User talk:JustinSmith
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Hi! Sorry for the delayed reply, I was very busy yesterday and really only had chance to scan my watchlist at wikipedia.
FIrst let me say that wikipedia is a collaborative project—thousands of people are changing other people's edits constantly; if there were a requirement to get permission from each editor individually before changing their edits nothing would ever get done. In fact, when you submit material to wikipedia you implicitly give permission for other people to edit it—in the editing window it states clearly "If you don't want your writing to be edited mercilessly or redistributed by others, do not submit it."
Regarding the external links that I removed. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. Encyclopedias have content. If you bought an encyclopedia and it just referred you to other books I think that you would go and ask for your money back. This is one of the reasons why external links are discouraged by many editors (you can read the current community consensus on external links at WP:EL). So, whilst I agree with you that, for instance, adding a topographical map to the Geography of Sheffield article would be a great addition, I think that adding a link to a topographical map on another website adds little or nothing to the article. Similarly for the links that you placed in other articles—had you added useful content to the article I would be only too pleased, but adding links to articles on your own website looks like self-promotion. That may not be what you intended, but wikipedia gets many thousands of people who do think that they can use wikipedia to drive traffic to their own website. So I would encourage you to add content to wikipedia (bearing in mind that it may be edited by other people), but not in the form of external links. JeremyA 15:05, 3 February 2006 (UTC)