User talk:Spfarquhar

Welcome!

Hello, Spfarquhar, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages that you might find helpful:

I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or place {{helpme}} on your talk page and ask your question there. Again, welcome!

Please do not add inappropriate external links to Wikipedia, as you did in E-mail filtering. 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. Wrs1864 15:04, 15 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Author comment to above: I added these links as I thought they would be useful to the readers of this section. They are free resources and should contribute to this relevancy of this section.

Adding external links can be a service to our readers, but they should be kept to a minimum of those that are meritable, accessible and appropriate to the article - all these conditions, as I see, were met by the inclusion of these external links. I see many other direct product placements, of which my external links were not. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Spfarquhar (talk • contribs)

Hi Spfarquhar. I'll try to address your concerns. First up, I've added the "welcome" template that should give you a little more information about wikipedia. In particular, you can sign your comments by using ~~~~. Also, a lot of people use the ':' character to indent your replies on talk and discussion pages to make it clearer which parts are being replied to and who wrote what.

Ok, as for the links, I encourage you to read the WP:External links page, everything I tell you will just be a rehash of it and I may not do a good job of making things clear. As far as the specific external links goes, in addition to the WP:EL page, please review the WP:Conflict of interest page. Please refrain from adding any links that you are associated with, or creating articles about yourself. One link you added was to various e-mail laws, but there is already an article on that subject so it isn't appropriate for the E-mail filtering page. Moreover, most of that information should just be put into the article instead of linking to an external source. The other link you added was a directory of products and as WP:EL says, the dmoz entry is generally preferred.

I agree that there is a huge problem with product placement links. Please help out by eliminating those other links that violate WP:EL. Thanks Wrs1864 21:49, 15 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]