User talk:Maberly

November 2009
Welcome to Wikipedia. Although everyone is welcome to contribute constructively to the encyclopedia, one or more of the external links you added do not comply with our guidelines for external links and have been removed. Wikipedia is not a collection of links; nor should it be used for advertising or promotion, and doing so is contrary to the goals of this project. Since Wikipedia uses nofollow tags, external links do not alter search engine rankings. If you feel the link should be added to the article, 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. Thank you. Dirk Beetstra T C 14:32, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

I am going to strike the warning, though I do still think that some of the link additions are inappropriate (others are not). Let me try and explain:


 * here you add a piece which is (for a large part) about "Giant Steps", so that is fine.
 * Though here you add a link to an album by Coltrane, while the text is just partially about one of the songs. There is not a direct link between the two subjects.

It looks like you know about the subject, and I would suggest, maybe you could actually write articles about some of the songs (if they are 'big' enough to warrant an own article), or write something about a song in the article on the album and use the link as a reference.

I hope this explains. --Dirk Beetstra T C 14:46, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, Dirk.

I find, at times, that even my own distinctions between what makes for an appropriate link and what doesn't are questions of philosophy and logic. The main questions that I ask myself, when adding a link, are "Will those who have come to read this article naturally be interested in the contents of this linked site? Will the contents of the linked site add to their understanding of the subject of this article?" You are right -- I do know about the subject (I'm a composer, music analyst, and music teacher) -- and it's on the basis of that knowledge that I try to assess the answers to those two questions. While I completely understand (I hope) your logic behind not linking Giant Steps, Central Park West, and Modulatory Cycles to the article on Coltrane's Sound, there is another perspective, with which I think you'd agree, were you a musician and music analyst yourself: among other things, John Coltrane was perhaps most famous for his particular innovations to jazz composition and harmony;  anyone deeply interested in his  Coltrane's Sound will axiomatically be interested in his compositional and harmonic techniques -- and it is those techniques that are thoroughly described in the Giant Steps, Central Park West, and Modulatory Cycles article. Apart from the fact that the article relates to the compositional and harmonic techniques of all the tunes on Coltrane's Sound, the individual tune -- Central Park West -- is the direct subject of more than 50% of the article.

However, I'm not anywhere near the expert on Wikipedia that I assume you are, so I will defer to your judgement. I appreciate that you contacted me about this link!

Regarding your kind suggestion that I write a Wikipedia article on the subjects to which I've linked: each article that I post on my website is the result of decades of thought and experience, and has usually taken weeks or months of careful writing, followed by more weeks or months of web design. They are usually far longer than the average Wikipedia article, and -- while objective assessment is always my aim -- they are more an exposition of my own analyses and conclusions, rather than an attempt at encyclopaedic objectivity. For these reasons, I think that the links -- that I've added to what I've tried to determine as appropriate Wikipedia articles -- are the most appropriate way for me to contribute to Wikipedia.

All the best, Maberly (talk) 17:29, 2 November 2009 (UTC)