User talk:TrisDG

Welcome!

Hello,, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few good links for newcomers: I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~&#126;); this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you need help, check out Where to ask a question, ask me on my talk page, or place  on your talk page and someone will show up shortly to answer your questions. Again, welcome! Kukini 16:04, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
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Please do not add commercial links (or links to your own private websites) to Wikipedia. Wikipedia is not a vehicle for advertising or a mere collection of external links. You are, however, encouraged to add content instead of links to the encyclopedia. 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. See the welcome page to learn more about Wikipedia. Thanks. Mwanner | Talk 22:40, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

Please stop adding commercial links to Wikipedia. It is considered spamming, and Wikipedia is not a vehicle for advertising. Thanks. --S.K. 06:41, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

Advice for future edits
You wrote: "Can you offer any advice for future posts..."?


 * Most of the advice I would offer is contained in the links in my first message to you, above. Read External links. Basically, Wikipedia is not a link farm. Links should only be added if they have valuable information that does not belong in the article itself and if they are not trying to sell something. If the information in the link does belong it the article, it should be re-written (to avoid copyright issues) and added to the article. In general, articles should have very few links, because very few links fit these criteria.


 * The idea is that we want our articles to be the best possible source of information on a topic, not a short article followed by a long list of links to other articles-- one might as well just google the subject and read the first dozen sites if we are going to assemble long external link lists.


 * Generally, if the link is trying to sell something, the bar to it's inclusion gets a lot higher-- a site with advertising, or that engages in direct sales would have to be truly extraordinary to pass muster.


 * Finally, don't be mislead if you see a lot of links in a lot of articles that violate the above: we're being spammed pretty massively, and there is often a substantial lag in cleaning things up. And please feel free to join in the cleanup!


 * Happy editing! -- Mwanner | Talk 20:38, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

External links in article text
You wrote: "Some of us were also wondering if external links can be added throughout the articles on each page, or if that is reserved for linking only to other Wikipedia pages; can external links only be posted under the External Links section?"


 * In general, external links should only appear in the External links section. A fairly common exception is when the link is used as a reference to support a given fact, especially a statistic.  See WP:EL under "Citations".  Cheers! -- Mwanner | Talk 23:25, 2 August 2006 (UTC)