Hello, Admittedly, not being familiar with Wikipedia and being guilty of not reading guidelines and such (until today), I innocently added links to our website at the "External Links" section at the end of several Wikipedia listings, because I felt our website added historic information and value. I also added a couple of other links, which apparently weren't acceptable. I was shocked to be blocked for "spamming/advertising" and truly wasn't aware that I was doing anything wrong. I'm 54 and not very computer literate, and it took me this long to figure out how to leave this message after being blocked. I've tried contacting the blocker and have tried to find an administrator for help, but without luck, but was able to communicate with another user, a young man purportedly from India, and asked him to help me with this. I'm not a spammer/advertiser, and would like to have this blemish removed from my name. Can someone please tell me how to get unblocked? Thanks so much. User maurath Maurath (talk) 22:14, 4 January 2009 (UTC)Reply

Seems a little harsh. The website you're linking to is quite appropriate to some of the articles, less so to others, certainly no evidence of commercial motivation. Hope they reverse the block (that does in fact happen) and that you stick with Wikipedia. DavidOaks (talk) 22:26, 4 January 2009 (UTC)Reply
I saw the external link added to the United States Colored Troops page, and didn't think there was anything wrong with that link. Then, looking at your contributions, and seeing that you dropped 30+ of these links in less than three hours, I can see why they took action. If you had stuck to the Missouri troop pages (and perhaps added something to their pages, ie data, information, ref's), you might have been okay, as the website does have a lot of information on it. The27thMaine (talk) 00:44, 5 January 2009 (UTC)Reply

January 2009 edit

  Welcome to Wikipedia. Although everyone is welcome to contribute constructively to the encyclopedia, one or more of the external links you added to the page United States Army 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 for advertising or promotion. Since 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. --- Barek (talkcontribs) - 19:36, 4 January 2009 (UTC)Reply

  This is the last warning you will receive for your disruptive edits. The next time you insert a spam link, you will be blocked from editing Wikipedia. Persistent spammers may have their websites blacklisted preventing anyone from linking to them from all Wikimedia sites as well as potentially being penalized by search engines. J.delanoygabsadds 19:38, 4 January 2009 (UTC)Reply

 
You have been blocked indefinitely from editing in accordance with Wikipedia's blocking policy because your account is being used only for spam, advertising, or promotion. If you believe this block is unjustified you may contest this block by adding the text {{unblock|your reason here}} below. J.delanoygabsadds 19:41, 4 January 2009 (UTC)Reply