User talk:72.205.10.4

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Please do not add inappropriate external links to Wikipedia. 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. Femto 21:50, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Response to your post on my Talk page

You wrote: "You recently deleted some external links on the page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnet. The links were to some sites that had some interesting information on permanent magnets. These sites are unrelated commercial sites that present information in a separate section from their commercial content. You did however leave three other commercial sites with similar information untouched. Could you clarify your rational for this? I believe both sites should be reincluded in the wikipedia as they provide interesting and useful resources. These are the sites and the original listing:

I agree that the first site has some useful information, the second one rather less so. I removed them because Wikipedia's External links guidelines list "Links to sites that primarily exist to sell products or services" under "Links normally to be avoided". I don't understand your contention that the links that I left in place are commercial-- one of them does carry advertizing, but it does offer any products for sale. We accept many sites that carry advertizing-- the New York Times pages are a prime example. And the pages you added seem to me far less "separate" from their commercial content than you suggest-- the first shows a shopping cart in the upper right-hand corner, the second has a link to "Products" in its upper left-hand corner. I could possibly see keeping them if one had to go back to a home page to find one's way to the direct sales page, though I think it would be fair to say that, even so, they would still be "sites that primarily exist to sell products". But having the sales link directly on the info page is clearly over the line. -- Mwanner | Talk 02:49, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

We're here to create content, not to link to that of others. Trade organizations and manufacturer sites may generally be assumed of dubious encyclopedic value, until consensus is established otherwise. You kept adding links to these companies to various articles, without comment, despite the fact that they were removed by several people. Please don't re-add links without consensus on the article talk pages. Femto 12:54, 14 December 2006 (UTC)


You wrote: "Thanks for your explanation. I added an invitation for discussion on the talk page of the article. The invitation includes a listing of all of the commercial sites that have been, or currently are, on the page. Hopefully we'll get some good input. I hope a clear consensus will result of whether content that is contained on a commercial site should be removed or has merit independent of the product or service being sold.

I also received a comment from Femto saying that I shouldn't add links repeatedly without discussing it on the Talk page. I actually wasn't familiar with the Talk pages until yesterday. However, in my defense, what I did was re-add links that had been there for some time and were removed by a single individual repeatedly who did not open up the discussion on the Talk page."

No defense needed-- there is an immense amount for a new editor to learn when getting started at Wikipedia.
The Talk pages can be useful, but I have often found them to be too little used to provide solid direction. The best solution to the issue of these links is incorporate their contents (rewritten, of course) into the article, and then list them as sources or references. It's hard work, of course, but it results in our article becoming the best possible source of information on its topic; not incidentally, it also pays back the editor who does the work significantly-- after undertaking such a task, you will find that you know the subject much better than you did by just reading the sources.
I'm going to paste in the standard Wikipedia welcome; it has a number of useful links...

Welcome!

Hello, 72.205.10.4, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages that you might find helpful:

I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or place {{helpme}} on your talk page and someone will show up shortly to answer your questions. Again, welcome!  -- Mwanner | Talk 15:14, 14 December 2006 (UTC)


[edit] February 2007

Welcome to Wikipedia. We invite everyone to contribute constructively to the encyclopedia. However, the external links you added to the page Magnet do not comply with our guidelines for external links. Wikipedia is not a mere directory of links; nor should it be used for advertising or promotion. Since Wikipedia uses nofollow tags, external links do not alter search engine rankings. If you feel the link should be added to the article, then please discuss it on the article's talk page before reinserting it. Please take a look at the welcome page to learn more about contributing to this encyclopedia. Thank you. RJASE1 Talk 16:54, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

If this is a shared IP address, and you didn't make any unconstructive edits, please ignore this warning
Just a heads-up - I did read the talk page discussion of this issue. The information should be incorporated into the article, rather than just inserting an external link at several places throughout the article. RJASE1 Talk 17:09, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
I replied to your post here. Also, please don't forget to sign your posts with four tildes. RJASE1 Talk 23:44, 27 February 2007 (UTC)