OddLot

Welcome

Welcome...

Hello, OddLot, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages that you might find helpful:

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• How to write a great article
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Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your username and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or place {{helpme}} on your talk page and ask your question there. Again, welcome! Okiefromokla ^questions? 02:27, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

Re: External links

Well, I would generally avoid using "how-to" guides, as it is really not the purpose of Wikipedia to provide such guides. People who want to find such guides can go to yahoo or some other service, not an encyclopedia. If you take a look at what not to link, money-and-investing.com would fail because it is a website that offers "member services" (which isn't free), along with being a how-to guide. It would therefore be close to failing #4 and 5 on our list of what not to link. Fool.com offers a similar how-to-guide that offers services you have to sign up for aside from its free tools, although this is somewhat of a grey area that can be treated with the occasional exception if common sense dictates. Investopedia seems better than the other two, but I would reccomend using that website as a reference to content in the article itself. The bottom line is that external link sections on Wikipedia should generally be very small, linking only to websites that increase the encyclopedia value of the article but cannot be taken directly because of the level of detail or copyright issues. Click here for a list of what should be linked.

If you add some external links that other people think aren't appropriate, it's not a big deal. Likewise, it's not a big deal if you add content to an article that may technically fail some policy, as long as it's reasonable. Although it's important to understand our policies (you can find a link to them on my user page), you should just get out there and start editing. Other people can fix your mistakes if need be, and no admin will block you for them. If there is a problem, you will be contacted on your user talk page and the problem will be explained — no big deal. The important thing is to be bold in your editing. However, one note of caution: If people see that your account is being used only to add external links to articles, it looks very suspicious. Users will assume that you are here only for spam and advertising, and you can be blocked for that, which is what happened last time. Oh, and don't forget to sign your talk page comments by adding ~~~~ at the end. Good hunting! Okiefromokla ^questions? 15:46, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

No problem! Okiefromokla ^questions? 04:07, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

I noticed that you have been trying to add money-and-investing.com and other websites to external link sections and as references in articles. I also see that your edits have been reverted, so I'd recommend taking the advice I gave you and staying away from these websites. Also, please note that reverting edits of another user without an explanation in the edit summary or talk page is not a good thing to do. In the case of your edit here, Flowanda was correct that money-and-investing.com is not an appropriate link. Just to let you know, I have your page on my watchlist, so there's no need to reply on my talk page. Please reply here. Okiefromokla ^questions? 15:27, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

PS: Please see Wikipedia:Copyright violations. Going over your edits more closely, I noticed you have copied content word-for-word from copyrighted websites. Wikipedia has very strict rules regarding copyrighted material, and editors who repeatedly add copyrighted material to aritcles can be blocked. Please refrain from doing this in the future. Thanks. Okiefromokla ^questions? 15:39, 4 August 2008 (UTC)