JeremyA. DVD R W left the comment to me as a new contributor "Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes" I am familiar with this convention, but I guess this doesn't apply to you since you didn't sign your comment.
Anyway, if you're going to object to external links to a non-commercial site with substantially more content than the pages in Wikipedia contained, then I suggest you start chasing down the numerous Google maps external links. A link to a satellite photo that can easily be found directly at Google is certainly lower in content value than external links to sites that happen substantial content that is, in fact, not easily accessible via Google (photos don't index particularly well).
So if you're mass reverting external links there are ample other opportunities for you to pursue. Thank you for your encouragement.
- I have posted the following query at User:JeremyA's talkpage: "You seem to be methodically deleting external links recently added by newbie User:Dmill96 to Professor Mary Ann Sullivan's pages of excellent architectural photos and informative text. What is your motivation? --Wetman 06:16, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
- He responded at my Talkpage: "Hi Wetman! I have nothing against Dmill96 (talk • contribs), or the website that he/she was linking to. However, where I see external links that are outwith the guidelines described at WP:EL I delete them. There are many excellent websites out there, but we don't link to them all because Wikipedia is an encyclopedia not a web directory."
- I responded: "If you do have "nothing against" Dr. Sullivan's useful architectural details and professional descriptive text, perhaps you should have a look at the Wikipedia's guidelines Wikipedia:External links, which would serve in lieu of common sense. If I take the trouble to reinstate all the links you deleted without analysing their usefulness to the reader, will I be faced with an edit war? I don't want to misuse my time." --Wetman 20:26, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
- Thank you Wetman for pointing out Wikipedia:External links. I have read this material and don't see the applicable section justifying User:JeremyA's deletion, but my newbie status probably prevents me from seeing the relevant part. I added external links to a large well known, academic site because I assumed that importing photos from that site would be a rather serious IP violation, so I couldn't contribute to the article directly, as suggested by JeremyA, in the case of photos. Dmill96 16:59, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
JeremyA: One of my external links you deleted was Dr. Sullivan's study of Des Moines Art Center. The article you reverted to describes the contributions three different well-known architects (Saarinen, Pei, Meier) but has no photos. Architecture is inherently a visual subject so textual descriptions alone do not provide a reader the same value as also including photographs. The one external link you allowed, to the official website, rarely describes or shows the architecture. So thus readers are denied the right to see any of the three architects' work by your reversion, certainly an improvement to the article's value. Dmill96 16:59, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
- I have replied on my talk page —JeremyA 16:38, 10 September 2006 (UTC)