Biased, Poorly Informed And Opinionated
Adrian J Cotterill, Editor-in-Chief
Screen.tv’s Barnaby Page along with several others at Beaver Group have been doing a fantastic job taking care of the Digital Signage Wikipedia entry and indeed defending its honour from those who seek to mis-appropriate it for their own ends.
It’s a shame then that someone from Scala VAR, The Beaver Group should so vehemently flame us as follows…
The DailyDOOH is a blog, not a news source. It’s biased, poorly informed and very opinionated (serving to spark argument and increase its own web traffic). I’d like to see if anyone wishes to defend its place here on Wikipedia as a valid news source? I propose the link is removed. Legion722 (talk) 11:29, 6 May 2009 (UTC)
Our open source advocates in the office did warn us off getting involved with Wikipedia but we didn’t listen – a few weeks ago we thought we were helping by adding references to OVAB, OVAB Europe and POPAI DIgital as we saw that both the DSA and The Screen Forum were listed as external links. The key thing with Wikipedia of course is the collaborative nature of the medium.
As digitalsignagetoday, screens.tv and aka.tv were also listed we took the liberty of adding DailyDOOH and then put the whole list of external links in alphabetical order (which makes sense and puts aka.tv at the top).
If it comes to a flame war we don’t really care one way or another whether we are listed on the site but as you read (so called) impartial web entries just remember who you might really be dealing with. We’d agree that we are opinionated but would defend any bias to the death and as to ‘poorly informed’ – just who exactly told the world this morning that Scala had won the RFP with Sprint?
And finally to show what a complete nonsense wikipedia can be; take a look at what Barnaby Page wrote here….
As I think I’ve suggested on this page before, there’s something of a paucity of really good published information on digital signage (and unfortunately one of the best sites – http://www.wirespring.com/dynamic_digital_signage_and_interactive_kiosks_journal/ – fails Wikipedia’s link policy on multiple grounds), so we don’t have the luxury of rejecting links for falling a bit short of ideal. Barnabypage (talk) 14:35, 15 April 2009 (UTC)
Bill writes more sense about digital signage than anyone else out there AND is he allowed to be referenced in the Wikipedia entry?
ABSOLUTELY NOT! As Barnaby points out he falls foul of Wikipedia’s link poilicy.
To add insult to injury, guess who first put that Wikipedia entry up online back on 26th August 2005?
Yep, you guessed it, Bill Gerba!! You couldn’t make this up if you tried could you?
You can see his original entry here
Question:L How do we know its Beaver Group? Answer: Legion722 points to a social networking site which points to a twitter account which points to The Beaver Group. Not difficult is it!
May 6th, 2009 at 17:59 @791
Hi Adrian,
Yes, that’s my opinion and a personal view which I put on a public Talk page on Wikipedia. A Talk page which has addressed this issue (and several like it) many times before.
These aren’t the views of Beaver Group and as an active member of the digital signage industry, I like to contribute to the ongoing and lively debate. I would be happy to debate the point with you (you too can become a contributor for Wikipedia) and I’m sure you have your own views on the various media outlets (Your story: Only Thing Missing Is Free Bucket Hot Wings).
My personal views should not be taken as company views and vice versa.
Kind regards,
Robin Critchley (Legion722)
May 6th, 2009 at 18:49 @826
I would very much like to see other sites publishing as many news as the dailydooh.
Yes they are opinionated, especially Adrian, but even though we advertise on this space, we have had our share of “bad press” on some of our installs.
Poorly informed? I will have to disagree, deeply disagree. See their posts on this site, and then see them happening out there days later.
Again, you might like or dislike their comments, you might like their contributors or not like them, but they are definitely not biased or poorly informed.
Cheers
May 6th, 2009 at 18:54 @829
Biased?
Opinionated?
This from someone in the advertising industry?
That’s our job, guys!