BCBrett

June 2016

Hello, I'm Toddst1. I wanted to let you know that one or more external links you added to Mortgage loan have been removed 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. Toddst1 (talk) 22:22, 20 June 2016 (UTC)

Help me!

<I am new to this process and after adding what I thought was a well researched sentence to mortgages someone deleted all of it and when I challenged the person they gave me no valid reason why except they told me it was a conflict of interest yet I do not see why as I was not promoting myself. Clarification and Help Please

Please help me with...

understanding why the addition I made to mortgages was deleted BCBrett (talk) 07:50, 25 June 2016 (UTC)

The source you added to that statement was not a reliable source subject to editorial oversight but rather a commercial website by a real estate agent. Adding such links is frowned upon because it's often seen as an attempt to drive traffic to that website. Given your username, it seems likely that you are associated with Brett Cairns; adding links to a website you are associated with is not a good idea. Huon (talk) 12:56, 25 June 2016 (UTC)

Help me!

<follow up question->

Please help me with...

So all of the thousands of links to larger commercial sites throughout this wikipedia are ok? For example the following link under the Avril Lavigne article www.realtor.com/blogs/2011/05/16/avril-lavigne-lists-bel-air-home-for-9-5-million-photos/ does not even go to any article. It redirects to a blog page. As a smaller example, in the Comox Valley part the links section the Discover Comox Valley text links to a website run by a marketing and seo firm and the Comox Valley Guide link is run by an individual who sells ads and does seo. Consistency would be nice. I guess I thought that valuable accurate and verifiable and reference content from expert writers who are knowledgeable of the topics and who can add value to the public was the aim. Guess I was wrong. BCBrett (talk) 19:03, 25 June 2016 (UTC)

I've edited your question to remove the <!-- comment out tags --> preventing others from reading it. --Nick⁠—⁠^Contact/_Contribs 19:38, 25 June 2016 (UTC)

Blogs are not normally considered reliable sources, but sometimes how reliable a source must be depends on the nature of the fact being cited. In the case of the Realtor.com blog cited on Avril Lavigne's article, it is citing only the year in which a home was put on the market—a relatively non-controversial fact. Now, one could argue: if the blog is the only source that picked up the year of the listing, is it really an important enough fact that it needs including in the article? That is a discussion for the talk page, where consensus of editors will go one way or the other. What the Realtor.com blog post certainly is not, however, is WP:REFSPAM. I'm not saying your contribution was done with promotional intent, but that's certainly what it looks like to other editors. Adding a significant fact cited to a commercial website that may or may not be accurate (we don't know, because as Huon pointed out, there's no editorial oversight) is a different scenario. As a side note, an important thing to know on Wikipedia is that every contribution must stand on its own merits, under policy. We have millions of articles, and a relatively small base of active users and admins. The fact that another article might be violating policy is not a reason to do the same thing on another article. See WP:OTHERSTUFF for an explanation of this. Cheers, Nick⁠—⁠^Contact/_Contribs 19:51, 25 June 2016 (UTC)