User talk:Msteri

Welcome from Brian0918

"Welcome to Wikipedia!"

Hello, Msteri, and welcome to Wikipedia. Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few good links for newcomers:

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Again, welcome! — BRIAN0918 • 2005-08-19 20:29

Migraine External links

You wrote: "I would appreciate understanding your reasoning for removing some of the links you removed before I do anything more to the page."

The link you readded about triptans is to an About.com page, a commercial encyclopedia. Please read WP:EL. Links should only be added if they have valuable information that does not belong in the article itself and if they are not trying to sell something. If the information in the link does belong it the article, it should be re-written (to avoid copyright issues) and added to the article. In general, articles should have very few links, because very few links fit these criteria; the migraine article has 37 links, at present-- way too many. The idea is that we want our articles to be the best possible source of information on a topic, not a short article followed by a long list of links to other articles-- one might as well just google the subject and read the first dozen sites if we are going to assemble long external link lists.

Note, too, that since we have an article on triptans, an external link to an article about it, if it's going to appear anywhere, should be in the triptans article itself, not in the migraine article.

I hope these external links guidelines make sense to you. Since this area is your specialty, please feel free to join in the spam cleanup! Wikipedia is drowning in external links. Thanks, -- Mwanner | Talk 01:47, 4 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

About.com is not a commercial encyclopedia. In fact, as an expert in my field I contract with the New York Times to write the headache and Migraine Disease content on About.com. About.com health sites are HON accredited. I added that link because it contained information beyond what was available in the Migraine article. I fully understood why you removed the link to the main page of the About site. It was all too general, but deleting the link to the article that provided an overview of all of the triptan drugs and a comprehensive profile of each one is, IMO, inappropriate. Your point is well taken that there is a triptans article on Wikipedia, but many Migraineurs do not feel up to surfing, so a link on the Migraine article page itself is also appropriate.

As I have time, I'll be glad to contribute and help with the cleanup. Spam only servers to hurt the credibility of Wikipedia and make the articles less valuable.

Thanks!

--TeriRobert 04:37, 8 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

On what basis do you assert that About.com is not a commercial encyclopedia? And how does "In fact, as an expert in my field..." relate to that claim?

Please read Wikipedia's external link policy, and perhaps How not to be a spammer.

Again, "Links should only be added if they have valuable information that does not belong in the article itself and if they are not trying to sell something." You say that you "added that link because it contained information beyond what was available in the Migraine article". What information from that link does not belong in our article?

And your assertion that a link to the triptans article on the Migraine page is appropriate because "many because Migraineurs do not feel up to surfing" is entirely beside the point-- we are an encyclopedia, not an information service or a link farm.

I'm going to leave the issue alone for the moment, in part because you are now making worthwhile contributions to the article itself. But rest assured that at some point, someone is going to have to do some major trimming of the external links, and at that point, the About links are pretty likely to be removed.

Happy editing! -- Mwanner | Talk 17:21, 8 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Your first article looked great! I hope you enjoy editing and using Wikipedia. —Brim 19:47, 13 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, Brim! --TeriRobert 21:33, 13 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Changed user box

Hi there,

Just wondered about the change you made to the user box on my talk page. Could you tell me why you made the change? That way, if I did something the wrong way, I'll know not to do it again.

Thanks!

--TeriRobert 06:29, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

Don't worry, it's not your fault. If you're not aware, there has been much debate and even controversy about whether userboxes are acceptable as part of Wikipedia (see Wikipedia:Userboxes for a starting overview of them and links to more info). While userboxes that highlight people's skills and ways that they can help out (starting with languages and Wikipedia:Babel) mostly are and probably will always be accepted, there has been much objection over other types of userboxes, like ones that express people's points of view, especially controversial views.

One of the methods that has been proposed to provide a compromise is Wikipedia:Userbox migration (formerly the German userbox solution as the idea came from the method that takes place on the German Wikipedia). Basically this migration involves the moving of userboxes from the template namespace (where Wikipedia's strict content policies apply) to the user namepsace (where the rules aren't as strict). This process involves replacing the template transclusion on each page to the new version in the userspace. Just one of these userboxes that was under the process was Template:User mom2 (now deleted), which you have on your userpage. It was moved to User:Springeragh/Templates/Userboxes/mom2. Before I changed the userbox for you, you would have seen something like this:

Per the userbox migration, {{User mom2}} was moved to {{User:Springeragh/Templates/Userboxes/mom2}}.

I changed {{user mom2}} to {{User:Springeragh/Templates/Userboxes/mom2}} so that you have the original box back again. Hope this helps clear things for you and if you want more information, feel free to contact me at my talk page Harryboyles 07:57, 18 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]