User talk:Showmesouthafrica

Hi there. I see you've been adding links to showme.co.za to various articles about South African towns. I'm afraid that sort of thing isn't allowed, as it violates our policy on external links. Also, because your username "Showmesouthafrica" indicates that you're editing for showme.co.za, you will run into trouble with our policies about conflicts of interest and acceptable usernames. Please ask if you have any questions. Regards, htonl (talk) 10:37, 16 July 2013 (UTC)


 * Hi - I'm not sure how to reply to you, I hope this is the place. The Showme sites contain the most up to date, correct and informative information about South Africa and its towns - more so than the majority of external links on Wikipedia for these towns.


 * This is fine for replies. I'm sure you believe that about ShowMe, but it's not the criteria we use for determining which links to include. The external links section is not supposed to be a directory of potentially useful links. It is generally expected to contain link(s) to the official website of the thing in question - which in the case of towns we interpret as meaning the local municipality and/or the town's official tourism bureau - and other than that, only content that we would like to include in the article but can't for some reason. I repeat, it is not for a general collection of links about the topic in question. - htonl (talk) 11:27, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

July 2013
Hello, I'm Apparition11. I wanted to let you know that I removed an external link you added to the page Cape Town, because it seemed to be inappropriate for an encyclopedia. If you think I made a mistake, or if you have any questions, you can leave me a message on my talk page, or take a look at our guidelines about links. Thank you. Apparition11 Complaints/ Mistakes 10:56, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Hello, Showmesouthafrica. We welcome your contributions to Wikipedia, but if you are affiliated with some of the people, places or things you have written about on Wikipedia, you may have a conflict of interest or close connection to the subject.

All editors are required to comply with Wikipedia's neutral point of view content policy. People who are very close to a subject often have a distorted view of it, which may cause them to inadvertently edit in ways that make the article either too flattering or too disparaging. People with a close connection to a subject are not absolutely prohibited from editing about that subject, but they need to be especially careful about ensuring their edits are verified by reliable sources and writing with as little bias as possible.

If you are very close to a subject, here are some ways you can reduce the risk of problems:


 * Avoid or exercise great caution when editing or creating articles related to you, your organization, or its competitors, as well as projects and products they are involved with.
 * Be cautious about deletion discussions. Everyone is welcome to provide information about independent sources in deletion discussions, but avoid advocating for deletion of articles about your competitors.
 * Avoid linking to the Wikipedia article or website of your organization in other articles (see Spam).
 * Exercise great caution so that you do not accidentally breach Wikipedia's content policies.

Please familiarize yourself with relevant content policies and guidelines, especially those pertaining to neutral point of view, verifiability of information, and autobiographies.

For information on how to contribute to Wikipedia when you have a conflict of interest, please see our frequently asked questions for organizations. Thank you. Apparition11 Complaints/ Mistakes 10:57, 16 July 2013 (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 websites, links to websites with which you are affiliated, and links that attract visitors to a website 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 page, please discuss it on the associated talk page rather than re-adding it. Thank you. Materialscientist (talk) 11:25, 16 July 2013 (UTC)