Timeline Links 

Hi Minderbinder,

I am new to posting on wikipedia, and you recently deleted all of my links that I have added.  I have read the links you posted in my talk section, and appreciate your concern and commitment to keeping the external links on wikipedia relevant and non-commercial. I support you in that effort.

However, you mistakely assumed I am associated commericially with OurStory, which I am not.  Additionally, none of the links I posted attempt to earn me any money.  The timelines I manage are freely open to the public to browse and reference.  

I am a biographer by hobby, and am using the OurStory service beacuse I like the timeline they provide.  It is a service that I couldn't find else where on the web, and as a history buff and biographer, I think it is valuable.  I run a number of profiles on their service, which are told collaboratively with other people on the site, and I particpate in other people's biographical projects.

I do respect the fact that external links should provide information that positively adds to the discussion, or provides valuable information that is not already in the entry.  And I understand that in some cases the information on my timeline projects does this and sometimes it does not.  So, in respecting this, I will only add my links back to entries where I think my timeline provides valuable (or missing) information on that subject, for the wikipedia user. You can see my comments on those individual discussion pages.

But, as a final thought, I hope that you can appreciate that, in and of itself, a biographical (graphical) timeline is a useful external reference tool.  It is something I have been looking for for a long time.  For example, when I created my biography on Barack Obama, in my research I could not find a biographical web source that provided dates for important events that make up his life (including the wikipedia entry, offical Illinois sentate, or US Sentate biographies, or even his current campaign page).  There was nowhere I could go to get a sense of the major events in his life, without reading 3 pages of text.  So, in a case like that, I think the timeline is an external reference that is contributing to the entry.

If you think it is best, I can alter the way I leave links, so that it does not say Our Story in it.  I just followed the example that is widely used on wikipedia for external links to IMDB.

If you would like to further the general discussion, please post on my Talk page again.  And, please engage me on the discussion page for the individual entries where I am adding the links back.  If you plan on re-deleting them, please review the timeline first, and provide a reason why you feel it is not worthy of being listed.

Thank you!