User talk:BobbyToffee

Welcome to Wikipedia. Although everyone is welcome to contribute to the encyclopedia, one or more of the external links you added do not comply with our guidelines for external links and have been removed. Wikipedia is not a collection of links; nor should it be used as a platform for advertising or promotion, and doing so is contrary to the goals of this project. Because Wikipedia uses nofollow tags, external links do not alter search engine rankings. If you feel the link should be added to the article, please discuss it on the article's talk page before reinserting it. Please take a look at the welcome page to learn more about contributing to this encyclopedia. Thank you. Ian Spackman (talk) 05:38, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

Ian, I do believe it does follow this category as it provides useful information in relation to the Lake Como area. Unlike all the other sites who are doing it for commercial gain. Lakecomopages has been present on wiki for more than 8 months without any issue. Over the past month the site has been removed from wiki repeatedly by commercial website operators (and I can prove it) that dominate the lake como subject area. Then we have Attilios, I should note that lakecomopages has no commercial aspect to it whatsoever so I don't know what the using popups is all about.

So here we are, the undocumented escalation path where you consider yourself the authoritarian of the subject Lake Como or is it wikipedia?. As the people editing lakecomopages live in the area and speak to the visitors, they know first-hand what information is useful and relevant. Can you possibly say the same, or is that irrelevant?

As it states in the guidelines linking with wikipedia has no affect on the rankings of the website so why do you think lakecomopages is there? It's not for the commercial aspect, so obviously it's there to aid visitors with useful relevant information pertaining to lake como. It never ceases to amaze me the carte blanche methods used to edit pages on wiki. If someone feels that they want to take ownership of a particular subject matter then they should edit in such a way that they understand proposed content and relevancy not just "hmmm, doesn't look to comply lets remove it". If its due to time contraints then the person shouldn't be editing the page as they are only doing half a job.

I'll be honest with you, ordinarily I would just sigh and forget about this as I don't want to waste my time playing ping pong, but I feel that this is a disservice to the visitors coming to the lake como wiki page.— Preceding unsigned comment added by BobbyToffee (talk • contribs)

Personally I quite like your site, as it happens, and might well look at it next time I plan to visit the lake. But of course that personal view does not make it an appropriate link for what is an encyclopedia, not a directory of links. The Open Directory Project (dmoz.org) is intended for such purposes, however. Have you considered submitting your site to the relevant categories there? Those categories can be linked to from our articles using the {{dmoz}} template, and I have never seen such links attracting controversy.

Having read the guidelines for external links referred to above you will know that in line with Wikipedia policies ‘you should avoid linking to a site that you own, maintain, or represent—even if WP guidelines seem to imply that it may otherwise be linked’. You will also know that ‘except for a link to an official page of the article's subject, one should avoid…any site that does not provide a unique resource beyond what the article would contain if it became a Featured article’. If you think your site does offer valuable and unique resources of this type then I suggest that you make out the case on the appropriate talk pages. If consensus is reached that a link should be included, certainly an established editor will restore it to the article.

Best wishes, Ian Spackman

P.S. Noting comments like ‘you consider yourself the authoritarian of the subject Lake Como’, and edit summaries like this, you might also wish to read WP:Civil. Ian Spackman (talk) 12:00, 26 October 2009 (UTC)