User talk:124.178.105.8

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Please stop adding commercial or personal-website links to Wikipedia. It is considered spamming, and Wikipedia is not a vehicle for advertising. Thanks. (I appreciate that the Navy is not commercial but this generic warning applies to wholescale link addition)--Arktos talk 02:06, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

  • In particular please stop adding the links to the year in Australia articles. External links are not useful there, internal links should be used.--Arktos talk 02:48, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
  • I don't know what your login is, so I am replying here. Firstly, the easy one, Year in Australia articles. Those articles link to other articles, so say take, 1941 in Australia and the events of 19 November, the 1941 article links to the Battle between HMAS Sydney and HSK Kormoran. All references should be found there, not in the year article which is a summary of events. We don't have any external links in the years in Aust articles (or almost none because I think there may be an exception) because the referencing material is in the articles that are linked to. Relevant external links as a valuable service to our readers belong therefore in the article. Internal links are preferred over external links.
You have made reference indirectly to Wikipedia:External links by quoting it, so I assume you are aware of it. You may not have caught up with meta:When should I link externally. It states Not very often. If the site you are linking to is an article, history or timeline, then Wikipedia should have its own article on that subject, not just an external link. The web is already full past capacity of sites composed of links to other sites. In the case of the Year in Australia articles, we are linking already to the Wikipedia articles, why offer the readers a fork?
My problem with merely adding links is you have given no incentive to the reader to go further. Does the content of the links relate directly to the material on the page? Is it a reference for the assertion? If so, why was the link added without any content being added. If you add content and links as references then I have no difficulties. Adding links by themselves and I would go to the postion on meta that we don't need more links to other sites. That being said, I would accept without question any web page from the Royal Navy web site as an authorative source and a link as a reference.
As you point out the Sumatra link is a reference and I will revert my reversion.
Happy (in fact delighted) to discuss further if you have any issues - I'd really like ot see content added not just links - add content with a link as reference and there would be no quibble! Regards Arktos talk 08:22, 30 August 2006 (UTC)