User talk:JustinSmith
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Hi! Sorry for the delayed reply, I was very busy yesterday and really only had chance to scan my watchlist at wikipedia.
FIrst let me say that wikipedia is a collaborative project—thousands of people are changing other people's edits constantly; if there were a requirement to get permission from each editor individually before changing their edits nothing would ever get done. In fact, when you submit material to wikipedia you implicitly give permission for other people to edit it—in the editing window it states clearly "If you don't want your writing to be edited mercilessly or redistributed by others, do not submit it."
Regarding the external links that I removed. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. Encyclopedias have content. If you bought an encyclopedia and it just referred you to other books I think that you would go and ask for your money back. This is one of the reasons why external links are discouraged by many editors (you can read the current community consensus on external links at WP:EL). So, whilst I agree with you that, for instance, adding a topographical map to the Geography of Sheffield article would be a great addition, I think that adding a link to a topographical map on another website adds little or nothing to the article. Similarly for the links that you placed in other articles—had you added useful content to the article I would be only too pleased, but adding links to articles on your own website looks like self-promotion. That may not be what you intended, but wikipedia gets many thousands of people who do think that they can use wikipedia to drive traffic to their own website. So I would encourage you to add content to wikipedia (bearing in mind that it may be edited by other people), but not in the form of external links. JeremyA 15:05, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Re: your mail
Hi! You sent me an email with a couple of questions:
- If I edit an article but forget to "sign in" is it possible to go back and put my name on the edit?
- You cannot change the name on the edit. What many do is sign in and make a null edit with an edit summary that is something like "the last 5 edits were by me"
- How does one start a new page ?
- For the long answer read Help:Starting a new page and Wikipedia:Your first article. The short answer is to type the name of the article that you want to start in the search box on the left hand side of this page and click on the Go button. If an article with that title already exists you will be taken to it, if not you will be taken to a page with a red-link that says create this article—click on that link and start editing.
I hope this helps, feel free to ask for more help if you need it (I am likely to reply faster to messages on my talk page than by email as I use a dedicated email account for my wikipedia email and I often forget to check it). --JeremyA 00:52, 10 August 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Page views
Hi! I thought that I had replied to your email about this, did you not get it? Anyway, unfortunately as far as I am aware Wikipedia has no way for you to see the number of people that visit a particular page. Wikipedia is one of the most visited sites on the internet—a google search for 'Ponds Forge' gives the wikipedia page as the second hit, so you can be sure that a good number of people will read your contributions. However, the only way to gauge page visits is by the number of edits a page gets (add it to your watchlist), but as only a very small percentage of people that read an article actually edit it this won't really tell you very much. —JeremyA 19:47, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Your contribution to Transmitter
I'm afraid I find your edit rather baffling. I live about ten miles from a place named Waltham, but I've never heard of "Sandy" except as a woman's given name, and "digital MUXES 5 & 6" doesn't signify anything to me either. Please remember that Wikipedia is an international project, and an example which is obvious to you may mean nothing to most readers. 121a0012 02:34, 9 September 2006 (UTC)
