User talk:Herm720

Welcome

Hello and welcome to Wikipedia. We appreciate encyclopedic contributions, but some of your recent contributions seem to be advertising or for promotional purposes. Wikipedia does not allow advertising in articles. For more information on this, see If you still have questions, there is a new contributor's help page, or you can write   below this message along with a question and someone will be along to answer it shortly. You may also find the following pages useful for a general introduction to Wikipedia. I hope you enjoy editing Wikipedia! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes ( ~ ); this will automatically produce your name and the date. Feel free to write a note on the bottom of my talk page if you want to get in touch with me. Again, welcome! --Dirk Beetstra T C 12:27, 25 February 2007 (UTC)
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Your edit to Mark Zupan
Welcome to Wikipedia. We invite everyone to contribute constructively to the encyclopedia. However, the external links you added 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. --Dirk Beetstra T C 10:58, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

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 attract visitors to a web site or promote a product. See the external links guideline and spam policy for further explanations. 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. See the welcome page to learn more about Wikipedia. --Dirk Beetstra T C 11:29, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

Please stop adding inappropriate external links to Wikipedia. It is considered spamming and Wikipedia is not a vehicle for advertising or promotion. Since Wikipedia uses nofollow tags, additions of links to Wikipedia will not alter search engine rankings. If you continue spamming, you will be blocked from editing Wikipedia. --Dirk Beetstra T C 11:33, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

This is your last warning. The next time you insert a spam link, you will be blocked from editing Wikipedia. Persistent spammers may have their websites blacklisted as well, preventing anyone from linking to them from any site that uses the MediaWiki spam blacklist, which includes all of Wikimedia and Wikipedia. --Dirk Beetstra T C 12:06, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

Link additions
Hi Andy, I will answer here, since I think you missed my message to you on my talkpage. You are only adding links to articles, that is not providing information, that is spamming. With adding information to an encyclopedia, people have to add content. There are guidelines in WP:EL and WP:SPAM and the policy WP:NOT (as well as others), which I would ask you to read, as well as the text in the welcome message which I am going to add in a minute.

We spamfighters have a channel feed, and we see which, and to which article a link is added by whom, and the addition is counted per person. You have a count of 45 now, and except for two talkpage-edits, all were link additions, hence spam. Users adding more than 2 links pop up in red, and we check the linkadditions they perform. If the links are references, they are probably OK, when they are only adding to the external links sections, we revert the addition as spam.

Just as a sidenote, you are linking to a real-media file, which may not be content that all users of the encyclopedia can read, you need 'special software' for that (see WP:EL). Hope this explains. --Dirk Beetstra T C 12:27, 25 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Hi Dirk, I see where you're coming from... though i still don't agree that i'm a spammer. But it's not my place here to make the rules -- so i'll gracefully bow out of adding more RealMedia links. I thought Wikipedia users would enjoy the relevant audio files i've provided to the appropriate entries. Again, i'm sorry for the misunderstanding. Thanks, Andy Herm720 12:43, 25 February 2007 (UTC)
 * The spam guideline states "There are three types of wikispam: advertisements masquerading as articles, wide-scale external link spamming, and "Wikipedian-on-Wikipedian" spamming or, "canvassing" (also known as "internal spamming" and "cross-posting")." and these additions are of the second type. It does not matter whether the links are useful, it is the way they are added.  We are writing an encyclopedia, not a directory.  I am sorry that that makes you a spammer within the wikipedia definition.  By the way, I am assuming good faith in this, but there is no way I can check whether or not you are affiliated with the link, and it could be linking for you benefit.  Also, if these links are really adding to the article, WP:EL clearly states that you could discuss the addition on the talkpage first, and if more people think it is a good link, you, or another editor, can add the link, pointing to the discussion on the talkpage in the edit summary.
 * You can still add information (as in content) to the wikipedia, and maybe some of the links provide information which can be used as a reference (see WP:CITE). In that case the link is allowed.  Hope this helps.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 12:53, 25 February 2007 (UTC)