I ranted on it like just yesterday :)
http://www.seobook.com/archives/001894.shtml

Don't forget that they classify SEO as part of the spamming series

the page also says shit like

Google's market share of daily searches has fallen rapidly from 75% to 56% over the past few years, as other search engines find many web pages that Google has banned and cannot display due to Google's severely limited index.

No BlackKnight ?

If they're going to list seo's then Doug fits in there ...somewhere. Right?

Doug's name has been removed. I protest, he has a long-standing forum and is well-known in the industry.

How about No Famous People? Did I tell you how famous I am to my clients and their wives? Rofl. Seriously, by listing it as Famous SEOs you might as well just be saying, "Go here for SEO". You gonna tell me that you would recommend any of those people. I wouldn't. Its kind of a sore spot to talk about marketing and then name drop a few people. Talk about what it is, but don't promote a few businesses to drive potential business to when there is plenty very legitimate SEO companies out there. This isnt the yellow pages. Its an encyclopedia.

The Founder is spot on. Talk about what SEO is. Not make a mockery of it.

"This page explains what SEO is and also what could be considered SPAM or black hat techniques. Notice that we have managed to drop a whole bunch of names at the bottom so they can filter out some good link backs from this article."

I'm already a, ummm, errr, person of contention at WP from long ago. In their mail system, there's even a pronouncement from On High (Wales himself) telling the troops that they should rollback my entries (about half mutinied and kept them --hence the contention).

BUT I'm not the one adding Doug back, I only entered him the first time. Evidently, I've made a contentious entry once again.

Please add to the Famous SEO's:

Chuck Norris

All his shit is PR11.

just Noteworthy

...and thanks for all the fine contributions to the article. Please read it and fix anything you like, but be sure cite reliable sources.

This may be of help to some of you...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Three-revert_rule

yawn.

Somebody do something already with pikiwedia.org, ok?

Those guys have been there like FOREVER. And you are allowed to link only to existing articles (not external links).

Hell, you know better than anyone that we don't know people by their real names. (Remember trying to go to real names at Pubconference #1 --lasted maybe 10 minutes.)

Black Knight
Bill Slawski

This is kind of like watching a bug zapper.

Dude, haven't heard? Anyone that ever changes a single web page is an SEO (not that that's a bad thing).

i threw your name up there ...can't figure why it stuck.

...is a marketing ploy by people from SEMPO and the SMA and as such should be severely edited and have a no links external links policy instituted.

I agree, Greg should be on there.

"And you are allowed to link only to existing articles"

So lets see the SEO Wiki page links to jill's wiki page and aaron's wiki page, then those pages link to their webpages. Which part of this isn't taking advantage of a good link back? Maybe everyone of the first page of Google for SEO should be listed there because hey lets admit it, thats a competitive word and its pretty noteworthy if you got that placement.

Sorry, guys and girls, not to single you out..im just continuing my expression of angst at the idea. Aaron you know i link love ya ;)

>>And you are allowed to link only to existing articles

This sounds a little bit like a walled garden.

If you find a Wikipedia page that doesn't establish notability, you can tag the page with {{notability}} and that will put it on the radar. Either the editors will clean it up and add references, or some "exclusionist" Wikipedians will swoop in and tag it with {{AfD}}, articles for deletion.

Here's the notability guideline for people. It's not a rule:
WP:BIO

>Persons achieving renown or notoriety for their involvement in newsworthy events, such as by being assassinated

... may I be excused

Yup, WP looks a bit incestuous these days (pardon, LOL) Some editors are even mentioning "pagerank" (sic) as a reason not to link out to other sources. That's just sad IMO.

> they are still missing a lot of people that should be listed, like Ammon Johns, Greg Boser, Mike Grehan, and Rand

I put all those mentioned and more on there. All are current admins, moderators, and in nearly all instances, notable conference speakers. No links to anywhere because they didn't have a page on wikipedia. BUT, having read through the editors' discussions I saw no rule requiring a WP article before submitting a name. I may be mistaken, I might have missed it, but I did read over their discussion thread first. Particularly this part:

It didn't seem to exclude "plain text" submissions outright --until the last entry, which was after the above submissions.

It's not a general rule, but *someone* added a comment to the article page itself. Fits current (unwritten) Wikipedia law rather well.....

Well the walled garden didn't work for AOL and I doubt it will work for Wikipedia.

On another note, why are only "Google Engineers" listed what about the other search engines? Wait, I forgot, Goggle is the whole world - resistance is useless.

While I have no strong opinion either way on Bruce Clay - why list Bruce? I don't remember Bruce Clay helping out at any of the major SEO forums. And while Bruce has a major SEO firm I suspect that he's included because he advertises way more visibly than most other SEO firms. Which is a good argument for branding BTW, but not a real good reason for being on the list. The other folks on there currently do deserve to be there but there are many glaring omissions. I don't say they have to be linked anything: either a Wiki page or an outside link. The value is in the information not the link. Once a reader has the name they can google it on Yahoo. ;-)

"Welcome to Wikipedia,
the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit."

I guess it depends on your degree of equality (and yes, that book springs more and more often to mind as we talk about communities and social marketing and open participation...)

Once again the animals were conscious of a vague uneasiness. Never to have any dealings with human beings, never to engage in trade, never to make use of money — had not these been among the earliest resolutions passed...

If each of you takes one paragraph and fixes it, the article might become halfway decent. For better or for worse, lots of people read this article, so it tends to define our industry. We may as well try to convey an accurate view and provide reliable references.

One of the reasons you may find it hard to get your edits to stick is that edits by anonymous IP addresses tend to draw extra scrutiny. Instead, if you make ongoing constructive edits and identify yourself, the other editors will tend to give you much more respect. So don't charge in there with keyboard blazing and expect everyone to bow down to your leetness.

That may be very true and a call to assistance is very nice but... how about that fact that it's a public wiki and this is promotion and marketing field, driven by back end performance? Your SEO section is going to mirror the network news hour... heavy on the Hollywood at best.

There is a beautiful irony in the way a privately owned user generated content site approaches a community of hard-core online marketers and webmasters and ellicits their contributions to a game that never ends. Reminds me of a casino I know...

So far as independence, accuracy and objectivity is concerned Wikipedia is the new Dmoz so who gives a shit anyway.

... what exactly is a "Google Consultant?" Is that someone who consults to Google? Is this a new breed of expert that has suddenly appeared and is helping Google?

I'm confused. More beer methinks.

what happens if / when Google's brand dies out? is Wikipedia going to do a find and replace Google --> Yahoo!

I was going to mention SEO PR - that highly specialised blend of SEO and, er PR, involving submitting online press releases and then writing articles about doing so, but I thought that I couldn't really mock that page too much as it is, after all, simply a copy and paste of the first two paras of one of the articles it references.

I especially liked the first item in the discussion

which, imho, would be because YOU MADE IT UP.

..... and, breath.....

two things on that - the first is that someone raised concerns on the 18th of August and nothing was actually tagged until now. I guess that happens but in an SEO related area where people are so quick to edit an article which references this one you would sort of expect less than 6 weeks from 'this is dodgy' to 'lets take a look'

The second is that you believe the citations are valid. OK on first glance they're not bad, but when we look at this one is posted on a site which the writer is CEO of, the second mentions SEO-PR only as a company name and the third is on search engine watch true, but look closely and its about the same company, and never uses SEO and PR next to each other apart from in the company name.

So remove that company name and you have one article which mentions it, which appears two days before the wikipedia entry.

I reckon I could setup a company called SEO-carrot and get a mate to write an article about 'carrot and stick' methods of SEO link building and get it published. Are you going to let me have the wikipedia page about it? :)

You definitely don't want to identify yourself. ;-)