User talk:Trapezelady

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Hello and welcome to Wikipedia. We appreciate encyclopedic contributions, but some of your recent contributions seem to be advertising or for promotional purposes. Wikipedia does not allow advertising in articles. For more information on this, see If you still have questions, there is a new contributor's help page, or you can write   below this message along with a question and someone will be along to answer it shortly. You may also find the following pages useful for a general introduction to Wikipedia. I hope you enjoy editing Wikipedia! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes ( ~ ); this will automatically produce your name and the date. Feel free to write a note on the bottom of if you want to get in touch with me. Again, welcome! Mfield (talk) 23:26, 7 January 2009 (UTC)
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January 2009
Please stop adding inappropriate external links to Wikipedia. It is considered spamming and Wikipedia is not a vehicle for advertising or promotion. Since Wikipedia uses nofollow tags, additions of links to Wikipedia will not alter search engine rankings. If you continue spamming, you will be blocked from editing Wikipedia. ''Without a citation to back any kind of notability, adding links to a business is inappropriate per WP:EL. Adding links to a business you are affiliated with is WP:Spamming.'' Mfield (talk) 05:58, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

The link I added is not spam. It is directly relevant to an attraction on the pier. I only added it because I saw an external link for "Pacific Park", which is a business on the pier. Please explain why that link is OK and the one I added is not. Trapezelady (talk) 06:12, 9 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Hi. Pacific Park is notable in its own right, it also has its own WP article which means it has passes a threshold of notability. Without references to back the notability of the trapeze school, there is no reason for the inclusion of a link to its website, otherwise every store and business near the pier should merit one too. That is the reason. You have to be very careful adding external links to articles without discussion when you have made no other contributions to Wikipedia - especially in light of your username - or your intentions are likely to be called into question as far as WP:COI and WP:SPAM go. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a business directory or a travel guide (see WP:NOT). Hope that helps clarify the situation. Mfield (talk) 06:22, 9 January 2009 (UTC)
 * I have also cleaned up the rest of the section as those others were not mentioned in the text nor have references to back notability. Mfield (talk) 06:29, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, the info you provided is helpful and makes sense. Just one more question: if I want to create an article about the trapeze school, would I be fairly safe using the "Hot Dog on a Stick" article as a model (but with more sources)? Trapezelady (talk) 07:18, 9 January 2009 (UTC)
 * You can use any kind of article for a similar business as a starting point, but you will definitely need to make sure to back notability and that comes from references and citations from multiple reliable third party sources. That means newspaper and media stories, trustworthy trade publications etc. but not self published sources like the schools own website (except for providing facts) or self published sources like blogs which fail the standard. If the source has an article of its own on WP its likely to be reliable enough. If the article fails to obviously qlaify as notable it is highly likely to be nominated rapidly for deletion, so make sure to create the article somewhere else like in a subpage of your userpage (e.g. User:Trapezelady/scratchpad) and get the article looking polished before copy and pasting it into its actual location. That way you can have others check it etc. without fear of deletion and losing your work. Also, if you have an affiliation with the school, you should declare it on the article talk page so as to avoid accusations of WP:COI and make sure that the article remains neutral and encyclopedic. Feel free to ask on my talk if you need an y assistance with anything. best. Mfield (talk) 07:28, 9 January 2009 (UTC)