Hello, Is it really not OK to put a link to a commercial website on Wikipedia? I have an e-commerce website. I have original content, like articles I've researched, and interviews I've done with artists, and this information either does not exist on Wikipedia, or the existing info is sparse. I clarified this through user-talk at Wikipedia and this is my Q & A: Me: I wanted to clarify the external link policy. On the "External Links" page, it says, "This guideline does not apply to inline citations or general references, which should appear in the "References" or "Notes" section." I added about 3 paragraphs of content to this page [link to wikipedia page] and put in a reference to this page [my website]. Since it is a citation, and not a link in the main content area of the page, is it still unacceptable to reference this page? Thanks for any clarification. Risa User-Talk Guy: It might be OK if someone else did so. We don't get to put in links to our own websites, anywhere. I thought I've read/heard from top link-builders that it is OK to add content to Wikipedia and cite a website, even if it is commercial. Please advise.
You can try, but 99.9% of the time it will get taken down. Of course, the authority sites out there all get away with it, since they are all running things like Adsense, but unless you're one of them, it will assuredly not last more than a few hours.