Talk:Paid to click/Archives/2017

References to popular PTC websites should not be there? (they were immediately removed claiming that it was a promotional attempt.)

I recently updated the paid to click article in order to enhance it and improve the provided information on the subject and Bonadea decided to remove several of my contributions claiming there was a promotional attempt.

Another part of my contribution that was removed would be impossible to be considered as advertising (directly or indirectly) and the explanation (which she never mentioned in our discussion but it was possible for me to find it later in the history log) for that part was this: "remove an unsupported assertion".

It is strange that the rest of the respective paragraph is still there and IT IS "unsupported assertion" as well and kind of misinforming the readers. Either my text should be returned or the whole paragraph to be removed. Otherwise, it is a double standard policy only. I know I could not find a reference I could include for the text I added in that paragraph. but at least it was correcting the meaning of the paragraph. Maybe it was just a mistake of mine that due to respect for the writer of the original text I did not remove it when I updated the article instead of trying to correct it.

Except for your opinions on my disagreement with Bonadea's actions I would also like to ask other contributors if they consider as abnormal or advertising to mention 2 well known organizations directly related to the subject of an article and even support this with references from a Colombian newspaper as well as Amazon Alexa?

If your opinion is that this is an advertising attempt, then maybe mentioning Amazon Alexa in the text above should be treated as advertising as well?. I try to understand but it does not make sense.

I will give a random example to make it very clear why it is absurd in my opinion to claim that mentioning well known organizations related to the subject of an article is advertising:

In software article we have this text:

"A great variety of software companies and programmers in the world comprise a software industry. Software can be quite a profitable industry: Bill Gates, the co-founder of Microsoft was the richest person in the world in 2009, largely due to his ownership of a significant number of shares in Microsoft, the company responsible for Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office software products.

Non-profit software organizations include the Free Software Foundation, GNU Project and Mozilla Foundation. Software standard organizations like the W3C, IETF develop recommended software standards such as XML, HTTP and HTML, so that software can interoperate through these standards.

Other well-known large software companies include Oracle, Novell, SAP, Symantec, Adobe Systems, Sidetrade and Corel, while small companies often provide innovation."

As we can see the article is naming Microsoft, Oracle, Sidetrade and other well known entities directly related to the subject of the article (and even without any Wikipedia / 3rd party reference / link for Sidetrade) and this is just natural in my opinion since it is giving to the reader some examples of software (which is the subject of the article anyway) companies.

Consequently, I cannot understand why the same should not be done for an article related to the PTC business model or any other subject. Should not the reader be able to find a few well known examples of those who are using that business model?

According to the logic behind Bonadea's aforementioned actions, should I try to edit the software article and remove the quoted text because it was an advertising attempt?

My fellow contributors I would be glad to see your point of views and read your arguments.

Note: If anyone is interested, my communication with Bonadea can be seen here: User_talk:Bonadea#Further_explanation_is_required

P.S. I will not hide that it was an unpleasant surprise for me (as a new contributor) that my contributions were removed before those who did it attempt to contact me to let me know their disagreement. I do not like the "shoot first, ask later" policy to be honest. Manifeston (talk) 02:32, 18 September 2017 (UTC)

Wikipedia is a big place and a zillion edits occur every day (check Special:RecentChanges). Being reverted is standard. Imagine how articles would look if everyone with an opinion was able to post their favored text and have it stay until everyone was satisfied. Please just calmly explain what text is missing from the article, what reference would be a source for the text, and briefly why it would be helpful. Johnuniq (talk) 04:23, 18 September 2017 (UTC)

I understand the need to avoid personal opinions whenever it is possible but this should be a rule applied in every case.

For example the definition of the PTC model cannot be found in a reliable 3rd party source, but still the definition that someone wrote in the "Paid to click" article is correct and it is better than having nothing at all. It could be easy for anyone to say something like:

"This definition is a personal opinion, so delete it".

Instead of that it would be much better to explain someone why he / she believes that the definition is incorrect so it can be improved. ::Otherwise, and with the "personal opinion" and "advertising" excuse, the whole article and many other articles as well should not exist.

I believe I have already explained why my contributions would be helpful, but to make it short: Mentioning the two most popular (according to Amazon Alexa) websites that use the PTC model and explain that most of the PTC websites do not use the Pay-per-click model nowadays are useful to help the reader learn a bit more about the PTC website model and which are the organizations that using it. For example, it was useful for me to see that the 2 PTC websites I mentioned had higher traffic than websites coming from extremely popular companies like Coca-Cola and Pepsi (and I hope I won't be accused again for advetising) which I found there: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Reward_websites

In any case, anyone who is interested can see the revision history of the article. Here are the links related to my contributions and the respective removals:

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Paid_to_click&diff=801123207&oldid=801122926

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Paid_to_click&diff=801124122&oldid=801123207

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Paid_to_click&diff=801122926&oldid=800872822 Manifeston (talk) 05:16, 18 September 2017 (UTC)

Mentioning specific companies/products/websites in a Wikipedia article may give them undue weight, and there must be sources that specifically discuss the importance or popularity of those websites, for them to be included. This is particularly true when it's something that is not notable according to Wikipedia's definition of notability; I have been trying to find sources that would indicate that Neobux meets the notability criteria for websites, but without any success. Extrapolating from the Alexa ranks is a form of synthesis, which we as Wikipedia editors can't do. Besides, to be relevant for an encyclopedia, the information can't be temporary - a website's Alexa rank changes, it is in the nature of things, and unless there is a secondary source that discusses the ranking, it's not going to be relevant in a month, or next year. (I know that many articles about individual websites mention their Alexa ranking; I don't think it's particularly useful, but there may be consensus to keep the info in those articles). As for the information that "almost no PTC websites adopt Pay_per_click as one of their advertising models nowadays", the source [1] does not in fact say that - and as it is ten years old it would not be possible for it to make any claims about "nowadays" in any case. Again, it is always best to avoid statements about what something is like "right now", because right now changes so quickly. --bonadea contributions talk 08:43, 18 September 2017 (UTC)

Thank you Bonadea for coming here to discuss even though I cannot forget nor I like your “shoot first / ask question later / no apology” policy. I appreciate though your gesture (I assume it was you) to add the required dots in my previous message. I'm new here and I am not familiar with all the format rules yet.

To be honest it does look like you do not know much about the PTC business model and those who are using it, and I support my opinion based on what you wrote regarding the source / reference you claimed was related to "almost no PTC websites adopt Pay_per_click as one of their advertising models nowadays"

Since it is a wrong practice to select a part of a sentence and ignore the rest of it, the full text was exactly this:

“It should be noted though that almost no PTC websites adopt Pay_per_click as one of their advertising models nowadays, staying clear of its potential misinterpretation as click fraud.[6]”

As you see the 6th reference / source is next to “click fraud” because it does explain the “click fraud” (obviously).

Therefore, the source / reference you have mentioned was NOT there to explain the “almost no PTC websites adopt Pay_per_click as one of their advertising models nowadays” part as you claim.

If it was there to explain that, it would be next to “Pay_per_click” or next to “nowadays” and NOT next to “click fraud.”

At least you have noticed that the source / reference was 10 years old and this is a proof in my opinion that most likely you have almost zero knowledge regarding the PTC business model. Before 10 years, there was basically no PTC business model and this should make you understand that the aforementioned click fraud in reality has nothing to do with the PTC business model, but you did not understand anything most likely because you have no idea when PTC websites appeared nor which of them became popular and when.

Therefore, that reference / source was absolutely necessary to help the reader to understand what is the click fraud that this paragraph was mentioning and that is actually related to the “pay-per-click” model and NOT the PTC business model.

This is exactly what you have failed multiple times to understand. The original paragraph is actually talking for something related to a different model. What I did was to explain this without removing the existing text and the only intentional "mistake" was the “nowadays” since in reality PTC websites basically never used the Pay_per_click model.

But, this was a way to keep the original paragraph and give it a correct meaning at the same time. In others words: Instead of saying that the original writer was wrong, I only said that what he mentioned does not happen anymore. Just my “silly” if you like attempt to respect the effort of someone else.

For your information: Alexa’s rank for NeoBux and Swagbucks is very high for almost a decade and this is not temporary by any means. To get such a high rank from that metric for so long you have to be very popular online, thus your argument of “temporary information” is not valid since it really is a proof of popularity. There was also a secondary source / reference from a Colombian newspaper regarding NeoBux that was adding extra support for the content of that -removed now- paragraph. And yes I believe that both of these website are popoular enough to be considered notable.

By the way, please do not provide any “argument” such as “we do not know what will happen in 5, 10, 20, etc. years” because this way absolutely nothing could be characterized as popular (just because this might be changed in the future).

Alexa itself does not show the historical statistics to a visitor, but you can find them online.

For example:

http://www.rank2traffic.com/neobux.com

http://www.rank2traffic.com/swagbucks.com

As anyone can see there:

-NeoBux is between the 800 most popular websites for the last 7 full years at least.

-Swagbucks is between the 1900 most popular sites for the same period.

(800 and 1900 are the worst ranks for this period)

Before I make my contributions to the article I did personally check the historical ranks for many websites that still exist and currently use the PTC model (as well as all the websites that are included in the "reward websites" here in Wikipedia), and no one else comes any close to those two, thus I naturally picked them as the ones I should mention in the article.

I chose not to include Alexa statistics from a 3rd party website, because I thought that Alexa’s website is considered as a more reliable reference / source (even though the data is the same regardless if you see it in Alexa or a 3rd party website). And since a rank of the current moment was being used in the Swagbucks article as well and no one has removed it, I thought it should be just fine. Furthermore, the popularity that the historical rank proves it is being properly reflected in the current ranks for both websites, thus I thought there will be no problem.

Last but not least, there was no synthesis as you claim since the source is the historical rank data from Alexa, which is a single source and does show popularity (that is the only subject of the ranking anyway so there is no room for misinterpretations).

I believe I have now properly addressed your arguments and misunderstandings and I am open to know what you think.

Furthermore, and since you are now fully responsible for the current version of the article after you decided (without any detailed explanation and without trying to discuss it before you remove my contributions) what should be kept and what should be deleted, I need you to answer my questions below:

1. Why the first paragraph has been kept by you?

It is the paragraph that begins with:” The “Paid to click (PTC) is an online…”

According to your logic it is an opinion, and there is no reference / source.

2. The same for the second paragraph that I added, which begins with: “The PTC model shares some similarities” and has no references / sources as well.

(and yes, I know that both paragraphs are just fine, but so is the text that you have removed, thus I have to ask).

3. The same for “The viability of the PTC business model has been questioned….” statement.

Who has questioned it? When it happened? Where is the source / reference showing that it has been questioned?

In fact, no one questioned it, since the great majority of the PTC websites never used the related model, which is the Pay_per_click model. What I am saying and repeating here is that the respective paragraph is actually about the clicking fraud related to a different model than the business model which is the subject of the article.

This is why I tried to correct the situation by extending the paragraph with true information (even without references / sources). But, your choice was to remove only what I added and leave there a misinforming paragraph.

As I previously said, I did not remove the original paragraph out of respect for the respective contributor. I like to create based on what others have done than simply deleting their contribution, which is an “I ignore your effort just because I want and can” approach / attitude.

4. Why you did not remove this sentence of mine: “A criticism leveled towards the PTC business model”? (Since there is no reference / source explaining the criticism nor where and when that criticism took place).

5. Why you did not remove “Traffic Monsoon”?

(I assume it does not meet the so-called notability requirements according to you).

6. Does swagbucks meet the criteria of notability in your opinion? If it does, why you did not remove just NeoBux?

If it does not, why you do nothing for the whole article about Swagbucks (which by the way is a clear promotional attempt, since it mentions absolutely no drawbacks)? Why you do not have any problem with “Alexa’s rank of the moment” temporary nature (according to you) in that article?

7. What a PTC website should have/do to meet the notability criteria in your opinion? And if none of the PTC websites meets them, what is the point to have an article about the respective business model? Is the model notable but not those who are using it in your opinion?

8. Why a reference from a Colombian newspaper does not make NeoBux to meet the notability requirements?

This was a second 3d party source / reference on top of the very high rank in Alexa by the way.

And two extra questions if you do not mind:

9. Why while there is an ongoing debate, the version of the article appearing in the meantime should be your version and not mine?

At the very least, I sincerely tried to enhance / improve the article and what you did was just to delete things based on your personal opinion. I tried to create and not to destroy and you did the opposite.

10. Have you ever added anything in the article or your only contribution is deciding what should be deleted just because you think it should be deleted?

Manifeston (talk) 03:54, 19 September 2017 (UTC)