Talk:Yateley

Yateley Is A Town

Yateley has a town council and is therefore offically a town. Verica Atrebatum 21:04, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

Gun Powder Plot?!

Yateley was one of the early places the plot was discussed?! I'm not entirely sure there were even any man made structures in Yateley at that time. This smacks of being an old wifes tale. Can anyone clarify or back it up with a citation?

Well, Lord Monteagle lived at Monteagle House, which dates back to c. 1540, and he had a part in foiling the plot. See http://www.hants.gov.uk/yateley_lionsclub/about_yateley.html . I'm not sure the plot itself was ever discussed in Yateley though. 143.252.80.100 17:05, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

Simple English

I do not get the point of the Simple English article. The main article is already in simple English!

The Yateley Forums

I am the admin of the forums and am currently posting this from Yateley. Virtually all the members went to Yateley school and either lived there or the immediate surrounding area. The person who removed the link to the forums admitted to not living in the area and they didn't even spell Yateley correctly!? They also mentioned relevance, but surely a forum named after the town is relevant enough, even without all the members coming from the town in question.

Did you read the link in my edit summary (WP:EL#Links normally to be avoided)? Yateley Forums both requires registration to view the relevant content and is a discussion forum. As an administrator of the forums you also have a conflict of interest - WP:EL#Advertising and conflicts of interest states that "You should avoid linking to a website that you own, maintain or represent, even if the guidelines otherwise imply that it should be linked."

Me not being from the area and spelling Yateley incorrectly in my edit summary is irrelevant to the issue of whether the link is acceptable per Wikipedia's external link guidelines. I've removed the link again, for the reasons given above. — Matt Eason ^{(Talk • Contribs)} 15:58, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, I checked again and it seems the forums no longer require registration to view content. However, the rest of my post still stands. — Matt Eason ^{(Talk • Contribs)} 16:03, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

It looks to me like the purpose of adding the link is mainly to drive up traffic to the site, rather than help wikipedia visitors. Linking to one site like this over others shows endorsement and I do not think an encyclopedia should get into anything like this Corpx 06:03, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Aside from the conflict of interest issues here, discussion forums are to be avoided as external links, as per WP:EL#Links normally to be avoided. Wikipedia is not a collection of links and therefore being "useful to the surfer" is not in and of itself a good reason to add the link to this site. If a discussion forum is to be added it must be shown to provide information about the subject of the article that could not for one reason or another be added to the Wikipedia page. I would be interested in seeing the points is favour of adding this link to the page. -- Alucard (Dr.) | Talk 11:42, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

I am the admin of the forum and I think that it is relevant to the article. Although I haven't set up individual forums for specific discussion of Yateley, we do discuss matters relating to the town. We have had people ask us what it is like to live there, what the best areas for families are, and how easy it is to commute to the surrounding areas. An example of such a thread is HERE

We also discussed the new town improvement scheme which recently took place, as well as a memorial service for Sean Devereux, HERE

So, although I don't set a specific Yateley agenda, local issues are discussed, and are always welcome. Nearly all members of the forum originate from Yateley and many went to yateley School. It is only a small town, and while I admit we do talk a lot of rubbish sometimes, it is a place that epople from the same town can go on through the day and keep sane while at work in different parts of the country! :)

I also noticed the wikipedia entry for Reading,_Berkshire has a user forum listed in the Reading,_Berkshire#External_links section, and although they shoehorn in issues such as housing, there is no reason why this can not be discussed with regards to Yateley on the yateley forums. What do you think? --Timjbart 23:20, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

So you are saying that the forum is for the residents of Yateley, and not strictly speaking about Yately, although it does have some articles about it that your members contribute, yes? -- Alucard (Dr.) | Talk 23:48, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

I think the Reading Forums link should also be removed, but I'll wait and see what the consensus is here before I go ahead. — Matt Eason ^{(Talk • Contribs)} 01:13, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

• Sorry, but Wikipedia is not the place to advertise your forum. >Radiant< 13:54, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
• Forums almost never meet WP:EL criteria for inclusion, so we certainly aren't singling this one out for removal. It just doesn't belong here. DreamGuy 16:36, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Ok, I accept the general concensus. Will the Reading one also be removed? --Timjbart 20:09, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Yessir, I've just done it. — Matt Eason ^{(Talk &#149; Contribs)} 20:38, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Nothing inherently wrong with a COI, it merely alerts us to the possibility that a link is WP:linkspam. That collapses to the same question of whether it's a valid link. A valid link is not linkspam. The WP:EL guideline is not set in stone. You have to use some common sense about the goal of the policy, which is to prevent Wikipedia from becoming a list of random trivial web links or a host for spam. A link to an external community page may be appropriate if the external site is a respected store of relevant information that would be inappropriate to include in the Wikipedia article. If the Yately link were the town's official online presence, or generally recognized as the place to go for all of the residents of Yately, it is a fair link. It's hard to imagine any forum fitting that bill unless it's official in some way and universally used, e.g. run by the town government or chamber of commerce, in which case the link should be to the main site anyway, not the forum page. Wikidemo 09:11, 25 August 2007 (UTC)