User talk:Nicmila

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Don't spam Wikipedia
Please do not add commercial links or links of your own private websites to Wikipedia. Wikipedia is not a vehicle for advertising or a mere collection of external links. See the welcome page if you would like to learn more about contributing to our encyclopedia. Thanks. -- Rhobite 06:05, May 17, 2005 (UTC)

I am sure my contributions are not spams
I am in a process of transforming many important international documents to something usable and all external links at Wikipedia to individual formated documents at Law-Ref.org are on the topic and I feel very useful. --nicmila 06:15, 17 May 2005 (UTC)


 * You may feel they're on topic, but it's all public information which is already available from official sites. More importantly, it's against the rules for you to use Wikipedia to promote your personal site. You've been linking to your site from a very large number of articles - sorry to say it, but this is link spam. Please don't do it again. Rhobite 06:20, May 17, 2005 (UTC)


 * I have slightly different definition for spam but it I will not argue about this as I can see your point although I see some arguments against. But while the basic texts are available elsewhere (I am taking the official relesases) can you show me any place where you will find indexed versions of these documents? With my experience of a university teacher and a publishing consultant I can argue that presence or absence of indexes is the crucial point which makes a scientific or technical material usable.--nicmila 06:29, 17 May 2005 (UTC)

From Village Pump: External links to own site
Recently I have been adding links to my site [Law-Ref.org] where I am gradually indexing and crosslinking important international documents (UN conventions and other treaties, EU and US constitutions, ...). Today I have received a talk message naming this a link spam: [] While I have also a private motivation as links from Wikipedia are obviously very useful, I do not consider my links to be a spam as I am convinced they are useful because:
 * I am always asking a question before adding the link: would I consider the link useful in case I was not the author?
 * while official documents are available on the Web I am not aware of any resource which would offer indexes to these documents and crosslink them together

Examples of my links in Wikipedia:


 * United Nations Charter

and just at this moment, when I was writting this message and was looking for a second example I discovered that the author of the talk message started to remove my links without ending the disscussion with me


 * WIPO

I am planning to add other links to my crosslinked documents when available and remove the last edits by  User:Rhobite which removed my links, but I will do it only if I am confirmed that my contributions so far are not to be considered as spam. --nicmila 07:36, 17 May 2005 (UTC)


 * User:Rhobite even removed my link to:

*TREATY ESTABLISHING A CONSTITUTION FOR EUROPE According to my opinion indexes to 100+ pages of text are of some value. --nicmila 09:07, 17 May 2005 (UTC)


 * Nicmila, on my talk page you said "Marketing is a necessary part of any serious webmaster or programmer work (especially open source one) and there is nothing to be shameful about this as long as your work is of a high quality." You're right, and I hope your web site succeeds - but you need to market it somewhere else. Please don't continue using Wikipedia for marketing purposes. If your site becomes popular, there is a chance Wikipedia users will add links to the proper articles. Unfortunately you added several links to a wide range of articles, and many of them had little to do with the actual text of the laws you host. Rhobite 14:40, May 17, 2005 (UTC)


 * can you please corroborate your claim

with an example of such a case?
 * """ you added several links to a wide range of articles, and many of them had little to do with the actual text of the laws you host"""

You have removed some links from pages where relevance must be obvious to everyone, and from others where relevance is obvious to me. In some cases I can see opposite points in some not. I have asked you to point to other resources which are better suitable for addition - your single criterion "it must be spam because it points to your site" is rather strange. I have an expertize in some fields and have produced quite a lot of usable public source materials, some of them in the field of XML were translated to many languages and they are widely used around the world, see Zvon.org - Miloslav Nic. Being rather busy I would not even argue about these deletions although I consider them senseless and based on a very strange criteria. But as I am trying to understand how the wikipedia process works it is a useful exercise. External links are the things I am using from Wikipedia most often and consider them extremely useful as they are quite often of high quality. At this moment I am convinced that if you want to find hidden connections in international treaties, you should use Law-Ref.org. Because I am the author of the engine it is not a modest claim, but I still argue it is true. I would like to know if Rhobite really tried the links before deleting them and btw. also if this discussion is of interest to anyone than me. As I am thinking about Wikipedia quite a lot in recent weeks, I may be reached at address nicmila@zvon.org if somebody is interested in informal disscussion. I consider preparation of a very short research paper about pros and cons of wikipedia and opinion of people who are not anonymous would be valuable. --nicmila 05:26, 18 May 2005 (UTC)

My two cents
Hi Nicmila,

I'm sorry to hear that you are having a rough time starting out in Wikipedia. I've briefly reviewed your edit history and Rhobite's talk page and I'm afraid I'm sympathetic to Rhobite.

I can see two general guidelines that apply, though they are more community norms that strict rules. It is thus no surprise that they are not immediately obvious to you. The first is that links are put into the most specific article possible. For example, I recently moved about a dozen links pertaining to the Rwandan Genocide from the Rwanda page to the Rwandan Genocide page. They were certainly relevant to Rwanda but needed to "sink" down for practical reasons. One can imagine that if this wasn't a norm, there would be a novel-length list of external links to broad pages such as North America, ranging from religion to law to politics to cuisine, rather than the much more readable lists in sub-pages. Placing links to a law site into an article such as Slavery and Biodiversity would probably result on the link eventually being removed or moved by another user. Placing such an external link into a large number of medium-level pages would be regarded as disruptive, as it creates a large amount of work for all the users who would have to remove or move them. An exceptionally conscientious user might do all that work themself, which Rhobite has done.

The second relates to spam and how users watching for spam and vandalism make decisions. You openly admit in your posting to Rhobite's talk page that it is spam, albeit useful spam. See Spam for the relevant policies. Users with spam patterns of editing will tend to be reverted on principle. For example, I recently saw someone inserting links to a large baseball card store into baseball card, and then collectible. It may have been useful for someone, but was clearly spam and added little informative to the article. The same link was inserted into about a dozen articles and by the end I wasn't even looking to see what the article was or if the pattern had changed - I was simply reverting on the assumption that it was continued spam. I have also warned a user that inserted links to Forced Migration Review in about five articles that they were getting perilously close to spamming, even though I regard FMR highly. This obviously results in some useful links being lost, but a no tolerance approach is the only way to keep WP from being buried in advertising. The repeated line "at Law-Ref.org - fully indexed and crosslinked with other documents" is clearly advertising and would probably result in some added scrutiny.

By far the best way to get links into Wikipedia is to let other users put them in. Never put a link about a sub-topic into the overarching topics' page. The addition of external links is often checked by other users, and your edit history is giant red flag that you are spammer and that your edits should probably be treated with extreme caution. (It should be noted that editors who make disruptive edits under another account are always eventually identified by their pattern of edits and are tarred with the title of "sockpuppet vandal".) Frankly, the most constructive course would be to make substantive content contributions to Wikipedia. You clearly have knowledge you can contribute, and directly editing Wikipedia would help build up some credibility among the community.

And that's about all the thoughts that spring to mind. Cheers,  BanyanTree 22:27, 24 May 2005 (UTC)


 * Thanks. While I would use other criteria for selection of external links if I were running the site it is a right of any site to have its own policies. It may diminish the scientific value of the encyclopedia but it makes maintanance easier.--nicmila 05:13, 25 May 2005 (UTC)