User talk:Pikeweatherman

A note on your edits to date: please read Wikipedia's policy on external links. Newspaper web sites are not generally linked for counties (usually it is the official county website). I am going to revert your edits, but if you feel strongly otherwise, please leave a message here or on my talk page. Some might view your edits as "link spam", which is not allowed. Thanks, Ruhrfisch 04:02, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Response to Question
Hi Pikeweatherman, thanks for the question at my talk page. First off, let me say that I have nothing against you or your newspaper. However, Wikipedia is not a web directory and it did not seem to me that your link met the criteria in WP:EL. I have since looked at the paper's web site here and am still very doubtful it meets the criteria.

Here are my concerns - there are links to 36 "news" articles on the Tristateobserver website. 10 are to "National" news, 3 each are to "State" and "World" news, and 20 are to "Local News". Of those 20 articles, only 7 (35%) are truly local for Pike County, Pennsylvania: 1 on concerts at a local high school, 2 on local businesses (Wilkins & Assoc., The Treehouse), 3 on the United Way campaign, and one on PennDot work in the county. 3 more articles are on regional news (Steamtown and the NE PA Philharmonic in Scranton, and the Orange County, NY 4-H Goat Club) but the link is for Pike County.

If I consider all news links, only 7 of 36 (less than 20%) are local news. However you count them, only one of the local news stories (concerts at the high school) is on a topic even metioned in the Pike County article (the school district). To be fair, highways are often mentioned in county articles, but are not for Pike Co. (so the PennDot article could someday count). While I understand your desire to include your paper's website on Wikipedia, I do not see that it meets the criteria for inclusion as an external link.

Since Wikipedia is about consensus, if you want I will raise this issue on the WP:PA talk page and we can see what the consensus is. I have to warn you that I doubt it will be seen differently there. Thanks, and I look forward to your response here or at my talk page

Yours, Ruhrfisch 05:13, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

P.S. There is a tab at the top of this page that says "edit this page" by the way - I know it can be difficult to learn the ropes here. Please ask if I can be of help in any way, especially if you want to add to articles on Pike County or its communities.


 * Thanks for your response. Just to clarify, I am not against commercial websites or links to them, nor am I against newspapers or links to them. I have written two featured articles and they both have links to newspaper articles in them as references. I have also contributed much to the article on the Grit (newspaper) and it has a link to the Grit website. If there were a Wikipedia article on the TriState Observer, it would be fine to have a link / reference to the paper's website. However, I do not think it meets the criteria for inclusion as an external link for Pike County or any of the communities in or near it. I double checked the list of featured articles at WP:FA and there are no US counties there, but there are several US cities. I checked Ann Arbor, Michigan and Cleveland, Ohio and neither lists a local newspaper in External links. Since Wikipedia is supposed to work by consensus, I will raise this issue (what are valid external links for US County articles) on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject U.S. counties and Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Pennsylvania (Counties will be a link to PA) and we can see what the consensus is. I will put in links to your and my talk pages and briefly summarize our discussion so far. You are welcome to add to the talk page and make your case and I will not remove the links unless there is consensus to do so. Sound good? Yours, Ruhrfisch 03:01, 24 December 2006 (UTC)