User talk:Dsgtrain/Archive/ Apr 2007

Re. linkspam edits
Please read WP:EL, the policy regarding external links. Links which are added solely to promote a site are not acceptable. I don't know or want to know if you are connected with the sites you added, but it appeared (and still appears) to me that several of them were for advertising purposes (including the forum link you added here).

The fact that in this edit, you removed the template raised a red flag with me to begin with. You also removed several existing links and replaced them with your own. Spammers commonly remove or re-arrange links because they want their links to be at the top of the list.

If you want to contribute to Wikipedia, please continue as you have done in a few edits already and write content instead of just adding links. Wikipedia is not a link farm or just a repository of links to other sites -- it was meant to stand on its own feet. External links to owners clubs and forums just dilute the article where time could be better spent improving the articles themselves. --Tim1988 talk 19:01, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Re. linkspam edits 2
You may have considered the links that were currently there to be "irrelevant", but the question I ask myself is what makes your links more "worthy"? In actual fact, I went back and checked out the links you removed and also the ones you replaced it with. One of the links you removed was a link to the Channel 4 website with a timeline of the Fiesta's history. The sites you replaced the link with were owners clubs -- all with very similar content (forums etc).

Whether or not the "words were correctly written" is not an indication you are not a spammer, but removing links and replacing them with your own often is. If you were genuinely interested in making the Ford articles better and not just using them for promotion of your own site, you would not be as concerned as you seem to be about having the links removed. If you're not connected with the sites at all, why are you as concerned as you are about their removal? And with that said, I reiterate what I said earlier -- Wikipedia is not a vehicle for promotion.

Finally, I have to rebuke your notion of Owners Clubs links being useful to everyone. People primarily come to Wikipedia for encyclopaedic information which is backed up by peer-review and citations -- not to be presented with a link farm. I no longer own a Fiesta, but I am still interested in the vehicle and therefore I still edit its Wikipedia article. I am no longer an owner of the vehicle, so an Owners Club link is useless to me. Similarly, not everyone who views the Mondeo article owns a Mondeo, so a Owners Club site is likely to be of little use. However, facts and figures presented to them in the Wikipedia article text itself will probably be useful.

Hopefully you will now understand a little more of what Wikipedia is and why I believe external links such as the ones you added are harmful to Wikipedia in the long run. --Tim1988 talk 12:23, 12 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Okay, I'll leave the links up to your judgment, though I would appreciate if you let the remain as new links are always being added to the Fiesta article and it lets other editors know to periodically check the article's links.  Thanks. --Tim1988 talk 13:30, 12 January 2007 (UTC)