IssuesRUs
November 2009
edit
Welcome to Wikipedia. Although everyone is welcome to contribute constructively to the encyclopedia, one or more of the external links you added do not comply with our guidelines for external links and have been removed. Wikipedia is not a collection of links; nor should it be used for advertising or promotion, and doing so is contrary to the goals of this project. Since Wikipedia uses nofollow tags, external links do not alter search engine rankings. If you feel the link should be added to the article, please discuss it on the article's talk page before reinserting it. Please take a look at the welcome page to learn more about contributing to this encyclopedia. Thank you. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 20:09, 2 November 2009 (UTC)
Clarification on Deleted External Links
editSome external links I added to a few articles were deleted for -- I believe -- conflict of interest (COI) issues. I would like to re-add them and explain why I think there is no conflict of interest.
The links I added were for a website which houses collections of research on various issues, including Environmental Justice, Arts Education, and Interfaith Organizing, among others. The website belongs to a nonprofit organization called IssueLab whose purpose is to collect and archive research produced by nonprofits and university-based research centers. The links do not go to IssueLab's home page or any sort of promotional or donations page. They go directly to the specific collections relevant to the Wikipedia article -- an actual list of research documents. The research was not written or sponsored by IssueLab and we do not benefit financially from an increase in the number of people who view the research. We are a non-profit-seeking organization by definition. Like Wikipedia, IssueLab is a neutral resource; we do not espouse any political views and we include in our archive research produced by a large variety of organizations. The links were added in the spirit of expanding knowledge, what Wikipedia is all about. One of IssueLab's guiding principles is to encourage sharing of and free access to information. Along with each link I included the description '"Nonprofit Research Collection on [Subject]" Published on IssueLab' so as to make it clear what the link led to. I assure you I was not trying to mislead anyone or promote any sort of commercial website. I was simply trying to offer an additional resource for those who might be interested. I apologize if I appeared to be breaking the rules, but after carefully reading Wikipedia's guidelines on External Links and Conflicts of Interest, I truly believe that I am not.
From Wikipedia's section on External Links: "Some acceptable links include those that contain further research that is accurate and on-topic, information that could not be added to the article for reasons such as copyright or amount of detail, or other meaningful, relevant content that is not suitable for inclusion in an article for reasons unrelated to its accuracy."
IssueLab's collections contain "further research that is accurate and on-topic" and "could not be added to the article for reasons such as...amount of detail."
External Links also includes guidelines on "Links Normally to be Avoided": "Links mainly to promote a website. Links to web pages that primarily exist to sell products or services, or to web pages with objectionable amounts of advertising. Links to sites that require payment or registration to view the relevant content."
The links were added to promote the research, not to promote the website or to sell anything. The site does not require payment or registration.
From the section on Conflicts of Interest: "A Wikipedia conflict of interest (COI) is an incompatibility between the aim of Wikipedia, which is to produce a neutral, reliably sourced encyclopedia, and the aims of an individual editor.
"COI editing involves contributing to Wikipedia in order to promote your own interests or those of other individuals, companies, or groups. Where advancing outside interests is more important to an editor than advancing the aims of Wikipedia, that editor stands in a conflict of interest."
The aim of IssueLab is to offer another "neutral, reliably sourced" resource. "[A]dvancing outside interests" is not more important to us than "advancing the aims of Wikipedia," which are strongly in line with those of IssueLab.
Finally, several of the Wikipedia pages to which I added a link already included external links to other nonprofit organizations or to related articles and research. My added links fit right in with these accepted links.
I hope I've explained the situation clearly and I hope you won't object to my re-inserting the external links. My apologies for the length of this entry.