User talk:Rou3

Welcome!
Welcome to Wikipedia. Although everyone is welcome to contribute 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 as a platform for advertising or promotion, and doing so is contrary to the goals of this project. Because 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 constructively to this encyclopedia. Thank you. 76.235.56.106 (talk) 20:28, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

Please do not add inappropriate external links to Wikipedia. Wikipedia is not a collection 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 attract visitors to a web site or promote a product. See the external links guideline and spam guideline for further explanations. Because Wikipedia uses the nofollow attribute value, its external links are disregarded by most search engines. If you feel the link should be added to the article, please discuss it on the article's talk page rather than re-adding it. Thank you. 76.235.56.106 (talk) 20:34, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

Please stop adding inappropriate external links to Wikipedia. It is considered spamming and Wikipedia is not a vehicle for advertising or promotion. Because Wikipedia uses nofollow tags, additions of links to Wikipedia will not alter search engine rankings. If you continue spamming, you may be blocked from editing Wikipedia. 76.235.56.106 (talk) 20:35, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

This is your last warning; the next time you insert a spam link, you may be blocked from editing without further notice. Persistent spammers may have their websites blacklisted, preventing anyone from linking to them from all Wikimedia sites as well as potentially being penalized by search engines. 76.235.56.106 (talk) 20:38, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

May 2011
You have been blocked indefinitely from editing for spamming or advertising. From your contributions, this seems to be your only purpose. If you would like to be unblocked, you may appeal this block by adding the text, but you should read the guide to appealing blocks first.  Acroterion   (talk)   20:44, 15 May 2011 (UTC)


 * If you're not a highly recognized music journalist, then those interviews count as WP:OR, and linking to them is pure spam. If there's even a single advert on any of the websites linked to, it's even worse ... ( talk→   BWilkins   ←track ) 22:31, 15 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Dear BWilkins, you are the third moderator who has dealt with the unfair blocking of my account that, as mentioned above, is completely contrary to Wikipedia guidelines and not one moderator has taken the time to actually check the links. The website in question has NO ADVERTISING on it at all. Secondly, there are thousands of web links to sites that DO contain advertising. Why do you not tackle these offenders rather than somebody who is merely attempting to enhance Wikipedia? Furthermore all warnings I received (that I was unaware of until I was blocked and notified of that on screen) were received within 10 minutes - from first to final warning. Is this really fair practise? As for being a 'highly recognised' music journalist. If you take the time to actually look at the links you will see that I am a music journalist with over 15 years experience writing for magazines including International DJ magazine and Mixmag - the largest selling dance music magazine in the world. You will see this if you follow any of the links I posted. Every single article has been researched thoroughly prior to publication in the magazine/website in question and first person interviews have been conducted between myself and the artists in question - therefore I find the suggestion of 'WP:OR' as you put it offensive and defamatory. I suggest that before blocking valid users who are trying to contribute to Wikipedia and improve users' experience the links people are posting should at least be checked so that mistakes like this are not made. As stated before, please unblock my account as it is clear I have not broken Wikipedia guidelines at all otherwise I will take further action. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Rou3 (talk • contribs) 23:13, 15 May 2011
 * In response to the above and your email, the issue is not the quality of the interviews, it's your addition of links to your interviews, as well as the fact that the interviews themselves, while entertaining to read, are feature articles and offer relatively little in the way of the encyclopedic content that external link policy requires. Again, that's not a criticism of your work, it's just not the style or specificity of content that makes it useful as an external link. In general, we expect editors to avoid adding material to subjects or from sources in which they have a direct personal interest, as it makes it hard to maintain an appropriate level of editorial distance. Repeated linking to one's product is regarded as promotional, whether or not any form of gain is involved. In cases like this, we have a standard offer: if you will undertake to work with other material, avoiding the problematic addition of links to your own interviews, you can be unblocked. If your sole purpose here is to add links to your work, then it implies that your priorities are more aligned with your own interests than with Wikipedia's.  Acroterion   (talk)   02:35, 17 May 2011 (UTC)


 * Can you please clarify what you mean by "I will take further action"? JamesBWatson (talk) 14:50, 16 May 2011 (UTC)


 * With respect to the addition of full transcripts and linkage, I'd have a few observations:
 * It's probably not in your best interest to post transcripts. This is your product, after all, and you will be releasing it under the Creative Commons copyleft. Since your website has a copyright notice, I assume that you want to retain control of your work, which becomes nearly impossible if you place it here under the required free license.
 * Transcripts will upset the balance of an article and aren't really appropriate for an encyclopedia, which seeks to summarize and condense material rather than to go into great depth and detail. Selective quotes are much preferred, and even then, the use of quotes should be de minimis. It's far preferable to use such material as an attributed reference and to weave the substance in as part of the article's prose in summarized or paraphrased form. Better to say "in an interview, Musician X described his childhood as ..." than to directly quote, unless the quote is uniquely stated.
 * Encyclopedias are tertiary sources, striving to create no new thought, but rather to summarize material already developed by others in secondary sources; editorially reviewed or peer-reviewed content. Your interviews are self-published primary sources, at least in the form presented on your webpage, something to be avoided or at least approached with care. We prefer material that has been published by a party that has reviewed the content and which has a reputation for fact-checking and editorial control. That's not to say that you haven't done all that, but it's the preferred methodology for the encyclopedia, and we avoid self-published sources in most (but not all) instances. That's where reputation comes in: if your material has been frequently picked up and published elsewhere, preferably in dead-tree form, that source would be preferred, but it also lends substance to your self-published material. A quick search shows a lot of hits for you, but most lead back to your website. Social media (and I see you've been very active there) are effectively useless for this purpose, as it's all self-published or linked to self-published material. Blogs are nearly always rejected on WP as sources, for instance, unless they're the blog of a major public or media figure.
 * You will need to check the policies on conflict of interest as well. We prefer that editors not use material they've created, because it's hard to maintain balance and neutrality: you can imagine the nationalist or scientific issues that get injected into articles in that manner. Music journalism is less contentious, but I'd really rather you used your knowledge of the industry to improve content without resorting to your own material, but rather using references to other peoples' work. Your knowledge can inform your contributions, but we are all expected to avoid reference to our own work, out of a general need to maintain order and to scrupulously avoid self-promotion, which can easily get out of hand, considering the way WP content is developed. That's why we're so tough on obvious self-reference. As you can imagine, we see a lot of spam: people advertising their dry-cleaning business, religious or nationalist proselytizers, link-farming, search engine optimizers (which doesn't work here, and which can backfire if Google finds out), it goes on and on. Wikipedia is written using social media principles, but it isn't pure social media, and it's subject to editorial control by consensus, which can be quite ruthless at times.
 * I'm willing to unblock based on your undertaking to avoid reference to your work - if that's acceptable, please reply, and I'm happy to answer any other questions. There are a lot of rules: nobody (including myself) can fully understand all of them, but we'll try to explain.  Acroterion   (talk)   12:48, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

Thanks again for taking the time to get back to me Acroterion, that's very helpful. All of the articles on my own site have been published in print magazines or online, mostly in print. You can see this at the top of each article on my site where I have linked back to the publication's website and included the issue number and date etc. My site is ad-free which therefore meets Wikipedia guidelines on the one hand but is seen as 'self-publishing' in spite of the articles all being published elsewhere. If I link to the publication's websites instead as you suggest then I will fall foul of posting links to sites with ads on so it really is a no-win situation! Either way that means no posting links to the interview features I've written for various publications that I felt may be of interest to people. I am also not entirely happy to completely forego the copyright in the transcripts so that means no more posting of links from me! I understand that you have guidelines to follow though and that I as a user must also abide by these guidelines. Please unblock my account and any future edits I make will be in keeping with these guidelines. Thanks again, Ian —Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.104.88.107 (talk) 11:15, 19 May 2011 (UTC)


 * Excirial took care of the unblock first, so all's well. I appreciate your willingness to work with us and your interest in contributing; working on "the free encyclopedia" isn't as straightforward as we'd like to think, in part because the "free" part means that your contributions become free, which can be a problem when your company or livelihood are involved. We're not quite releasing our work into the public domain, but it's pretty close, and I've always cautioned contributors not to release anything over which they might wish to retain control onto the site. Let me know if you have any questions.   Acroterion   (talk)   12:08, 19 May 2011 (UTC)