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Thanks for your comments. I do agree that the one company external link should have been removed, too. Thanks for taking it out of there!

The reason I took the section out was that it was posted as an additional "external links" section, solely to commercial companies. This makes it look like "link spam". I don't think that the list of these companies belongs in this article, I think that they might belong in an article on noise monitoring, however.

The information on when external links are appropriate or not is found at WP:EL. This says that external links should be included if:

1. Articles about any organization, person, web site, or other entity should link to the official site if any.
2. An article about a book, a musical score, or some other media should link to a site hosting a copy of the work if none of the "Links normally to be avoided" criteria apply.
3. Sites that contain neutral and accurate material that cannot be integrated into the Wikipedia article due to copyright issues, amount of detail (such as professional athlete statistics, movie or television credits, interview transcripts, or online textbooks) or other reasons.
4. Sites with other meaningful, relevant content that is not suitable for inclusion in an article, such as reviews and interviews.

Obviously links to the homepage of company websites doesn't meet this criteria, especially when the article isn't about the company itself.

The guideline also outlines which links should be avoided, in particular:

1. Any site that does not provide a unique resource beyond what the article would contain if it became a Featured article.
2. Links mainly intended to promote a website. See External link spamming.
3. Links to sites that primarily exist to sell products or services.

There is also good information at Wikipedia:Spam#External_link_spamming, where it says "Adding external links to an article or user page for the purpose of promoting a website or a product is not allowed, and is considered to be spam. Although the specific links may be allowed under some circumstances, repeatedly adding links will in most cases result in all of them being removed."

While it might be possible to add a section to this article on noise monitoring, then listing a series of companies that make the equipment to do this is going to be seen as link-spam unless they can instead be internal wiki-links articles on those companies, or unless there is no attempt to put in the websites of those companies as external links. It might be possible to use the websites as references in a "reflist" to reference the existence of the company. It just looks too much like advertising otherwise! - Ahunt (talk) 15:47, 18 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]__DTELLIPSISBUTTON__{"threadItem":{"timestamp":"2008-03-18T15:47:00.000Z","author":"Ahunt","type":"comment","level":1,"id":"c-Ahunt-2008-03-18T15:47:00.000Z-Aircraft_noise","replies":["c-Ahunt-2008-03-20T20:46:00.000Z-Ahunt-2008-03-18T15:47:00.000Z"]}}-->

Thanks for your note. This is obviously a subject that you have some real expertise in! That is a good thing!

I really think, from what you have said, that the information from the four commercial websites would make a good basis for a whole new article on Noise Monitoring. Alternatively, you could create a new section on it in the existing article and then if it gets too long (which it sounds like it could do so) it could then be split into a new article at that point - either way.

There is no problem using a commercial website (or, better yet, a number of them) as a reference for a Wikipedia article. Using peer-reviewed academic journal articles is the ideal, but reality intervenes! Many subjects are just not the subject of those sorts of articles and we have to rely on commercial or other sources. Books are perfectly acceptable, too.

If you wanted to write a new article or new section to the existing article using those sites as references, I would say "be bold" as is often said here in Wikiland. The key thing is to use the websites as references and not just as external links, so it doesn't look like merely free advertising for a company. By using multiple sources and using them as refs instead of external links I think most editors would accept that as a good way to proceed!

If you want to see an example (maybe not the best example) of an article on a somewhat technical subject that relies heavily on commercial websites as the the only available references, then have a look at Quadricycle. This is an example of a subject where there are no published books and certainly no peer-reviewed journal articles, although there is lots of material from commercial websites. - Ahunt (talk) 20:46, 20 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]__DTELLIPSISBUTTON__{"threadItem":{"timestamp":"2008-03-20T20:46:00.000Z","author":"Ahunt","type":"comment","level":2,"id":"c-Ahunt-2008-03-20T20:46:00.000Z-Ahunt-2008-03-18T15:47:00.000Z","replies":[]}}-->