Talk:Garden railway

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[edit] External Links

I don't think it makes much sense to include web pages that simply describe your own garden railway. There are already good places to do this such as DMOZ or RailUSA to name just two. By all means let's include those sites in the external links, but if we link direct to thousands of personal pages, this will just become a URL list and not an informative, enjoyable article. What do other contributors think? Gwernol 06:28, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

I would normally fully agree with you. I put my website on there because I have spent many hours putting together pictures from club events, personal layouts, and factory tours. I have seen many sites and mine has a great deal of information about how to get started in garden railroading that I feel this site does not fulfill. By all means, I am slightly biased and if you still think it sould be removed I will, but I think my link being on here only adds to the wealth of information that someone starting out in this hobby would want. Thank you for listening. sheldonmcdonnell 7 March 2006

Hi, thanks for taking the time to respond. Usual Wikipedi policy is that you shouldn't link to your own site (see WP:EL, point #9). While I agree your site is a good one, I argue that the purpose of Wikipedia is to be an encyclopedia, not a set of links to information. So really you should add the useful information for beginners to this page rather than link to an external site. This has nothing to do with the undoubted merit of your site, rather an overall policy of the Wikipedia community. I'm leaving your link in place for now, but be aware that other editors may decide to remove it for the reasons pointed out. Gwernol 17:58, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] LSOL.com

I've removed the links to LSOL.com because this is primarily a subscription site and external links to such sites conflict with WP:EL policy. Gwernol 17:54, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

Per discussions with Gwernol some general information on LSOL.com was added in to talk about the free services, but letting people know that there is a subscription part of the site like a printed magazine.