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Linkspam?!
editHi Haikupoet, Sam from Sam's Toybox here. Thanks for trying to add the link to my info page back but apparently the Wiki-Nazi's have removed it again. I first started adding links to my toysite from articles in Wikipedia in January after I noticed via my site statistics that someone else had done so, on the Tracer Gun article when someone added a link to my Star Trek version of the gun. I thought it was a great idea since for many of these old toys my page is the only information about that particular toy on the web. It looks like the self-appointed link police on Wikipedia take the same tact as the school administrators who enforce "zero-tolerance" in their schools. Some poor 3rd grader is suspended for bringing a gun to school when he drew a picture of his dad (with weapon) who is serving in Iraq as part of a assignment to "draw what one of your parents does" for career day.
It seems from the discussions I've read on the pages I had added links on that reasons for removing links are often ill-thought out if thought out at all. Someone takes it upon themself to delete all links to a particular site--they must be spam. So my toysite has the only page devoted to Mattel's Incredible Edibles on the net. So I own, display, and describe every version of the toy put out by Mattel in the 1960s. Adding a link to that page from the article in Wikipedia on "Incredible Edibles" must obviously be spam. No one going to an encyclopedia and looking up a vintage toy would actually want to read about the toy or see photos of all the versions available. And for this page, obviously anyone searching for "Armatron" in Wikipedia certainly doesn't want to be spammed with such useless links as pictures of the multiple versions of the toy released, or the scan of the toy's instruction manual--they only wanted to read the short description in the stub article.
One might say that I should simply be filling in the articles with more details rather than linking to the info pages on my toysite. This goes against everything taught by information experts and against the whole point of the web. Why should the data I've already created be replicated within the Wikipedia article when it already exists, and has existed for years, on another page. Each time data is copied it introduces the possibility of errors and the probability that only one copy of the data will be updated should it ever change.
I am a big believer in Wikipedia. I am also a big believer that any idea, no matter how great can and likely will be ruined by a small set of pompous people who are way too full of themselves. Kent Keith said it best, I believe, in his book 'Anyway, The Paradoxical Commandments' with commandment 2: "If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives. Do good anyway..." and commandement 6: "The biggest men and women with the biggest ideas can be shot down by the smallest men and women with the smallest minds. Think big anyway..." I would like to continue to do good and think big but am a bit jaded right now.
I started creating my toysite in October, 1998 when I started collecting vintage toys after discovering eBay. In my "Why a Toysite" page I described the site as a work in progress and a labor of love. I don't sell toys, I simply collect them and display them on the web. There are collectors out there who have collections much better than mine but they are like the art collectors who buy a Monet and never let anyone else see it. Since I have the skills to display my collection on a website, I do so in case others might be interested in reminiscing. I don't do this for personal profit, though I am an Amazon associate and have earned as much as $10.00 in a month when folks bought toys via links from my site. Woo Hoo! Ten Bucks!!!! If this were a job, the $10.00 likely wouldn't cut it as my paycheck. I built and maintain the site simply for the joy I get when someone writes and says, "Thank you for having the instructions for Sub Search on your site. I can now play the game I loved as a child with my own children." I maintain the site so I can answer questions in emails that say, "My mom and I were talking about the fond memories of the Hands Up Harry game she gave me for my eighth birthday. Do you have any clue where I might get one to give her for her eightieth birthday?" I maintain the site so that when I get an email from a high school science teacher in Texas saying he just received five copies of the Radio Shack 160-in-1 project kit but none had the manual, I can make five copies of my manual and send them, along with my actual copy of the toy with original manual to him.
It is apparent from my website statistics, from external links into my toysite, and from the large volume of emails I receive that folks do appreciate reminiscing. It makes their day when I can tell them the name of the toy they've been scratching their heads over for months. I thought that folks searching for descriptions of vintage toys in Wikipedia might enjoy the access to the additional information provided on my 195 toys pages (and the 50 or so vintage trailer/vehicle and Lost in Space B9 Robot pages) on my site. Apparently attempting to hook folks up with additional information outside of Wikipedia is spamming and I am a horrible spammer. Not sure what I'll do with all this--I've never been a spammer before.
I guess I've blabbered on long enough. Perhaps I should copy my remarks to the discussions of the other dozen or so pages that the link Gestapo removed my "spam" links from but to quote Rhett Butler, frankly my dear, I just don't give a damn. If the Wikipedia community allows this type of strong armed lunatics to run the asylum, you can have it. I guess the readers here don't get access to the info I've already assembled.
Sam Cancilla, sfcanci, sam@samstoybox.com
If you don't like the links provided, please replace them with better ones rather than eliminate them entirely. Wikipedia's reputation for bad information is bad enough already without eliminating third-party information pages, especially those that are used as references to write the article. Haikupoet 20:12, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
holy fuck way to sperg out--24.82.251.159 (talk) 06:52, 17 November 2009 (UTC)