Rik Hemsley

Hello.

External links in AIWS

Dear Mr. Hemsley,

first of all, let me point out to you that adding external links to websites you maintain yourself constitutes a conflict of interest. The best way to have these added, if valuable, is to suggest them on the article talk page, and let others add them.

Regarding the external links themselves:

• http://aiws.info/: at the time I removed them, I could not access the site because it timed out (connecting too slow). I could not reach the site and hence removed it. Today I could access it without any problem. Looking at it, I think it clearly fails rule no. 1 at WP:ELNO (external links normally to be avoided): "Any site that does not provide a unique resource beyond what the article would contain if it became a Featured article."
• Per WP:ELNO, links to forums and groups are also to be avoided. Forums are almost always removed from medical articles.
• Newspaper articles are discouraged as they are not considered reliable sources for medical information, per WP:MEDRS.
• On the whole, your additions seem to fail WP:ELNO rule 11: "Links to blogs and personal web pages, except those written by a recognized authority (this exception is meant to be very limited; as a minimum standard, recognized authorities always meet Wikipedia's notability criteria for biographies)."

Don't hesitate to contact me further if you think our policies support inclusion of these websites. You might also want to seek a broader opinion from medical editors here: Wikipedia_talk:MED#Charities_in_external_links.

--Steven Fruitsmaak (Reply) 14:29, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

Hi again,

We can include quotes if it would add to the article. We can also put quotes on Wikiquote and link to them.

Perhaps you should start a discussion on the talk page to get more opinions, I think you have some good points but overall my judgement would be not to have the links, but that's just my opinion and I can be wrong too.

--Steven Fruitsmaak (Reply) 21:45, 26 October 2008 (UTC)