Talk:Web.com

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Contents 1 Merge with Interland 2 NPOV Issues 3 66.223.59.xxx IP addresses traceroute back to Web.com (a.k.a. Interland) 4 Well at least they are creating accounts now... 5 Litigation and other disputed article content -- refer to the company's SEC filings 6 Cleanup of Feb 6 7 64.126.14.3 8 Financial results 9 66.223.59.* and user Movtoo continue to vandalize the article 10 Request for Comment 11 Protected 12 70.128.255.56

[edit] Merge with Interland

This is a probably not appropriate. See Interland for comments. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 66.223.59.198 (talk • contribs) 01:25, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

66.223.59.xxx IP addresses such as this one traceroute back to Web.com (a.k.a. Interland): atl2prdcrrt01-vlan4.net.interland.net. --A. B. ^(talk) 04:08, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] NPOV Issues

Take a good look at this edit where an IP removed reference to a lawsuit. Every edit since (besides a spelling fix by Wiki Raja has been made by single purpose accounts and IPs who have only contributed to this and related topics. I don't think this article is anywhere near being neutral, so tagged for the time being.--Isotope23 18:03, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

I believe this information was removed because it was not relevant and spammed. If you look at the IP that added the content, their only contribution to Wiki to date has been that one edit repeatedly. There is no reason to include an old lawsuit having nothing to do with the business in an encyclopedia. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 66.223.59.81 (talk • contribs) 22:31, February 2, 2007 (UTC).

66.223.59.xxx IP addresses such as this one traceroute back to Web.com (a.k.a. Interland): atl2prdcrrt01-vlan4.net.interland.net. --A. B. ^(talk) 04:10, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

See my reply to this IP editor at User talk:Satori Son#Web.com listing. -- Satori Son 22:44, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

(reset indent) The motivation of the person who added the negative information does not seem relevant. I, and apparently others based on their edit summaries, have double checked the references and they do verify the information concerning the law suit and poor stock performance. I strongly encourage anyone who feels otherwise, including employees of Web.com, to discuss this situation here if you believe the information is being misrepresented somehow. Please be specific. -- Satori Son 23:58, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

• The original article which I worked on was clearly put together by employees of the company, and it read like, and probably could have been speedy deleted as spam. I checked all sources, and the information appears to be correct as verified, so the rewritten version included the information about the litigation per my research of the article history. The above IP editor (web.com - through traceroute) claims the litigation is irrelevant, and the PR department of Web.com has now owned up to prior reversions of what they consider "vandalism". It is now carefully cleaned up and monitored by established users such as Isotope23 and myself, there should be no more excuses for removals unless it can be sourced (in other words: "put up or shut up"). Even if the case has been drpped, it would probably still be relevant and worth keeping, but with a note added to the effect. Ohconfucius 08:10, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] 66.223.59.xxx IP addresses traceroute back to Web.com (a.k.a. Interland)

These IP addresses traceroute to atl2prdcrrt01-vlan4.net.interland.net.

See:

• Conflict of Interest Guideline
• Biographies of Living People Policy

Articles for which a conflict of interest exists:

• Web.com
• Joel Kocher (company executive)
• Worldwide MediaWorks -- former employer of some of the individuals above
• Simpli -- former employer of some of the individuals above
  • ValueClick -- current owner of Simpl
• Trellix (Web.com division)

--A. B. ^(talk) 03:38, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Well at least they are creating accounts now...

A user with a relatively singular edit history has been removing the stock performance link with the note that it was misleading based on the source (i.e. the article stated 2006; source did not). The answer here of course is to correct the article, not remove the sourced section completely. I've restored it and correctly attributed it to being one of the ten worst over the last 10 years.--Isotope23 15:22, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

• Watch them squirm - they probably now wish they never started it! I have further corrected the article for the stock performance. Although it was misleading, it is now obvious that the initial version was far too kind to them. The article implies that there has ben a massive destruction of shareholder value over a ten year period: the negative returns on the stock means that it is now worth 2.2% of what it was worth 10 years ago! Now that the information is largely correct, they ought to be running out of excuses for deleting chunks of it. Ohconfucius 19:50, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
  • Isotope23 and Ohconfucius,
    • I think you are misunderstanding these changes. No-one is trying to present something biased but these facts you keep using are slanted. How is a 5 year old uneventful court case that seems irrelevant to the business something that should show up on an encyclopedia, for example. That said, Interland has had all of the problems you mention and more. BUT…Web.com is a new company, with a new NASDAQ stock ticker symbol and a different management team. Since the company started, it has increased shareholder value. The lawsuits mentioned are not recent and were all started during the Interland era. These things should be on the Interland page, not this page. I will try to take a stab at a completely unbiased view but I am worried that the people who added this in the first place will just delete it. People who know and care about the company are doing this and that is why we keep erasing the information. I for one have no problem leaving it in but the information should be more broad so it tells the whole story. We should all try to be unbiased and factual. It is just wrong to say these things (exclusively) about web.com simply because it includes and took over Interland.
    • I have no problem with an fair unbiased article (that is what we are shooting for here), but if you take some time to look through previous versions that were posted from IP's that resolved to the company they were pretty much fluff jobs that were written like so much marketing spiel. That said, I have no problem leaving this up until I have time to go through it and look at all the sources/additions.--Isotope23 00:17, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
    • Unfortunately, the article was a rather poor one both in terms of content and style, and I would also be happy to help making it a better one. Whilst I do sympathise with you, I believe that there are just some things which cannot be "swept under the carpet". Running a company in the business sector of web.com is not easy due to the openness and constant change, but the company (or its previous incarnation) does have baggage which wI believe would be better to own than white-wash. What fellow editors have been objecting to is the manner in which the changes have been brought about by web.com/interland employees in an apparently clandestine manner (IP address accounts) and making an article which read like a company advert. Obviously, if there were more objective factual information in the article, the company's controversies settle into their context. Therefore, I would advise you and your colleages to refer to wikipedia's policies when updating the article, in particular WP:V, WP:RS, which should not be a problem for a listed company, and in your case, I would strongly advise you to bear in mind WP:NPOV and WP:COI, and exercise some restraint when reversing the edits of fellow wikipedians. As you have discovered the article's talk page, so if in doubt, general or explanatory comments can be placed there concurrent with the changes you make. (moved from my talk page) Ohconfucius 01:49, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Litigation and other disputed article content -- refer to the company's SEC filings

The company's quarterly Form 10-Q filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) lists all litigation the company thinks is relevant. I suggest that be used as the basis for judging what's relevant to this article and what's not. While it might seem at first that a report written by the company itself might be unreliable, management and the board risk personal liability if they knowingly understate any problems and risks to their shareholders.

Their most recent Form 10-Q was filed 9 November 2006. Since that time, they filed a Form 8-K report with the SEC reporting the settlement of their lawsuit against their former insurance carrier.

More information on SEC reports can be found at:

• Category:SEC Filings
• SEC filing
• EDGAR -- the SEC's electronic database

You can search EDGAR for company filings; here's a link to the Web.com filings.
--A. B. ^(talk) 01:32, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Cleanup of Feb 6

Following improvemnts of the article by User:Movtoo, I have done some further tidying up, created a few new headings, removing some redundant (repeated) sentences, and added the infobox. I thought that the reference to the web.com merger and change of name was too positive a spin. Web.com was a small company taken over by (not merged with due to the vastly differing sizes) Interland, who used the admittedly sexier name as a means of turning a page in its history. I have repositioned it for what it was. Ohconfucius 03:37, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

In the course of my cleanup, User:70.128.255.56 removed the paragraph relating to the improvement in the share price as "false information". He/she has furthermore removed the claim about the 4 million websites as unverified per WP:RS.

I fail to see how the stock price claim is false: the data is real enough and verefied. Although the timeframe selected may be considered arbitrary and favours the company, I believe the author has explained and adequately justified his choice as the beginning of the turnaround, although admittedly, the August 1 anticipates Stibel's arrival by 10 days so the comparison should arguably have started at the closing price on that day ($2.49). It has now been rebased at that level in the article. Juxtaposed against the 10 year negative returns, I believe that it cannot be considered misleading.

For the moment, I cannot access the document which established the number of subscribers, nor do I have access to SEC information, which would tend to be reliable although self-published, so cannot attest to the veracity of the claims, and I invite those with paid access to same to attest the existence of this claim in the filing. I have not restored this deletion for the time being. Ohconfucius 04:33, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

While there are SEC mirrors that heavily advertise and charge for SEC documents, you can get them for free at:

• http://edgar.sec.gov/edgar/searchedgar/companysearch.html

Here are the latest Web.com documents:

• http://edgar.sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse-edgar?company=Web.com&CIK=&filenum=&State=&SIC=&owner=include&action=getcompany

And here is a link to the main section of the latest 10-Q:

• http://edgar.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/854460/000095014406010655/g04082e10vq.htm

If you still can't access these, let me know and I will send you a PDF copy.

--A. B. ^(talk) 13:15, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] 64.126.14.3

This IP is only editing Web.com and appears to consistently pull anything positive included by Movtoo, A.B.,or Ohconfucius. They also seem stuck on providing excess detail on a case about an old acquisition. I can’t even find anything about that old company online anymore—does it still exist? Personally, I am not sure how it is relevant to the company's page. I think even the stuff about how the company is suing and winning should be gone (ie, the positive and negative really doesn’t seem relevant). In any event, Movtoo consolidated what seems to be identical info and 64.126.14.3 continues to spell out things that shouldn't be in an encyclopedia.

• A.B. rightfully pointed out that this level of detail belongs in a public companies filings. If Microsoft's page, for example, listed every piece of litigation, it would take hours to read. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 66.223.59.81 (talk) 14:57, 8 February 2007 (UTC).

1. If litigation is sufficiently material to be included in the company's SEC filings, it's very relevant here.
2. IP addresses registered to Web.com/Interland (66.223.59.xxx) should never edit Web.com-related articles; if they have concerns, they can express them on this talk page. 66.223.59.81, these article edits of yours[1][2] violate the Conflict of Interest Guideline. --A. B. ^(talk) 22:26, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

• We are not talking about any old litigation here. The acquisition of CommuniTech.Net, Inc. appears important enough to the company, so I wager it's warranted to mention the dispute over $26 million in unpaid consideration in a sentence or three. Ohconfucius 08:50, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Financial results

When the company publishes its next 10K, I will include a financial performance section, which should put paid to many arguments about selective inclusion of favourable or unfavourable info. In the meantime, I have reversed the edits by 64.126.14.3 and User:Movtoo as being unsourced. In particular, Movtoo's assertion of the CEO's starting date. We can only assume the company would have got the right starting date in the press release. SEC filings only say August, no precise date is mentioned. I agree with A. B.: it's high time for these edits in violation of WP:COI to stop. Ohconfucius 08:40, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] 66.223.59.* and user Movtoo continue to vandalize the article

IP addresses tracing back to Web.com continue to vandalize the article against COI policies repeated on this talk page. Consideration should be given to banning this subnet of IPs given the ongoing violations even after a number of warnings. 70.128.255.56 03:28, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Request for Comment

The back and forth over this article has to stop. I have taken this article and these disputes to the Requests for Comment process for assistance in resolving this. Please take a look at that page for instructions on how the process works.

As I understand the process, editors involved in the dispute add comments in the "Statements by ..." section while others use the "Comments" section. All participants on all sides are encouraged to make statements below.--A. B. ^(talk) 04:46, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

This is a dispute about:

1. Who should be allowed to edit this article in light of the Conflict of Interest Guideline
2. What information should be included in this article

Statements by editors previously involved in dispute:

• This article is one of a number of inter-related articles involving Web.com, Web.com executives, and their former employers created in violation of the Conflict of Interest Guideline. A summary of these articles and editors can be found at Wikipedia talk:Articles for deletion/Peter Delgrosso. Since a light was shown on all of this, some of these articles have been deleted. This article, however, remains a battleground between:
  • Editors using company computers (IP addresses in the 66.223.59.xxx all traceroute to atl2prdcrrt01-vlan4.net.interland.net; Interland was the predecessor to Web.com) plus Movtoo (talk • contribs • count)
  • Other editors
    

--A. B. ^(talk) 04:48, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Comments:

• I am not interested in the company but was drawn here in the course of the delgrosso AfD. I was surprised to see such activity over an article of a company. This and Interland were both battlegrounds before they were merged. Immediately before I got involved, the web.com article was so squeaky clean it was fit to be speedied as spam. More recently, 70.128.255.56 joined the fray by constantly injecting usually factual information taken from the company's SEC filings and selectively including a negative slant. Information in SEC filings may be true and verifiable, but may not necessarily be encyclopaedic - it is not wikipedia's vocation to mirror all SEC information. Although User:Movtoo still has a tendency to spin, he/she seems of late to be behaving with some restraint, but still sometimes assumes we know what he knows as an insider. In the case of 70.128.255.56, I suspect there also to be a conflict of interest. The article has been oscillating between extremes of non-NPOV and occasionally possessing unencyclopaedic tone. It occurs to me that the vast majority of vandal edits have been made by IP editors, who would probably be deterred by semi-protection of the article. If there are then problems with identified editors, we could look at a selective ban. Ohconfucius 09:56, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
• I fully agree with the comments above, including my own edits early on. I was frustrated by the negative slant made by certain IP editors and went over the top correcting things but have long since stopped that. The appropriate thing is to provide an accurate and complete encyclopaedic view of the company, without a slant or trivial information. Certain things on the page don't really seem interesting or noteworthy to someone looking at this page in an encyclopedia, especially as compared to other public company pages. That said, a number of editors have tried to be very unbiased and leave referenced material (bias or not) but things are out of hand. A semi-protection may in fact be the right decision here because the article is likely to be irrelevant if too much information is present or worse, unfactual if 70.128.255.56 and the other IP addresses continue to place inacurrate information on the page. --Movtoo 14:27, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Protected

Per the continual edit warring, I've protected this article for the time being. Sort it out here and I'll unprotect (or ask another admin to do it if I'm not around).--Isotope23 19:36, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] 70.128.255.56

This IP is only editing Web.com and appears to consistently pull anything positive included by Movtoo, A.B.,or Ohconfucius. I had consolidated what seems to be identical info and 70.128.255.56 continues to spell out things that shouldn't be in an encyclopedia.

• Frankly, I recommend that it remains protected. It is being abused all over and this is a public company. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Movtoo (talk • contribs) 19:40, 13 February 2007 (UTC).
  • We don't indefinitely protect articles.--Isotope23 19:42, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Isoptope is right -- nothing stays protected long. The fix is to engage in the Request for Comment process above. If that doesn't work there are futher, more cumbersome (and potentially unpleasant) resolution mechanisms we all' want to avoid. --A. B. ^(talk) 21:23, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

• I looked at the edits by 70.128.255.56 and I do not see where this user "consistently pulls anything positive"; I do not see where this user has removed anything positive. The user has supplemented the article with detail in the legal section and updates to the Websource Media acquisition. I do see where he had several reverts based on removal of info by Movtoo. Upon invesitgation the information added by 70.128.255.56 appears to be accurate and sourced, but removed by IP addrs of the company since this information is not what the company wants out in the public but is information either in the company's filings or in 3rd party articles. User Movtoo has an IP address that traces back to Web.com and it seems the company and/or its employees consistent edit out accurate information to put their spin on the article. It also seems that there are on-going COI issues with 66.223.59.* that continue to persist after warnings. I suggest banning any user who edits the article who is affiliated with the company or any user who removes legitimate, correct information on the article.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 216.55.131.66 (talk • contribs) 05:21, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
  • How can you tell what Movtoo's IP address is? What is it anyway? --A. B. ^(talk) 05:34, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
  • The IP addresses 216.55.131.66 and 64.126.14.7 (both frequent editors to the Gabriel Murphy legal proceedings and Motley Fool article) trace back to Abacus Direct servers, which as owned by Aplus.net, which coincidentally are operated and partially owned by Mr. Murphy). The search was conducted on domainwhitepages.com. Their edits are completely self serving. These two editors consistantly rearrange and front load their biased legal comments on the web.com page. This is a NPOV violation and a case of the pot calling the kettle black. Movtoo (talk • contribs) 11:25, 14 February 2007

• Also coincidentally, the IP domains 216.55.131.66 and 64.126.14.7 no longer exist. Ohconfucius 04:35, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

• And now it looks like they are using new IPs (70.250.40.106). They are getting smarter but it is a bit absurd. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Movtoo (talk • contribs) 14:51, 27 February 2007 (UTC).