User talk:Sharlene Thompson

A post which has caused some spam problems

Wiki Survey

My colleague and I are conducting a study of wikis with health information pages. To participate in the survey click on https://websurvey.jmu.edu/ss/wsb.dll/27/wikipedia.htm

Hello, I'm Ww. I wanted to let you know that one or more external links you added have been removed because they seemed to be inappropriate for an encyclopedia. If you think I made a mistake, or if you have any questions, you can leave me a message on my talk page, or take a look at our guidelines about links. Thank you. Notinasnaid 18:25, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

Please stop adding this to articles immediately. It is highly inappropriate for you to spam Wikipedia articles like this. If you continue I will indefinitely block this account. Gwernol 18:26, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

PLEASE STOP NOW

Please stop adding inappropriate content to Wikipedia articles. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. Wikipedia is not a bulletin board for you to post solicitations. Fan-1967 18:27, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

Please forgive. The links were not intended to be SPAM. I am new to using wikipedia and new to the rules.

We actually received permission to post a link to our study on wikipedia article pages and to email users from Jeandré du Toit.

Do you have any suggestions regarding how we could let the community know about our study?

Sorry to have caused offense.

I'd be okay with you adding these to the talk pages of articles, but not to the articles themselves. So, for example, you could add a request to Talk:Multiple sclerosis but not to Multiple sclerosis. Thanks, Gwernol 18:57, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

The permission you received was, almost certainly, ill advised. In fact, it would be only one of the Directors of the WikiFoundation (Wikipeida's official owner of record) who might have, alone, granted such permission, but I think even that is questionable. I suspect you've been led astray by someone who does not understand the nature o fthe Wikipedia. You probably should have been directed to the Village Pump, or one of the other community pages (links in the rightmost column on most pages), to inquire of the WP community whether your survey was acceptable content for WP, by the only relevant test, a consensus of WP editors. Suggestions for an acceptable posting location will likely be forthcoming, though I myself can't quite think of one just now. WP is not set up for inquiries of its editors or users. Perhaps you could ask for ideas about setting up such a mechanism? Or write a proposal for one such?

-

In any case, your placement choice for the article I found was exceptionally poor. It was the first text in the article, placed well above all other text, even above the italic disambiguation header, and implied that the survey was more important than the content of the article. Perhaps it was, but the assumption with which we all operate here on WP is that we are engaged in writing an encyclopdia, and that alone is the standard by which all (at least in theory, and as much as can be managed, in practice) is measured. It is likely that the placement was what particularly evoked immediate and vehement requests that you stop.

You may find that your relationship with the Wikipedia, and its editors / operators / users may go swimmingly if you find an article or topic on which you are informed, and contribute some content, or revise some existing content. You too will probably find yourself acting protectively about the Wikipedia.

I have also indented your reply post above using the ':' convention. I trust there will be no objection. And it would be well if you singed your posts with the 4 twiddles (ie, ~) in a row convention. ww 19:18, 30 October 2006 (UTC)