User talk:Willwhatyoudo

Welcome

Hello and welcome to Wikipedia. We appreciate encyclopedic contributions, but some of your recent contributions, such as your edit to the page Latent class model, seem to be advertising or for promotional purposes. Wikipedia does not allow advertising. For more information on this, see: If you still have questions, there is a new contributor's help page and the Teahouse, 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 my talk page if you want to get in touch with me. Again, welcome! Sleddog116 (talk) 15:18, 12 April 2012 (UTC)
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(Willwhatyoudo (talk) 16:39, 12 April 2012 (UTC)) Thank you for your message.

I understand that my insertion of a link in the "Latent Class Analysis" article may fall under the "Links to normally be avoided" category. Could you please help me to understand how the links in the "Software" section of the article are determined to acceptable? The "Software" section of this article includes both open source (R packages) and proprietary software (Mplus). Since the link to Mplus links directly to a website that "primarily exist[s] to sell products or services", it appears that this link may also fall under the "Links to normally be avoided" category. Should this link also be removed? Alternatively, should Mplus and Latent GOLD (and other software programs listed) link to a currently non-existent Wiki articles discussing the programs? Or would it make more sense to break this "Software" section down into the various types currently available as is now done in the article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_statistical_packages ?

Many thanks for your patience and assistance to a new contributor!

Reply by Sleddog116: No problem. Glad to help - and glad to see that you accepted my advice. I will take a look at the link you provided and evaluate the problem. As to your first question (about the links in the "software" section), I don't have a definite answer on how those links were decided upon because I was not involved in the article when it was inserted. My recommendation would be to look 1) at the article's talk page for information about it (i.e. see if it has been discussed before), and 2) look at the page's edit history to see when the links were added (I can help you with that if you're unsure how). If you see that those links also fail to meet the guidelines and no discussion has taken place about them, my advice would be to be bold and remove them. Just be prepared to possibly be reverted - and don't take it personally if someone reverts your edits. Don't edit-war with someone who reverts your edits; discuss it on the article's talk page or leave an inquiry on the reverting editor's talk page asking why your edits were reverted. (I suggest you read Bold, Revert, Discuss - it's not a policy, but it's a helpful guideline for how the editing process typically works.)

As to your alternate proposal, that sounds like a very sound idea if you can find references (from secondary sources) to support such sections. It might merit discussion first, but be bold if you can't find it. As far as the "non-existent Wiki articles" are concerned, can you find enough verifiable information to create those articles? Some experienced editors are in the habit of removing red-linked articles as non-notable; I don't always agree with that school of thought - if you can create an article information that will help (but is neutral), then by all means, do so. Also, not necessarily saying it applies in this case, but you might want to read "Other stuff exists" to understand why some links are included while others are not.

One last quick tip for future reference - if you want to link your text to another article within Wikipedia, you don't have to use the full URL - simply type double brackets and the article name - for instance, List of statistical packages produces List of statistical packages. (You can tell it worked because the link is blue - non-existent articles produce red links, so if you linked to an article that doesn't exist, your link would be red; it's a good idea to preview your edits to make sure you're linking to the right place.) I'm not saying that to be picky - just giving advice that can save you time in the future.

Please let me know if you have any other questions.

Cheers. Sleddog116 (talk) 18:14, 12 April 2012 (UTC)