User talk:Keithphw

Welcome

Welcome!

Hello, Keithphw, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages that you might find helpful:

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I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your messages on discussion pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically insert your username and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or ask your question on this page and then place {{helpme}} before the question. Again, welcome! RJFJR (talk) 14:43, 30 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

May 2014

Hello, I'm Doc9871. I wanted to let you know that I removed one or more external links you added, because they seemed to be inappropriate for an encyclopedia. If you think I made a mistake, or if you have any questions, you can leave me a message on my talk page, or take a look at our guidelines about links. Thank you. Doc talk 01:45, 6 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Doc, thanks for leaving a message.

First, I want to say thank you for your work cleaning up wikipedia. People like yourself make it a quality resource. In this case, I think that you might have been too strict with the removal of the external links I posted. The website fightfinance.com which I was linking to (which is a website that I made) is a free online textbook test bank for finance students. In the wikipedia external link guidelines [[1]] "What can normally be linked" sub-title it says that the following should be included:

"Sites that contain neutral and accurate material that is relevant to an encyclopedic understanding of the subject and cannot be integrated into the Wikipedia article due to copyright issues,[3] amount of detail (such as professional athlete statistics, movie or television credits, interview transcripts, or online textbooks), or other reasons."

I understand that you may have thought that I was promoting my own website, which in some way is true, but I make the web site purely as a resource for my own university finance students, I collect no money from it (there is no advertising) and I strongly believe that it is a valuable resource to finance students and wikipedians alike trying to understand finance.

Best regards, Keith Keithphw (talk) 13:55, 6 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

We also have to consider WP:Notability, especially as a reliable source. WP:SPS as well. What makes your online textbook more notable or reliable than any other? And why don't we have a ton of online textbook external links, like yours, here already? This is not a new approach, and we don't permit links like this. Cheers :) Doc talk 05:26, 6 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your reply Doc.

Actually I and many others would greatly appreciate a list of quality online textbooks. I have only found a small number of free online finance textbooks, and the good ones such as Ivo Welch's cannot be easily viewed without registering and/or paying, they deliberately offer an inferior product to entice buyers. Such is the finance industry! Also, many textbooks do not offer enough questions and answers which is the purpose of fightfinance.com. One reason is the difficulty in presenting maths in web pages, and two is that there is no monetary incentive for people to make free online textbooks or test banks.

About notability, that applies to articles, not to external links. Further, the fightfinance website hosts questions used in Macquarie University Australia's finance courses AFIN253 and AFIN353. I am the teacher of both courses.

About self-published sources, the fightfinance website is not used as a source in the articles I linked to, it is a set of exercises that readers may use to better their understanding of the material.

I notice that in topics such as simultaneous equations (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_of_linear_equations) there is a 'textbooks' heading with a number of external links. I thought this was a good precedent and indicated that textbook links are a welcome addition to wiki articles. This is also spelt out in the wiki external links guidelines i posted before.

With your approval, I would like to re-add the links I posted. I respect your expertise on wiki editing and policy, so I look forward to your reply.

Keithphw (talk) 13:55, 6 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think it's a good idea to add the links again. I'm hardly the only editor that would have reverted you, and there are many, many others out there that would/will do the same thing I did for the exact same reason.

With this article topic area, there is a long history of linkspam. Every mortgage company wants to link to WP articles on mortgages. Every mortgage blogger expert, author, etc. wants the same thing. Because of this, the threshold for including external links is very tight. It's brutal, really. Per WP:SPS, unless you've been mentioned by third party sources, there's not a great chance of your link making it.

You can ask any admin on the site about this (I'm not one). I will always admit when I am wrong about something. Cheers :) Doc talk 08:30, 6 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, I understand. A casual inspection of the website links reveals that it is not of a commercial interest that counts as spam, rather it's just a textbook test bank. But oh well. I will wait until I make a journal-published finance article, making me an expert, and then I will repost the links. Cheers.

Keithphw (talk) 13:55, 6 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not the final authority by any means, and I could be wrong. I encourage you to seek other opinions, and you've done nothing inappropriate.

BTW: For any talk page, at the end of your comments simply type four tildes (~), like this: ~~~~. Put just one space after your last punctuation mark of the post before adding them. That will sign your comment. Doc talk 09:07, 6 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Ok good, I'll revisit the topic later. Maybe I need an 'about' page or mission statement on fightfinance to make it clear what the website is about. Thanks for making me aware of the issues. Cheers Keithphw (talk) 13:55, 6 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

You're still not getting it. Please see WP:ELNO, links to avoid, and Wikipedia:Conflict of interest, which you have because it's your own web site. Please refrain from adding links to your own web site to any articles. Because you have a conflict of interest, your approach should be to propose your link on article talk pages, for other more neutral editors to evaluate. Please avoid any edits that create a conflict of interest. ~Amatulić (talk) 23:00, 6 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I appreciate your input, but I have read the "links to avoid section" and my website does not violate any requirement. It isn't spam since there's no advertising, it requires no registration to use it, it's factually accurate (the questions are used in university exams) and notable (being a university course). Thank you for your point about suggesting the link on the talk page, I will do that in the future rather than post the link myself. While I do not benefit financially or otherwise from peoples' use of my website, of course I take pride in it and enjoy to see it being used, which may constitute a conflict of interest depending on how broadly that's defined. My motivation for posting the link to fightfinance.com in the first place was to improve wikipedia's coverage of the topic and help peoples' understanding, which ironically is probably yours and Doc's motivation for deleting it too. Hopefully I can make a case for convincing you otherwise. May I ask, have you visited the website and attempted any question? Keithphw (talk) 15:19, 7 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]