User talk:MichaelCrawford

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Welcome!

Hello, MichaelCrawford, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few good links for newcomers:

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!  -- GraemeL (talk) 15:07, 30 March 2006 (UTC)


Nice to see somebody showing up and taking the responsible path to adding external links instead of slapping them across a dozen or more articles. --GraemeL (talk) 15:07, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

Hi GraemeL, thanks for the tips and the welcome. I expect I'll be able to contribute actual content, and not just links, once I get to know my way around a bit better. I have a degree in Physics, I'm an amateur astronomer, and I've worked nearly twenty years as a software engineer. And as I'm sure you've already observed, I like to write :-) MichaelCrawford 19:11, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

Hi again,

By starting at the five pillars of Wikipedia, I read the discussion of what should and should not be an external link. Notably it was argued that one should lift specific information from the external pages, if not actually copy the pages verbatim, if their license permits it.

While I'm happy to contribute my methods, some of them are not appropriate to Wikipedia. It was pointed out that Wikipedia is not for howtos or tutorials, but for verifiable facts. While my article contains some facts, on the whole it is a howto and a tutorial. As I said in the SEO talk page, some of my methods are not in any practical way verifiable.

My article is inappropriate to be copied verbatim because it definitely does not use a neutral tone. For example, I argue impassionately that one should not use Flash intros to homepages, and that web designers who recommend them do not have one's best interests at heart. I'm sure one could demonstrate my assertion in a verifiable way, but my purpose in writing it the way I did was not so much to inform, as to convince. Such rhetoric is not appropriate for Wikipedia.

That all said, I expect I can contribute actual content to the SEO Wikipedia entry, and I can both supply some of my verifiable facts, as well as write new versions of material that was removed but copied to the talk page.

My link has been there twelve whole hours now. I'm feeling pretty hopeful about it. MichaelCrawford 00:16, 31 March 2006 (UTC)