User talk:Michael Pocock

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maritimequest.com
Regarding the addition of external links to your website on several articles, please consider reading our guidelines on conflict of interest and external links. As I don’t regard your external links to be a clear case of WP:SPAM but find 513 links pointing to your website worrying, I have asked for some extra input here. --Van helsing 06:48, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

From MaritimeQuest.com I have added links only to vessels listed on my site as a way for those interested to locate better photos. Wikipedia is a reference site and I find the links, not only to my site but all other sites of great value when researching a subject. BTW the Admiral Gorshkov link is correct, the ship was named Baku until 1991. This is not spam. Michael Pocock

Welcome to Wikipedia. We invite everyone to contribute constructively to the encyclopedia. However, the external links you added do not comply with our guidelines for external links. Wikipedia is not a mere directory of links; nor should it be used for advertising or promotion. Since Wikipedia uses nofollow tags, external links do not alter search engine rankings. If you feel the link should be added to the article, then 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.
 * Although the site may be of good interest to the wikipedia, it should be used as a reference, not as an external link only; The way you are adding the link appears spammy, wikipedia is not a linkfarm. For further discussion, may also I invite you to the discussion on the wikiproject on spam.  Thanks.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 08:33, 5 August 2007 (UTC)


 * As someone who likes your website and who wants to find away forward to continue linking to it from Wikipedia, please do not add anymore of these links to articles yourself. Even though it's a good site, when you add these links, you are spamming, given your conflict of interest. Feel free to suggest your site's use on article talk pages, however. It would be helpful for your to join in the discussion ASAP at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Spam.


 * Otherwise, if you persist, it will aggravate the situation and undercut your site's supporters. -- A. B. (talk) 15:35, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

From MaritimeQuest, I fail to see why this has become a problem now as I have inked to many ships listed on my site. I have received many very kind messages from wikipedia users who thank me for adding them as it gives them another place to find the information or photos they are looking for. I do not post links to my main page on the site only to the page for that vessel. As you say that like the site then why would you recommend hiding it from other users? I know the site ranking does not go up because of wikipedia but that is not my concern nor is it the reason I add the links. As for becomming involved with the discussion groups it is something I just don't have time to do. I have enough to do working on the site as I have a full time job and a family. If you remove the links there is nothing I can do but it is to the detrement of wikipedia users if they are not there for them. Michael Pocock


 * Hi Michael,
 * Yes, many of the pages on your site are very interesting. It is appropriate for some articles on Wikipedia to have links to Maritimequest (you can see our policy on external links at WP:EL). It is much less appropriate for you to keep re-adding links to your site after other Wikipedia editors have removed them. We have strongly worded policies against both spam and conflict of interest in editing. Please let those of us who maintain the warships articles on Wikipedia to decide which articles should be linked to your site and which shouldn't. If you continue to add links indiscriminately, you may end up being blocked from editing Wikipedia by myself or another administrator.
 * Regards, The Land 17:49, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

Hello, OK if you wish to remove the links I can't stop you, nor will I waste any more time adding them or arguing about it. I can only assume this will apply to ALL links posted by other sites as well because there are many. If it does than wikipedia will be much the lesser for it. If you wish to contact me directly here is my email address michael@maritimequest.com MP

After looking around I can see someone has removed many of the links to MQ however, other sites have not been removed. Why is this? What exactly do you have against MQ? It's a real shame that some wikipedia nazi can do this but I guess this is what one gets from an open forum site. Are the other sites paying for the link? MP


 * Some external links are useful to our articles, some of them aren't - this applies to maritimequest.org as much as it does to hazegray.org, battleships-cruiser.co.uk, or in a different context imdb.com. No site is entitled to a link from any relevant Wikipedia page. And no-one is paying for a link. The mass removal occurred because someone thought that they should be added on a case-by-case basis by Wikipedia editors. Many thanks for your understanding. The Land 18:33, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

Well after looking around I find it hard to believe that other sites with LESS material are MORE useful than MQ but that is your decision. However I find it outrageous that these sites remain when MQ is removed. You will find very few sites with more photos than MQ and there are hundreds of never before published photos as well and you want to keep your users from finding them for some obscure reason. Since I am rather new to this I guess I must learn that there are those who will attempt to keep people from the site, as you are doing for what ever reason. I believe this is unfair and not helpful to the users of wikipedia who use the site as a reference not to have as many links as possible to information regarding the subject they wish to find. MP

Further investigation shows that "The Land" has his own Naval website and this is perhaps why you have removed MQ links. So now wikipedia has become another corrupt site. I don't see any complaints from users only from administrators. Maybe they all are only promoting their sites and can not accept compitition. I guess MaritimeQuest having the best photo galleries on the eitire internet for many vessels is not important to the wikipedia administrators because they seem to have vested interest in promoting their own material. MP
 * The Land has been one of the strongest advocates for maintaining links to the MQ site. We are an encyclopedia, not a portal or director service, so while that makes us a reference site, we are not a site whose articles are intended to provide as many links as possible to othersites.  Articles should provide well rounded balanced articles whose major content is in the article itself, a few good external links can be considered appropriate.  Nevertheless, we have strong policies in place to stop other sites using wikipedia as a marketing tool to increase their own site's popularity.  To that end, we ask site owners, agents and supporters not add their own sites directly to article pages, but instead to add them to the talk page where editors who are not involved with the site can decide whether or not it meets our standards.  -- SiobhanHansa 20:01, 5 August 2007 (UTC)


 * The only way I have a naval website is that I am one of the people actively working to make sure Wikipedia has good coverage of naval topics here. Which website do you think I run? The Land 20:06, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

This is my first day with all this behind the scenes wikipedia stuff. I have found the discussion about MQ and have posted my response there. Michael Pocock

I was looking at the maritime warfare task force banner on your info page. I will work this all out in due time, still trying to understand how all this works. MP

Move on
I am posting here, it is time to stop the thread on WT:WPSPAM. Let me first apologise for causing so much aggravation, but I will also explain why things happened, and try to suggest how we move on.

Your linkadditions got reported to WT:WPSPAM, after which I started to have a look at your contributions. You were performing link additions only (something that certainly sets of our spam alarm), and with about 500 links in wikipedia, and you having about 350 contributions a quick calculation shows that you were 'responsible' for the majority of the links in wikipedia. I checked some of the contributions, saw that you were the owner of the site that got linked to (which sets of the spam alarm even more), and saw that quite some links were to picture pages on pages that either already contained quite some pictures, or quite some links. I also noticed that there were 3 other accounts which only added links to this site, and to three other, similar sites. As was noted on WT:WPSPAM, (one of) the sites seemed to be related to/named on your site. Per our spam guideline, even if such linkadditions are to useful links, they are often all removed, and that is where I proceeded. I maybe should have investigated the situation further, as in, find an appropriate wikiproject, but then the 'spam' continues until the wikiproject reacts (as I have tried such approaches before, they tend to be ignored, even if there is consensus like 'it is a good link, it should not be in the external link section but be used as a reference' nothing happens). Again, I am sorry that this caused so much trouble.

I think it is now time to move on. Your site is certainly useful, and I think that you know a great deal about the subject (or at least have the information available). What I would suggest is the following:
 * Help in re-examining the links that are at the moment in the external links sections.
 * If there are a large number of links (say, more than 5) then evaluate them (consider removal of links that fail WP:EL, WP:NOT).
 * If the page contains (a number of) pictures then a link to your site may be superfluous. There are freely available pictures, apparently, no need to link to more.
 * On pages without pictures or few external links:
 * If you have a freely available picture, upload the picture and use it in the document.
 * If you have information, consider adding content, you can then add a link to the document on your site as the reference (see WP:FOOT for the howto of referencing). Sometimes a link to a picture can also be a reference, e.g. when discussing certain aspects of the ship.
 * When the above options don't apply, consider leaving a note on the talkpage. You can also add the link (still obeying WP:COI/WP:EL/WP:NOT) with a link to the talkpage in the edit-summary ('link added, see talkpage').  If people disagree, (temporarily) remove the link and join the discussion (but I don't think many will disagree), if in doubt, start the discussion but don't add the link.

When proceeding in this way you are less likely to set off our spam alarms, and I think you will be a great asset for the wikipedia. The next time I will visit the Cutty Sark I will first have a look at your site to see how it is supposed to look.

I hope we can move on like this. Don't hesitate to ask me if you have further questions. --Dirk Beetstra T C 08:42, 6 August 2007 (UTC)


 * As one of the editors who has added a couple of the deleted links back, can I add what Dirk suggests:
 * The External links section often invites the 'me too' type contribution of adding a link to yet another site, hence the suggestion of pruning the list when it gets beyond five, and why WP needs anti-spam patrols (and people like Dirk Beetstra are basically heroes - without them WP would degrade into rubbish). So when you add a link say what people will get when they go there.  See for example the links I have re-added on HMS A1 and HMS Prince of Wales (53).  The photos are the most obvious value add for your site (if we haven't got the technical data that you have, do please add it to the article), but there might be other types of material on your site that is relevant as additional material e.g. linking to the message board if there are discussions between researchers, relatives or survivors etc.
 * As Dirk suggests, consider adding your site as a reference instead of an external link (provided of course you are confident of the provenance of your material). For example, if we haven't got the technical data and you add it for us, you should link your site as the reference (but put a note on the talk page that you are adding your own reference, as there is a policy about no original research! WP:NOR - if you warn us, other editors can find other ways to verify the data).  Adding references is one of the most valuable activities that editors can do for WP - and references don't generally get spammed in the same way.
 * Although Dirk suggests that if an article is already well illustrated, it doesn't add much to link to more photos, I would disagree. HMS Prince of Wales (53) is already quite well illustrated, but having a link to your site is the image equivalent of further reading, and anyone particularly interested in this vessel is going to find additional insights from your site.  Obviously it wouldn't add value if it was the same or very similar photos - but views of the same vessel in different parts of the world, tells about her voyages, not just what the ship looked like.


 * Please do keep contributing to WP - you obviously love ships and have lots of resources to call on to help us make WP better. Also do join the projects like WP:MILHIST and WP:SHIPS, you'll find you make virtual friendships with other regular editors! Viv Hamilton 16:04, 6 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Please just make a decision, if it is Ok for me to add the links than I will but, you guy's are wearing me out on this. Dirk, since you seem to be the one in charge of deleting the links perhaps there is a way for you to put them back en mass. As far as editing wikipedia pages, I have tried but none of my edits to the content of the page was kept. If this was because there is a procedure for doing this than I was ignorant about it. Until all this I was unaware of all this behind the scenes chatter. I do not want to become an editor of wikipedia nor do I want to begin to delete other peoples links as I don't feel it is my place to do so. I just don't have the skill or the time to keep up with the massive amount of work that you guys do. If I did then my website would never be updated. So please just let me know if it is OK for me to add the links or not and if you are going to, or even can replace the ones that have been removed. But please be aware that if you want me to go through some kind of committe or process to add the link I would not be so inclined but this is due to the time factor. I just don't have time to be checking over and over again about one link or another. The work on my site takes hundreds of hours and I have a more than full time job and a family so please understand. It's just not worth the hassle. I'm not trying to be an ass about this I just want it finished.

Thanks, Michael Pocock

I received this message from one of your editors "Your links are considered valuable in most (if not all) cases - they just need to be reviewed & added by someone else, to avoid the appearance of you hyping your own site.

That's really all there is to it. Instead of adding links to individual pages, could you, say once a week, make a list of ships with new photos and post the list for someone to review & add?

It seems like this would actually be less work for you, since you could practically make the list by copying & pasting from your Recent Changes page, and you wouldn't have to manually edit a wiki page for each one. You shouldn't have to do any kind of follow up, just periodically provide a list of links that have new stuff.

How does that sound?"

It sounds fine to me, what do you guys think? If this is the way to go let me know who to direct the links to and I will be happy to do so. Regards, Michael Pocock

The text pasted above was my suggestion. I am posting on WikiProject Ships to see if everyone feels this is an appropriate way to move forward. Michael, you can see & participate in that discussion here: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Ships. Maralia 04:07, 7 August 2007 (UTC)


 * I can agree with this option, this sounds like the best solution. Michael, I hope you don't take this personal, but I am just afraid that it would set a very bad precedent if Wikipedia would allow certain users to perform link-additions only.  Libraries and musea could follow (not necesseraly on these specific pages), and then ... (WP:SPAMHOLE).  I am sorry, but I hope this explains.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 07:26, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

Very well, this is the route I will go. I am very happy this has been resolved, thanks to everyone who had provided input in this situstion. I have two questions, 1. Can or will the links that have been removed be repalced and 2. Where do you want me to post the updated links?

I was asked how I decide what links to post (do I search wikipedia and then make a page to match or do I make a page then search wikipedia?). The answer is the latter, I make the pages I want to, or am asked to depending on the material I have and to be honest what I feel like doing. If I feel like working on passeneger ships then I do, if I feel like working on warships, I do. Of course warships are much more popular and I have far more material on them and, wikipedia will almost always have a page on the warship not so for the passenger ships.

For smaller or obscure vessels I don't even bother to search so you can see that not all ships on MaritimeQuest have been linked to wikipedia. Also, sometimes I just forget to do it. I saw the list of all MQ links and noticed I failed to add links to the RN B class subs. Oh well it happens.

If someone here wants to add information to wikipedia from one of my pages to create a better wpda page it is fine with me, I don't have the skill or time to do so and there are many wpda pages that could use some of this.

Thanks again for resolving this and I look forward to working with you folks in the future. Michael Pocock

Possibly unfree File:Cornelia clark fort marker.JPG
A file that you uploaded or altered, File:Cornelia clark fort marker.JPG, has been listed at Possibly unfree files because its copyright status is unclear or disputed. If the file's copyright status cannot be verified, it may be deleted. You may find more information on the file description page. You are welcome to add comments to its entry at if you are interested in it not being deleted. Thank you. Stefan2 (talk) 14:11, 1 November 2012 (UTC)

I am not sure why you deleted this photo. I took the photo, I uploaded the photo. So why would you delete the photo? Michael Pocock

ArbCom elections are now open!
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