User talk:WheelCipher

Please do not add inappropriate external links to Wikipedia. Wikipedia is not a mere directory 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 exist to attract visitors to a web site or promote a product. See the external links guideline and spam policies for further explanations of links that are considered appropriate. If you feel the link should be added to the article, then please discuss it on the article's talk page rather than re-adding it. See the welcome page to learn more about Wikipedia. Thank you.

Please do not add links to: --A. B. (talk) 18:27, 1 January 2007 (UTC)
 * http://www.DistanceEdOnline.net
 * Current list of articles with this link
 * http://www.elearners.com
 * Current list of articles with this link

Talk:Edublog
Just added a comment at that talk page. --Renrenren 17:06, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

Once again, please do not add links to DistanceEdOnline.net
Please stop adding inappropriate external links to Wikipedia. It is considered spamming, and Wikipedia is not a vehicle for advertising. Thanks.

The above is our standard boilerplate level 2 external links warning. Consider yourself duly warned a second time. (The warnings get progressively less friendly as you progress through 3 and 4).

OK, so on to the matter at hand: I see you've in effect implicitly asked on the Talk:Edublog why delete the DistanceEdOnline.net and not that other crummy link? Comments:
 * 1) Thanks for deleting the other link if it was inappropriate.
 * 2) You should not have added back your own link, however -- hence the 2nd warning.
 * 3) Wikipedia presently has about 3 million links. I'd guess perhaps 500k to 1 million are inappropriate although most have been added in good faith (but poor judgment) by regular editors, not added in some sort of linking campaign.
 * 4) Why you? Because you set off someone's spam radar -- a new editor adding multiple inappropriate links all at once and little else.
 * 5) So should other inappropriate links stay if yours must go? Absolutely not. Feel free to delete them, however I would suggest you perhaps do so tactfully and carefully, explaining what you're doing on an article's talk page. I'd make sure you are very familiar with:
 * 6) External links guideline -- read thoroughly
 * 7) Conflict of Interest guideline -- read
 * 8) Reliable sources guideline -- the thought processes and values behind our rather narrow external links criteria -read
 * 9) Original Research policy -- skim
 * 10) Verifiability policy -- skim
 * I emphasize going slow on deleting other links only because of your history -- folks might be suspicious at first. As an alternative, you can flag articles with bad links using the Template:Cleanup-spam tag. That flags others to come do the dirty work by adding them to the list at Category:Wikipedia spam cleanup.

If you feel you've been done wrong and I'm all wet, you can always go to WikiProject Spam and get a second opinion however you'll likely hear the same thing.

So, again, welcome to Wikipedia, but please no more DistanceEdOnline.net links. --A. B. (talk) 18:53, 2 January 2007 (UTC)