures me. Then again, Comcast is in no way affiliated with http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamie_Leigh_Jones, the way Halliburton is.

Then, you've also got a rural guy sending Comcast a message on the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Comcast#We_ned_RFD_on_comcast, as if it's some kind of corporate Suggestion Box.

...sigh...

Posted by: carbuncle

Don't mess with broadcasting articles unless you may an infinite amount of patience. They seem to attract a large number of "special" editors.

Posted by: Somey

Well, exactly. If Halliburton were responsible for denying out-of-market sports coverage to particular sections of the United States, you'd better believe they'd have a "Controversies" section header in their article, and damn quick, too!

Posted by: EricBarbour

That's because you're not supposed to mess with a nerd's TV programming.

Posted by: thekohser

When Angela Beesley created the Wikipedia article about Comcast in 2003, the Comcast website timeline stated:

Angela the worker bee chewed this up and spit it back out in GFDL form, as follows:


This botched interpretation has held steady in the article about Comcast for more than six years, and it has been http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22under+the+name+Comcast+Corporation+from+American+Cable+Systems%22&sourceid=navclient-ff&rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS291US291&ie=UTF-8.

Tonight, I broke the Conflict of Interest rule and http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Comcast&diff=315834643&oldid=315771454, mainly because the previous editor Jerzy's indignant edit summary ("It unquestionably *is* a shortening of the previous name of the same thing; they can *explain* their intention in not dumping the name as they please") got under my skin.

Wikipedia will never be a reputable reference resource for business matters, until they welcome businesses to assist with article development and maintenance.

Posted by: Kelly Martin

"The current version of the name ... is treated as an amalgamation ..."? Please, someone put whoever wrote that out of his or her misery immediately, lest he or she repeat that egregious assault on the English language.

Posted by: TungstenCarbide

OMG, Jerzy is http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Comcast&diff=next&oldid=315029208? He's always been a little odd.

Posted by: thekohser

I love it when people unwittingly describe a falsehood as "unquestionable". It tickles me. And that's the main reason I like Wikipedia.

Posted by: MBisanz

Greg, tiny pro-tip on making the ref easier to read http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Comcast&diff=315855468&oldid=315839344

Posted by: thekohser

Yeah, I know. I didn't want it to look too professional, like the polished work of a paid editor, for example.

Posted by: thekohser

Jerzy http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Jerzy&diff=315859835&oldid=315837530.

Angela, on the other hand, http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Angela&curid=3201231&diff=315860890&oldid=315836695.

Posted by: thekohser

Every day, it becomes http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Comcast&diff=333435777&oldid=333374475 that Wikipedia would be better served on its articles about corporations if the corporate communications staff were more fully integrated into the process of article construction.

Does Wikipedia really think that this throughput upgrade was limited to "certain areas of Utah", just because that's what the chosen reliable source happened to say?

Posted by: A Horse With No Name

Stop right there!

Posted by: Lar

A policy for disclosed COI and monitored/restricted editing would be far more effective than our current don't ask/don't tell policy in which all you have to do is assert you don't have a COI and then claim that any attempt to show you actually do have one is "outing"...

COI isn't a bad thing in and of itself, if it's disclosed and known in advance.

I for one would LOVE to see the Comcast PR department on the Comcast talk page (they might get an earful from time to time but yes)... WP corporate articles are one of the weakest areas of the project (other than BLPs) which is not too surprising when you consider the demographics of the editor population... many folk pretty anti-corporate and many of the rest pretty uninterested in the topic area.

It's a hard area to do well. Especially when you can't use certain classes of references.

Posted by: A Horse With No Name

It also doesn't help that the PR people make no effort to learn how Wikipedia operates (in theory, if not in practice). PR people come from the school of "When You're a Hammer, Every Problem Looks Like a Nail" -- they usually fail to adjust their information to fit the editorial requirements of Wikipedia, but instead keep doing the usual PR shtick as if Wikipedia is PR Newswire or BusinessWire. Thus, it is too easy to spot a PR-crafted article -- it reads like a press release.

Posted by: thekohser

Since at least November 2009, Comcast has been the third-largest home telephone provider in the United States (http://www.reuters.com/article/2009/11/11/us-dealtalk-nbcu-comcast-idUSTRE5AA55R20091111).

Wikipedia still has Comcast as the "http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Comcast&oldid=467974100", so they're only 25 months out of touch with reality.

Posted by: SB_Johnny

So much for WP being more up to date than the real encyclopedias?

BTW Greg: maybe pass a note to the guys upstairs that when somebody calls about a problem for the third time, maybe not such a good idea to end the call with yet another pitch for the phone service.

Posted by: Fusion

{{fact}}