User talk:Tony Tan/Archives/2015/11

TABS.org and Boardingschools.com

Hello. My major problem with the tabs.org and boardingschool.com links is that they are WP:PRIMARY profiles submitted by the schools without any indication of fact-checking or oversight. This info can be made available by the schools on their own site, but since this isn't acceptable as a reliable secondary source, I strongly question its use as an WP:EL. I'm also wary of the fact that it's so often added by IPs in a specific range with a lot of other questionable, spammy edits. Why don't we talk about it further rather than edit war, eh? Grayfell (talk) 02:33, 17 November 2015 (UTC)

@Grayfell: Hi there! I am sorry if it is starting to look like an edit war. That was not my intention at all, as we are all here to build Wikipedia. I undid your revision because I thought that tabs.org is a legitimate resource to link to and that you might have been reverting in a hurry. I agree with you that the profiles could come from the schools directly without much oversight, so I should have been more cautious. Could the link be helpful for someone trying to learn more about the school? Maybe, but you are certainly right that the material (at least the tone) there isn't completely neutral. It does contain a lot of accurate and potentially useful details, though. I think this is a difficult call, and I will let you decide. Thank you for reaching out. Cheers, Tony Tan · talk 02:42, 17 November 2015 (UTC)

I'm too quick to judge with spam, so I'm glad someone is second-guessing me. I've looked into it a bit more: A lot of pages link to boardingschools.com and looking through the history of some of those, I'm seeing that many and maybe most of those links were added by different IPs that geolocate to North Carolina, where TABs is headquartered. I'm concerned that this is someone at TABs trying to add value to TABs membership. That's understandable, but it's a misuse of Wikipedia for obvious reasons, so it makes me uneasy. Combined with the very promotional and otherwise routine content the site provides, I feel like this is just plain ol' spam. It's pretty harmless, and somewhat useful, so there's no rush in removing it, and I'm open to other points of view. Grayfell (talk) 02:50, 17 November 2015 (UTC)

ArbCom elections are now open!

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