User talk:Mailseth

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Please stop adding links to www.unearthedoutdoors.net. It is a commercial site and adds little useful information. -- Mwanner | Talk 13:24, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

The first response you quote covers what I consider to be the important points: (emphasis added)

  • Take it easy with the links, and go slowly. Add 10, wait a week, and see what happens. See if any get removed. See if you get any comments on your talk page. Then add another 30, and wait another week. Avoid shocking people, and avoid being mistaken for a linkspammer.
  • Only add links if they are among the most informative on the web for a given article. I imagine Yellow Stone Park probably has mountains of info on the web, but maybe a more obscure park doesn't. Use judgment on each link, don't add them all blindly.
  • Remember that Wikipedia is inherently egotistical - it does not accept that better sources of information can or should exist. That is, people will probably want to add everything informative that there is to know from your site, then cut off the link. To put it differently, Wikipedia wants to be the most informative site in the universe on US national parks, and will not respect the right of your site to be more informative than it.

So here's the response he told you to wait for...

Please read WP:EL. Basically, Wikipedia is not a link farm. Links should only be added if they have valuable information that does not belong in the article itself and if they are not trying to sell something. If the information in the link does belong it the article, it should be re-written (to avoid copyright issues) and added to the article. In general, articles should have very few links, because very few links fit these criteria. The idea is that we want our articles to be the best possible source of information on a topic, not a short article followed by a long list of links to other articles-- one might as well just google the subject and read the first dozen sites if we are going to assemble long external link lists.

I understand your desire to use Wikipedia to increase traffic to your new site. Unfortunately, that is not what we are here for. I hope you will continue to improve our articles by contributing to the contents. And seriously, good luck with your site! Cheers! -- Mwanner | Talk 14:06, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] I'll hold off for now

Well, I'll tell you what... I'm going to stop removing your links, at least from articles that don't already have a lot of links in them. I feel confident that eventually, someone will decide they are spam and pull them, but it might be a long time from now, and it might give you worthwhile exposure in the mean time. The only thing that would make me reverse course on this is if I find more spam being added from other users-- it's awkward defending removal of one link while leaving another in place.

I'm doing this only because you have been adding content along with your links, the articles I've seen your additions to are fairly slender and link-free, and because yours is not actually a retail site. Please understand that my decision is not a precedent for any other user. I do hope you continue to add content along with your links. Good luck. -- Mwanner | Talk 15:07, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

You wrote: "You would be OK with me continuing to add links (and content) to articles lacking such? What about reverting the reverts that you made?"

Yes, I won't revert further links you make, and yes, you can revert my changes (but please note-- in some cases I worked on the articles as well). And my problem with your site is simply that it has advertising-- that gives you a motive to try to build up your traffic, rather than improve our articles directly. See, if all you wanted to do is get the info out there to the broadest audience with the least effort, why even create your own site? Wikipedia has traffic that you'll never see on your own site, no matter how fine you make it.

Anyway, again, good luck. BTW, you might want to add something, anything at all, to your User page-- with it blank, your edits draw attention to themselves. -- Mwanner | Talk 15:45, 7 June 2006 (UTC)