GameMan

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Please stop removing my edits

Please stop removing the links from the hangman page. I don't believe any of the group are particularly commercial. The friendlydragon one certainly is not. GameMan GameMan 03:57, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

The domains of all of your external link additions are owned by the same individual (including your IP alias, see sockpuppet links) and have Google syndication links. Wikipedia is not a vehicle to increase traffic to those sites. If you need more evidence, I'll post the correlations between your IPs, edits, and owners of the external link domain names.OhNoitsJamie^Talk 04:00, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

Oh yes, please do post everything. ALL my external links? You mean all 2 of them? Friendlydragon and perfectpixelpage? Oh, and all two logons. The one before I registered in order to be able to set up a permanent page to speak to you at and and the one after I registered both have the same IP? Wow! I'd say that's pretty deceitful stuff!

What did I do to you that you are pursuing me to be a nuisance? I have done nothing inappropriate. I added my link AFTER the others as advised in the documentation. I added my link to the hangman page after others that existed (and had been there awhile) and on the pixel ad page, I added content as well as my link. If you don't want links on that page, fine, but don't harrass me elsewhere. DOn't accuse me of spamming for 3 links, and don't accuse me of using sockpuppets for registering.

I used to have a lot of respect for the wikipedia community, but you are sure leaving a sour taste.

Response I'm just calling it like I see it. Your anon IP address did nothing much else besides add external links with Google ads whose domains were registered to the same person. I removed the ads (as well as other commercial links that were on those pages), warned you about it and responded on the talk page. You then registered an account and added those links back. I sockpuppet tagged that account and warned you again. These actions and the fact that you seemed to adament about retaining the links led me to think you were trying to increase traffic to your sites through Wikipedia (which many folks attempt to do). Yes there were "only" three links, but I was trying to nip the issue in the bud. I'm sorry that you think this is harassment, but when a user does little else besides add external links with ads, I always check their history, and remove ads from any previous contributions. I believe strongly in keeping Wikipedia free of adverts and not letting it degenerate into a link farm.

If you've set up an account to contribute other things besides links to personal pages, great. We welcome your contributions. Assuming good faith, I'll remove the sockpuppet template. Regards, OhNoitsJamie^Talk 15:20, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply. I do not agree with you about the links, as I obviously felt they were relevant, but as you have been around longer here longer than I have I will defer to your opinion, at least until I have reason to be convinced otherwise. I was pretty angry when I wrote the last post, and in light of your more polite reply feel less attacked. As a suggestion for the future, you might want to pay more attention to overall context before replying in a way that could be considered insulting. Whether it was intended or not, your attitude came across as extremely insulting to me. I had taken care to ensure the links were relevant to the topics, I noted that on the hangman page, which was the only one I particularly cared about, there were several longstanding links. I posted mine discretely under the others as the last link, and tried in every way to be low-key and non-offensive. When you removed the link in the pixel ad section, I went back and read the history of the page, noted there had been a long-running problem with numerous links, and did not repost there. I did the same on the hangman page, and noted the links were longstanding, and had never been an issue, so reposted there. When I registered, I left you a note asking that you please stop remove my links. Would I have done that if I were trying to pretend to be someone else? There was really nothing to add about hangman, so I added nothing else. I had additional relevant comments on both other topics (the concentration addition is on the main page noting another meaning, not the game page). I was miffed that you just bulk deleted on the pixel theme, without even noting the additional comment, which is not only relevant, but would seem to reinforce the reasoning for not wanting the external links on that page. I also noted that while you were very quick to remove the labled links where I placed my link, you left the dead link to tic-tac-toe hangman, and then in your haste to revert the page, restored the dead link I had removed. Perhaps I was being oversensitive but the fact that you just undid every change, without bothering to separate the ones that you objected to from others I made did make me feel attacked. Again, I understand the reasoning on the pixel page, but on the hangman and concentration pages, which are unlikely ever to attract more than a handfull of links, I think you should reconsider restoring the removed links. I would think links to a few relevant examples would be a usefull addition. However, it is not something worth arguing about. If you had simply asked that I not include links on the pixel page, without making the comment "sorry spammer" in the edit, which came across to me as rather snotty, I would not have had a problem or felt offended. The fact that you felt you should then look at my post history, and remove everything without bothering to read what else was there also annoyed me. The three other additions may have been short (one sentence in the case of the pixel page -- one dead link removal on hangman, which I researched and spent a good 1/2 hour trying to find and correct before deleting -- one addition to the main concentration page on chemistry) but they were thoughtful, well considered, and carefully worded. They certainly took a lot more effort to post than you spent removing them. Anyway, I would send this privately, but can't seem to find how to get an email from your registration. It's wordy and picky, because I still feel a bit attacked and want to feel vindicated. However, the tone of your last post indicates some of that feeling may be overreaction on my part. I often remind others that straight text contains no inflections, and can be misinterpreted, but am having a hard time following my on advice in this instance. I would suggest that in the future, especially when writing to someone you've never had interaction with before, that you put some thought into how you could be interpreted before making comments, and that you take the time to check the totality of a change before removing it in total. It would have been nice to see the dead link remain gone in hangman, and the comment about link farms remain in the pixel page. Meanwhile, I'll try to remember my own advice about written messages before becoming angry in the future. P.S. I know this is wordy. Feel free to delete it after reading if you like.

Response I rarely leave "snotty" edit summaries, like the "sorry spammer" one. I suppose I did in that case because it was on the Pixel advertising page, which is a hotspot for spamming; also, I feel very strongly about not letting people turn Wikipedia into a link farm. Nonetheless, I apologize for failing to assume good faith on your edit. Regarding the edits to the two game pages; I'll admit that it's debatable whether or not those pages need an external link section. I try to maintain a pretty strict interpretation of what articles really need external links. For Concentration or Hangman, a quick Google search will yield hundreds of free games; I lean toward the attitude that unless there is a particularly notable one, or a completely advert free, public domain one, let the user find examples via web searches. If you posted a question on the talk pages for those games to see what others thought about adding a few example links, I would respect the consensus opinion.

I tend to make my reverts very quickly; the idea is that if a vandalism or link spam is reverted within seconds, that endeavor will be abandoned as futile. In my haste, I do occasionally make mistakes.

Fighting link spam can be more frustrating than fighting vandalism, as (1) there's already a lot of existing link spam and (2) link spammers are often able to operate faster and cause more disruption before they're blocked. Here's one of the more egregious examples that I had to cleanup with the help of another user. I tend to take a hard-line approach when I see a few instances of what I think is link spam in an effort to avoid situations like that. I have a few personal sites with lots of info relating to a few topics here, but I've resisted the temptation to add them to the articles (even though they have no ads). Unfortunately, there isn't a black-and-white rule for what's an appropriate link and what's an advert/promotional/vanity link. Just today, I changed my mind about a few travel links a user had added (travel links comprise a large portion of spam links) after examining the link contents and deciding that the site seemed to be non-commercial and useful. [1]

I appreciate your taking the time to write a thoughtful response and consider both sides of the issue. Your constructive criticism of my handling of the situation is noted and appreciated. Cheers, OhNoitsJamie^Talk 03:19, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks Jamie, Given your examples, I can understand your frustration with the link spamming. I will take your suggestion about the hangman talk page. GameMan

Hangman

There probably aren't many people watching that page since it's not exactly a controversial topic, so it could be a long time before anyone would respond. If you re-add the link, I won't revert it, and chances are no one else will. Given our discussion of the situation, I see no harm in it. Cheers, OhNoitsJamie^Talk 01:36, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, Jamie!

Concentration

I have replied to your questions on my talk page. Vsmith 03:02, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

Hangman

I'm not sure I understand the objection to adsense on linked pages, but since it seems to be an issue, and matters little to me, I just removed it from the linked page at FriendlyDragon before restoring the links.

There are many creative variations on how the game is portrayed on the web, so I do think there is room for various links there. I also restored the other links that had some ads on them, but if you feel that strongly, I'm not going to get in an edit war over it. However, commercial does not mean irrelevant, and if the other sites have the same pay-ratio as mine, noone is taking advantage of Wikipedia to get rich. :)

The one with the hang-glider and continuing game is unique, and without knowing to look for it, it is unlikely anyone will stumble on it in a web search. the multilingual game also struck me as an interesting take on the game.

Anyway, I was not the original poster of those sites, but they seemed to me to be worthwhile additions. I don't feel the need to get overly emotional over them, however, so if you feel strongly they don't belong, I won't re-add them.

Now, on a different topic, I'd like to share my thoughts on Adsense and get some frustration off my chest. First it is quite different than a Link_farm. A linkfarm is a collection of links whose only purpose is to artificially inflate link count as measured by search engines. Adsense does not do this. Google chooses ads to place on the site, and does so based on what it perceives to be the site's content. Because they exist only programatically, being written at runtime by a javascript, they are neither indexed nor seen by web spiders or crawlers (that generally do not execute code from the page). Adsense can be abused, but if included in a generally useful site tend to be more usefull than nuisance to viewers of the page, as Google does a pretty good job of determining the intended audience. The whole point, for google and the advertisers is to present something users of the page want to see.

While the site owner does get paid if people click on an ad, those who earn significant income tend to design a site around adsense, not place adsense on a site. The hangman page was generating on average 3-4 cents per day. The entire site generates about $5 month ... you can see why removing the adsense doesn't bother me from a monetary viewpoint :)

However, the links it provided were nearly always related to similar things my viewers might have been interested in. If not, noone forces them to click, (just as noone forces them to click the wikipedia link at the bottom of the hangman and concentration pages).

—Preceding unsigned comment added by GameMan (talk • contribs)

Hi GameMan. I know you're frustrated with this whole external link mess but please try to understand this problem from Wikipedia's point of view. Our articles are being overrun by spam and it takes the effort of many dedicated people to keep the articles clear of advertising. Because of the huge spam problem at Wikipedia, we have had to develop a very strong external links policy. One link to an example game of Hangman might be acceptable. Five is far too many. There is really no need to link any hangman games in the article because a reader could simply do a google search for "hangman" and come up with thousands of results. Monkeyman^(talk) 16:56, 13 March 2006 (UTC)