Iranyc

Ira, thanks for your edits, and great to have you on wp. and thanks -- you would not believe how large an impact the guide had on my college career, not to say musical tastes. bikeable (talk) 15:46, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

Thanks

Thanks very much for your kind words. I admit to being a bit stymied by the technology here - i will attempt to get a grip on it before delving in any further.

ira

Feel free to leave me a message on my talk page if you have any questions or if I can help. best -- bikeable (talk) 04:50, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

linking to Trouser Press

hi Ira -- sorry for the slow reply. You and the commenter you quote are quite right that WP is not doing a good job of linking to TP reviews for many bands. I've noticed this myself, but have been lazy about adding links (in general, not just to TP). The way to look at (and to pitch) this is that TP is an invaluable source of expert reviews; I would caution you not to say that you are trying to raise TP's visibility on wikipedia. This may be true but skirts the spirit of wikipedia's guidelines on spam and external links. Were you only trying to improve TP's visibility, you could be accused of spamming, as your commenter evidently was. Of course, since TP is a genuine resource, it's extremely valuable for wikipedia to include links.

There's no problem with us doing so, and in fact I notice that TP links have a much simpler format than All Music links (TP's are of the form trouserpress.com/entry.php?a=stereolab which is easy, whereas AMG's use some database code). I think it's fine for you and me and anyone else to add TP links, keeping in mind that the goal is to improve WP, rather than for TP's benefit. The criticism of vandalism was probably an overenthusiastic editor who was not familiar with TP. A bit of explanation should help. Feel free to ask people to contact me -- I am a nobody, not even an administrator, but I do at least know the rules and can explain that the TP links are appropriate. I learned most of what I know about music from TP (only a bit of an exaggeration) so I know whereof I speak!

Sorry this seems a bit finicky and rule-heavy, but WP has very good reasons to be protective of spam links. I notice that there is a "template" (don't worry about the details) to make adding AMG links easier for music editors -- I will see if I can hack together a TP template and perhaps advertise that a bit to other music editors. I'll let you know how it goes.

I suspect this is a lot more detail than you wanted, but I hope it's helpful. have a good Thanksgiving! best, bikeable (talk) 05:14, 22 November 2007 (UTC)