Please do not add advertising or inappropriate external links to Wikipedia. Wikipedia is not a mere directory of links nor should it be used for advertising or promotion. Inappropriate links include (but are not limited to) links to personal web sites, links to web sites with which you are affiliated, and links that exist to attract visitors to a web site or promote a product. See the external links guideline and spam policies for further explanations of links that are considered appropriate. If you feel the link should be added to the article, then please discuss it on the article's talk page rather than re-adding it. See the welcome page to learn more about Wikipedia. Thank you. (Adding a book to irrelevant articles is a form of spamming. Please stop.) ·:· Will Beback ·:· 21:20, 20 May 2008 (UTC)
Hi, you posted to my talk page, but I think it's probably clearer if I reply here.
Wikipedia has a problem - it has to keep this whole "encyclopedia" thing in view. As past technologies like Usenet and email showed, if something can be spammed, it will be spammed. So everyone is very concerned about anything that looks in the slightest inclined in that direction. There are some links above that are worth following, but there are others too like WP:COI, which are relevant here.
There's another good one called WP:AGF (it annoys you like crazy at first, until you start to appreciate the virtues). This means that editors must always act in a way that assumes other editors are acting "in good faith" (yes, even the teenage vandals). Now I'm happy to assume this about your edits and I'm delighted to see that you've added your book ref to the relevant page on silver hallmarks, where I hope it will be appreciated for adding value to that article (and if someone deletes it, I'll probably revert that deletion as being a bad idea). Hey, if it covers Scandinavian marks, I'll buy my girlfriend a copy. However that Wikipedia is not a mere directory of links policy is still there, so I really can't justify adding your book to each and every silver-related page. I hope you appreciate the reasons why editors really do have to act in this way.
Andy Dingley (talk) 22:26, 20 May 2008 (UTC)