User talk:Luckycharms

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Please do not add commercial links (or links to your own private websites) to Wikipedia. Wikipedia is not a vehicle for advertising or a mere collection of external links. You are, however, encouraged to add content instead of links to the encyclopedia. See the welcome page to learn more. Thanks. -- SmthManly  / ManlyTalk  / ManlyContribs  06:14, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

Avg Apartment "Rents" information added to city articles
I just reverted the information that you added to several city articles regarding average apartment "rents" in the city. First of all, this is linkspam, and is inappropriate for an encyclopedia article. You should not post links to other sites in articles to personal sites or to sites that you have a private interest in. I also find it interesting that several ISPs have already added apartmentratings.com to their antispam blacklists, as well. Please read Spam for more information on Wikipedia's efforts to combat linkspam.

Secondly, the information that you added was added to a paragraph in the demographics section that had nothing to do with what you added. The paragraph you added this to dealt with the average income of the population of the city. The information you added does not pertain to this at all! Your information deals with the average cost of housing. And not ALL housing, either, only rentable properties. So you're only providing information valuable to those that rent, not those looking to buy and own homes.

The information could be made more notable in the future a) if more information is found from a repudable source (real estate magazines, newspapers, government housing offices), b) you include more information than just apartment rent prices, and c) you find a more appropriate section for this information (perhaps a subsection on real estate). The data as it stands now, however, is merely just linkspam and promotion for apartmentratings.com, which will continue to be reverted. Dr. Cash 19:40, 24 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Mea Culpa


 * First of all, I profusely apologize that the information we added was considered linkspam. I went ahead and added this data based on a conversation that another of my colleagues had with Raul654, who ok'd this content.


 * I honestly thought I was doing the right thing because I was adding content (what I felt was) useful and relevant, and citing it per Wiki guidelines. I was not merely adding links.  Unfortunately, I overlooked the fact that Wiki requires editors to NOT add content (and presumably by extension, cite) from websites they are involved with.  This was my mistake, and I take full responsibility.


 * I wanted to address some of your points:


 * 1 Average rental prices paid does not pertain to Demographics.


 * I agree, this wasn’t ideal, but it seemed like the best of the available sections and passable given the definition of Demographics on Wikipedia.  Anyway, this wasn’t done to be malicious, just to avoid creating entire new sections of content.


 * 2 Our data deals only with rented housing.


 * This is true, however, nationwide 30% of the population rents, and I felt this was a large enough sector to merit attention. From the perspective of demographics, it’s helpful to see the average income and average rental price together to get a gauge for the % of income people in a city are spending on rent.  In some places, like the Bay Area, this can exceed 50%, in other places that are more affordable, it's below 30%.  Anyway, regardless the usefulness of rental information is a judgment call, and since your opinion is the one that matters, I should not presume.


 * 3 Content from reputable sources (real estate magazines, newspapers, government housing offices) is prefered by Wikipedia.


 * We have no disagreement on this, however no entity collects and publishes rental data for free. There are literally dozens of regional data providers who sell this data to property owners, none give it away.  As evidence, here is a list of data vendors on the National Multi-Housing Council’s website:


 * http://www.nmhc.org/Content/ServeContent.cfm?IssueID=261&ContentItemID=1188&siteArea=Resources


 * Indeed, after much research on this topic, we have never found any nationwide source of up-to-date market rents that is available to the general public for free.


 * Also, apartmentratings.com is used by over 10 million renters per year (based on traffic, the site is among the 5 most-used apartment hunting websites on the web) and has over 350,000 data points from renters. Also, the findings of the rental survey was published in a number of newspapers, including the national publication, “Units”, the official publication of the National Apartment Association.  Here are a few links to regional coverage:


 * http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4182/is_20050927/ai_n15616013


 * http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1:142472918/Renters+paradise%7eR%7e(survey+of+top+livable+cities+according+to+renters)(Brief+Article).html


 * http://www.luxurysarasotaliving.com/archives/2005/09/renter_friendly.html


 * That said, we must defer to your judgment on whether or not this data source is sufficiently valid for Wikipedia. If you say it’s not, then I accept that.


 * In closing, I apologize for citing the website I work for and assure you that nobody from our site will do this in the future. I’d only ask that you remove apartmentratings.com from the linkspam blacklist so that other Wikipedia editors can add links to our dataset in the future if they deem it relevant.


 * Sincerely,


 * Luckycharms 23:05, 29 March 2006 (UTC)


 * PS: You mention that “several ISPs have already added apartmentratings.com to their antispam blacklists”. We are mystified by this.  ApartmentRatings.com sends email only when users register on our site.  We mail them a confirmation of their password.  That’s all.  We don’t mail anything after that.  But more importantly, we have no reason to send spam. ApartmentRatings.com is a free community website where renters can post their reviews of apartments.  We aren’t selling anything (except advertising and not even to apartments at that).  Could you point us to where you saw this information?  We checked the spam blacklists on DNSStuff.com, and can find nothing.