User talk:Artinyourarea

Please do not add commercial links or links of your own private websites to Wikipedia. Wikipedia is not a vehicle for advertising or a mere collection of external links. See the welcome page if you would like to learn more about contributing to our encyclopedia. Thanks. — Trilobite (Talk) 22:11, 22 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Having read the page and seen this : "Advertising. Articles about companies and products are fine if they are written in an objective and unbiased style and their subject is relevant enough to merit an article. External links to commercial organizations are acceptable if they can serve to identify major corporations associated with a topic (see finishing school for an example). Please note Wikipedia does not endorse any businesses and it does not set up affiliate programs."

Art in your area is designed for Local Artist to publish their work on the web. It is free for users to upload their work. It is merely promoting local Artists, not Artists in general but Artists specific to a particular area. Is this not acceptable for wikipedia? If not I think that the guidelines need to made a little clearer. Thanks.

No, this is not acceptable I'm afraid. What you were doing before I spotted what you were up to was going round county articles adding links to your site, which appears to be designed to hold details of artists, arranged by area. If this was acceptable, then virtually anything you could think of with some kind of local element should be linked from the county articles. I might run a website which maintained a national database of taxi firms, and I could go round adding links to county articles to a list of taxi firms in that county. This would be a recipe for turning Wikipedia into a huge commercial directory. We are an encyclopedia, not the Yellow Pages. If you wish to contribute to our coverage of art by writing useful content, that would be much appreciated, but bulk insertion of links to your website is likely to be reversed quickly. I appreciate the need to promote your website and attract visitors, but I'm afraid Wikipedia is not the place. Thanks. — Trilobite (Talk) 22:43, 22 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Using this logic Devon http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devon has links to an alternative music scene. However when you click on the link it just advertises local bands and venues. If your argument is that local organisations are ok and national organisations are not allowed, then if you look at Devon it has links to the British Broadcasting Corporation. This link then points to the Devon section of the BBC, an example of a national company being divided into regional areas. The BBC provides information as a service as does Art in your area. I think that the example of a taxi is a little oversimplified. If the site merely promoted local Artists purely as services then your argument is valid. The site however has a myriad of other facilities, ranging from local art societies to places to paint. It also contains Arts news. If this is the case then all links to the BBC should be removed. I personally would never wish this to happen as the BBC is obviously a great source of unbiased information, but I hope you can see my argument. In additional to this all tourist board sites are affiliated to the National tourist boards and are therefore essentially arms of a National body divided into regional sections.

Art in your area is not simply a commercial adventure it is there to promote the Arts and yet again on the Devon entry the link to Broadway House Tourism Directory is just a set of links to local Businesses. I do not wish to be a pain I am just having trouble working out the inclusion policy.

External links are expected to serve as an extention to the encyclopedia, providing information about the local area or an aspect of the local area (I will take a look at the Devon link you pointed out to see if it does that). Directories simply listing local insitutions and companies do not provide encyclopaedic information. Having reviewed the Dorset section of AIYA I'm afraid it simply doesn't (at present) provide readers with any informational content about Dorset or art in Dorset that Wikipedia that doesn't already. Joe D (t) 23:41, 22 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for taking the time to explain the policy. So at the moment it is a big no. But if Art in your area becomes a cornucopia of encyclopaedic knowledge it might be allowed in the future. Thanks for your help again.