In an earlier post I mentioned using Wikipedia as way to get traffic to the It's Tired in Here Web Accessibility section. I've learned a few things since then about Wikipedia.
It worked! I got a lot of traffic from my link on the Web Accessibility Wikipedia Page page...and fast. It's typically the first result from searching for web accessibility. It brought in about 200 unique visitors to my site in under a month.
Unfortunately, it didn't last. One day i noticed my link was gone. I thought maybe someone didn't like the content. So, I created a Wikipedia user and added it again. I received an email indicating I had violated the rules for using the external links section, that the url was flagged, and XLinkBot had deleted it.
Understandably, Wikipedia doesn't like people promoting things, or in general adding a ton of external links. However, after looking through the Web Accessibility page I saw that aside from the W3C and government/legal specific links, there wasn't much as far as real examples of issues, how to address the issues, and understanding why the guidelines are important. Some of links also point to very outdated content, a portion of which that aren't even that accessible.
My take on it is that there's a big mess Wikipedia is trying to prevent from growing. Consequently, they're making it difficult for better content to be added. The lesson learned is if you're really trying to drive users to your site, you have to be diverse and creative. Also, beware of the bot!
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