User talk:Phantomrose1590

Welcome

Hello and welcome to Wikipedia. We appreciate encyclopedic contributions, but some of your recent contributions seem to be advertising or for promotional purposes. Wikipedia does not allow advertising in articles. For more information on this, see

If you still have questions, there is a new contributor's help page, or you can write {{helpme}} 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! Wyatt Riot 22:07, 19 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Regarding spam links on Wikipedia

You are absolutely correct, Wikipedia is filled with spam, completely contrary to the official policy regarding external links. And you are absolutely welcome to remove as much of it as possible. We will love you for it.

Pardon me if I'm wrong, however, but I believe you're pointing this out as a form of the "if I can't do it, why can everybody else" argument. My response to this would be that I can't monitor all articles at all times, so I happen to remove spam when I see it on articles I care about (Role-playing game, for instance) and not on those I don't (Jurassic Park: Operation Genesis). Of course, this completely side-steps the fact that such an argument is bogus to begin with. (See WP:SPAM for reasons why.) If you were not attempting to make that argument, please accept my apologies. Wyatt Riot 13:37, 20 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

In response to your questions on my talk page:

1. I believe that you slightly misunderstand the role of users on Wikipedia. True, there are administrators, but I am not one of them. Wikipedia is the "free encyclopedia that anyone can edit" and that makes us all editors. Everyone has the ability to edit, add, and remove material, but subject to Wikipedia policies and guidelines. (When I suggested that you remove the spam links yourself, I meant it literally: that you have the power to do so and Wikipedia policy recommends that you do so. There's nothing making you do so, of course.) Essentially, it's a community-based encyclopedia, and so it's the community's responsiblity to enforce policies regarding spamming, for instance. Because this isn't always possible (for a number of reasons), there is a group named WikiProject Spam whose members concentrate on removing spam links in general.

2. Regarding the validity of the specific link that you added and the creation of new pages. All external links must follow official policy or be removed. Now this doesn't always happen, usually because someone slips in a link among other edits, which is why you'll sometimes see links being removed days, weeks, or months after they've been added. RPGTopia may sometimes "get huge" and become one of the major RPG-oriented websites, but only at that time would it merit an external link on the Role-playing game page. Now if someone were to create a Wikipedia entry on RPGTopia, an external link on that page would not be considered spam, because rpgtopic.com is the official website for RPGTopia. Now the problem with this is that RPGTopia probably doesn't satisfy the notability requirements regarding inclusion on Wikipedia, which generally means that verifiable and reliable sources would have to publish articles about it first. To sum up and give some examples: say that RPGTopia gets a little bigger and a handful of RPG magazines put out articles about it. Then it would be notable enough to merit an entry on Wikipedia, and a link to rpgtopia.com would be appropriate in that article (but still not on Role-playing game). Now if it kept getting bigger, to the point where it became one of the few "default" RPG websites out there that everyone goes to, then it would certainly be allowed an external link on the Role-playing game page.

3. I'm not sure what you mean by "I'd like to be given just the names of the community links and what they've done for the RPG Topic on your site, because I honestly feel that they are doing nothing but advertising there." I'm apt to blame it on the fact that I've just woken up (which should also explain the rambling above). Wyatt Riot 22:48, 20 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]