User talk:JaimeyWB

Welcome from Redwolf24
Welcome!

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Redwolf24 (Talk) 07:12, 30 July 2005 (UTC)

P.S. I like messages :-P

Re:
See User talk:Redwolf24. Also, tell us about yourself a bit on your User page. Cheers, Redwolf24 08:42, 30 July 2005 (UTC)

Please stop spamming!
Hi, Jaimie--

I don't know if you are affiliated with the American Film Foundation or just obsessive about them, but I assume it's the former. Either way, please stop spamming Wikipedia. Wikipedia is not for promoting your own organization or projects, no matter how worthy you may feel them to be. Please stop inserting a mention of the American Film Foundation or its projects into every possible article!

Thanks.

Best wishes, --Jacobw 11:15, 1 August 2005 (UTC)


 * I'm here for the same reason as Jacobw. Adding many links to the same site is not encouraged, to say the least, and your acount may be banned if you continue. American Film Foundation is notable enough to have an article of its own - I suggest that you edit that article to include a list of artists on whom the AFF has done documentaries and a link to the master directory page. That would include the same information in a more appropriate manner. Thanks, -Willmcw 21:26, August 1, 2005 (UTC)

Not Spamming
Hi. Thank you for visiting me about your concern for spamming. I have been doing some additions about American Film Foundation, a non-profit production company run by Academy and Emmy award-winning filmmakers Terry Sanders and Freida Lee Mock. My understanding, and that of my wife (Designmotif), is that because their work is considerably valuable we have created the appropriate internal pages about them and their remarkable films because much of Wikipedia is lacking in information about them. We begun adding the articles in the hope that other users will contribute. And we've added specific external links where appropriate, linking directly to the films, many of which are difficult to find. The question of spamming is a good one, given that Amazon.com (IMDB site), Sony and other major commercial websites have been allowed to add their external links with no real reference to the pages they are added to either I might add. I'm getting very annoyed by the accusations of spamming. We are going by guidelines here. So I will return the page to it's previous condition, as it's not spamming. Please don't target American Film Foundation and their vast body of work as spam.

Thanks, JaimeyWB 06:19, 2 August 2005 (UTC)


 * Strictly speaking, almost none of the commercial websites here added the links themselves. tregoweth 14:54, August 2, 2005 (UTC)


 * You are selling a product. A fine one, I'm sure. But a reader going to your site learns nothing about the subject until they pay to buy it, and wait for it to arrive. Therefore a link to your site doesn't provide the reader easy access to additional information. IMDB may have commercials, but it has lots of useful info. You could add, "In a documentary filmed 2003, Mr X. said...", giving some relevant, interesting information, and then provide a link as a source. But you aren't adding information to the articles themselves, just your link. That's another hallmark of spamming behavior. I've suggested a compromise - list the documentaries on the AFF article. But please stop adding links to the site to articles all over Wikipedia. -Willmcw 23:46, August 2, 2005 (UTC)

I have once again removed the links you have added. Please stop. Willmcw's comment, above, speaks my mind. Please see also the policy at External links. The Uninvited Co., Inc. 00:30, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

More Thoughts on Spam vs Not-spam
Hi, JaimeyWB--if you'll indulge me for a moment, let me suggest an analogy. If you were part of a bunch of students who met up for study groups, it would be natural that some of them, in their discussions, would mention various commercial products. But if somebody suddenly showed up for a study group and started mentioning "the fresh, delicious taste of Pepsi" in every sentence, you'd be pretty convinced he was a corporate shill. And if your study groups were constantly interupted by these corporate shills, you wouldn't hesitate to kick the guy out. Every once in a while, this would mean expelling an innocent victim who just genuinely liked Pepsi--but if you tried to engage every potential shill in conversation long enough to weed out the rare sincere Pepsi fan, you'd never be able to have any other kinds of conversation. (Meanwhile, if the Pepsi fan didn't realize how often your study group was interrupted by shills, he might think you were pretty arrogant and quick to judge unfairly.)

This is sort of what happened with you. When you joined Wikipedia, every single change you made was aimed at directing readers toward the AFF. This is such a common spam technique that I felt no qualms about simply reverting every alteration you made without further thought. Clearly, other users have felt the same way.

However, the fact that you've stuck around and argued passionately for your point of view has set you apart from the typical spammer, which has encouraged me to step back and try to look individually at each of the links you've added. What I found is that some of them are indeed relevent, although many of them are presented in an inapproriate way.

For example, take a look at my recent edit of the George Grosz article. You had inserted the phrase "His drawings present a stark and powerful portrait of Nazi brutality in Interregnum, an Academy Award nominated film by Altina Carey, produced by American Film Foundation." A hallmark of valid Wikipedia edits is their neutral POV, and I think it's fair to say that "stark and powerful" is hardly neutral, objective language. I would also argue that the article on Grosz isn't really the place to go into detail on who produced a film about him. However, the fact that Grosz was the subject of an Oscar-nominated film documentary is certainly relevent to his bio. I've therefore edited the page so that the language is more neutral--but I've also created a seperate entry dealing with "Interregnum," since Oscar-nominated films are certainly worthy of inclusion in Wikipedia. I've done something similar with the Rose Kennedy article. I'll try to take a fresh look at the other relevent articles over the next few days.

One thing I haven't seen you address directly is whether you work for or with the AFF, or are just an admirer of their work. If you have a business connection with them, you should know that Wikipedia discourages people from inserting information about themselves or their businesses into articles. The reason is simply that it is hard to remain objective about one's own work. One possible compromise is to put something on the "Talk" page for a given article, saying something like, "I work with the AFF, and Tom Hanks was the narrator of a film we did. I think this is worth including in the article, but I might be biased since I work with the AFF, so I'm going to let another Wikipedia user insert it if you think it's relevent." This might seem like a roundabout way of doing things, but it helps keep things a little more objective.

Finally, there's the question of the external links to AFF vs. external links to Amazon and IMDB. As another user has pointed out, those Amazon and IMDB links were added by Wikipedia users not affiliated with Amazon or IMDB. Generally speaking, though, I'd say there's another issue even more important than that. If I'm reading an article on Tom Hanks and I click on his IMDB link, I'm taken to a page with a huge amount of additional information on him--the roles he's played, the awards he's won, trivia about him, etc. On the other hand, if I click on a link to a page at the AFF for a film Hanks has narrated, I don't really get any additional information about Tom Hanks--just some quotes about how great the film is, and the opportunity to buy it. Similarly, Amazon links tend to include a wide variety of reviews, positive and negative, as well as technical and publishing information.

I hope this makes things a little clearer. You've had a rather bruising introduction to Wikipedia, but you're clearly passionate about the subject of documentary film, and I hope you stick around and get the hang of contributing here. Please feel free to contact me via my talk page.