Reusable warning prose[edit]

Spam or not spam[edit]

Are these links spam or not? [1]. The issue is whether or not this link is or is not considered to be a spamlink - www.all-art.org/.

If not then I will re-add them...Modernist (talk) 12:55, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

We need to distinguish between spam sites and spam behaviour. This is a case of spam behaviour (the site itself is probably OK), as adding links exclusively to one site is a strong indicator of promotional intent. As such, the links shouldn't be restored unless there is an editorial reason (and not a commercial and/or PR one!) to include them. The history concerns me, but our link analysis tools won't handle this domain for performance reasons (5000+ additions in the database). MER-C 13:58, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

British to American & vice-versa[edit]

What to type

What it makes

In a recent edit to the page Article, you changed one or more words from one international variety of English to another. Because Wikipedia has readers from all over the world, our policy is to respect national varieties of English in Wikipedia articles.

For a subject exclusively related to the United Kingdom (for example, a famous British person), use British English. For something related to the United States in the same way, use American English. For something related to another English-speaking country, such as Canada, Australia, or New Zealand, use the variety of English used there. For an international topic, use the form of English that the original author used.

In view of that, please don't change articles from one version of English to another, even if you don't normally use the version in which the article is written. Respect other people's versions of English. They, in turn, should respect yours. Other general guidelines on how Wikipedia articles are written can be found in the Manual of Style. If you have any questions about this, you can ask me on my talk page or visit the help desk. Thank you.

Also, thanks to user Tocharianne,
I just wanted to let you know I reverted some of your changes and wanted to explain why. On Units of textile measurement there's no need to change from American to British spelling since both are acceptable on Wikipedia. You can check out WP:ENGVAR to learn more about that. Hope you enjoy editing on Wikipedia!

Other vandal warnings[edit]

Consider the friendly but strong {{Welcome-anon-vandal}} |Victim article

==Your 17 December 2006 edits to [[Brick Township]]== Please do not remove information from articles unless it is incorrect or inappropriate, and then please explain the reason for removal in your edit summary or on the article's talk page. Such edits can be seen as [[Wikipedia:vandalism|vandalism]]. --~~~~

Please do not remove content from Wikipedia, as you did on [[27 February]] by replacing the [[Peter Drucker]] paragraph in [[Marketing]] with a quote from yourself [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Marketing&diff=111325249&oldid=111175915]). Removing content is considered [[Wikipedia:Vandalism|vandalism]]. --~~~~

Mousing over links[edit]

Someone above mentioned mousing over links. To make that work for you, you'll need to click on 'my preferences' at the top of the page, click the 'Gadgets' tab, check the box next to 'Navigation popups', then click the 'Save' button at the bottom of the page. Now when you mouse over (actually you need to hover over, for a second or two) a blue link you'll get a preview of what the link leads to. Have fun.

The final arbitrator of guilt[edit]

(From a discussion at Talk:Megan Kanka)

It does not matter if there are people who are wrongfully convicted. It also does not matter if the defendant continues to maintain his innocence. In American Law the defendant is presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Emphasis on the until proven guilty part. The final arbitrator of guilt is not the public, not the accused, not the state, but the court system. Once the court system finds one not guilty, then they are not guilty, once the court system finds they are guilty, they are guilty. It also does not matter that he is appealing his conviction. A person going before a higher court on appeal is appearing as a guilty person in the eyes of the law Once a person has been convicted, the presumption of innocence dissapears.(see Herrera v. Collins 560 U.S 390, 399-400 (1993) --User:Hallett87

Response to a complaint about unjustified vandalism accusations[edit]

Hello. The unfortunate situation is that we get thousands of vandalism edits every day—not just kids inserting dirty words, but sophisticated insertion of intentionally erroneous information designed to fool those who are not experts. Because of this, an infrastructure has developed to stamp out these problems and you are an unfortunate casualty. I am not making an excuse for what occurred but trying to help you understand why. A great number of these edits come from users editing without accounts (by their Ips by default). Those who fight these edits look for certain hallmarks, such as no edit summary being provided. You have to understand that it's not just a little problem but a raging firehose of crap being spewed which results sometimes in less than careful reversions. Your first two edits were not accompanied by edit summaries, and are meaningless to non-experts so they were reverted. I think your third will not be because it's prose, and you did leave an edit summary. Hey, I just checked and there's some nice messages on your talk page showing that the error or the warnings has been found, removed, and an apology given. Please stick around and don't let this sour you on the project as a whole, and please do sign up for an account, which has many benefits.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 04:44, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

Trivia: "a few examples suffice." Thanks, Ewulp![edit]

You've spammed this link 5 times, please stop[edit]

Please do not add commercial material to Wikipedia, as you did to Pay per click. While objective prose about products or services is acceptable, Wikipedia is not intended to be a vehicle for advertising or promotion. Please don't add links to this or any other article unless the link has its own Wikipedia article. Red (no article) links will be removed on sight. --CliffC 16:39, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

{{subst:uw-advert2|Pay per click|Please don't add links to this or any other article '''unless the link has its own Wikipedia article'''. [[reddllinkkedd|Red]] (no article) links will be '''removed on sight'''.}} --~~~~

The FisherQueen declines a spammer's unblock request[edit]

Decline reason: "You are blocked because your reason for joining Wikipedia appears to be, not making the encyclopedia better, but promoting a specific web site. We can tell because most of your edits involve adding links to that web site to Wikipedia. If this web site really is the best source of reliable information on a subject, others will undoubtedly discover it, but since you don't appear to have anything else to add to Wikipedia, there is no reason for you to have an active account at this time. If you ever become interested in helping to write the encyclopedia, please feel free to let us know. FisherQueen (talk · contribs) 18:35, 6 September 2009 (UTC)"

Marking all edits as 'minor'[edit]

{{subst:W-graphical}} (one line above)

Most people here think it's best not to do that, here's how to turn off the default behavior:

Click on 'my preferences' at the top of the page, click the 'Editing' tab, untick the box 'Mark all edits minor by default', then click 'Save'.

Then when you have an edit that really is minor, just tick the 'this is a minor edit' box directly under the edit summary. See Help:Minor edit for all the details. Happy editing, CliffC (talk) 13:45, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Please provide edit summaries[edit]

Please provide edit summaries with your edits. Without them, other editors have difficulty distinguishing between legitimate edits and vandalism, which is a big problem at Wikipedia. Edits that have edit summaries are much less likely to be reverted. Thanks.

--CliffC 18:55, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Please provide edit summaries[edit]

It would be helpful if you left an edit summary along with your edits, other editors had to spend time checking whether this was a legitimate edit or a vandalism. Thanks.

--CliffC 18:55, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Why am I a vandal (no edit summaries, no sources)[edit]

I didn't consider my edit to be disruptive, I saw that Newark and New York City share the same Metro and New York City's Metro population is 19,006,798 so I assumed Newark was too. Please explain to me how this edit was disruptive.(unsigned)

To me, any edit that lacks both an edit summary and a citation is de facto disruptive, because it takes up my and other editors' time wondering whether it's a genuine edit or just some garden-variety vandalism. Some editors will spend time checking such an edit for accuracy to be sure the encyclopedia is not damaged, some will simply revert it. If you do know for a fact that the stated NYC metro population is incorrect, please provide a citation to a reliable source and an edit summary with your correction. I looked at some of your other edits, for example here is an edit with made-up numbers that was immediately reverted by another editor. Please respect everyone's time.

Unsigned edits to Talk pages[edit]

Please try to sign your Talk page edits with four tildes (~~~~) so that everybody can see who said what when. Thanks. --CliffC 02:48, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Good rant by Adrian M. H.[edit]

<start rant>Misuse of Wikipedia really gets my hackles up. This is, as it says in the tagline, an encyclopædia. Which means, among other things, that it is not here to provide free webspace for advertorial. We are here solely to build a verifiable, factual, and neutral compendium of the notable aspects of academic, scientific, historical, and cultural knowledge. Incidentally, if those of us who regularly nominate articles for speedy removal were to notify their creators every time, it would double our workload: we have no specific obligation to do so. The number of article deletions per day are in the four-figure region.<end rant/> Adrian M. H. 22:46, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

Your upset boss (comments by Canuckle, on Alison Lawton)[edit]

Tell your boss to calm down and realize that she can not control what other people say about her. The article about her has flags on it because in its current state it is a fawning fluff piece written by one of her employees. You're only making it worse with your contributions. Wikipedia is not a vanity page service and not her personal or corporate website. I sympathise with you and I'll try to take a look at it in my spare time. The rest of us are volunteer contributors you know, not paid to make her look good like you are. Canuckle (talk) 23:41, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Why were my links removed? - an explanation[edit]

On almost any topic, there are web sites containing more information than the corresponding Wikipedia article. However, we try to encourage more content to be added to Wikipedia while keeping external links to a minimum. To do this, volunteers regularly review articles and prune external links.

One method we use to determine whether a link should stay or go is how it was added to the article. In this case, your link was added "bare" (no additional content was added to the article), across several articles. This approach always raises a red flag; if I had not noticed and removed those links, someone else almost certainly would have.

Wikipedia needs more content, not more external links. The best way to incorporate a link that points to an external web site is to contribute cited text - add information to the article that can be learned from the link in question and then cite it per normal guidelines. This is the happy medium that we strive for.

I hope this explains why your links were removed. For the future, here are some guidelines on external links: *[[WP:SPAM#How_not_to_be_a_spammer]] information regarding link spamming (in particular, see point number 2 in this guideline)
*[[WP:EL]] External Links guidelines
*[[WP:CITE]] Wikipedia citation guidelines
--~~~~

[and maybe...]

I have checked the history of the John Pierpont article, and you're right, in that case I did overlook your previous edit in which you contributed much of the article's text. However I do stand by the remainder of my removals, as only the bare links were contributed (Special:Contributions/129.219.46.76).

One of the major goals of Wikipedia is to compile a print version, for which more content and citations is much needed. If you are adding a link that serves as a reference for text that is in the Wikipedia article, then great (and thanks!) - but I urge you to focus on adding more content to the articles as you did with the John Pierpont article. If your website can be used as a source for the content you add, then by all means include it as a citation. Thanks! --AbsolutDan ^(talk) 23:56, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

Why were my links removed, another one[edit]

Hi Yechiel, Jfdwolff and CliffC. I'm a newbie and I'm starting to understand how wikipedia works for editors. In my opinion I'm entering useful information in other sites (this is why I put it in external links). In example, amlodipine.com has general information from that specific product: composition, news articles, product images and lots of bibliography... I really think this is relevant information. I've also seen that when searching cefalexin it has (in my opinion) non apropiated external links because at least one of them redirect to a pharmacy online. There's a difference, isn't it? (User:Redacted) 12:18, 20 June 2008 (UTC))

Redacted, Wikipedia rules are clear on this, "Adding external links to an article for the purpose of promoting a website or a product is not allowed". However, take a look at item 6 in Wikipedia:Spam#How not to be a spammer and the guidelines in template {{welcomespam}}. Wikipedia needs content, not links. I hope you'll stay and be a content contributor. I hear what you are saying about other promotional links in Wikipedia, these are an ongoing problem, and I have removed the one you pointed out. Editors here are volunteers and can't always keep up. If you report any you see, they will be looked at, and deleted if they fail WP:EL. Your argument is mentioned indirectly at WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS and I'm sorry is not a convincing one. --CliffC (talk) 15:13, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

Why were my links/articles removed? - another explanation[edit]

To expand for Adrian, and to explain perhaps the most important issue you mentioned, the copyright policy is quite clear: You may not copy and paste any portion of another website or page to create (or add to) a Wikipedia article. This is for legal reasons, which I'm sure you'll understand when reading the copyright policy (click on the blue words to read what they are about). Now, to expand above: Conflict of interest is when you create, or edit, an article about yourself, your family, company, product, or friends, as you would likely be unable to edit neutrally. Neutrality is one of the core policies of Wikipedia, as is verifiability. Verifiability means that any information given in an article must be verifiable with reliable, third-party sources. Reliable sources are not: Blogs, forums, fan site, personal sites, MySpace, etc. Reliable sources are: News articles, professional journals, magazines, TV news websites, or websites that perform fact checking to verify the items they report, to name a few. Without sources and verifiability, information is classified as original research, and not appropriate for an encyclopedia. Additionally, there are many notability guidelines, that cover everything from people to music, to academics. Basically notability means that something is important enough that the media has taken an interest in it, and has written about it, in more than one news article. Most important people are written about and reported on, so when notability isn't an issue, the sources to cite are quite easy to obtain. Hope this helps explain the issues! Ariel♥Gold 16:41, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

Copyright copyvio nothanks template[edit]

Your addition to Article has been removed, as it appears to have added copyrighted material to Wikipedia without permission from the copyright holder. For legal reasons, we cannot accept copyrighted text or images borrowed from other websites or printed material; such additions will be deleted. You may use external websites or publications as a source of information, but not as a source of article content such as sentences or images. Wikipedia takes copyright violations very seriously and persistent violators will be blocked from editing.

'Nuther[edit]

"It looks like you and another editor or editors have differing opinions on this. It appears that you made some changes, the other(s) made further changes, and now you seem to have reinstated some of your earlier changes. There might be more history to it, but that seems to be the recent history. It would be better to bring this up at [[Talk:Dianetics}} and reach consensus there before making changes to the article. That usually results in an enduring improvement and avoids edit wars. Please consider that this can be a contentious topic, and that your relatively narrow editing focus will imply to some editors that you have a particular agenda. I don't suggest that you do have an agenda, only that you should tread cautiously. Happy editing, --AndrewHowse (talk) 17:55, 25 July 2008 (UTC)"

On web site promotion, 'promotion through citations', from WP:Spam[edit]

Individual edits don't seem bad - though content is a little hypish and site does not seem to be particularly reliable as a source. If they were one off edits I would be inclined to leave them until an article was being seriously worked on. But the editors involved only seem to make edits that add content supported by citations from this website and I haven't found any instances of the site added by any regular editors. This looks like promotion of the website rather than development of sound encyclopedic articles.

also, removal with summary

remove WP:REFSPAM, these statements are unlikely to be challenged

"Flawed policies" argument from Talk:Spam, edited for brevity[edit]

WP:SPAM and WP:COI would appear to be deeply flawed policies if they can be cited cogently to justify the warnings recently directed against ... called this edit "spam". That didn't make sense at all. It was a link to a lecture by a respected professor on the topic that the article was about! That's a valuable contribution. I restored the link.

Then I looked at Hu12's edits. He was systematically deleting external links to lectures at Gresham College. The edits were put there by James Franklin, who is employed by Gresham College. Apparently this raised two concerns: (1) that the purpose of the links was only to promote Gresham College's web site, and (2) that there was a conflict of interests of the sort treated at WP:COI. Understandable concerns, but there's a difference between valid grounds to suspect a problem, and valid grounds to conclude finally that there is. [lots more reasonable argument, removed for brevity]

I think what you're failing to appreciate is that spamming behavior can occur, and be disruptive, even if many of the links added are appropriate when looked at individually. We simply cannot allow mass additions of external links by persons who have a conflict of interest and are thus ill-suited to objectively determine whether each and every link should be added. — Satori Son 21:29, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

What makes you think there is such a conflict of interests? The affiliation of the person with the organization is reason to INITIALLY SUSPECT such a thing. But now, AFTER you know the nature of the person's affiliation and his specific activities, do you STILL think there's a conflict of interests that prevents him from objectively judging THESE links? If so, WHY? ...and if the links are appropriate when looked at individually, and you HAVE looked at them individually, would you still delete them? If so, I will argue that that is absurd.

None of these links was appropriate. We get this all the time: an eager advocate of a magazine, company, organization, or whatever, starts going through Wikipedia "helpfully" adding links to something their boss/employer/alma mater/organization has put out. Part of the reason for the COI policy is the knowledge that nobody can be the best judge when they have a horse in the race. Such links are invariably violations of our guidelines on external links. Anybody who persists in linkspamming is going to get banned; that's as it should be. --Orange Mike | Talk 23:50, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

(eC)Regaring 'what is wrong with these links': There are some things that need to be considered here. Mass addition of links is generally unwanted, especially with a COI. The question here is if the links are needed (we are not a linkfarm/directory), and if the user (with the COI) is the best user to decide that his link is needed (a link to a car-museum on the page automobile is appropriate, but that goes for (e.g.) every car-museum in the world, so every museum owner is doing appropriate edits if they are adding their links?). For libraries/musea/archives/universities/or whatever non-profit institute: if it is a person involved in the site, then if the contributions of that person is only/mainly adding (external) links (and even, references only on every place where it could be suitable), then that behaviour is spamming (and then 'spam' is defined as 'unwanted links', not 'bad links'; see also Spam (Monty Python), one or two of them may very well have wanted spam, it is just that the spam was virtually pushed down their throat in stead of giving a choice). Also, many institutions have links which are more appropriate as references, or can add content also (as argued often, they are specialists!), so just dumping it as an external links is IMHO inappropriate even if the link is on topic, etc. (see also the header of the external links guideline!). So, in every form, if a user is only/mainly adding links, of whatever kind, then that is spamming, and the user should be cautioned, invited to discuss (e.g. with a wikiproject), and I would suggest that if there are some questionable edits (including adding link number 20 on a page), that all should be reverted and that established editors after that should check if they would have been appropriate. If after discussion it is deemed that the user is careful enough in how his links are added (deciding if there are enough already, if his link can be used as a reference, or indeed makes an appropriate external link, and even, if there is a link to another institution that is even more appropriate, that this user does also consider that), then that is fine. But not before that. COI does not have to be a problem, as long as the editor is engaging in discussion.

Again: bad faith warning (I have followed this reasoning more often)! Link additions of non-profit institutions do not give revenue to the institution, there is not an obvious financial benefit for such organisations to have their links here (and indeed, there is other rubbish to follow, which is more urgent). Still, these organisations need money, either from governments, from other parts of the organisation, etc. And a way to measure a part of that efficiency of that organisation is to look at statistics on how many people visit your site. And a way to get people to go to your site is to link it from other websites. And the high traffic that Wikipedia offers may yield more people visiting your site. Now, we don't have to assume this is true for a specific editor, and it is probably not the aim of the editor (though I have run into cases where using wikipedia as a soapbox by people involved in a non-profit institution), and the effect is minimal, it still is better to warn these users that they are 'spamming', and to try them to get to stop for a moment, and discuss (the links are certainly not needed NOW, next week is also fine, and if you have one hour to add 30 links, you also had one hour to discuss for 15 minutes and add content to/reference 3 other articles). --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 11:24, 3 July 2008 (UTC

"Why was my page deleted?" - another explanation, by Ariel[edit]

Dear Sirs, I posted a page describing a new class of pharmaceutical products called a " "tarmogen" and it was apparently deleted. This is something that has been published on in major journals such as cancer research and nature medicine. I don't understand the wikipedia site or process well enough to figure out what or why it happened. Can you advise? Thanks. Former_ski_bum (talk) 20:26, 19 November 2007 (UTC)kirk_christoffersen

According to the deletion log: 18:28, November 14, 2007 DragonflySixtyseven (Talk | contribs) deleted "Tarmogen" ‎ (copyvio). Which means the text was copied and pasted into Wikipedia, which is against copyright policy. For legal reasons, we cannot accept information taken word-for-word from other sites. Information must be summarized, paraphrased, condensed, and then can be submitted, if properly cited with reliable, third-party sources, because without them, there is no way to verify the information, which leads to original research, which is also not appropriate for an encyclopedia. Additionally, it appears you may be somehow connected with the product, judging from your image upload log, so I'll also direct you to the conflict of interest guideline, which discourages editing or creating articles about yourself, company, product, family or friends, as it would be difficult to edit neutrally. Neutrality is one of the core pillars of Wikipedia, so it is often best to allow someone uninvolved create articles with which you may have a personal connection. See Wikipedia's manual of style, layout guide, your first article, article development, and how to edit for further assistance, and if you'd like to allow a neutral editor to create your article, you can submit it to articles for creation, explaining that you are connected to the product, and thus, would like another editor to create it so there is no risk of COI. If you choose to do that, be sure you cite multiple, reliable third-party sources (company websites are not reliable sources, nor are blogs, personal websites, etc., and generally press releases, are also not considered to be a third-party source.). I hope that helps explain some of the policies and guidelines here. If you have any other issues, feel free to ask here, or at the Help Desk. Welcome to Wikipedia! Ariel♥Gold 20:47, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

Well said, Ariel :) J-ſtan^Talk_Contribs 20:51, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

Another keeper, this one from Gwernol[edit]

This is the last warning you will receive for your disruptive edits.
The next time you vandalize Wikipedia, as you did to Web hosting service, you will be blocked from editing. Gwernol 15:41, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

How do I have or get legitimate pages about my companies or articles into Wikipedia? It seems that all of the top hosting companies have their own pages. That doesn't exactly seem fair. Do I have to know or pay someone or is the system truely free? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.228.229.106 (talk • contribs)

If your company is notable enough to have been covered in multiple published, independent sources then someone else will write the article for you. You cannot, since that would be a conflict of interest. There is no payment ever required for Wikipedia articles, but we also have minimum standards of notability and we do not allow you to promote your own company through spam. Thanks, Gwernol 15:47, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

Other spammer warnings[edit]

Some approaches to handling a persistent linkspammer

Consider {{welcomespam}}

Nice piece on corporate "involvement"[edit]

It seems that you need to understand how Wikipedia works: No one owns an article; this is not the place for any "official corporate identity statements"; and no one has any say whatsoever about how their company is presented. This is an encyclopædia, not an advertising portal, promotional tool, soapbox or freespace, and no one gets to say whether their company is mentioned or not. WP:CORP does that. The history of the article shows that NPOV was violated as well. Adrian M. H. 15:54, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

Overlinking[edit]

==Overlinking in [[Popcorn (disambiguation)]]==
Just a note, no big deal, but you might want to take a look at [[WP:CONTEXT]], especially the section [[Wikipedia:CONTEXT#What_generally_should_not_be_linked|What generally should not be linked]], defining overlinking in part as "Links that have little information content, such as linking on specific years like 1995, or unnecessary linking of common words used in the common way, for which the reader can be expected to understand the word's full meaning in context, without any hyperlink help"; and [[Wikipedia:Manual of Style (disambiguation pages)]], advising in favor of "avoiding distracting information, such as extraneous links (internal or external)". Regards, ~~~~

==Overlinking in [[Popcorn (disambiguation)]]==
Just a note, no big deal - but you might want to take a look at [[Overlinking]], especially the second bullet, characterizing overlinks as "Links that have little information content, such as linking on specific years like 1995, or unnecessary linking of common words used in the common way, for which the reader can be expected to understand the word's full meaning in context, without any hyperlink help"; and [[Wikipedia:Manual of Style (disambiguation pages)]] advising in favor of "avoiding distracting information, such as extraneous links (internal or external)". Regards, ~~~~

==Overlinking in [[Italian American]]==
You might want to take a look at [[Overlinking]], especially the second bullet, characterizing overlinks as "Links that have little information content, such as linking on specific years like 1995, or unnecessary linking of common words used in the common way, for which the reader can be expected to understand the word's full meaning in context, without any hyperlink help"; and the third bullet, "A link for any single term ... excessively repeated in the same article"; finally [[Wikipedia:Manual of Style (disambiguation pages)]] advising in favor of "avoiding distracting information, such as extraneous links (internal or external)". --~~~~

Removal of warnings[edit]

Policy does not prohibit users from removing comments from their own talk pages, although archiving is preferred. The removal of a warning is taken as evidence that the warning has been read by the user. Deleted warnings can still be found in the page history.

Why waste time posting all these warnings?[edit]

Lots of warnings but no blocks. Why do we even bother? --CliffC (talk) 14:31, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

For the record, all about CliFFFc[edit]

(posted at [[Wikipedia:Usernames for administrator attention])]

New account CliFFFc (I am CliFFc, 2 F's not 3) in the edit here deleted the reference section from Car donation, an article I have edited in the past to standardize its references and remove a promotional link to an article promoting car donations to outreachcenter.org, a charitable group that Google shows has a poor reputation indeed (search "Outreach Center" and "scam"). I believe CliFFFc is likely a puppet of user Millwonder, whose edit to the same article 11 minutes earlier here removed an external link to a newspaper article critical of the organization,

Please permanently block userid CliFFFc to avoid confusion with my own (hopefully good) name CliFFc, a confusion particularly likely when the FFF username's run-together Fs are viewed in lower case as Clifffc. Thank you, CliffC (talk) 18:47, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

Deleting well-sourced criticism[edit]

I am florist from Europe. I edit some articles about floral industry in Europe in my free time. I used to work in USA in flower shops. We had bad blogs and chat post for flower shops. But flower shops did excellent job. Why you trust unobjective quotes? I do not understand why you are accusing me of COI? --User:5alextheflorist

We have rules that say reliable sources may be quoted in our articles. Properly sourced criticism should not be removed. Such removal suggests that you are not motivated by the best interests of the encyclopedia. If a company has received some negative reviews in the press, it is not up to us to censor that record. Our goal is to neutrally report what others have published about the article topic. --User:EdJohnston

Well-reasoned argument against reasonable spam[edit]

Quoting,
Without seeking to offend any of the editors involved in the decision to remove references to spiritoftheages.com, the comments - including that site has "[n]o encyclopedic purpose for ...[Wikipedia] readers" - seems inaccurate and the action to remove links based upon such comments removes links for readers interested in that artists and artwork accessible on the various links. In making that comment, I would note that spiritoftheages.com is clearly under continuous development - I have noted regular revisions to the site with many of the more recent updates involving the inclusion of considerable material derived from original sources (inclusive of details around publishing, illustrations, the artists and the text related to the illustrations). Some of that information has directly contributed to Wikipedia articles. Further, in a number of cases, the link site (spiritoftheages.com) has highly detailed information of research value that does not otherwise appear to be available on the web - examples that spring to mind are the emerging practice on the site to accompany images with associated text (as is the case in Vernon Hill's illustrations to Ballads Weird and Wonderful), Holbein's illustrations to The Praise of Folly (Moriae Encomium) [in that example, the illustrations are shown with both French and English translations of Erasmus' text], illustrations shown from Der Weiss Kunig (where extracts of translated text from the medieval German is shown on occasions), Der Todten-Tantz (where German and English text is shown with the associated image) and Michaud's The History of the Crusades (where Dore's illustrations are shown with Michaud's associated text). I do appreciate the comments about spam and the like, but believe this to be a significant resource that has relevance to Wikipedia users (and rather than go ahead with inserting references again, would appreciate some considered comment about the points I have raised before taking such potentially inflammatory action). --User:Ruderabbit007

There are many thousands of good web sites, and many have teams of eager helpers who want to promote their site. I'm sure your site (like many others) is good value, and you (like many others) are well intentioned. But the fact is that you (and 121.223.25.219) are a single purpose account who obviously is looking for places on Wikipedia where you can inject links to your site. We can't debate the quality or relevance of your site because many articles could have links to over a hundred quality sites. We have to be brutal and cut off all attempts to perform link spamming. Have a look over this page and its archives to get an idea of the size of the problem. --User:Johnuniq

There certainly seem to be a lot of assumptions being made by some otherwise well-intentioned editors, including that I am working for spiritoftheages.com and thus, am "obviously ... looking for places fo Wikipedia where ... [I]can inject links to ... [the] site". That response seems overly emotional and loaded with defamatory assumptions that betray a zealotry that is unwarranted in editing - similar to many of the justifications used, including that "the images are postage stamp sized" and the like (obviously the size of the images depends on the screen resolution - and not all users have hi-def screens). For some time, I have been adding information to Wikipedia on various subjects - and I will continue to do so. --User:Ruderabbit007

I will have to make an essay on this (is there one?) because the issue regularly arises where a well-intentioned editor gets irritated by do-gooders such as myself when we remove their text, particularly their links. Some spammers don't need any explanation because they always had a clear intention to exploit Wikipedia for their benefit. However, there are other editors who find a great web site (there are lots of them), and feel that using the site on Wikipedia would benefit the relevant articles.

To understand why many editors remove link additions, think about the thousands of great web sites. Often each site has lots of workers and readers who are interested in the topic of that site. Some of those people will realize that "the encyclopdia that anyone can edit" is a great place to add links. The personal motivation of the editor is not relevant, it's the effect that concerns WikiProject Spam. We cannot determine whether a particular editor is "good" or "bad". We only know that if those who add links are not strongly resisted, then every paragraph in every article on Wikipedia will end up with links to several web sites.

The clearest test of whether a particular editor needs to be resisted comes from looking at their contributions. Checking the contribs of [these two users] shows that while the edits were good, nearly all the edited articles ended up with links to one site. We cannot say "that's ok because your intentions are good and the site is helpful" because there is a never-ending queue of spammers, and they would want to argue about their intentions and their helpful site.

It looks as if nearly all articles edited by the two above-mentioned users involved adding a link to spiritoftheages, so there are no assumptions involved in saying "obviously is looking for places on Wikipedia where you can inject links to your site". I will make it clear now that by "your site" I simply mean the site you were interested in. As I hope I have made clear above, your intentions and who owns the site are not relevant. --Johnuniq

'Citation needed' tag removal[edit]

Please don't remove 'citation needed' tags without providing a citation. These tags indicate someone has challenged a statement and should remain in place until a citation is supplied, or until they 'age out' (are over a month old), at which time the statement and the tag can be removed by any editor. This is what I have done with the statements referenced by the two aged-out tags that were deleted in Fight Club. Thanks, CliffC (talk) 04:09, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

Tip on sharing repeated references to same source[edit]

Hi, just a tip that may save someone some work later – when adding multiple references (as in Albert Gonzalez) to the same news article, you can use the "name" parameter in the <ref> of the first use of the citation, thus: <ref name=MH0822>, then later on instead of repeating the same citation over and over, just say <ref name=MH0822 /> (note trailing slash) to cite the same reference. Some of the other cites in the Albert Gonzales article already use this method. --CliffC (talk) 18:32, 23 August 2009 (UTC)