First off, please sign your posts on talk pages. Thanks. Second, it would help if you posted some links or diffs to reference what you're talking about, because I'm not sure if I understand it.

  • I generally try to, not sure what you're referencing. My apologies if I forgot.

I assume that by "various nn-bio pages" you mean "two guideline pages regarding notability"? There is a fallacy in your reasoning in that you state that I should discuss before removing those links - yet there has not been any discussion before adding those links (or if there has been, please point out where). It is generally not true (see WP:BOLD) that one needs to discuss everything before changing anything.

  • Indeed there was discussion and as much agreement as possible gained prior to that template being created and those links being added. Links to those discussions were included in my comment on your talk page. The pages may have changed since then but here's a link ot one of the locations it was discussed [1]. Regarding your second point, I think this mainly pertains to changes that are in the spirit of Wikipedia (i.e. that are correcting incorrect information, doing major article reorganizations to currently deficient works). I think most people would agree that changing communally developed material based on individual opinion does not fall into that category.

Linkspam means to create links someplace in Wikipedia to websites in order to advertise them, or make them seem more important than they actually are. Given the sheer smallness of both wikime and wikitree, I'd say that yes, those links are an effort to advertise them.

  • Two comments: You argue against linkspam but you continually mention Everything2 and other sites (al la below). Advertisement is advertisement regardless of the website's size. WikiMe and WikiTree are at least geared to the topic at hand. Secondly, other wikipedians (beyond me) don't agree that it is linkspam[2].

Having alternate outlets for vanity articles does not in fact reduce the time WP has to devote to nn-bios, because people will post them here anyway (because we're the largest wiki in the world by far, and one of the most prevalent public sites) so we have to delete them or move them out. We have a number of alternate outlets, the most prevalent being Wikinfo, Anarchopedia and Everything2. I'm sure a simple google test will show the difference in importance between Everything2 and Wikime.

  • The statment that it has no effect is your opinion, unless you have data. Since neither of us have facts, I'm willing to error on the side that it has some benefit. And what harm does it do if others are willing to take the task on themselves? If you don't want to use the template or try to redirct people - don't. But leave the option for others who think it may help.

Hope that helps. Yours, Radiant_>|< 08:49, 19 January 2006 (UTC)Reply