Saturday, December 09, 2006

Wikipedia woes

I had posted a link to my blog on Wikipedia, assuming it would be acceptable because I'm writing this blog as a public service, not to make money or promote myself.

My link kept getting removed, and I wasn't sure why.

It turned out that a Wiki editor had removed the link because he considered it to be spam.

So I wrote to the editor, whose user name is Mwanner:

Hello Mwanner: I'm writing to find out why you removed my Sweaty Palm Diaries blog from the list of external links for the hyperhidrosis page. I'm writing the site as a public service to people with hyperhidrosis, looking at treatment options, studies, and related psychological issues from a patient's point of view. I am not profiting, nor do I wish to profit, from the website in any way. The users who find my site through Wikipedia do not consider my link to be spam, and if you read their comments, they thank me for helping them by writing about this socially embarrasing condition.

I would be most grateful if you would reinstate my link -- http://sweatypalmdiaries.blogspot.com/.

Best wishes,
Tiara


Here is his response:
Two reasons, both covered in Wikipedia's External links policy, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:EL -- thou shalt not add links to your own site, and blog links generally are a no-no. Why not work on the text of the article? We need that much more than we need more external links.

Cheers!
Marc

OK, he makes some good points. I can't change to Wiki policy, and I see how it makes sense, but it would be nice if they allowed links to blogs like mine that are created to help others.

Does anyone have other suggestions on how to raise awareness of my blog? I don't want to do all this work if no one sees it.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I went ahead and posted a link to your blog on one of my posts in my blog :)
www.blog.stopsweatyhands.net

to gain more traffic/readers, submit your site to the major search engines, write articles and send them to article directories such as ezinearticles.com, goarticles.com, ideamarketers.com. And when doing this make sure your author/bio has a link to your blog. or if it is allowed, within the article make relavent links to your blog :D

link exchanges with relavent blogs/sites help as well :D

hope this information is helpful,
joqtan a.

Anonymous said...

Hi Tiara,
It' me again. e.g. founder of Singapore's hh support group: http://asia.groups.yahoo.com/group/hh_sp_in_sg/).

There's a idiot-proof way, i.e. add your URL to Google:
http://www.google.com/addurl/

Regards,
hh_sp_in_sg