Talk:ENom

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[edit] Verifiability

I understand C. Fred's concern about the citation to eNom's 2002-2005 Name Intelligence awards, especially in the context of edit warring, but point out a couple things:

  • Cited reference is a press release by Name Intelligence, about awards bestowed by Name Intelligence.
  • Similar awards in the Go Daddy article cite GoDaddy.com as their source, and are not contested.

In terms of verifiability, I'd propose that the first point brings the content "above the threshold" for verifiability. The second point I raise only to document that eNom's competitor is being subjected to a far lower standard of scrutiny, which raises WP:POV concerns about contributors who are attempting to remove positive eNom content and insert negative content which does not meet WP:V policies. Thirdbeach (talk) 16:31, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Second call for discussion of whether Name Intelligence press release for Name Intelligence award meets WP:V. Thirdbeach (talk) 22:53, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Last call for discussion of whether Name Intelligence press release for Name Intelligence award meets WP:V. Precedent on Wikipedia is that although citing a press release by the awarding organization is "less than ideal" it is sufficient. Please be advised that a skeleton objection is not satisfactory. You'll need to articulate an argument that shows some rational train of thought, and understanding of and respect for Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. Thirdbeach (talk) 23:18, 19 March 2008 (UTC)
Following "last call" above, removing "verify credibility"/"unreliable source?" tag on emediawire citation. Wikipedia precedent is as cited above. Thirdbeach (talk) 16:50, 21 March 2008 (UTC)
emediawire publishes press releases, they are not an independent fact researched publication. Does not conform with WP:V guidelines. 70.176.235.154 (talk) 04:38, 23 March 2008 (UTC)
70.176.235.154/204.62.193.69/TeerGrub/Galf (all same person): As documented above, a press release about industry awards by the organization that bestows the award *does* conform with WP:V policy. If you disagree, it would be helpful if you back it up in a way that demonstrates a genuine understanding of the policy. Be aware that due to your activity on other sites (http://groups.google.com/group/news.admin.net-abuse.email/browse_thread/thread/de72d8d57db0da17/ea032d836db105b3#ea032d836db105b3) you should expect an increased level of scrutiny in terms of WP:POV. KillAllSpammers : I'm dubious about removing the reference to awarding organization's press release, because it is the only cited reference that covers 2002-2005 and, as discussed above, it does satisfy Wikipedia precedent for WP:V. Can you go into more detail about your reasoning? Thirdbeach (talk) 23:08, 24 March 2008 (UTC)
To quote from WP:V directly "...Questionable sources are those with a poor reputation for fact-checking. Such sources include websites and publications that express views that are widely acknowledged as extremist, are promotional in nature, or rely heavily on rumors and personal opinions." A PR release is a form of self-promotion. Furthermore, the website itself is not a reliable source itself, being that it is not a fact-checking peer-reviewed publication. Incidentally, my "activity" on a public newsgroup is hardly worthy of being described as worthy of "scrutiny" since it is done in the open (newsgroups are PUBLIC and are tagged with my IP address). Futhermore, quoting it doesn't help your case much since you'll see I am asking for contributions that adhere to the Wikipedia guildelines. Anyone can read this public posting themselves and make their own minds up. It would be interesting to know what your involvement with eNom is since you've been doing such a great job scrubbing it nice and clean, worth of a public relations professional. 70.176.235.154 (talk) 17:17, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] POV

POV - current criticisms are correct but context, even that in cited sources, suggests that eNom is not as negligent as current portrayal. Thirdbeach (talk) 23:16, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

I added numbers pulled from the spam newsgroup for eNom and its competitors to show that, in context, eNom is not as nefarious as former statement suggests. Also moved entire "spam" discussion to a separate section. To be clear, I think the whole newsgroup citation is a good candidate for removal because a *number* doesn't tell enough about their *content*, especially when we have the URIBL and SURBL data. Thirdbeach (talk) 19:31, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

Luke AFB contributor (70.176.235.154): I've corrected your incorrect representations of eNom's BBB accreditation (eNom is a BBB "Accredited Business", not just a "member"; and if you'll read the BBB page carefully you'll notice that all consumer complaints were resolved to BBB's satisfaction. If BBB judged eNom's efforts to be satisfactory, but consumers didn't, that speaks to the consumers' character, not eNom's). Likewise, I've removed the Wikileaks content because it is self-published and has not been posted in any source that meets Wikipedia's requirements for verifiability (fact-checking, etc.). Neutral point of view and verifiability are core tenets on Wikipedia. If you have an axe to grind you need find a different forum than Wikipedia. There are many forums for opinions, rumor, and unverified "facts" that may be a better fit for what you have tried to post here. Thirdbeach (talk) 20:56, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

As stated before, 70.176.235.154, Wikipedia has verifiability standards that are not met by citing forums. Please see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:V Thirdbeach (talk) 21:42, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

67.150.252.180 (Pac-West Telecomm): The actual WP:NPOV statement is, in part, "All Wikipedia articles and other encyclopedic content must be written from a neutral point of view (NPOV), representing fairly, and as far as possible without bias, all significant views that have been published by reliable sources. This is non-negotiable and expected of all articles, and of all article editors." It is supplemented by WP:V, which says in part, "All articles must adhere to Wikipedia's neutrality policy, fairly representing all majority and significant-minority viewpoints that have been published by reliable sources, in rough proportion to the prominence of each view." In other words, content isn't self-promoting just because it's positive. Indeed, it's inaccurate to characterize third-party publications as self-promotion on the part of the article's subject (which is the case with the info you've tried to remove). Please read the entire WP:NPOV, WP:V, and WP:RS policies for a more complete picture of neutrality. Thirdbeach (talk) 21:51, 22 May 2008 (UTC), revised Thirdbeach (talk) 19:15, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

Thirdbeach: Actually that's a bizarre interpretation of the WP:V -- your own words "content isn't self-promoting just because it's positive" is not contained within the language of WP:V and rather it seems to raise the bar on material requiring neutrality "in proportion to the prominence of the content". Furthermore, one should also consider the language of Wikipedia's Conflict of Interest policy WP:COI which describes a conflict of interest as "Adding material that appears to promote the interests or visibility of an article's author, its author's family members, employer, associates, or their business". Further stated self-promotional material is a COI if it is "material that appears to promote the private or commercial interests of the editor, or their associates". Lastly, a {{POV}} tag was recently added (which interestingly I noticed you removed) which I believe makes the redaction of promotional material even more tenable. KillAllSpammers (talk) 00:16, 24 May 2008 (UTC)
KillAllSpammers, I honestly don't think there's any confusion. I quoted from WP:NPOV, then said, "In other words", then made a statement that was not in quotation marks. I think any reasonable reader is going to understand that what followed "In other words" was a paraphrase of the preceding quote.
So, getting back to the substance of the discussion, I stand by my paraphrase: "content isn't self-promoting just because it's positive." I also have to disagree that my edits violate WP:NPOV and WP:COI. If you'll kindly read the whole discussion page, you'll notice many comments that the article was biased against eNom. Those comments, and just a little bit of research, convinced me that the overwhelmingly negative tone of the article did not accurately represent eNom's overall record and was not encyclopedic.
Over the history of my edits, I've preserved all content from reliable sources (I did remove one of your edits/citations that, as several editors pointed out, did not meet WP:RS). I have added the other viewpoints, in most cases from the same outside sources where the original Wikipedia editor presented one viewpoint and failed to include other viewpoints that were presented in the same source. The article now expresses a representative collection of viewpoints. This stands in contrast to your edits which formerly expressed a single viewpoint, but have now crossed the line into removing reliable information that differs from your opinion. In other words, please consider the possibility that if you perceive someone is not meeting WP:NPOV and/or WP:COI standards, a little introspection might be in order.
Request for specifics: Would you say more about your citations request? It looks like every sentence in the article cites or refers to a reliable source. What do you perceive is missing? Thirdbeach (talk) 18:51, 27 May 2008 (UTC) Revised Thirdbeach (talk) 21:59, 27 May 2008 (UTC)
KillAllSpammers, you are distorting Wikipedia policy in order to achieve the non-neutral point of view you have consistently worked toward in this article. WP:NPOV "In a nutshell" reads, "All Wikipedia articles and other encyclopedic content must be written from a neutral point of view, representing significant views fairly, proportionately and without bias." I'm skipping over your other accusations as attempts to distract from the real question, which is whether the disputed content is the type of encyclopedic, reliably sourced, balanced information that general readers want. I think there's no question that the answer is, "yes". Thirdbeach (talk) 01:26, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

It's not against Wikipedia's policy to list honours and awards. Many articles do it. GreenJoe 02:32, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

4.224.39.29, Wikipedia's WP:RS policy is "This page in a nutshell: Articles should be based on reliable, third-party, published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy." For general readers, the section of the page that you have removed cites the best sources of information on the history of the company and its standing with consumer organizations and its industry. Thirdbeach (talk) 17:32, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Unsorted talk

eNom has made several edits to this article, each time redacting ICANN maintained statistics with data maintained on an eNom owned domain name (registrarstats.com). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.100.249.75 (talk) 04:14, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

I think eNOM has proven itself to be in bed with spammers and other sketchy sites. Look up the complaints people have with them, and it will show you that they dont care wether people are getting scammed by sites hosted on their servers, as long as they make money. Anyone wanting a genuine website should look past enom for anyone else. if you are hosted on enom, you are flagged as a scammer.


This latest edit looks rather like it's a copy-paste from eNom's site or similar - certainly seems rather too commercial for Wikipedia, anyway. Any objections to reverting to the previous edit, or similar?

 – orudge 00:45, 01 January 2006 (UTC)


It doesn't look like that to me, in fact I would say the article is highly biased against ENOM, the information is not encyclopedic, more of a rant. --Jackaranga 14:22, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

I added POV, I am fairly new to wikipedia and can't decide whether the kind of comment about unavailable customer support, is useful information. --Jackaranga 21:35, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

Looks like they are into this "domain tasting".. Bastards.. They should be DDos'ed of the earth. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Unixwolf (talk • contribs) 21:01, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] DPRK web hosting

I think it DOES matter if the last hardcore socialist country, North Korea, depends on the services of an american ISP to host its official web presence. I moved it to a trivia section, for lack of a better context. It matters, however. It matters greatly. See North Korea and the news footage of the last two years about the DPR Korea for details. --85.181.8.27 05:05, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

eNom, like all large domain registrars hosts the registration for hundreds of thousands of domains. In most cases it's nearly impractical for a registrar to have any knowledge what a domain will be used for, whether for political purposes or not. Foregoing obvious arguments of the First Amendment (and even more important than than this) is the issue as to whether the registrar is conducting business lawfully and following ICANN guidelines properly (e.g., prohibiting domains from being registered en-masse with ficticious contact data for the purpose of sending UCE/UBE, etc). One last point worth mentioning: In your example, the domain in question isn't hosted by eNom, only their domain registration. The actual hosting of the website itself is performed by a non U.S. business entity in Spain. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 204.62.193.68 (talk • contribs)

[edit] Cybersquatting

My webhost recently made a mistake, and failed to re-register my domain name for me in time. This resulted in it being snapped up by a cybersquatter, who has replaced my site with a fake site full of spam links. At the bottom of the site there is an e-mail link which is obviously directed at me, so I can enter into ransom negotiations to get my site back. The e-mail address is info@whois-help.info. I went to www.whois-help.info and found myself automatically redirected to www.enom.com. Presumably, this means that eNom is behind all this.

Are they well-known for this sort of extortion? — Chameleon 05:18, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Original Research in criticism of eNom

The current article appears to contain some content which, to my eyes, is clearly original research. Namely, the part of about a newsgroup search of NANAE. Wikipedia policies don't allow us to go and make that kind of analysis ourselves. Now, I myself suspect eNom is likely a somewhat sketchy, if not outright nefarious organization, but that doesn't mean Wikipedia policies no longer apply. Someone else has already tagged the content in question. If someone cannot come up with some reliable sources, that part is going to have to be removed. —DragonHawk (talk|hist) 15:59, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Agreed, as it turns out there is some actual academic research and data that I hope satisfies Wikipedia's original research standards. If not perhaps the section about Google groups could be redacted itself -- 204.62.193.69 (talk) 23:26, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

I added a POV flag and a new POV topic at top of this page -- just noticed this section is current discussion that addresses some parallel concerns. I know it's a kludgy way to gauge eNom's nefariousness, but a search in the Google newsgroup on eNom, and one on Go Daddy, yields more than four times the number of spam posts for Go Daddy as for eNom but Go Daddy has less than three times as many domains. Does that mean Go Daddy, normalized for size, is about 1.4 times as nefarious as eNom? Thirdbeach (talk) 23:41, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

I added numbers pulled from the spam newsgroup for eNom and its competitors to show that, in context, eNom is not as nefarious as former statement suggests. Also moved entire "spam" discussion to a separate section. To be clear, I think the whole newsgroup citation is a good candidate for removal because a *number* doesn't tell enough about their *content*, especially when we have the URIBL and SURBL data. Thirdbeach (talk) 19:31, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

Simple solution to the policy conflict mentioned above - change the policies... 84.9.125.170 (talk) 17:20, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

I've re-added the Original Research tag to the Google groups content. I put numbers of posts in a table to try to quantify the number of eNom posts compared to other big registrars, but since they're opinion posts and I didn't look at a single one to check out the content of posts it's the epitome of junk science. If nobody comes up with a logical reason to keep the newsgroup content in, I'm going to appeal to W:OR and the good sense of the Wikipedia community at large, and remove this content in a couple days. Thirdbeach (talk) 20:56, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

It seems that ThirdBeach, probably an eNom or Demand Media employee has been softening up some of the harsher facts about eNom in an attempt to clean up their wikipedia page. The wikileaks boycott was published on slashdot, and isn't original research. It was published in several other news publications, it's historically correct. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 204.62.193.69 (talk) 21:22, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

AMUG contributor (204.62.193.69): Wikileaks is certainly "historically correct" but is not "verifiable" to Wikipedia standards. Forums, which state opinions but don't go through fact-checking and Wikipedia's other verifiability requirements, don't meet the criteria -- even if dozens of them participate in the "echo chamber". Thirdbeach (talk) 21:35, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Sources were cited in a verifiable news publication, it fits Wikipedia standards

If you'll take the trouble to actually read Wikipedia's policies you'll fine that forums do not meet Wikipedia's standards and in fact are routinely thrown out of articles throughout Wikipedia. For example, WP:V requires "reliable, third-party published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy" and "Questionable sources are those with a poor reputation for fact-checking. Such sources include websites and publications that express views that are widely acknowledged as extremist, are promotional in nature, or rely heavily on rumors and personal opinions. Questionable sources should only be used in articles about themselves. (See below.) Articles about such sources should not repeat any contentious claims the source has made about third parties, unless those claims have also been published by reliable sources." Repeating a claim made by an aggrieved party does not constitute verifiability. Third party, yes, and historically accurate, yes, but WP:V? No. Thirdbeach (talk) 21:52, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

In the case of above, the user cites a news publication (theinquirer), which does not appear to be an aggrivated third party. I do believe the article also appeared on slashdot, which is a fairly credible news source. TeerGrub (talk) 22:05, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Nope, sorry. Both theinquirer and slashdot, though third parties, do not fact-check the content that almost anybody can post. They're more "echo chamber" than WP:V. Please refer to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:V and the pages it links to. Other content in the eNom article has remained in place because it appeared, for example, in the New York Times or organizations that simply compile and publish data. Thirdbeach (talk) 22:11, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Last call -- anybody object if I remove the Google newsgroup content? Again, the reasoning is that:

  • It doesn't meet WP:V standards
  • The table I created only counts (basically) posts of opinions, not any sort of evaluation what those opinions are. Junk science that I regret.
  • The subject is better documented by the paragraphs on URIBL and SURBL.

Please be advised that a skeleton objection is not satisfactory. You'll need to articulate an argument that shows some rational train of thought and compliance with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. Thirdbeach (talk) 22:53, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Following "last call" above, I have removed the newsgroup content to bring article into compliance with WP:V and WP:OR. URIBL and SURBL content remains because it appears to be credible sources. Thirdbeach (talk) 23:18, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] TeerGrub/KillAllSpammers

For future reference in case there are more edit wars, you should check out this request for checkuser. GreenJoe 16:06, 30 May 2008 (UTC)