User talk:Lfapn

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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 if you want to get in touch with me. Again, welcome! Toddst1 (talk) 00:10, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
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To the editors:

I am the Director of Policy for Americans for Peace Now (the American sister organization of the Israeli Peace Now movement). This morning, at the suggestion of my interns (who are avid Wikipedia users) I spent a great deal of time linking substantive background papers on our website to the relevant Wikipedia pages. These documents deal with Israeli settlements and are in the form of long shelf-life, heavily-sourced, data-based background papers. They are co-written by the Director of Peace Now's Settlement Watch -- Peace Now being the most respected source for information on Israeli settlements in the world and the documents I linked -- all part of our regular Settlements in Focus series -- were each relevant and valuable contributions to the pages to which I added them.

I have not gone back to each of the pages I linked to this morning, but I have checked several. On one page, my edit was marked as vandalism by an editor in Israel. This is baffling -- the edit in question (to the page on the settlement of Ariel) -- simply added as an external link a document about....Ariel. A document that covers things like when the settlement was founded, where it is located, who lives there, what their voting patterns are (based on official - and sourced - Israel elections results), etc. It is not clear how that would qualify as vandalism.

Another edit (to the Gush Etzion) page removed links I had added to two documents that are specifically about Gush Etzion -- again, about the settlements in it, the population, the voting patterns, the barrier route around it, etc... No reason is given for why these were deleted.

I would urge the editors to take a moment to check out the links themselves (all available through the peacenow.org website, on the section entitled "Settlements in Focus"). This is a product we have been producing for several years, with very strong positive feedback. The documents include more information than analysis or opinion, and where analysis or opinion is given, it is clearly marked as such. They represent serious, valuable material that is often available nowhere else in English or in an easy to access format. They certainly do not represent vandalism or spamming or whatever else they have been labeled. I respectfully ask that the links be re-stored where they were added.

Best regards,

Lara Friedman Director of Policy and Government Relations Americans for Peace Now

August 2008
You have been indefinitely blocked from editing in accordance with Wikipedia's blocking policy for being a spam-only account. Persistent spammers will have their websites blacklisted from Wikipedia and potentially penalized by search engines. If you believe this block is unjustified, you may contest the block by adding the text below.

lara friedman (talk) 23:35, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

I am the Director of Policy for Americans for Peace Now (the American sister organization of the Israeli Peace Now movement). I have been blocked for “spamming” links to external sites. The links I added were to wikipedia pages related to West Bank settlements, and all the links were to substantive background docs about the exact topic of the linked page. APN/Peace Now is the leading authority on settlements in the world and each document is a heavily-sourced backgrounder, co-written by the Director of Peace Now's Settlement Watch. Each is a relevant and valuable contribution to the page in question, including material that is often unavailable elsewhere in English or in an easy to access format.lara friedman (talk) 23:49, 13 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Please read WP:SPAM along with WP:ROLE, both of which are not allowed. Any way you put it, you can not advertise for your company here. Tiptoety  talk 23:55, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Note from blocking admin
If you read the note above, your request will be re-evaluated if you add a note here with a concise reason why you feel you should be unblocked and will behave in accordance with Wikipedia policies. 23:52, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks you and I very much appreciate how seriously you take your responsibility as editors. Wikipedia is a tremendous resource and I applaud you for fiercely protecting its integrity.

Best regards, Lara Friedman
 * Feel free to leave a note on my talk page if you need asisstance. Toddst1 (talk) 14:43, 14 August 2008 (UTC)