User talk:NealKelly

Reply to your message on my talk page[edit]

Hi NealKelly, thanks very much for your message on my talk page. I have looked again at the edits you made to the Isle of Man article. I may have been a little hasty to revert the links you added. We have had a problem with users, especially new users, with linkspamming (I.e. adding lots of external links to articles in order to increase traffic to the external sites). My original impression was that you were engaging in this sort of behaviour. I now see that the links are not linkspam, so it becomes more of a nuanced question of style/content/etc. I revert a lot of vandalism every day and this time it looks like non-vandalism got caught in my cross-hairs. Sorry about that!

Although it is not necesarily against policy, it is not our usual practice to add external links into the body of a Wikipedia article. The preferred practice is to use internal links in the body of the article. That means the best practice would be to link to our own articles for each of those teams in question. Then, at the article for the team in question, it is perfectly reasonable to have a link to the team's external website down in the ==References== or ==External Links== section.

There is one exception to the rule of not having external links within the body of the text - that is when giving a reference. For example: Bob Latham is stepping down as CEO of USA Rugby.[1]
Even this, however, is not the best way to handle references, but it is the quickest way, so it does get used fairly often by people in a hurry (I count myself in this group sometimes!)

In concusion, the best thing would be to use internal links (E.g. Vagabonds R.U.F.C.) at the Isle of Man article, then to put the external link at the individual article. If that article does not exist, you can click the red-link to create it. Then you can create a short stub aticle by pasting in the following text (or writing something better):

'''Vagabonds R.U.F.C.''' is a [[Rugby Football]] club in [[Douglas, Isle of Man]].<br> ==External Link== [http://www.vagabonds.iofm.net/ Official web site] {{RugbyUnion-stub}}

I hope that helps! I notice that no one has given you an official welcome yet, so I'll be right back with a copy and paste of a welcome message that has links to some good resources for you. Please let me know if you have any questions. Thanks! Johntex\^talk 23:11, 25 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Welcome![edit]

Welcome!

Hello, NealKelly, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few good links for newcomers:

I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your name 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 someone will show up shortly to answer your questions. Again, welcome! Johntex\^talk 23:12, 25 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]