User talk:Dr Christopher Heathcote

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Contents 1 Spam 2 Thank you 3 Editing user pages 4 Deleting versus Archiving

[edit] Spam

Please do not add inappropriate external links to Wikipedia, as you did in Sidney Nolan and at least 26 other articles. Wikipedia is not a mere directory of links nor should it be used for advertising or promotion. Inappropriate links include (but are not limited to) links to personal web sites, links to web sites with which you are affiliated, and links that exist to attract visitors to a web site or promote a product. See the external links guideline and spam policies for further explanations of links that are considered appropriate. If you feel the link should be added to the article, then please discuss it on the article's talk page rather than re-adding it. See the welcome page to learn more about Wikipedia. Thank you. Phaedrus86 04:38, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

This raises the dilemma of what is an appropriate link. When I first started using Wikipedia I found that many of the pages had links to private art dealers & commercial galleries, and they were clearly using the links to tout for business (a quick check and I see they are still there). What I mostly did was add links to the National Gallery of Australia's page that gives a listing of all Australian artists. I understand what you say, but it is clearly not taking place. Just take a careful look at your entries. (Incidentally, I used another internationally oriented page yesterday and I found a link to a hotel chain had actually been put at the bottom!) Apologies if I broke protocols, but I was under a misapprehension that there was a little flexibility due to what I have seen on other pages. CH 25/1/07

It would be good if you can actually reply to all your talk page items and not the ones that you choose to respond to  :) A good read of the intro and welcome pages would be useful, and your infernal red talk page needs fixing up SatuSuro 06:05, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

OOPS - I only just saw your response above in the section named please/ Please do something with your user page - even just a full stop. (wikipedia rules are that any editing on another users page is vandalism - otherwsie I'd do it for you... Then you need to find the ~ tilde on your keyboard to sign properly (using it four times) , then after that it might be worth giving you a few more clues to keep your whole existence on wikipedia not look like one large advertisement! .... SatuSuro 06:17, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Hi Dr Christopher. I agree it is a dilemma. To answer your points in the order they are raised:

• any links to private art dealers and commercial galleries that are clearly advertising should be removed. I remove such links when I come across them
• take a careful look at your entries - I don't understand what you mean here, because my contributions list shows I have removed spam from many articles in recent weeks.
• re the link to the hotel chain, if you post the name of the article here, I will remove the link to the chain.
• it is clearly not taking place - certainly Wikipedia has a spam problem, but I think there is a consensus on Wikipedia that we want to oppose this trend, not encourage it. For example, have a look at Wikipedia:Counter-Vandalism_Unit.

I have to say yours is a difficult case. Clearly you are highly educated and qualified in your field, and your book appears to be a solid academic work. The work clearly has a place somewhere in the art articles, but I don't think it is relevant to every artist. It was the number of links to it, and the fact that the links were placed by the author, that prompted me to label it spam and remove the links.

One thing that caused be a little bit of anguish was the fact that you have made a number of high quality improvements to Wikipedia articles. I hate to discourage that. Phaedrus86 06:33, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

I for one dont want to do that - but to encourage further usage - I would encourage any elimination of the bits and pieces that make the overal operation on wikiopedia look like one large advert SatuSuro 08:11, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Dear Phaedrus86 & SatuSuro, There clearly are people/merchants out there who log into Wikipedia quite regularly looking for an opportunity to bang in a link to their own commercial website in order to promote/publicise their businesses. Take the page on Roger Kemp, which I typed in. I tagged it to alert me if it was changed. Less than a week later the alert went off, and when I checked a link had been put in to a commercial gallery which has some works by him for sale. A few weeks later the alert goes off again, and when I checked another link has been put in, this time to an art auctioneer's website. As I say, clearly some people are periodically checking, then slipping in a link if they see a chance to promote their business - it runs right through many of the entries/pages listing Australian artists. Of course you can't chech every link all the time. I'd suggest that you develop an re-editing schedule, and use it to periodically check the entries in certain categories/disciplines to clean out any dodgy links. Dr Christopher Heathcote 03:30, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

I had a look at Roger Kemp - yes there are links from commercial galleries there, but I see that they provide information on the artist and images of his paintings. The link to Eva Breuer is to a page on their site which provides quite a decent potted biography and some images to look at, which as far as I can see adds value to the Wikipedia page, so I am inclined to think they have earnt their link. It adds value to the article and is not just something which might possibly tell you a bit about the artist if you dig enough, and is not just a dealer trying to flog Roger Kemp mugs and Roger Kemp t-shirts.

Wikipedia manages spam in a number of ways:

• via guidelines and the Spam Wikiproject. The latter provides tools for spotting new spam links as they are added, such as the IRC feed at irc://irc.freenode.net#wikipedia-en-spam. I have been watching that lately and swatting new links as they get added. I find that over 90% of people who add links will stop adding them to an article or group of articles once they are warned. If they see their activity is being watched then they lose interest.
• via the watchlist mechanism. Thousands of Wikipedia contributors have watchlists of articles they have contributed to and have an interest in seeing free of spam and vandalism (the other serious problem on Wikipedia). When an article is changed it appears at the top of the watchlist, so the watchlist owner can easily see if pages are being vandalised or spammed. I have a paltry 100 on my list, I see SatuSuro says he has 4500. This mechanism allows reclaimed ground to be prevented from sliding back into the swamp again.

Wikipedia has it's problems, but these problems are being attacked. I still think that in spite of the spam, vandalism and errors that it is still the greatest encyclopedia the world has ever seen, and it is worth trying to keep free of the vandals and commercial freeloaders.

On a slightly different tack, I have no objection to your book being cited where it is relevant. Why don't you start an article on Australian art history and cite your book there (hopefully with a few others!) Phaedrus86 05:29, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Dear Phaedrus86 & SatuSuro, I get your points, but I do have a different perspective on some of those links. If I might put it in context, you will have noticed in the media over several years that an ongoing debate is taking place on the ethics of dealers/merchants buying up art cheaply from Aboriginals in remote communities, then selling them for greatly exagerrated prices in cities. In many instances (and I could cite the participants) works would be purchased from the Aboriginal painter for under Aus$1000 and resold months later in Melbourne or Sydney for Aus$6000 or $7000. Actually, this has been a longterm problem on the domestic art market, with artists getting a dismal return on their work, and merchants further up the economic chain reaping the benefits. The issue with some of those links is that Wikipedia can be unwittingly aiding the merchants (who invariably have fabululous and most informative websites) by allowing links to them to be put in from an entry on an artist. As I skim through entries I intermittently see some links have been allowed in that raise this matter for me. Actually, this is not an exclusively Australian problem, but surely affects many countries. There are times when a specialist will see something that is to them immediately questionable in commercial terms taking place, although the layman wouldn't notice. Lets face it, some websites are really what the media would classify as 'Infommercials'. Dr Christopher Heathcote 00:42, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

If you see instances of these links you should remove them with the comment "rm spam" and post a warning on the offending user's talk page. Feel free to do this, but that fact that some have got away with it doesn't mean the practice is supported, it simply means the links should be removed. Phaedrus86 03:46, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Thank you

Thank for taking the trouble to respond to our talk messages, it is appreciated. I still stand by the idea of (a) getting rid of your red user page - it offends me - you have been editing long enough - even just a word or dot would get rid of that - but you need to do it - any other user on a user page is considered vandalism! (b) I really think you should have started with a non identifying user name - for various very obvious reasons.

Yes - commercial spam occurs everywhere on wikipedia -considerable numbers of red link users create it - and large numbers of editors spend their time working to eliminate it, and there is considerable success with tracking it down. However no one editor can or would want 1.5 million pages on watch - we can only do what we can - and there are always strange loopholes where weird and wonderful stuff gets in.

Phaedrus86 and I am sure would like you continued presence on wikipedia - but I for one would like to help or ease you into trying to get into the 'mindset' of what editing in wikipedia is - and a major part of that is to work around those issues which have caught you out to date - so far - when or if you are interested I have no problem in trying to struggle through them - or you are welcome to ask anyone on wikipedia for that matter none of us has a monopoly of advice.

I have 4,500 articles on my watch list and I am not an admin - it can be a headache at times - but if there are articles that you would like to point out with spam problems I would only be too pleased to add them - and when the occasion occurs take the issues as they come...

Best Wishes SatuSuro 04:18, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Editing user pages

Hi Dr Christopher. Thank you for your reply, but I see you put one copy on my user page User:Phaedrus86. Please don't edit my user page. User pages are reserved for use only by the owning user. All users have related talk pages, mine is User talk:Phaedrus86. I know, Wikpedia seems to be just crammed full of rules and regulations, like some army or government bureaucracy... Phaedrus86 06:29, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Deleting versus Archiving

Looks like another wikipedia oddity - we do not delete talk pages (although some do for nefarious reasons...) the process of archiving - reverse engineer Phaedrus or I talk pages by going into edit mode and see that what you do is create a new page name on your own talk page - (Best to have your user name with it - Like User:Dr Chistopher Heathcote/Archive one - but make sure you have double square brackets on either side of that - save the page - it will then show that archive as a red link. Then you cut the talk material you want to archive, and save the page again - then you open the red link archive page, and paste the material in there - and save again. You should look at other talk pages - and see if there are any items you might want to appropriate - and put them on yours - minimally it is well worth using the disclaimer label (with frilly brackets userpage) and something about being you talk page - well worth getting the handle on that if youre around for a while - specially as some take quite serious offense at deleted/blanked talk pages... SatuSuro 00:46, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

BTW you should really do something about your red user page - its sticks out in article histories like a dogs... SatuSuro 00:57, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

I don't quite agree with some of the above talk. There is no onus on a user to put anything on their user page, and if they want to stay as a red link, it's entirely up to them. Also it now seems users can just delete content from their talk page (including warnings) if they want. There has been discussion about this on WP:AN amongst other places. There is no need to archive it. (It's all retained in the history anyway.) Some users think talk should be archived, but it's not enforcable. If an archive is desired, then clicking on this link will open one: User talk:Dr Christopher Heathcote/Archive 1. Talk can be cut and pasted into it. As to using one's real name, again that is entirely optional, and many people do. One drawback is the fact that all this unseemly wiki stuff is then on permanent record and associated with the user. For wikipedia the more important consideration is to ascertain that the person using the real name is actually whom they claim to be. I am not suggesting any inpropriety in this case. Tyrenius 02:48, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

I agree. Archiving is suggested in WP:ARCHIVE to avoid having talk pages that are too large, with a figure of 50 kb being mentioned somethere. There is a definite cost to having excessively large talk pages - consumes excessive Wikipedia resources. However there is no question of this page being too large. The fact that archiving of talk pages is common is not a reason to insist that someone should do it. I think Wikipedia benefits from diversity provided there is no harm being caused. I can't see any harm being caused here. Phaedrus86 05:03, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

OK having read above - my concerns are counterweighed - and I can see their well reasoned points - so please take them into account as much as mine - but at least appreciate there is a diversity of views... SatuSuro 00:23, 5 February 2007 (UTC)