[pydotorg-www] Pakt Publishing using wiki for SEO

[Mats Wichmann]

On 1/2/19 3:50 AM, Steve Holden wrote:
> I'd agree this is abuse. We should revert the content to include the
> deleted links, and stop these automated updates.
> 
> regards
> Steve Holden
> 
> 
> On Wed, Jan 2, 2019 at 10:22 AM M.-A. Lemburg <mal at egenix.com> wrote:
> 
>> I don't know if you are aware, but Pakt has been publishing (apparently)
>> their complete list of Python books on the wiki, adding new titles
>> to the top of the page in an apparently automated way:
>>
>> https://wiki.python.org/moin/AdvancedBooks
>> https://wiki.python.org/moin/AdvancedBooks?action=info
>>
>> Not only that, but they removed older entries from the page:
>>
>>
>> https://wiki.python.org/moin/AdvancedBooks?action=info&max_count=100&offset=200
>>
>> e.g. the Python Cookbook is no longer listed.
>>
>> I don't think the purpose of the wiki should be SEO and even less
>> removing competitor links.
>>
>> I think we should take action here, e.g. restore the old version of
>> the page and add a single link to the Pakt website instead of
>> the current endless list of entries.
>>
>> Thoughts ?
>>
>> --
>> Marc-Andre Lemburg

Certainly, content should not be removed, that may have been a mistake
maybe?

Do we have firm guidelines on where to add a new entry if you're adding
to a list?  By date of entry (i.e. top or bottom)? Alphabetical? etc.  I
believe a few wiki pages do state a preference, but the book pages of
today do not.  I don't look at books any longer, but scanning over the
introductory and andvanced books pages leaves me with the impression
this would not be very useful to anyone, it's just a seemingly endless
list with no organization at all.  It's better where the top page splits
out specialist topics, but there probably aren't enough of those buckets
now, and Packt seem happy to put everything on the advanced page... I
just tried a couple of links there and they 404, so they're not even
current, sigh:

Learn Computer Vision with Python and OpenCV [Video]
Learning Vue.js 2.0

... the former sounds pretty specialized, the latter doesn't even sound
like a Python book.

Just wondering if in addition to nudging Packt again, we can maybe help
out a bit with organizational ideas?  I don't have any specific idea for
presenting a long list of books in a better way.