User talk:Mannikon

Please do not add advertising or 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 exist to attract visitors to a web site or promote a product. See the external links guideline and spam policies for further explanations of links that are considered appropriate. If you feel the link should be added to the article, then please discuss it on the rather than re-adding it. See the welcome page to learn more about Wikipedia. Thank you. M.Toony (talk)
 * I hope this works, I don't find using Wikipedia very easy. How do we have a conversation about amendments I made which I received an email about from you? //Mannikon
 * Mannikon, glad to hear from you! It works, you can leave comments here. Use ":" to make an indented line (tabulation), or click "Advanced" in the Edit window to format your text. Click Preview to see the changes. As far as your edits, exaktacircle is a great and very informative web-site, but this doesn't mean you can replace other links (i.e. ihagee.org, exakta.org, collectiblend.com, etc) with links to exaktacircle. Especially putting several links to the same site from the very same wiki article. If you feel the need to add a link to exaktacircle, and if you think it will bring a value to the wiki visitors, please add it as a new source. Moreover, some of your links were broken, you used double http prefix like http://http://. Good luck, and welcome to the wikipedia. M.Toony (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 13:32, 26 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Thank you for the welcome to the arcane world of Wikipedia editing! I am indeed a committee member of the Exakta Circle but it was never my intention (nor that of any other Circle member) to indulge in "spam"! The Exakta Circle, along with fellow photography enthusiasts and experts in the USA, pioneered research into the output of Ihagee Dresden back in the days when East Germany was a no-go area and everything was kept secret from the outside world. We are an old-fashioned society with a worldwide membership but have not properly ventured into the Internet until recently. Our publications archive is the largest outside of Germany and many publications are exclusive to the Exakta Circle. We are not a profit-making society but a serious research resource which we are hoping to share more of on the Internet. There is a lot of misinformation about both Ihagee and their best-known marque, the various Exakta cameras, on the Internet, including Wikipedia. I take your point about adding rather than replacing external links but I did it with consideration. On the Ihagee main article in Wikipedia, the second link is to a price guide which is both inaccurate and incomplete namely the "collectiblend" site, it would also seem to be a commercial site. The first link is to "ihagee.org". On the main article in Wikipedia for Exakta, the first two links are to ihagee.org and to exakta.org, neither of which has any official link with Ihagee and are both the work of individuals who used to belong to the Exakta Circle but left when they disagreed with the rules of the Circle. Both of these sites (and many other English language sites about Ihagee or Exakta) are poorly constructed, misleading, out of date and contain material obtained without permission from Exakta Circle publications. Sadly, many of these sites have not been updated in a very long time and research into and knowledge of all things Ihagee and Exakta have come a long way in recent years with the publication of a few historical works (Richard Hummel's masterpiece on the Dresden camera industry in particular) but these older sites have been left hanging there and are picked up by all the Internet search engines. Just wanted to give you a little background. I also notice that the main Ihagee article is designated under "Talk" as coming under the scope of Wikipedia Germany or something like that. Now, Ihagee is best known to the world of photography and many Germans will never have heard of the Dutch company which operated out of Dresden. I don't know why the article doesn't come under a Photography classification? So for that reason it is not possible to use the Talk? Well, what I shall do is (with help and guidance from those fellow members of the Circle who have internet access - not many) to correct the relevant articles and add links and perhaps, time allowing, actually create articles about the Exakta Circle and the Exakta Times (the society's quarterly journal now in its twenty-fourth year of publication). I do wish it were easier to use Wikipedia though! Mannikon (talk) 19:21, 26 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Mannikon, thanks for the detailed background! I am not here to judge if ihagee.org or exacta.org "borrowed" information from exaktacircle or not, so you can use your best bet as more knowledgeable person. I can only give you several advices as far as wipedia rules. Please take my words with a grain of salt, it's a personal opinion. There are several items that comes into play here: person adding multiple links to his own or affiliated web-site (wikipedia has crawling robot which detect these kinds of things, and may ban you and the web-site you represent); replacing links of other web-sites without providing any proof of stolen copyrighted content (owners of ihagee.org and exacta.org may start so-called "editing war", we don't want that); placing several links on one wiki page to the same web-site (wikipedia has another robot crawler which detect this too). Each of these items are looked poorely onto by wiki admins (and I am not one of them, so don't worry about me). If I may, I can suggest what you can carefully do without getting attention from admins.
 * 1) Add one link to exactacircle per article as additional (alternative) source of information.
 * 2) Click "Talk" link on the article page, and add your concerns regarding stolen information by other parties; provide some sort of a proof (maybe archive.org cache?), ask if that's OK to delete copyright infidgement links. After a month or two, if no one responds, go ahead and delete those links, but make sure you mention your talk page comment in the "Edit summary".
 * 3) Make sure to use "Show preview" button before submitting changes, and check urls to avoid small things like double-http notation.
 * 4) Continue a great job of updating information on exaktacircle site, it will definitely get a much deserved attention from visitors in one way or another.
 * I hope this helps :) M.Toony (talk) 03:19, 27 February 2013 (UTC)
 * M.Toony, appreciate your advice and will do as you say. Best regards.

Mannikon (talk) 19:09, 27 February 2013 (UTC)