Hi James! Please do not take it personally. The guidelines in WP:EL disencourage linking to "to blogs and personal web pages, except those written by a recognized authority" and "sites that does not provide a unique resource beyond what the article would contain if it became a Featured article". Although your account is perfectly enjoyable and an interesting read, the link fails the two conditions mentioned and talk about only a little part of all the aspects that should be covered in an article about Chita/Siberia. If you disagree with my evaluation, please copy/paste your question in Wikipedia talk:External links for additional input from other editors.--Legionarius (talk) 03:48, 23 December 2007 (UTC)Reply

Hi, James! I was the person who removed the link to your site from Siberia. Basically, I do agree with what Legionarius said above—we have a set of guidelines which discourage linking to personal websites. I myself am pretty liberal about it—I left the link on Chita, Russia because that article currently does not have any quality external links at all, but, of course, it would not be right to restore the link once it is removed by someone else on policy grounds. I also enjoyed reading your account a great deal, but please understand that a link to it is not really suitable in an encyclopedia. I hope this resolves this situation. If you have any questions, you are quite welcome to ask them on my talk page, and I am sure Legionarius would be more than happy to help you as well. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 14:58, 24 December 2007 (UTC)Reply
Like I said, I myself am extremely liberal about external links. For me, as long as they are not clearly spam, are on topic, and are not overly broad or too narrow in scope, I just let them be. I, however, also realize that it is not the approach taken by most other editors, who take cleaning up the external links more seriously than I do, which is why I rarely get myself involved in discussions on this subject. If you want to contest the removal of your link, you will probably be better off by talking primarily with Legionarius. If you need an outside opinion, you can also post a review request on WP:AN to get opinions of other administrators. I doubt they will be much different from Legionarius', but you are sure free to try this option. Hope this helps.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 17:17, 8 January 2008 (UTC)Reply

Hi James: I will not remove the links again, but please take the discussion to the talk page of Wp:EL before readding it; I of course may be wrong about my interpretation, and an outside view is alawys helpful.--Legionarius (talk) 04:01, 12 January 2008 (UTC)Reply

WP:RUSSIA roll call and your input required

edit

Privet. You are receiving this message as you were listed on the membership list of WP:RUSSIA at Wikipedia:WikiProject Russia/Members. Recent times has seen minimal activity within WikiProject Russia, and there is an attempt to re-invigorate the project and have it become more organised into a fully-fledge functioning project, with the aim of increasing the quality of Russia-related articles across English wikipedia.

As we don't know which listed members are active within the project and Russia-related article, all listed members are receiving this message, and are requested to re-affirm their active status on Russia-related article by re-adding their username to Wikipedia:WikiProject Russia/Members by adding:

# {{User|YOURUSERNAME}}

to the membership list. You may also like to place {{User Russian Project}} on your userpage, as this will also place you in Category:WikiProject Russia members.

There is also an active proposal on the creation of a single WP:RUSSIA project. The proposal can be viewed at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Russia#Proposal_for_overhaul_and_creation_of_a_single_WP:RUSSIA_project, and your comments and suggestions are welcomed and encouraged at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Russia/Proposal.

We all look forward to your continued support of WP:RUSSIA and any comments you may have on the proposal. --Russavia Dialogue Stalk me 04:31, 2 October 2008 (UTC)Reply