User talk:(WT-en) HotelsCombined Voyage Tips and guide

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To help get you started contributing, we've created a tips for new contributors page, full of helpful links about policies and guidelines and style, as well as some important information on copyleft and basic stuff like how to edit a page.

If you need help, check out Project:Help, or post a message in the travellers' pub. --(WT-en) Nick 09:35, 29 September 2008 (EDT)

Hey there! Welcome, thanks for the good copyediting :) Would it be possible to reduce the links to your site on your userpage to just one for the main page? We do allow business owners to mention their business on their page, but there's been plenty of opposition as well, so it may be best to just keep it short and sweet, especially with linking. Thanks again! – (WT-en) cacahuate ^talk 22:46, 25 October 2008 (EDT)

He could have a sweet medium sized paragraph, as long as it doesnt dwarf everything else. Keep smiling, (WT-en) Edmontonenthusiast 12:41, 2 November 2008 (EST).

To add, all in all I don't mind it. I mean, isn't your user page to talk about (appropriate-in nothing illegal, porno, death, etc.)whatever you like? To me it is just what HotelsCombined wants to talk about-his company! I just don't get how thats a problem. Isn't the user page to just talk about whatever you want-doesn't have to fit a tight guidline? If so, I'd have to delete a lot of my user page, look at it, it is bustling with stuff-I thought that would be a neat, different pace. It is also interesting to learn about stuff you normally wouldn't;). But heck, thats my opinion! Keep smiling ,(WT-en) Edmontonenthusiast 12:45, 2 November 2008 (EST).

EE, I've replied on your talk page, this is not the appropriate place for this discussion – (WT-en) cacahuate ^talk 20:58, 2 November 2008 (EST)

Hey, thanks for your work on the Trans-Siberian page, I'm working a bit on it too (on & off), so it's great to see someone else chipping in :o) (WT-en) Sertmann 12:40, 2 November 2008 (EST)

Hello again User:(WT-en) ChicagoChica, User:(WT-en) HotelsCombined, User:(WT-en) MiamiMadness, User:(WT-en) SanFranciscoGirl, et al. I see you recreated User:(WT-en) MiamiMadness, although you were asked not to and reminded that running multiple accounts is inappropriate. It is also very clearly dishonest.

Additionally I have noticed that you are adding an increasing number of links to your multiple userpages. It seems that a major reason for doing so is to quietly increase the number of links to your sites in userspace. This is also very inappropriate.

I urge you to remove your multiple user pages, and to stop creating new ones. Otherwise I do intend to open a policy discussion that will may lead to the banning of your extra accounts. If the linkspam on your userpages gets out of control, that can hurt Wikivoyage's search rankings, and may lead to blanking. Either way, this issue casts your contributions here in a bad light, which is a shame, seeing as you have been doing some good work. --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 02:53, 12 March 2009 (EDT)

For reference, see also User talk:(WT-en) ChicagoChica#Multiple userpages, but lets keep discussion here, since this is the original account. --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 19:41, 19 March 2009 (EDT)

Hi Peter, thanks for bringing this to attention. I have multiple writers doing these edits so this is how these accounts came about - each have their own in their specific region of expertise. Is this really something inappropriate? If so, pls confirm and i will remove the accounts (pls also explain how to do that).

Thank you for your response. Provided these are separate users (and that was not at all clear up front), it should be fine for them to have separate accounts. It would be nice, though, in the spirit of openness to have your editors note that they are working for HotelsCombined. With the way the profiles are currently written, it looks like the accounts are trying to pull one over on someone. --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 23:33, 30 March 2009 (EDT)

That goes for User:(WT-en) New Zealand Traveller as well. --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 00:41, 31 March 2009 (EDT)

And I'll add that your response seems to straightforwardly contradict "MiamiMadness," who was without a doubt one person making edits under multiple usernames. → User talk:Peterfitzgerald#Deletion_of_MiamiMadness, discussion that was inappropriately deleted to cover this up. --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 00:47, 31 March 2009 (EDT)

Hi Peter, thanks again for bringing this to my attention - I'm not sure what has happened here. Either the vendor has been editing her writer's work through their own accounts, or they are cutting corners and breaching contract. Either way, this has caused more hassle then good so we have decided to pull out, effective immediately. Apologies for the hassles this has caused.

Thanks, I think it's the right decision.

So after investigating this a bit, my best guess is that Hotelscombined.com have leveraged on their (quite massive) affiliate program, and decided to do a bit of testing of wikivoyage, as a proving ground for receiving inbound links from web 2.0 sites - asking some affiliates to sign up here, do enough small grammar edits throughout a city or region, that someone get interested in the user, and check out their userpage. Hotelscombined then checks the referrer pages of inbound users on the site, paying? these affiliates a set percentage of final sales achieved through this method.

Interestingly this should say something about the sheer google power we actually leverage around here, so I suspect this is not the last time we're going to have to deal with something like this. --(WT-en) Stefan (sertmann) ^Talk 23:29, 31 March 2009 (EDT)

Stermann, I'm not entirely sure how what you speculate could work. It definitely wouldn't be at all effective. Also worth noting; an affiliate program could not reach the popularity ours has if it were indeed a sc@m. Please do a little more research and refer to our responses to this particular fraudulent affiliate.

We would like to continue sponsoring editors to contribute to wikivoyage once we have worked out these issues. We think it's wonderful PR and spending $$ on something worthwhile (you and the traveling community) rather than advertising companies. (WT-en) HotelsCombined 05:51, 2 April 2009 (EDT)