Wikipedia talk:External links/Archive 32

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Es un poco viejo lo que dice aca, ya que algunas compañías están subiendo sus videos a páginas que no les pertenecen, sin que haya señales de que lo dejarán de hacer. This page is a little outdated, considering that some companies are already uploading their videos to pages that don't belong to them. 190.51.144.68 (talk) 20:35, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

Why does this matter? Which sentences do you think are wrong or outdated? WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:01, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

Theatricalia

I'm surprised to find that {{Theatricalia name}}, for linking to actor profiles on http://theatricalia.com/ , was deleted, with just the nominator and one other in favour of doing so; and one voice (mine; the creator) in favour of keeping it; particularly as I pointed out that the nom. seemed to think it was a reference, rather than an EL, template. It was suggested by the "delete" !voter that it be brought here to discuss recreating it (which seems contrary to "be bold", but still...). Would anyone object to its recreation? Should I just got to deletion review? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 19:11, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

I for one would object. I don't think we should have templates that create external links when they generally aren't appropriate in articles (yes, this includes the Facebook and Twitter templates). Looking over the site, many of the pages I found wouldn't meet these guidelines if they were placed in their respective Wikipedia articles (many consist of material that could be incorporated into our articles with little effort). Links that do meet the guidelines could easily be placed without the template's existance. ThemFromSpace 19:23, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

This should be at WP:ELN, but yes, I am another who would object because using a template, whether intended or not, has the effect of elevating an external link to some "official" status, encouraging the addition of as many external links as possible without regard for WP:EL. Johnuniq (talk) 00:46, 3 September 2011 (UTC)

Official / inofficial facebook of company

My concern is that Wikipedia has made for our company, without our permission, a Facebook page that duplicates precisely our company's entry in Wikipedia. However, we have a Facebook page we made ourselves and which we can monitor. Therefore I would like to add to our Wikipedia entry a link to our own Facebook page ONLY so that when Facebook users see the one made by Wikipedia, they can easily get to our real one. Any comment? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 27.252.195.186 (talk) 09:40, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

Two things here:

• What do you mean with 'Wikipedia has made for our company, without our permission, a Facebook page that duplicates precisely our company's entry in Wikipedia'? I don't think that Wikipedia makes facebook pages, it must be made then by an individual.
• If any, only the official one should be listed (if it complies with all of WP:EL). If there is abuse of an inofficial facebook link, then I would suggest to add that one to the blacklist.

Could you give us the two links concerned? By the way, this discussion should be moved to the external links noticeboard. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 10:00, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

I think Facebook routinely copies pages from Wikipedia. Example: GNS Science and Facebook copy. I have no idea why Facebook does that, and while there may be some reason, it seems dubious to me. However, it is very unlikely to have anything to do with Wikipedia (text on Wikipedia can be copied by anyone under certain conditions; see WP:REUSE and the "Source" at the bottom of the Facebook page for an example of the conditions being implemented). Johnuniq (talk) 11:25, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

Facebook links of any sort are generally not appropriate as external links, unless your Facebook presence is key to your company's notability. An exception to this would be if your company has no better (for our purposes of providing encyclopedic information) official websites on the internet. ThemFromSpace 14:29, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

Five points: (1) I'm very sorry - I read the footer on the Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/pages/GNS-Science/115928885084402 too quickly - I actually don't know how to find out who made it but, following the advice above, I have to assume it was made by Facebook. (2) The page my staff member made is http://www.facebook.com/pages/GNS-Science/10150115509595004. (3) My frustration is that Facebook is not replying to my request about this issue. My attempt to put on Wikipedia a link to this latter page, so that Facebook visitors to the former could get to our proper page was certainly a naive quick-fix that doesn't work, and again I apologize for being too much of a newbie to cope with all the links to rules I see here, this being my first visit ever to this location. (4) I'm sorry this may be the wrong place for this discussion. I got to this very location from the warning I got not to use external links. So I knew no better! (5) Finally, if anybody knows what I should do I'd appreciate the help very much indeed. I don't now how to delete a Facebook page, nor how to discover who created it, nor how to get Facebook to reply to my messages, nor how to blacklist Facebook on Wikipedia (or did you mean Wikipedia on Facebook?) !!! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.90.159.248 (talk) 08:47, 3 September 2011 (UTC)

Sorry, but it is unlikely any help is available. Facebook made the copy of the article, and our opinion on that will have zero impact on them. What we can comment on is the proposal to link to the other Facebook page you mention from the article, and the news there is not good: per WP:EL (the guideline for which this is the talk page), that external link is not helpful for the article as it does not aid the reader with an understanding of the topic. As you will appreciate, people attempt to add external links all the time, and they are only accepted if they comply with WP:EL. Johnuniq (talk) 09:45, 3 September 2011 (UTC)

Thank you. While it may appear I can make no progress, I have actually learnt a lot from this exchange, and I very much appreciate the help you ahve given me. So let us close this discussion. 'Bye. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 49.226.179.180 (talk) 06:09, 4 September 2011 (UTC)

Large graphical templates

Kozuch has removed this line on the grounds that written permission for the change was not documented in advance.

The newly added paragraph says:

"Some templates exist for linking to Wikimedia Foundation projects such as Wikimedia Commons. {{Commons}} is an example of a graphical template that is commonly used to link to Wikimedia Commons. All such templates have inline versions (e.g., {{Commons-inline}}), or you may choose to link to them exactly like you would link to any other website. See Wikipedia:Wikimedia sister projects#When_to_link for further information. Do not create graphical templates for non-WMF websites, even if these websites are also wikis."

The only differences between Kozuch's template and the templates for WMF projects are the logos and the names.

These templates include graphics that call special (some might say "undue") attention to the WMF projects.

Kozuch, who created {{Osmrelation}} to look misleadingly like the WMF sister templates such as {{Commons}}, has removed the last sentence. I think it only natural for Kozuch to oppose any statement that requires Kozuch to link to the non-WMF-related OpenStreetMap website in ways that do not look like Open Street Map is an official WMF project, or that require this website to be linked like any other website, i.e., either manually or with an undecorated, normal inline template like {{Facebook}}.

Does anyone except Kozuch support the use of such large, graphical templates for non-WMF websites? WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:04, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

Update: You can see that the normal practice is single-line, undecorated templates at Category:Wikia templates and Category:Templates containing links to non-Wikimedia wikis. Out of all of those templates, the only ones that use large, graphical templates, are {{Familypedia}} and {{FamilypediaPlace}}. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:30, 9 September 2011 (UTC)

Question why are we proposing to save this at all. As mentioned in the other talk everyone believe the link does not meet our external link polociy so why are we going to allow a smaller version? This should be deleted outright "no"?.Moxy (talk)

If you think it completely inappropriate, then I've no strong objection to you sending it to TFD. But what I'd like to accomplish here is to see whether the sentence Kozuch removed should be restored. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:51, 9 September 2011 (UTC)

I guess unless you restore the sentence here you have no power to delete the template. Even if you do all this, I will redirect the {{Osmrelation}} to {{Osmrelation-inline}} which is perfectly fine with all current rules. I will request a comment about the use of such graphical templates, because deprecating such templates to free content project is simply nonsence.--Kozuch (talk) 21:42, 9 September 2011 (UTC)

Your assumption about "the power to delete" is wrong: The community has the power to delete whatever it wants. In the area of templates, more than a few template creators have the impression that decisions are sometimes based on little more than a few editor's whims. WP:TFD is normally orderly, but it is not a highly regulated process and it relies heavily on the participants' best judgment.

My goal in re-adding the sentence is purely preventive medicine: It's not acceptable, but it's unfair to expect template creators to magically know this. The primary goal of this guideline is to tell users what the community does and expects, rather than leaving them to make mistakes and get smacked afterwards by a handful of initiates into the mysteries. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:18, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

Is christianmusiccentral.wikispot.org a link that should be permitted as an external link?

From what I see, it's got a small, closed group of editors and mostly one editor is working on the wiki. It doesn't appear that the information presented is inaccurate, but there isn't any fact checking either. User:RichLindvall, the primary editor of the wiki in question is suggesting that his information is a valuable addition to wikipedia articles. Could we get some opinions on whether they should stay or go? --Walter Görlitz (talk) 06:09, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

Please post issues like this at WP:ELN. Here are the LinkSearch results. Johnuniq (talk) 07:04, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

The answer is no its not as per Links to open wikis.Moxy (talk) 07:18, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

EL formatting and placement for OEIS

You are invited to take part in a discussion. The EL-related issues are two:

• whether links to the OEIS should look like this  A190939, and
• whether links to external websites (non-WMF-related) should be placed in the middle of article text (e.g., last sentence of Alkane#Isomerism). WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:43, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

Icons for EL templates

Related to the discussions above, do we need to just add a line that says "no favicons in external link templates to non-WMF-related websites" to this guideline? We've gotten a couple of questions about this issue this year, and so far (without wanting to prejudice the outcome of the above discussion), the answer has always been 'no'.

Having secret, unwritten rules is not an act of kindness to our good-faith template creators. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:46, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

I agree that it would be much more helpful for WP:EL to just say no to favicons. That has been consensus, and as a guideline, it can always be overruled if some extraordinary exception is required. Johnuniq (talk) 02:00, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

Hard to find coverage specific to linking to complete online copies of works in a bibliography that are not used for reference in the text

I just scanned this article as well as several other wikipedia help articles on citations and bibliographies. As online magazines and sites that host whole books (not to buy, but to read online) become more and more common, the question of how to provide links to those works becomes more elaborate. This article implies that such links should be included in the External links section, but also has the guideline that the external links section should not get overly long. I just saw someone set up links to a set of short fiction to be inline references after the bibliography entries, so the link in the bibliography is to a line in the references section, which then links externally. But then the references section starts to seem overly long. Some specific guidance in this question in view of the changing, more reliable web publishing industry would be appreciated. Netmouse (talk) 05:11, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

The usual thing to do if you have more than a couple of publications is to establish a ==Works== or ==Further reading== section and link to the works exactly like you would have done if you'd had some reason to cite the book for article content.

If you want to stick with the EL section, then the ideal solution is to find a single webpage that lists all of the links you wanted to add (e.g., "Links to the free, full text copies of all of Jane Austen's books"). WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:55, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

Yes, it is best to avoid the EL police. Use inline citations and all will be well. I would even sneak in a bit of prose to make WhatamIdoings's example EL into a reference. Thincat (talk) 12:54, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

Anchors

A recent edit put one {{shortcut}} before its heading. I moved it to after for consistency (there are lots of other shortcuts which are after their headings); also, it seems to work ok when after, but the shortcut box is positioned in a somewhat ugly fashion when before. I also did some other consistency changes, mainly to put the {{anchor}} into the heading line, and after the heading text. When I last tried that, it worked. But now, in some browsers, it doesn't (that is, when using an anchor, the heading is often not displayed as the anchor appears to take effect just after the heading line. Some testing suggests that Firefox 3.6.22 fails, while Firefox 6.0.2, IE6, and IE8 work. There is heaps of discussion at Template talk:Anchor about what a pain the anchor is.

An example of the problem in Firefox 3.6 is that clicking Wikipedia:External links#What should be linked should display the heading, as clicking Wikipedia:External links#What can normally be linked does. I just did a test edit on my talk page to prove that there is no difference between =={{anchor|before}}Sample== (before) and ==Sample{{anchor|after}}== (after): when used, both anchors usually fail to display the header when using Firefox 3.6. I don't think there is a good solution—some feature in MediaWiki is required, although changing {{anchor}} to use the method in {{shortcut}} might be a good enough workaround. Later, I hope to post on the anchor talk page about that. Johnuniq (talk) 02:13, 1 October 2011 (UTC)

Inline links to OEIS

See Template talk:OEIS#This is an external link. {{OEIS}} seems to be used in over 500 articles. This template generates an external link to an entry in OEIS, which is a database listing integer sequences. Now it was suggested to format the template in a way, such that it uses list references rather than an inline external link. Are the inline links to OEIS a problem, or should they simply be kept? Toshio Yamaguchi (talk) 11:22, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

Rather than split the discussion in more than one place, people might like to contribute at Template talk:OEIS#This is an external link. HairyWombat 17:33, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

Important points to remember - WP:ELPOINTS

RfC closed, per discsussion Rich Farmbrough, 18:54, 23 October 2011 (UTC).

Apologies if this has already been covered elsewhere. I had a look but didn't find anything.

The section 'Important points to remember' - WP:ELPOINTS includes

• External links should not normally be used in the body of an article. Instead, include appropriate external links in an "External links" section at the end of the article, and in the appropriate location within an infobox, if applicable.
• Links in the "External links" section should be kept to a minimum. A lack of external links or a small number of external links is not a reason to add external links.

The second point seems IMHO to be not fully compatible with the first, i.e. why should a link be included in an "External links" section if it duplicates one in an infobox (particularly one prominently placed near the lead of the article)? Therefore, is there any support for inclusion of the following?

• Sometimes, a link in the "External links" section may be a duplication of one included in an infobox near the lead of the article. In this case, the link in the "External links" section should not be included. If this renders the section empty, the entire section should not be included.

The rationale for this is to reduce the maintenance burden when URLs change. Including this as a guideline would mean removal of any such duplication could be quickly justified by editors. If there is support for this, the text should probably be reworded to make it more concise.

If this proposal (or a variant of it) is not supported, then I should like to propose otherwise addressing what I perceive as an ambiguity in the current guidelines.

Thanks for reading. --Trevj (talk) 12:43, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

• IMO, if either of them should go, it should be the one in the infobox. It only makes sense to me that all ELs are grouped together. But considering a good article will have plenty of space between the box and the EL section, I don't particularly see the duplication as a problem. The infobox is for specific links only, almost always the official site (or if it's a website, the site itself), having that link duplicated doesn't really go against the spirit of the EL rules. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 14:01, 12 October 2011 (UTC)
• Note that infoboxes can be considered as short "summaries" of articles, from that perspective the redudancy/duplication of a link can even be considered as desired.
  Moreover I don't see any need for a regulation, having the links once or twice do both work.--Kmhkmh (talk) 14:23, 12 October 2011 (UTC)
• I have no problem with a fully appropriate link showing up twice (e.g. the official homepage of an entity is often in an infobox, ánd in the external links section), nor with having external links appropriately in the text or in the infobox and not in the external links sections - there are sometimes good reasons to have them there. It may sound ambiguous, but it is not black-and-white 'ELs should only be in an external links section' --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 14:36, 12 October 2011 (UTC)
• I don't see a problem here. There are two appropriate locations on the page for ELs: (1) under ==External links== and (2) in an {{Infobox}}. There's nothing in ELPOINTS that says the same link should always be placed in both places (although it is normal practice to do so for WP:ELOFFICIAL links). Perhaps you'd be happier if it said "and/or" rather than simply "and". WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:11, 13 October 2011 (UTC)
• It's true that it's slightly more burdensome on regular editors to maintain duplicate links, but that has to be balanced against the fact that duplicate links may make the article significantly more useful to the reader. I have often used Wikipedia to find the official website of something, especially software which may have fake sites out there. I trust the article writers to find the real official site. I go directly to the External links section. But the link is also highly appropriate in an infobox. So duplication may make the article more useful, both by giving the reader more convenient access, and by presenting an extra opportunity to see an important link. B^e——C_ritical 16:09, 17 October 2011 (UTC)
• Comment (proposer) There's no support for the proposal, but I now have a fuller understanding of the usefulness of including the link in both locations. I guess this is probably just about closed now. Thanks very much to everyone who's come here to comment. --Trevj (talk) 11:21, 18 October 2011 (UTC)
• Comment And let's not forget possibility of making a link a ref, when in fact that is what it should be. CarolMooreDC 23:24, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

That's covered by WP:ELRC (and elsewhere?) but would perhaps be more obvious if reinforced at WP:ELPOINTS too. -- Trevj (talk) 04:46, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

Google redirection URLs

This is a bit odd.

I noticed a case last night where a link was presented using a convoluted Google URL. I've done a little more digging, and it seems there's almost four thousand cases (linksearch). As far as I can tell, they just produce a "You will be redirected to [target url]" message and then redirect, or else redirect silently without a notice. None of them seem to be cached copies, though it does seem to be disproprortionately common with PDFs.

Any idea what's going on here? Should a bot run through all these and convert them into "normal" URLs? Shimgray | talk | 12:30, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I do:

• http://www.google.com/search?rls=en&q=Public+Law+105-298&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8

The first result reads:

[PDF]Public Law 105-298

www.copyright.gov/legislation/pl105-298.pdf

File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat - Quick View

PUBLIC LAW 105–298—OCT. 27, 1998. Public Law 105–298. 105th Congress. An

Act. To amend the provisions of title 17, United States Code, with respect to ...

If you right-click on the bolded name of the first result (on 'Public Law 105-298'), and copy the url, you get:

• www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=public%20law%20105-298&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CB4QFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.copyright.gov%2Flegislation%2Fpl105-298.pdf&ei=vmahTvikEoib-gadiZGuBQ&usg=AFQjCNH95AzJoEKz83KrtpLkLXENeJ3Njw&sig2=I_64kGBITluwmGNvw619Cg

That is probably how these URL's end up here.

Note, this is a loophole which can be used to circumvent the blacklist. I strongly suggest blacklisting this. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 12:36, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

Now globally blacklisted. Please clean these links - pages with them can still be saved, but if they get removed by accident, they can not be re-added. Thanks! --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 13:07, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. Thinking about it, there's another good reason to deprecate them - we're sending reader data to Google with these! I'll file a request for a bot to clean them up, since it should be fairly simple to convert these into "normal" links, but there's far too many to do it by hand. Shimgray | talk | 16:35, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

A quick note - the problem exists for other Google domains (445 on .co.uk, 83 on .de, etc.), so the blacklist should probably be set up to catch them all. Shimgray | talk | 16:41, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

I downloaded the externallinks.sql table from the most recent database dump. It appears that there are 70 Google domains currently in use for this purpose:

Big list o' domains

• google.at
• google.az
• google.be
• google.bg
• google.ca
• google.ch
• google.cl
• google.cm
• google.co.id
• google.co.il
• google.co.in
• google.co.jp
• google.co.ke
• google.co.kr
• google.com
• google.co.ma
• google.com.ar
• google.com.au
• google.com.br
• google.com.co
• google.com.ec
• google.com.fj
• google.com.gh
• google.com.hk
• google.com.lb
• google.com.mx
• google.com.my
• google.com.ng
• google.com.np
• google.com.om
• google.com.pe
• google.com.ph
• google.com.pk
• google.com.pr
• google.com.sg
• google.com.tr
• google.com.tw
• google.com.ua
• google.com.uy
• google.co.nz
• google.co.th
• google.co.uk
• google.co.za
• google.co.zw
• google.cz
• google.de
• google.dk
• google.ee
• google.es
• google.fi
• google.fr
• google.gr
• google.hr
• google.hu
• google.ie
• google.it
• google.jo
• google.lk
• google.lv
• google.md
• google.nl
• google.no
• google.pl
• google.pt
• google.ro
• google.ru
• google.se
• google.si
• google.sk
• google.sm

Also, besides "/url", it seems "/archivesearch/url", "/bookmarks/url", "/history/url", "/m/url", "/newspapers/url", and "/news/url" are also in use for the same purpose (although some of those are no longer be honored by Google). Probably any Google url with the path component ending in "/url" should be blacklisted. Anomie⚔ 02:33, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

Blegh. Pff .. how to do this error-free .. 'google.*?\/url\?' ?? --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 10:01, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

That may be about it. Or possibly 'google\.[^?#]*\/url\?' to be slightly more restrictive. Anomie⚔ 13:24, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

Link to a twitter diary of a classic author

I wrote a variant of the query below in the discussion for Samuel Pepys, but this seems a more appropriate place.

There is a daily twitter covering the entries of Samuel Pepys' diary of same date, in 1668. The owner of the twitter account, and the related website is an individual, so it can't be said this is an 'official website' (and it is difficult to qualify as an 'official website' for a long dead author).

More than 20,000 people are currently following the diary in this format, and many of them wouldn't probably read the book on one of the websites listed in the external links. For instance the book has been downloaded only 528 times from Gutenberg. (sources: twitter samuelpepys and Gutenberg search under this author).

To increase readership of not so widely read authors is considered an expansion of encyclopedic knowledge. So it is accepted to have external links encouraging readers to go to a website where they can download the book. The same logic should make acceptable to have a link towards a twitter that provides the same content on a daily basis, when this media sticks to the original text of the book (no comments, etc). Twitter has no adverts so one classic objection is waived.

So, can we formulate an exception to the general rule about external links to twitter ? --Jardeheu (talk) 02:13, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

The usual place to ask for advice on specific links is at the WP:External links/Noticeboard.

I don't feel strongly about this link either way. Twitter feeds in general are discouraged, but not outright banned. The primary reason why they are discouraged is that you normally have no idea what the reader will see on future dates. However, that's not an issue with this one, since the content is pre-planned. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:03, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

So, let's continue on the Noticeboard .--Jardeheu (talk) 04:29, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

Do "personal websites" that are actually just essays fall under WP:ELNO?

Do "personal websites" that are actually just essays fall under WP:ELNO? StandFirm-JW (talk) 05:00, 13 November 2011 (UTC)

That would be WP:ELNO #11, when it is used as an external link. If it is used as a reference, WP:SPS. --Ronz (talk) 16:59, 13 November 2011 (UTC)

Links to town news sites in town articles?

I'm surprised this isn't addressed on this page, but surely this has been discussed elsewhere: Should articles on towns have an external link to the town's newspaper or equivalent news sites?

I'd assume that the answer to this would be "yes", but at this discussion an editor is saying no, this is never allowed. Since the discussion is not heavily populated he's citing WP:BURDEN as justification for removing the link to the town's news website (it's a commercial news site, not an official site). Whether he or other editors will then feel justified in citing this as a case precedent for then rampaging through the Wikipedia and deleting all these links I don't know, but from the tone of the discussion I'd infer it's possible. So could we get this settled? Is an RfC in order?

(My arguments for including these links are detailed in the discussion linked to above, but basically it's 1) it's reasonable that some non-trivial percentage of people reading about a town would be interested in the town's recent newspaper articles and why on earth force them to go Google it, and 2) while many articles in a town's paper are likely trivial, a reasonable number aren't.)

The other editor also has arguments, but they mostly devolve to that these links are prohibited by various guidelines and policies. But if so then this needs to be clarified, I think. I'd be OK with adding "In articles about populated places, the place's newspaper(s) or equivalent news sites" to the "Links normally to be avoided" section if that's indeed the practice and general consensus. Or adding it to "Links to be considered" if that's the practice and general consensus. Either is OK but arguing over each one on a case-by-case basis seems wasteful. Herostratus (talk) 04:12, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

First, please keep in mind WP:FORUMSHOP - as this is essentially a reworded rehash of the prior discussion. Second, I fail to see how arguments that focus on guideline and policy issues can be classified as "devolving" - focussing on guidelines and policies is how best to support one's position on an issue, as those guidelines and policies have been developed by the overall community over a period of time for the purpose of bettering Wikipedia.

Those issues aside, I will restate what I posted at WP:ELN#eastkilbride.co.uk: the links being added are low quality advert laden material. They do not expand upon the encyclopedic understanding of the article subject (the city), and even if those sites are viewed as news websites - adding them fundamentally changes the types of external links that are added to city articles. Take a look at articles for major cities that get a lot more traffic and community review, such as New York, Chicago, London, Paris or Berlin. You'll note that none have news websites in the External Links section - although some have "media" sections within the articles where there are links to notable news sources within those cities (notability in this case being identified by having a Wikipedia article) - note: they do not have external links in the media sections, only internal Wikilinks to the articles for each news site in Wikipedia, and within their own article the EL to those notable news sources are listed. Having a section for notable media sources is spelled out at both WP:USCITY#Media and WP:UKCITIES#Media. Also, WP:UKCITIES appears to discourage these types of links in the external links section.

Wikipedia is not an internet directory of links related to a subject, the link should expand encyclopedic knowledge, not just be related to the article subject. These types of links simply do not belong in the External Links section of the city/town/village articles. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 07:11, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

In answer to the question "Should articles on towns have an external link to the town's newspaper or equivalent news sites?" - no. The article is about the town, it is not about the newspaper. The article text could mention, in prose and without external links, which is the local newspaper (and that is something for which you are likely to be able to find independent reliable sources), it can also wikilink to the wiki-page of the newspaper, but the external link of the newspaper is indirect on the page of the town. The link of the newspaper would be direct on the wiki-page of the newspaper. Sure, many local newspaper are not notable enough for a wikipage, but do remember that we are writing an encyclopedia here, not an internet directory. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 07:43, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

There might be two exceptions: the official link of the town and if the newspaper is driven by the town (so something like an official town newspaper). mabdul 16:59, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

Articles about towns should have the official link of the town, that for sure. If the newspaper is driven by the town it is still not the official link of the town, it is the link of the newspaper of the town. And if there is the official link of the town, and the newspaper is the official newspaper of the town, then a link for the newspaper is generally accessible via the homepage of the town, so we do not need to list it here (note, that is already true often for not-town-official newspapers!). If it is not linked from the homepage of the town, then you still have to ask, whether the site of the newspaper gives info that is not already covered by the official homepage and is necessary for an encyclopedic understanding of the town (yes, that someone gave birth to triplets is information about the town, but it does not result in understanding of the town - by far most of the news from a town is not giving understanding of the town). If the newspaper is part of the site of the town, then again only the mainpage will suffice, we do not link to all subpages which may be of interest there. I think, that listing a newspaper of a town on the page of the town is a very rare exception. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 17:13, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

Rather than tell you what "should" be done, I'll say this: the community does this, and it does it very frequently specifically in articles about small towns. So you're not going to find it in London or Los Angeles, but you will normally find a link to the local print-edition newspaper (if any) in articles about "Smallville"—not as ELOFFICIAL links (99% of our ELs aren't official links), but as links that might help the interested reader find more information about the subject. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:10, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

You find them, but IMHO, they do not comply with our policies and guidelines as not being direct, and the information is not 'constant'. I generally remove them for those reasons (and not because the are not the official link ..). --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 18:49, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

(ec) It should be pointed out that the URLs that brought up this discussion are not related to print-edition newspapers - and do not appear to be official for the towns. The links are geodomain sites (see http://www.eastkilbride.co.uk/ and a similar competing site http://www.eastkilbride.com/ ) which are administered by third parties that maintain similiar sites for other cities/towns/etc that all share the same administration, formatting, graphics, etc. While both of these competing sites in the above examples state "Copyright 2011 East Kilbride", there is no evidence that either site is officially supported, maintained, or endorsed by the city government. This has already been discussed in the prior discussion on ELN at WP:ELN#eastkilbride.co.uk, as well as on an archive of my talk page at User talk:Barek/archives/2011 archive 2#re East Kilbride.

I also believe that guideline and policy is against adding the ELs for print-edition newspapers - although some frequently sneak into low-visibility articles for smaller communities. But, that's actually a different issue than the sites that actually resulted in the current discussion. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 19:15, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

Barek, I'm familiar with the context, but I'm happy to answer the question that was actually asked.

Dirk, to the extent that this guideline is supposed to reflect actual practice rather than your (and my) ideals, I think we have to generally accept links to newspapers in small towns. This is widely done. Also, a source of current information about the town is not actually off-topic. When you remember that most of these articles also should include a section on ==Media==, then a link to whatever media exists in the town becomes even more obviously on-topic. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:07, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

No, WhatamIdoing. Pages on towns or cities have also often information about churches, important companies, important schools, important people, etc. etc. Just like a page on, say, a drug has information about the diseases it is working against. That is never a reason to include links to musea, companies, schools, the people or the diseases. This situation is pretty similar. And no, a local newspaper does not tell more about the town than what the church tells about the town, or the disease tells about the drug. These links are indirect, and not in the scope of an encyclopedia. It may be common practice, but these links are inappropriate and should be removed. Spam is also common practice, but that is not something that we then leave. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 06:32, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

Oh, but we do link to school districts, if there's no corresponding article for the school district at this time. We don't usually link to individual organizations like museums, churches, or businesses, but that's because they are so many of them, and none of them tell us much about the town. (We do sometimes link to multi-organization websites, like Chambers of Commerce, although I oppose these except when the link is directly to a history-of-Smallville page on such a website.)

However, a link to the weekly newspaper, which includes frequent reports on the city's actions and sends a reporter to every single city council meeting, tells us quite a lot about the town. "What the city did this month" (and often a link to search archives for every month in the previous several years) is plainly on-topic information about the city. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:16, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

Looking at WP:EL, the general answer is maybe: it depends on the nature of the site and the amount of material presented. We should link "Sites that contain neutral and accurate material that is relevant to an encyclopedic understanding of the subject and cannot be integrated into the Wikipedia article"; we should consider linking "Sites that fail to meet criteria for reliable sources yet still contain information about the subject of the article from knowledgeable sources." For some of the cookie-cutter sites mentioned above, I'm not sure that either criteria is met. That said, the official page for my city (hosted at the state's website) is thin enough on information that the city newspaper's website might be the better resource to link in the Wikipedia article, if I had to pick one or the other. So, I don't think we can generalize: I think it depends on the resources provided by official sites vs. what the unofficial sites or media sites can offer. —C.Fred (talk) 13:19, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

Right. "Encyclopedic understanding" is pretty vague though. It clearly includes some things and excludes others, but there's a huge grey area. If it was a matter of editors kicking around these links and coming to conclusions like "this one is pretty good" and "this one is pretty worthless", OK. But if it's a matter of some editors simply being against all of them in principle and other editors not, this breaks down. Herostratus (talk) 19:02, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

Hmmmm well, in the particular case that got me interested in this (East Kilbride) I wasn't able to get any significant third-party input on the article talk page, or at the EL noticeboard, and not much here, so the editor has now removed the link per WP:BRD and lack of consensus to include it, which I suppose is proper. But this makes me wonder more if these links are being thrown out generally.

I'm thinking that an RfC might be in order, along the lines of asking for editors to comment on these three options:

1. Include in the "Links to be considered" section of EL the following: For populated places, a link to the newspaper(s) serving the place, or equivalent web site(s).
2. Include in the "Links normally to be avoided" of EL the following: For populated places, a link to the newspaper(s) serving the place, or equivalent web site(s).
3. Neither, no change.

The problem is

This doesn't really apply to New York City and so on. It doesn't apply to articles where there is a "Media" section I would assume. It doesn't apply to places that aren't served by a newspaper or news site. There may be cases (maybe many cases) where the newspaper or news site is totally garbage. There may be cases (maybe many cases) where the newspaper or news site is outstanding and includes lots of good info. The question of what "serving the place" means is open to interpretation (county newspaper OK or not? etc.).

However, I'm not sure how to shoehorn all that in. Guidelines should be as succinct as possible. The sections are "To be considered" and "To be normally avoided, and EL itself is just a guideline.

But in real life, whatever gets in is likely to be taken as gospel, basically. So I'm not sure if this is best wording for the RfC or not. Herostratus (talk) 21:11, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

Note

I think we might need to expand our explanation of the "non-discrimination" standard: Just like we don't discriminate for or against for-profit websites, we don't discriminate for or against websites based on editors' perception of how many people are involved in maintaining it or the fame of the people or organization behind it. A site run by some "nobody" with excellent reader value is always preferable to a big-name site with a hundred employees but weak reader value. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:58, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

Does WP:ELNO apply to Wikipedia Templates, Templates that are then picked up in the body of a large number of other articles?

I have observed previously that Wikipedia has a large number of templates, templates that are then inserted into the body of other articles, that contain a number of (often not verifiably sourced)) assertions. Often times other editors will point out that an external link in the template ought to provide a sufficient source.

One example (of myriad cases) is Template:Philadelphia Eagles staff, which attempts to source the claims with two external links (labeled "Coaching Staff" and "Management") in the lower right corner of that Template/navbox.

What is the position of other editors who are more familiar with such questions than I am? Are these bare external links in Wikipedia embeddable Templates okay? Or should assertions made in templates generally be sourced more like Wikipedia:CS#Web_pages, or something else entirely? Cheers. N2e (talk) 22:56, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

So are external links inside of template boxes an exception? N2e (talk) 04:43, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

Simple answer: Templates should not normally contain external links.

Complicating question: Is that URL actually an external link, or is it a citation to a reliable (primary, non-independent) source that supports the content? WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:32, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the answer! It is an external link as it appears there in that particular template, but it is a link that hopefully supports the claims that are over and above pure navbox functionality; i.e., claims that are beyond the links to other articles. Another editor and I have been working on improving such info into a citation that works okay from within a Template. Our current latest idea is shown at Template:Kansas City Chiefs staff, which includes each of the elements of a citation required by Wikipedia policy on citing web pages (title of the source, date it was retrieved, name of the website, and also date of publication (if it is known)). In the latter case, it is no longer an external link (not normally allowed), but rather is a full citation (which is required per WP:V. Moreover, it also clearly tells the uninitiated reader of our encyclopedia that it contains Reference information. N2e (talk) 00:52, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

The format of the URL isn't what determines whether it's an external link or a citation to a reliable source. If it supports a claim in the article, then it's a reference, no matter how strangely or incompletely it's formatted. But I think your recent changes constitute a definite improvement, both from the perspective of readers and of future editors. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:17, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

Clarification that ELYES#2 includes recordings

ELYES#2 says: "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." There is some doubt that "other media" applies to recordings. Radio3net legally hosts a number of streamed recordings of entire notable albums. The site has been checked for copyright violations, see Wikipedia:Media_copyright_questions/Archive/2011/September#Radio3net, and while I understand from discussions on another website that they pay the appropriate streaming licences and royalties, we do not yet have an OTRS ticket (though I am writing to the website today to see if I can secure that for Wikipedia). A question has been raised at ANI regarding adding a link to Radio3net on the Live at Leeds article. There may also be an issue regarding the fact that when you arrive at the website you need to click on a link to get to the album, and while waiting you get the radio station live which will be playing unrelated music and talking in Romanian. Another consideration is that in my experience the site does not licence for all parts of the world. I can only play the albums when I am in France if I use a proxy, so I assume the licence does not cover that region. It works in other European countries that I have visited, and it appears to work in America. While ELNO#7 restricts "sites that only work ... in a specific country", the case here seems more to be that the site works in most countries, but not in all. Bearing in mind Wikipedia:External_links#Rich_media, and that the licence may not cover all countries, if these links are allowable, what would be the appropriate wording? SilkTork ^{✔Tea time} 16:32, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

ELYES#2 should include recordings. However, given the licensing restrictions WP:ELNO#EL7 comes into play as you noted. I don't feel that some restrictions are significant if a large number of possible users can access the source. Notice that WP:ELNO#EL7 says a "substantial" number of users. There was a discussion of this here with respect to Myspace, and I proposed a suggested wording for the link:

* Call the Doctor at Myspace (streamed copy where licensed)

The Myspace site also requires an additional click ("Play") to start the stream in a new window, which has been complained about by other editors, but it doesn't seem like a major issue.

More significantly though you need to verify that the site is not using a plugin per WP:ELNO#EL8. I would be surprised if they weren't using Flash. This may not be obvious. For example, Myspace is using Flash even though no Flash window pops up or is in anyway visible. I discovered this when I tried to access a Myspace stream on an IPod Touch. The Myspace Music Player page, Music Player, that it uses to stream the music is HTML in the browser but uses Flash.

-- J. Wong (talk) 19:27, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

And I just checked your link and they are very clearly using Flash to play the stream. The music player is a Flash widget laid out on the page. -- J. Wong (talk) 19:32, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

Given that Flash runs just about everything, and is on essentially every computer that accesses the Internet, perhaps ELNO#8 needs to be revisited? - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 07:57, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for responses. Would the wording below be acceptable?

• Streamed album online (where licensed) on Radio3Net a radio channel of Romanian Radio Broadcasting Company (click on album cover to play - requires Adobe Flash)

I'm with Bushranger that it would be appropriate to look again at ELNO#8 to revise it slightly. The wording would seem to disallow the example given in Wikipedia:External_links#Rich_media, which would be contradictory. The wording in Rich media seems useful: "Where a link to rich media is deemed appropriate, either as a direct link or embedded within an HTML page, an explicit indication of the technology needed to access the relevant content must be given". As Bushranger says, Flash is standard for browsers these days, so using Flash as an example might be unnecessary. Personally I find the amount of Flash on websites intrusive - I use a Firefox Flashblock as I want to be able to control what I hear and see.

Possible wording for ELNO#8: Direct links to rich media that require external applications or plugins (such as Flash or Java) to access the content, unless an explicit indication of the technology needed to access the relevant content is given. See rich media for more details. SilkTork ^{✔Tea time} 11:24, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

I don't believe WP:ELNO#EL8 needs to be revisited. Per the comments of WhatamIdoing here, "it's 'Links normally to be avoided'" not "links never to be linked". That said, linking to them is discouraged as it should be. Adobe Flash is not standard. I gave an example of where it is not available at all (iOS, i.e., Apple iPhone, iPod Touch), and users themselves may choose not or be unable to install it on their browser.

Per WP:ELNO#Rich_media it would seem that the Myspace layout is preferable, but the Radio3Net layout is also acceptable if not as preferable. (That is, the Myspace page has a button labeled "Play All" that open another HTML where the Adobe Flash application is embedded and streams the songs of the album.)

I think you're going to need to start a discussion at WT:ALBUMS about whether the editors at WP:ALBUMS want to allow these sorts of external links. You should also review the archives there for previous discussions along those lines. The question for the editors is whether the utility to the articles and the availability of these links are sufficient to be an exception to both WP:ELNO#EL7 and WP:ELNO#EL8. It's clear that some users of Wikipedia will not be able to access the links either because of licensing or availability of Adobe Flash. (Myspace actually redirects to another page if not licensed for the locality of the IP address or if being accessed from a mobile device [i.e., iOS].)

As to your proposed wording, in my opinion it is too verbose. For example, "a radio channel of Romanian Radio Broadcasting Company" is unnecessary. Readers that are curious can click on the Radio3Net link to find this out. I believe you added the phrase to overcome other editors' objections to legality, but "where licensed" is sufficient for that. Also, if the page being linked is sufficiently obscure (Romanian for the English language Wikipedia!) to require the "click on album cover to play" instruction, perhaps it should be avoided.

Here's my suggestion for the wording of your link:

* Live at Leeds (Adobe Flash) at Radio3Net (streamed copy where licensed)

You might also include a comment to make it clear to editors not to delete the link. For example, for the Myspace links,

<!-- This is a licensed stream for the album, which is allowed under Wikipedia polices, even though it's hosted by Myspace.com -->

You might consider the following links besides or in addition to Radio3Net:

* Live at Leeds (25th Anniversary Edition) (Adobe Flash) at Myspace (streamed copy where licensed)

* Live at Leeds (Deluxe Edition) (Adobe Flash) at Myspace (streamed copy where licensed)

* Live at Leeds (2010 Super Deluxe Edition) (Adobe Flash) at Myspace (streamed copy where licensed)

-- J. Wong (talk) 17:33, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

ELNO #8 is about "direct links", not links to HTML pages that happen to imbed, use, or link to non-HTML features. So imagine that SVG was "rich media": you could link to http://en.wikipedia.org/Main Page, but not to http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/80/Wikipedia-logo-v2.svg —even though the SVG file is present on the Main Page.

(Objections could be made on the basis of WP:ELMAYBE #2, because rich media files are normally "large".)

In this instance, you need to do two things:

1. decide whether the non-availability in some countries rises to the level of negatively affecting a "substantial" proportion of readers, and (if not)
2. label both the need for software (the non-availability of Flash software is a significantly increasing problem, largely thanks to Apple, Inc) and the non-availability in some countries. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:45, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the suggestions J. Wong. The MySpace links are preferable in terms of quality of sound, and the site is in English and, as you explained, are allowable in all regions, so - now that I am aware that MySpace has such links - I would use those in preference to Radio3net. Worth noting, however, is that all three links delivered me to the same page which contained all the Who albums. I'm looking at the addresses you put in, and they point to the right page, but the website converts them into the general album page. Is there a way the links could be made to go the right page without redirecting?

I added the click to play wording as one of the people who objected found it difficult to locate the album cover - he talked about "randomly clicking around". I have not found the Radio3Net site with the words "click2play" on the album cover any more difficult to use than the MySpace page which has a small black arrow with the word All. I would agree that it would be better to keep wording to a minimum, and even if not immediately spotted, I think most people will work out to click on the album cover.

Opening a discussion with WikiProject Albums is a good idea, and I will do that. SilkTork ^{✔Tea time} 17:28, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

Do you feel, WhatamIdoing, that the wording "streamed copy where licensed" would be OK to cover your point about labelling non-availability in some countries? Regarding WP:ELMAYBE#2 - are you saying that people may object to the link on the basis that it would be considered "very large". The wording doesn't forbid all large files, but suggests talking about a link on a case by case basis, which is what I hope we're now doing. I think your point about "direct links" applies, as the link goes to a page where the file is stored. People are alerted to this being a media rich file by the wording suggested above: "Live at Leeds (Adobe Flash) at Radio3Net (streamed copy where licensed)", so if they are aware they are on a low-speed connection they wouldn't attempt the link or if they did, are then given a second option to "clicktoplay". This is not the same as clicking unprepared on a link to be taken directly to a heavy media rich page which freezes your browser. SilkTork ^{✔Tea time} 17:28, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

Yes to all, I think.

One of the challenges with streamed content is that less-informed people think that the "file size" is the size of the HTML file, not the total amount of data that seeing the content requires. I'm not sure how you would figure out the actual size, but if someone knows, it would be great to have instructions posted for common rich media sites, like YouTube. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:50, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

Just a clarification: Myspace has not licensed the streams in all regions. I can access them in the U.S.A. Someone in Europe could also access them. Someone not in those two regions (I'm guessing either the MidEast or South Asia) could not. This might be why you do not go to the stream page for the albums. Myspace redirects when it determines that the IP address of the browser is in a region where it has not licensed the stream. Sorry. This is the issue that needs to be agreed upon by the editors of WP:ALBUMS. Is the restricted availability sufficient to allow or disallow using the links?

—J. Wong (talk) 01:27, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

There's no easy answer to this question. If you think that the song is going to attract mostly readers from an area where it is available, then it's probably okay to link. If you think that the song is going to attract mostly readers from an area where it's not available, then it's probably not a good idea to link it. We want most of the readers at the specific article (not readers of other pages) to be happy/non-frustrated. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:14, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

Restrictions on linking

Regarding a sentence in the section Restrictions on linking,

"If you know that an external website is carrying a work in violation of the work's copyright, do not link to that copy of the work."

Would the intent of the sentence be more accurately presented if the following changes were made?

"If you know suspect that an external website is might be carrying a work in violation of the work's copyright, do not link to that copy of the work."

This came to mind during a discussion at Wikipedia:External_links/Noticeboard#Two_interviews_on_CNN_and_Fox. --Bob K31416 (talk) 20:08, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

WP:ELNEVER is supposed to reflect the firm rules, "handed down from on high", as it were, that we-the-editors have no choice over. That item needs to be a faithful reflection of the legal policy rather than our personal advice. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:47, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, but the wording that says "know" gives a loophole to anyone to link to anything and then claim ignorance. "How was I supposed to know it was a copyright violation? "Bobhackerdude" could have been granted permission to upload that TV show to YouTube!" The legal restriction is not simply knowing for a fact that something is a copyright violation but having a reason to believe it is. You can't have a loophole you can drive a semi truck through or it's pointless even having it. I made the change, and also changed some awkward phrasing ("you" is unnecessary, "carrying" is a strange way of describing it, etc.) If you want to discuss the wording, fine, but the loophole cannot be there. DreamGuy (talk) 03:18, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

If a loophole actually exists, then the problem is not here. This is a summary of LINKVIO, which is part of a legal policy and which trumps any statement we make here at ELNEVER. If you've got a problem with a wikilawyer, you need to be talking about the requirements laid out at LINKVIO, not the brief overview presented here. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:32, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

HTTPS changes

I think that this page and Help:URL need to be updated now that "http" etc. are no longer necessary, and the links' destination (if it is within Wikimedia) will change automatically depending on whether you are viewing the HTTP or the HTTPS version of a Wikimedia site. It Is Me Here ^{t / c} 20:55, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

I don't understand what kind of change you want to make. The EL guideline does not discuss linking to WMF websites via URLs. In fact, there shouldn't be any Wikipedia links at all in the ==External links== section. Other Wikimedia websites are normally linked through sister templates. Although it's "legal" to link them as plain old URLs, almost no one ever does. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:40, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

I would like the information to be updated in light of recent software innovations. So, for example, it is no longer the case that

The URL must begin with http:// or another internet protocol, such as ftp:// or news://

— WP:EL

(My italics). It Is Me Here ^{t / c} 11:15, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

I'm not familiar with any "recent software innovations" that relate to this. Can you post a link here that (1) works when I click on it and (2) doesn't begin with an internet protocol? WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:25, 22 December 2011 (UTC)

I refer to mw:MediaWiki_1.18#Protocol-relative_URLs; an example of such a link is [1]. It Is Me Here ^{t / c} 16:33, 22 December 2011 (UTC)

Does that work for external websites, like nytimes.com? Does it work on all browsers (not just the most modern ones/ones in use in wealthy countries)? WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:57, 22 December 2011 (UTC)

I tried testing a few of these ... and it works (mostly).

It appears to use the current protocol of the user to determine the protocol of the target page. In most cases, this should work fine, especially for the larger sites on the internet. But, if you're using the https version of Wikipedia, you can run into problems if the target site does not use that protocol. This will mainly be an issue for smaller or regional news sites. But, these regional sites are often used as refs and ELs ... so there are limitations to this change. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 18:13, 22 December 2011 (UTC)

If the new system doesn't work reliably, then we really don't have any reason to permit it. IMO we get enough complaints about linkrot as it is. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:34, 22 December 2011 (UTC)

Question

Hi, Sorry if it's not a good place but I have a question about all these Youtube videos in this page List of world records in Olympic weightlifting, I added most of them but now I'm not sure if I did a good thing or a bad thing. Please someone answer me if possible, are these videos against the rules or not ? thanks in advance. Mohsen1248 (talk) 13:30, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

I see you posted at WP:ELN a couple of days ago and got no response (that was the correct location). I think many people are a little exhausted from dealing with all the external link nonsense (I am, at least) and may not want to get involved in borderline cases such as the one you mention. I'm sure I've seen a discussion about youtube links in a sports article recently, but I can't find it now. At any rate, some would argue that the links are helping readers, and others would say they are linkspam and undue (see WP:ELNO#20 and WP:MOS#External links). I doubt if you will get more guidance than that (not helpful, I know). Johnuniq (talk) 02:43, 22 December 2011 (UTC)

Response over there.Cptnono (talk) 04:18, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

Clarification on Facebook and Twitter

The guidelines say to avoid "Links to social networking sites (such as Myspace and Facebook), chat or discussion forums/groups (such as Yahoo! Groups), Twitter feeds, Usenet newsgroups or e-mail lists."

But the list is preceded by: "Except for a link to an official page of the article's subject".

I thought this meant we should exclude unofficial social networking sites of fans and supporters. But some editors say it means we exclude any such site even if it's the organization's own. So, I'll ask here: If an organization has a website and a twitter account, does this mean we cannot list the twitter account?

For example, Acadia University (first in template:Twitter's What Links Here) lists both the website and its twitter feed. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of articles that do this.

If that's wrong, why do we even have the template:Twitter and template:Facebook templates?

-- Randy2063 (talk) 21:01, 17 December 2011 (UTC)

The general rule, from all I've gathered, is that if the social site is easy to find on the official page, we shouldn't link to it. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 21:06, 17 December 2011 (UTC)

I've gathered that unless the social site is the primary website, it shouldn't be included.∞陣内Jinnai 23:45, 17 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks all. Not the answer I wanted, and not really the clarity I wanted, but it's an answer of sorts.

Considering the extensive use of the templates, I guess it depends more on who's running the article.

-- Randy2063 (talk) 01:03, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

Randy, I followed your link to WP:EL here and read the two weak responses to your question. I'm afraid you gave up on this point way too easily. One of the replies says, "I've gathered that unless the social site is the primary website, it shouldn't be included." But, Randy, Facebook is the primary locus of Occupy Marines. That's why we identify it in the lede as "a Facebook support group," in accordance with our cited reference to USA Today. Their web site is indisputably a secondary location for Occupy Marines. So we really ought to include Facebook in a template for External Links. JohnValeron (talk) 01:27, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

Perhaps but I told Basalisk I'd reply the next day. I didn't think it was important enough to delay, as I could live without the article showing all that much. (I'll be very surprised if that group exists this time next year.)

I would still prefer we include all three sites, and a YouTube channel if they get one. There are thousands of articles that to it this way.

If you really think it should be primarily Facebook for that article then you ought to just swap out the website and replace it with the Facebook links. I should say, though, that the Facebook link I used was the best I could figure out at the time. There may be a simpler one.

-- Randy2063 (talk) 01:54, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

You might like to read Wikipedia:External links/Perennial websites. If you want to ask about a link in a specific article, then the WP:External links/Noticeboard is your best bet.

The answer to your general question about why we have articles containing inappropriate or redundant links is the same as for anything else: Wikipedia has articles in need of improvement (e.g., by weeding the external links) because you haven't yet managed to fix every single one of them yet. With respect to Twitter at articles about organizations, both Twitter afficionados and public relations employees add them wherever they think they can get away with it, so it is an uphill battle. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:37, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

Well, I don't like it, but I'll accept it for now, and ask that the policy be changed.

-- Randy2063 (talk) 01:54, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

This is the best place to make that request. So far, your reasons in favor of adding Twitter links to articles about organizations seem to be "we should surrender to the spammers" and "the existence of the templates is an attractive nuisance". (I know that's not what you said, but you should not expect a sympathetic interpretation.) Think about why you believe these Twitter links are valuable to encyclopedia readers (e.g., someone who arrived at the page by clicking on Special:Random, not a person involved in the organization), and feel free to post a proposal for what you think a good practice would be whenever you'd like. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:08, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

I agree with WhatamIdoing, and want to give my view on Melodia Chaconne's above comment: If the subject's official page does not have an easy-to-find link to a Twitter or Facebook page, they obviously think that such a link is not significant. We should follow their example and not add the link to an article here (unless there is a really good reason, such as the article describing some significant event surrounding the Facebook page). Johnuniq (talk) 03:10, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

Johnuniq, the article in question, which prompted Randy2063 to open this § Clarification on Facebook and Twitter, is Occupy Marines. It is, according to a Reference we cite in the lede to USA Today, "a Facebook support group." Their web site is a secondary location for Occupy Marines. Moreover, their web site does include a prominent link to their Facebook page. So I really can't see that your comment has any relevance whatsoever to the case at hand. JohnValeron (talk) 03:17, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

This page is to discuss the guideline (WP:EL)—hence my comment. Requests concerning a particular issue should be at WP:ELN. Johnuniq (talk) 03:24, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

WhatamIdoing,

It's not to "surrender to the spammers" so much as it is to surrender to those editors with an interest in a particular article.

Clicking Special:Random took me to Richard Van Vleet. He doesn't have any of these URLs, but let's say he did. Facebook users might prefer to visit there, while I (a non-Facebook user) would click to his home page if I wanted more info about him.

Twitter serves a different purpose than a website. You don't visit Twitter accounts individually except when you first choose to "Follow" them.

You might say that Richard Van Vleet's website would probably tell us whether he had a Twitter account. But most readers don't arrive to that article via the Random button. They probably got there from the article on one of his movies, and they might be in a rush, preferring instead to read more about the actress who starred with him. If we list their Twitter accounts then readers can quickly go there, click Van Vleet's Follow button, and then go back to the article on the actress.

Or, they might want to follow all the major actors who have Twitter accounts who appeared in one particular movie. That's very easy to do if we list their Twitter accounts. It's more time consuming if we don't.

This last item is the most critical. Wikipedia isn't a one-article thing. Readers jump from one to another. The way the Occupados are fanatics about their little movement, I wouldn't be surprised if some of their fans would want to go from one Occupy-article to another, and then "friend" and "follow" them all. If they have to visit their websites first, then that takes longer. The different websites' own Facebook and Twitter links are probably in different places.

I could agree that we shouldn't overdo the number of links but the article we were talking about before has their website as the only external link. It's not likely to get crowded. Editors can decide whether the Facebook and Twitter accounts were worth following.

-- Randy2063 (talk) 05:54, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

So your argument in favor of Twitter links is that it permits users to do something in one click that would otherwise take them two, right? WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:23, 22 December 2011 (UTC)

Well, it's only a couple more clicks to Google the subject. Using your logic, we don't even need to list their websites. Most browsers have handy search bars right at the top right corner.

If one-click-or-two was all it was, it is a minor convenience to the reader in that websites don't always have Twitter and Facebook links in the same place on the page. And sometimes they have annoying opening screens.

But mostly, it's worth knowing that they have Twitter and/or Facebook links available. It might not occur to the reader who's in a hurry that they should check. This is particularly true when these links are already in most of the articles. Readers probably already assume that if a good article on an actor has a social media presence then it will be listed in the ELs.

-- Randy2063 (talk) 12:57, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

Just because readers assume something against the guideline doesn't mean that the guideline should allow it. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 14:45, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

The primary reason we include an official link at all is to provide the subject with something similar to a right of reply, and secondarily to provide the reader with the correct link (e.g., a link that's not a hoax or the wrong person, which they might encounter if they simply search for the person's name). Achieving these goals only requires a single link, and the type of link best suited for achieving these goals is not a social networking site.

Why "should" a reader check for Twitter links anyway? Presumably, if you really love Twitter, you'll want to go looking for it, but why do you say that the reader "should check" if nothing is listed? Outside of Twitter's marketing department, I can't think of anyone who believes that everyone ought to determine whether someone has a Twitter feed. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:20, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

Then my understanding of Wikipedia was askew. I thought the primary reason we include anything is because this is an encyclopedia with the purpose of informing readers about the subject.

It's almost as though we're acting like a commercial website that has an interest in keeping users from leaving the site.

Well, I gave it a shot.

-- Randy2063 (talk) 22:15, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

On the contrary, we're committed to not giving undue weight to other websites. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 23:06, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

Not the best argument for the policy. You could say that about IMDB links (although I hope they're not verboten, too) but not this. These aren't reviews or fansites. They're the social media choices of the article subjects. There isn't a Twitter link unless the subject chose to have one.

-- Randy2063 (talk) 21:35, 25 December 2011 (UTC)

Yes, they're the social media choices of the subjects. But since when do we report every single choice that any subject makes? Isn't letting them dictate (through their choices) how many links we provide to their web presence pretty much the definition of giving undue weight to their choices?

Also, we do think of the English Wikipedia has having an interest in keeping users from leaving the site. That's one of the reasons that the external links section is at the very end of the page. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:49, 25 December 2011 (UTC)

Not quite. I'd buy it if the policy was to encourage more discrimination. The subjects show what they want us to think is important, but editors are the gatekeepers to decide whether or not it's sufficiently important to link.

At the moment, editors don't have that job. It is the rules that decide one link is important, and the others cannot be.

I had previously believed ELs were like signs on the highway telling us that gas, food and lodging is available at the next exit. It's not.

-- Randy2063 (talk) 00:10, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

I think your initial thought that editors are the gatekeepers was correct. The policy is written in the language as a guide, not a rulebook, and thus the final decision on any given link inclusion to a article should be up to the editors to decide. The title of bad links is called "Links normally to be avoided", not "links not allowed". Facebook is thus something which is normally a bad link (its a link to a communication channel, may mislead the reader, are commonly promotional in nature, ectra...). This does not exclude the use through in cases where its the best form of including further research on the subject, or is the officially and primary website of the subject matter. It also mean that there is rarely no good reason to add more than one of those bad links in a article. Bad links has only a place in articles that lacks good EL's. Belorn (talk) 21:57, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Good points. The article I was referring to had no other ELs. There was no danger of it crowding out more important stuff.

In the end, I replaced the website link with the Facebook link, since it was more appropriate. Readers will live without the website link.

-- Randy2063 (talk) 00:57, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

RfC on promoting Wikipedia:External links/Perennial websites to a guideline

Please note that I've proposed promoting Wikipedia:External links/Perennial websites to a guideline. The discussion can be found here. Yworo (talk) 19:14, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

Proposed wording on snippet and abstract links in citations

FYI

 – Just a link to a relevant discussion elsewhere.

Help talk:Citation Style 1#Proposed snippet and abstract wording is discussing something – guidance about linking to snippet views and abstracts – that would eventually need to be integrated into WP:MOS if acted upon, and probably also be mentioned at WP:V and/or WP:RS, as well as WP:CITE. The parent thread above it provides some background, but may be "TLDR" for some. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 00:39, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

Websites with "illegal" content

This guideline only "forbids" linking to websites with copyrighted material, but does not mention websites with other kind of "illegal content". We have this page Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not#Wikipedia is not censored, but it reads more like a guide to newbies/outsiders and only states "Content that is judged to violate [..] the laws of the U.S. state of Florida where Wikipedia's main servers are hosted, will also be removed" in other words "Don't put crap on wikipedia because it will be removed", but that only reports about what de facto happens and is not really a guideline to editors.

Therefore I propose that we add here Wikipedia:External links#Restrictions on linking a new entry with something like:

"Websites considered illegal, or with illegal content under the laws of the U.S. state of Florida where Wikipedia's main servers are hosted."

Of course there then exists the problem "of what is illegal?" and there will certainly be "grey cases", however, I'm thinking about "clear-cut" cases, like rape videos, child pornography, etc. We could also tell readers to go to a certain place or contact the wikimedia foundation to ask about the "grey cases". --SF007 (talk) 02:19, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

PS: Example: A website distributing child pornography gains wide media coverage, a wikipedia article is created about it and someone adds the link to the article... As far as I can tell the link would not be in violation of this guideline. Of course in practice it would very likely be deleted under WP:IAR, but this seems an important thing missing in this guideline. --SF007 (talk) 04:48, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

I'd think such a website, if not shut down in short order, would at least lose all illegal content anyway. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 05:22, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

Adding a new vague guideline will not help, and I rather would see the current text to become less vague that it already is. I remember strongly some discussions in TPB and Wikileaks all having very long discussions what "Content that is judged to violate [..] the laws of the U.S. state of Florida" means for those articles. It should be noted that in each case of those, consensus was to keep the disputed links. Belorn (talk) 08:54, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

The purpose of the ELNEVER section is to summarize the absolute requirements imposed on editors by the legal policies, not to have a section that shows what the community feels more strongly about. That's why the first words of that section are "for policy or technical reasons". If you can find a separate policy that requires editors never to link to "illegal" content, then we can add it. Otherwise, we shouldn't put that item in that particular section. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:04, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

Question (official site)

Since there's currently some arguments going on over the external links (see: Wikipedia:Templates_for_discussion/Log/2012_January_9#Template:Google.2B), I've been going through several EL sections on articles; in most cases I've been modifying them according to the existent policy, but on Gabriel Iglesias I made an exception and kept a social networking link in addition to the official website.

My concern is that in some cases "official websites" may have several problems ranging from poor design/poor navigation, poor hosting (unstable, etc) to slow loading times (due to various widgets and other crap), whereas a link to G+ or Twitter would be more reliable to load and the user will know what to expect. Links to big celebrities' official sites tend to be reliable, but Wikipedia also has tons of articles on subjects that really aren't that big, and their websites may at some point become subject to inactivation and re-registration or just plain hacking (or a cheap web designer) -- my point is that a regular reader (or, even, myself) has a whole array of reasons of wanting to avoid going to a new website (especially of a subject who was obscure to them before reading the article on Wikipedia) when they don't really know what to expect, but where they'd be more willing to go to the subject's profile on a site that they trust and are familiar with (Twitter, G+).

Question: can an editor ever use their own judgement about the official link and add one social networking site in addition to that if they deem that necessary? I guess that's invoking IAR since the policy says things to the contrary, but I really think in a lot of cases it may be justified. Thoughts? — Jeraphine Gryphon ^(talk) 07:22, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

Just look for the Golden Arches. Yworo (talk) 07:31, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

I went and looked up McDonald's. What was your point? — Jeraphine Gryphon ^(talk) 07:51, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

Homogeneous experience. You won't get the best burger at McD's, but you'll always get pretty much the same burger. Yworo (talk) 14:47, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

Yes, it's perfectly acceptable to make the occasional exception. I believe that most editors would prefer that you use your best judgment after considering all the facts and circumstances. This guideline (not a policy) does not say "Never-ever-ever permit two links." In most cases, only one is the best answer, but in a few cases, two (or possibly even three) might actually be better for our readers. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:08, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

I have just reviewed the Google+ site here concerning Gabriel Iglesias and I can not find one single solitary thing that resembles encyclopedic information. I see a social networking site that connects users, and is not relevant to the subject of the article providing no useful information. If this is indicative of what the other Google+ pages are like then I am now totally against the site. A user can use their own judgement and add any site that is not blacklisted (Wikipedia will not allow it) but that does not mean the judgement would be considered correct by consensus.

It seems to me there is a "sway" to just add a site and if it is not contested then all is good. Some editors feel strongly about this and if inclusion of a site is contested will bitterly defend it even if there is clear consensus against use. While WP:EL (a guideline) is not policy nor is WP:External links/Perennial websites (an essay) there is clear consensus on many areas; WP:EP#Links normally to be avoided #1; #4; #5; #10; and #11. Also WP:ELBLP raises the standard on external links.

There "can be" exceptions to Wikipedia:policies and guidelines and they are on a case by case basis. If someone questions if (or should) a link be used or not then there are avenues to check this out. Adding a social networking site that blatantly promotes WP:SPAMLINK listed as "Other profiles" and that are only promotional sites is an indication that it is not acceptable. I did ask for consensus at WP:External links/Noticeboard#Google Plus, Facebook, Twitter. Otr500 (talk) 18:48, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

Using blogs as a source of image references

Blogs in general are a rich source of images not otherwise accessible to WP users. As external links one does not have to worry about copyright issues. This must have been overlooked when the guidelines for undesirable external links were framed. The wisdom of being cautious when using data from blogsites is obvious, but images do not fall in this category as they cannot be regarded as 'unreliable' or 'factually inaccurate'. An example of this is here where the blogger uses his own images to illustrate notes on a tree. Paul venter (talk) 09:29, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

Do note that blogs do contain also material which is violating copyright (though that does not happen often). But for the rest it is a case of applying WP:IAR to WP:EL - if the blog adds something that can not be incorporated, is not violating things, then it can be incorporated. Of course it would be better to have the images here (but I understand that that is not always possible). --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 10:46, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

External Link Black Listing

I am a new user to Wikipedia and I recently added an External link to the application software article. My link does or did not violate any external link rule. My rule only gives the user of an I-Pad or computer the ability to get help to learn how to use these devices. Apple does not include instructions on the I-Pad's use so, I was providing information on how to get a program that can be used on the I-Pad as a way to learn it's functions. It should be up to the reader of the article whether they take advantage of the information or not! Personally I would welcome this information. This was my first external link and some self-righteous self-proclaimed owner of a user generated site immediately upon discovering my link decided that he/she would remove the link and also prevent me from further contributions to Wikipedia! I will be watching that person's contributions and will make sure they cannot contribute also! This Black listing of my link destroys the purpose of Wikipedia especially when a few so-called know-it-alls control its content! NecroCephalic (talk) 13:08, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

You are obviously somewhat confused. Your note above was mis-formatted, so that it couldn't easily be read, so I've cured that for you. You say "My link does or did not violate any external link rule", but I wonder whether you've actually taken the trouble to read WP:EL, or any of the other useful links which were provided on your talk page? The purpose of Wikipedia is not to provide a user manual for your I-Pad; there are plenty of other websites that can help in that regard. As it happens, your link was a faulty one, firstly being mis-formatted, but then not going anywhere. The editor who reverted your edit was absolutely right to do so; Wikipedia is a collaberative enterprise, and if you wish to stay and contribute you will have to learn how to edit in accordance with the agreed processes. - David Biddulph (talk) 13:26, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

Someone from the feedback squad suggested that he "find some friends who can support you in the "battle"". Wha? — Jeraphine Gryphon ^(talk) 16:26, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

That was someone who has only been a named editor for a week. - X201 (talk) 16:40, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

Here is what the brand-new user did. As noted above, it's a busted link to a non-existent website. It's also in the wrong article (iPad users aren't going to be reading Application software; they're going to be reading iPad). And it's not WP:BLACKLISTed; it was just WP:UNDOne. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:28, 28 January 2012 (UTC)

Inline or in body external links

IMHO the prohibition against inline links should be more explicit. All inline links I have ever come across were either clearly linkspam or easily convertible to references. Roger (talk) 09:04, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

Given that WP:Nobody reads the directions, do you think it would actually help?

(Technically, those URLs that support article content [i.e., that are easily convertible to references] aren't subject to this guideline in the first place.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:43, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

IW

Can someone add iw for sl:Wikipedija:Zunanje povezave - User:Pinky sl — Preceding unsigned comment added by 31.15.196.29 (talk) 17:30, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

 Done Thanks for improving Wikipedia! mabdul 23:44, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

External linking

Hi Everyone,

I've been using Wikipedia for many years now and am a big fan! However, I'm new to Wikipedia editing. I was trying to add some very relevant external links to Wikipedia articles related to just one subject - Hindustani classical music, from a very well designed and informative noncommercial website on the subject.

However, after the first four links, I was greeted with an automated message telling me that I seem suspicious and am at risk of being blacklisted as a spammer.

I do agree that this is a good policy and that Wikipedia should be protected from spammers.

However, in this particular case, I would like to present my case to the Wikipedia Talk forum for a verdict. The website in question is quite useful and I think relevant portions of it should be linked to the relevant articles on Wikipedia. Please let me know what you think? This is the website:

http://raag-hindustani.com

Ushajayaraman (talk) 06:39, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

I have seen your contribution page. You have added the same link in 4-5 articles. And that's your contribution to Wikipedia so far. Are you an owner/moderator/friend of the owner/moderator of the site? --Tito Dutta (Send me a message) 22:24, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

This kind of question is normally handled at the WP:External links/Noticeboard. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:18, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

ELNO 14 wording

It says "Lists of links to manufacturers, suppliers or customers."

Shouldn't that be "Links to lists to manufacturers, suppliers or customers"? A single link to a list of manufacturers (etc) is a problem in an article; it's not just if you put a dozen in the article. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:57, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

I think the current wording is fine. It's saying that an article should not have a list that consists of links to manufacturers (or suppliers or customers). Sometimes it is reasonable to name some notable items if each item is a blue link to an existing article. But stuff like "Widgets are made by Acme" (a list of a single item) is not ok. Johnuniq (talk) 07:06, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

Let's think about this. You said that an ==External link== like this:

* Acme, an example of a widget manufacturer

is not okay (nor would half a dozen such links be okay). But what about this:

* Complete list of all widget manufacturers in the world

I believe that this second example is what the item is attempting to prevent: Links to a list of manufacturers, rather than the links themselves (which we would not need to specify as "a list", since all ELs are presented in list form). WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:52, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

I also think the current wording is fine and I don't think either one of the the examples above would be included under ELNO 14. So let's do think about this: ELNO 14 wants to prevent people from just creating a laundry list of links to different man., suppl./cust. So that in an article on widgets we wouldn't get an external link section that looked like this:

* Manu1, an example of a widget manufacturer

* Manu2, an example of a widget manufacturer

* Manu3, an example of a widget manufacturer

* Manu4, an example of a widget manufacturer

* Supply1, an example of a widget supplier

* Supply2, an example of a widget supplier

If this happens in an article, it should be corrected. I think it also covers the second idea of linking to a list of manufacturers as that would pretty much be the same as having our own laundry-list of items. But, if we need to put in a parenthetical stating that more explicitly, then that's fine, I'd be for that. Thank you. -- JoannaSerah (talk) 17:27, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

Self-publishing

This is an aide-mémoire that the guideline would benefit from mentioning the issue of wikt:self-publishing. Since practically all websites except those run by "traditional publishers" (like Random House), including all official websites for businesses, people, and organizations, are self-published, then being self-published is not a good reason to exclude URLs. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:29, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

I'm not exactly certain what you are wanting to discuss. This article is about external links, not about the reliability of references (See WP:CITE and WP:RS). Self-publishing means being published by the subject of the article (such as official websites or advertising). It doesn't refer to how the publishing is done by a third party (someone or group that is not the article subject). A third party could post something about an article's subject on the third party's own website or print it on paper bags if they wanted to. That wouldn't be a "self-published" source by the article's subject. Is this what you are concerned about? The only place I see where this article mentions self-publishing is regarding official website links. And it doesn't say to exclude actual official websites. Otherwise, what section of this article are you talking about that needs work? -- JoannaSerah (talk) 02:23, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

As a point of fact, self-publishing is when the author and the publisher are the same, not when the subject and the publisher are the same. Please go read the dictionary definition. What you're talking about is a non-independent source, which is a completely different issue.

The reason that I think it needs mentioning is exactly because this is EL and not RS, and because the External links/Noticeboard recently encountered a case of someone removing an external link (under the ==External links== section heading) with the stated reason that it was impermissible because it was self-published. I grant that it was self-published, but that's actually irrelevant as far as this guideline is concerned. Almost all websites are self-published. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:38, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

as far as use within Wikipedia, "self published sites" is used most frequently in the manner described by JoannaSerah.

and the vast majority of sites on the web are not appropriate for inclusion as "external links" -- The Red Pen of Doom 06:04, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

If "me talking about myself" were actually the wikidefinition of a self-published source, then we would not need to have a prohibition on using self-published sources to talk about other people, because according to Joanna's definition, a random personal blog is no longer self-published if it talks about something other than the author, e.g., any website about mathematics, medicine, or computers. (The common error is actually to assume that self-published refers to the size of the entity controlling the website, so that a small business always has a self-published website, but that Coca-Cola, Inc., is not self-published.)

I agree that the vast majority of websites are inappropriate, but having the same entity write and publish them is not what makes them inappropriate. Instead, what makes them inappropriate is their failure to be useful, informative, tasteful, factual, etc. (the criteria set forth in this guideline). WhatamIdoing (talk) 13:49, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

Ok. I think we run the risk of talking past each other. I haven't visited this talk page very often and just now noticed the commenting on the Noticeboard about "self-publishing". I see that the wiktionary definition does say what you state. But that is not the connotation used generally on WP. Forgive us for not being so precise. Perhaps this is an issue to take up on the Wiktionary definition talk page. When a lot of people say "self-published" here, they probably mean published by the article subject. So yes, a personal blog about me made by someone else would not be a "self-published" source by me. This would not be looked upon as a reliable source for a citation. However, this article is not about reliable sources, but about External links. But blogs and social media sites shouldn't really be included for other reasons. Again, please show where this article limits "self-published" links as you (and the wiktionary) describe them or let us know what you think needs to be changed or added to the article. I'm sorry, I am not seeing it. Thank you. -- JoannaSerah (talk) 16:11, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

Actually, Joanna, you are the only editor I've encountered who had that particular belief about self-publication. As I said above, the typical error is to discriminate against small entities, often specifically with the truly nonsensical claim that large corporations cannot publish their own websites because they employ too many lawyers. If you want to make yourself thoroughly depressed, then there's an enormously long argument in WT:V's archives about this.

My point here is that WP:EL doesn't mention self-publication one way or the other, and (probably as a result of our failure to provide adequate guidance), someone removed some external links the other day with the claim that they were impermissible specifically because they were self-published. Since we have people making this mistake, we should probably provide clearer guidance on the point. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:26, 24 March 2012 (UTC)

I see. Sure. If you've run across a lot of strange points of view about linking like you state, then, yes, I can understand why we'd want to mention something here. I've never run across anything whatsoever like that, but, hey, you've been involved on this article and talk page much more than me. So...Just put what you think ought to go in the article somewhere or suggest a new sentence/paragraph here. Thank you. -- JoannaSerah (talk) 02:52, 24 March 2012 (UTC)

I just looked over at WP:SPS and WP:BLPSPS and see that those articles do use your definition. Hadn't really read those sections before and most of my experience has been with editors negating some references and external links on BLP articles I've run across on the grounds of being self-published. I guess they really meant self-published puffery by the article subject. Some editors, then, probably have gone overboard in limiting references and external links based on what those sections state. I did not realize it was such a problem. Will have to think more on how to add to this article regarding that, then. Thank you. -- JoannaSerah (talk) 03:14, 24 March 2012 (UTC)

Campaign websites

Can I have some opinions as to the suitability of the very large number of external links embedded in the body of these two articles (amongst others) but labelled as such? My feeling is that this is WP:Linkspam, and because the purpose seems to be to offer a comprehensive list of campaign websites, and seems to be in violation to our policies and best linking practices. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 15:23, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

seems fishy to me. "Except for a link to an official page of the article's subject, one should generally avoid: ...13) Sites that are only indirectly related to the article's subject: the link should be directly related to the subject of the article. A general site that has information about a variety of subjects should usually not be linked to from an article on a more specific subject. Similarly, a website on a specific subject should usually not be linked from an article about a general subject. " Those links are to specific candidates and not the election overall which is the actual topic of the article. -- The Red Pen of Doom 16:48, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

I could go either way. Each district's race is independently notable; we've voluntarily chosen to assemble them into a list. If they were separate stubs, we wouldn't blink at including these links. So I'm consequently not too worried about the same links being provided here. It might not be what I personally would do, but it's not obviously prohibited. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:45, 25 April 2012 (UTC)

Banning links to social networking sites

I feel this was to made to prevent editors from linking to their own Facebook page about a certain random subject, but I feel this restriction has no reason when the article is about a person and we link to that person's public Twitter/Facebook page, just like we link to film people's page on IMDb. --uKER (talk) 14:46, 25 April 2012 (UTC)

The large majority of social network sites that would be appropriate can be found by going to the official site - there's no reason to also link to Twitter, etc in such cases. And they are completely different from IMDB, as the later is an independent site, I don't even see how one could even think to compare them. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 15:09, 25 April 2012 (UTC)

What if the person doesn't have an official site and uses social networking as their primary means of difussion? --uKER (talk) 15:22, 25 April 2012 (UTC)

Then you link whichever webpage seems to be their main one. Have you carefully read WP:ELOFFICIAL? It directly states that official pages are exempt from ELNO #10. You may not include every single social networking site used—Wikipedia is not a web directory—but if the subject's primary web presence is a Myspace page, then you link to their Myspace page. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:50, 25 April 2012 (UTC)

I support rethinking the policy on links to social networking sites. Here are some reasons why:

• The horse has bolted in that there are many tens-of-thousands of links to pages such as Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, etc. In other words, community practise (the practise of local editors—whom I'm sure have little or no knowledge of policy pages) is to include them, and the policy here is getting further and further away from actual practise.
• The links are in the "External links" section (the last section) and hence well away from the main article text. To get to the links, one must often scroll past enormous "References" and "Notes" sections, and hence I reject the argument that adding a handful of links to the EL section detracts from the article (either by adding to its size, or detracting from its aesthetic appeal).
• The use of templates (e.g {{Facebook}} and {{Twitter}} render the links neatly and succinctly, and columns could even be used to list links (in a similar manner that is employed for references and notes).
• Why should we be asking our readers to leave WP to find information that we can provide? Note that going to an "Official website" (to find social networking links) often means immersion in the weird and wonderful world of "official site" mechanisms (e.g. Flash and multimedia).
• To our readers, there is an inconsistency in our providing social media links on some pages and not others (based on whether there is an official website link or not). Our readers are generally not knowledgeable about our policies, so it must be confusing to them why sometimes we provide such links, and why sometimes we don't.
• We are not talking about an open-ended flood of such links. It's rare that there would be more than half-a-dozen of such links in an article.
• Far from discouraging such links, I would encourage a mechanism that formats and presents them properly. For example, a template could be created (e.g. {{Social networking links ...}}) that would have individual place-holders for the major links, and generic place-holders for minor links (similar to how the various {{Infobox}} templates work). This would allow the links to be rendered even more consistently (e.g. in a smaller font, or perhaps collapsible, etc.), depending on the consensus on this, and other policy pages.

I do understand that my views will meet some resistance here, however I would simply like to put my views on record in case other editors wish support (along these lines) in rethinking the policy.

GFHandel ♬  20:51, 25 April 2012 (UTC)

Nicely put. Now, just to make things clear, as it is done with regular external links today, that the only links allowed would be official/authoritative links, and not some random guy's page on Facebook/Twitter about the article's topic. --uKER (talk) 20:59, 25 April 2012 (UTC)

Absolutely. I only support links (in the EL section) that are: official, verifiable, and to the top level of the subject's profile on the external site. GFHandel ♬  21:07, 25 April 2012 (UTC)

A complete list of all the subject's websites puts undue emphasis on what the subject says. See WP:ELPOV and WP:UNDUE for general information.

As a quick illustration of the problem, though, why should "Faceless Corporation" get six or eight links (there are hundreds of social networking websites), and "Critics of Faceless" never get more than one? Does giving far more space and attention to the corporation sound balanced and neutral to you? WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:53, 25 April 2012 (UTC)

I'm not saying that you've done this, but ... one thing to remember in this discussion is that we are investigating the possibility of change to policy. Accordingly, going back to (at least some) policy to support why changes should not be made risks being circular (and not in the spirit of the discussion as it was raised). I only mention this here as a note to discussion that I'm sure will develop below.

I don't believe that WP:ELPOV and WP:UNDUE apply to this debate because links to the top level of the subject's profile are "sold" in the EL section as not having a POV. The policies you quote (in relation to the EL section) are designed to resist the linking of (say) only a subset of YouTube clips that present a one-sided representation of the subject. That cannot be the case for generic links to a subject's external profile.

I believe that the "hundreds of social networking websites" is bordering on a strawman argument because even where EL sections have been allowed to run riot, there is never more than a handful (or so) of links to what could be considered social networking sites. Could you present a diff of an article as it existed in the state of not presenting a "balanced and neutral" representation of the subject (based on the existence of too many social networking links)? Such a link (or two) would help us to appreciate the situation you are worried will develop.

Anyhow, I've had more than my share of input for a day (or so), so I'll leave it for others to comment. I'm hoping that discussion continues in a fair and balanced way because it is the right of all editors to raise questions like this (especially in the hope of adjusting policy to better reflect changing trends—both on and off WP).

GFHandel ♬  23:33, 25 April 2012 (UTC)

• support ban - and we should also get rid of the {twit} {myface} etc templates that seem to imply that we condone such a practice. -- The Red Pen of Doom 21:19, 25 April 2012 (UTC)

• Please note that this discussion is not about banning templates such as {twit} (sic) and {myface} (sic). Attempts to ban/delete such templates have been tried, but don't gain community consensus. The title of this section is not ideal (IMHO), and I would support it's alteration (perhaps to something like "Unbanning links to social networking sites"). GFHandel ♬  23:33, 25 April 2012 (UTC)

I have some questions over the suggested unban of social networking sites in EL.

1. What traits do social network site have in common with sites already normally linked or considered.
2. What traits do social network site differ from those mentioned under normally to be avoided.
3. How should we deal with pages that rapidly changes,
4. What is the expected longevity of a Facebook/Twitter page? Is it far/near those sites that normally get linked or are considered?
5. Are there usability issues we need to think on for those who are not logged in into twitter/facebook to reach the linked content? (WP:ELREG)

As a minor side note, I think we should have a exception for BLP and groups who global notability is based on their facebook/twitter page. Belorn (talk) 21:46, 25 April 2012 (UTC)

The exception for official Facebook pages (etc) already exists. Please go read WP:ELOFFICIAL, and when you get to the words "These links are exempt from the links normally to be avoided," click the link and see which items that means that official links do not have to comply with. ELNO #10 (the general social networking ban) is in that section.

After you do that, be sure that you go back to ELOFFICIAL and finish reading it. The rest of ELOFFICIAL will explain why we normally don't let businesses and people have as many "official" links as they can manage to create. The ideal is one, but there is no absolute limit and no absolute prohibition on that one link being a social networking site. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:57, 25 April 2012 (UTC)

Although just an essay that most are aware of Wikipedia:External links/Perennial websites does define this position well.Moxy (talk) 00:41, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

ELs that are already included as citations

Is there a part of this guideline (or another guideline) that says you shouldn't list an article as an external link if it's already included as a citation? (Article where this came up is Seamus incident, where another editor says the article should be listed under EL because that article is how the incident first came to public attention.) Theoldsparkle (talk) 22:05, 10 May 2012 (UTC)

I would think if the link is a relevant EL it doesn't much matter if it's used as a cite or not. Citations and ELs serve two separate purposes but they shouldn't be mutually exclusive either. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 18:16, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

WP:ELDUP is the section you're looking for. NB that you are expected to use your very best editorial judgment, not just mindlessly apply an absolute "no duplicates" rule. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:21, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

Dolphins

I would like to add a link to the section on dolphins. This is already a very factual page however offers no potential contact with the dolphins themselves. I work for a company in Gibraltar that offer a wealth of experience and knowledge, when taking people on trips to see dolphins. We also see Orcas and sunfish etc.. I am interested to see what peoples thoughts are on having this link for the users to follow up there interest with actually contact.

Any feedback is greatly received

Many thanks — Preceding unsigned comment added by 195.166.222.181 (talk) 11:08, 16 June 2012 (UTC)

Propose your link so we can judge whether it's appropriate to include. ~Amatulić (talk) 17:44, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

External links to internal Wikipedia articles

There's a bit of a disagreement (see Talk:Depictions of Muhammad) over the need for putting an external link in that article to an internal Wikipedia article; that is, linking to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depictions_of_Muhammad instead of simply [[Muhammad]]. Aside from the issue of why one would single out this particular link for externalizing, the rationale for doing so concerns link compatibility with Wikipedia mirror sites, on which an internal link might break.

Try as I might, I could not find any guideline about choosing between an internal or external link to one Wikipedia article in another Wikipedia article, or whether Wikipedia need be concerned about how mirror sites process links. Anyone know? ~Amatulić (talk) 17:44, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

WP:WAWI was just pointed out. Now the question is whether it's appropriate for that particular article. ~Amatulić (talk) 17:50, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

No, it shouldn't be the full URL. It probably shouldn't be linked at all, since it's not the first time that it's been mentioned. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:34, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

Template for warning

I would like to place a talk page notice or warning for someone who keeps placing an EL to his own website or book in various articles. Is there an appropriate template for this? Thanks! Location (talk) 12:42, 31 July 2012 (UTC)

I keep these 2 links on my userpage. Welcomes and Warnings. There are a profusion of both, but a quick ctrl-F will usually find something appropriate. In your specific case, either template:uw-spam1 or template:uw-advert1 are probably what you seek (or a higher number, if you've already warned the user. Going through all the numbers in order, is not required). -- Quiddity (talk) 20:42, 31 July 2012 (UTC)

Perfect... Thanks for the reply! Location (talk) 20:54, 31 July 2012 (UTC)

Links normally to be avoided

Item 16 in the section WP:EL#Links normally to be avoided currently has

"Links that are not reliably functional, or likely to continue being functional"

There would appear to be two ways of parsing this. Neither seems to convey the intended message. I have not been watching this page closely, so I hesitate to change it myself but assume the intended meaning is

"Links that are not reliably functional or are not likely to continue being functional".

--Boson (talk) 10:29, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

 Done WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:31, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

Removing links on request

I am handling a request by a site owner to remove links (that seem relatively valid as EL's) from Wikipedia for SEO reasons (links appearing in Wikipedia mirrors are impacting their scores). What is the process here; do we do this? If not, for what reasoning? etc. --Errant ^(chat!) 09:32, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

If they are valid external links I cant see why they should be removed although I am sure someone will be along soon with a guideline or policy, I thought the idea of SEO was to increase hit rates not lower them! MilborneOne (talk) 11:36, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

Well; the point being made is that the links appear on Wikipedia mirrors - which means they appear duplicated with the same (or similar) text in many places. And Google is penalising for that. --Errant ^(chat!) 11:46, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

We don't make editorial changes to accommodate someone's SEO efforts. If the links are valid and add encyclopedic value to the article, particularly if they are used as references, they should not be removed. On the other hand, if the link is one of many redundant links in an "External links" section, there's no harm in removing it. If he suggests an unacceptable change in wording, then his SEO is SOL, too bad. ~Amatulić (talk) 17:40, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

We do not pander to the wishes of article subjects. We "dgaf" what they do or don't want - we have our policies, standards and guidelines, nothing else matters. Their SEO problems are of no interest or consequence to us. Roger (talk) 17:48, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

While that's true, I don't know of any policy or guideline that explicitly says we can't remove an external link that adds zero to marginal value to the project. There is nothing preventing the site owner from doing so himself (unless he's already tried and was reverted). ~Amatulić (talk) 17:58, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

@Roger; way to be a jerk about it! Remember that how we interact with the "real world" reflects on our image as a whole - so maybe tone it down? Anyway; thanks everyone, this is what I imagined we would think. I'll have a look in more detail at the case (sorry, I can't point to specifics) and see if I can work something out that keeps them and us happy :) --Errant ^(chat!) 08:56, 23 August 2012 (UTC)

I factually agree with Roger, and though we should be courteous, we should draw a definite line, beyond which the encyclopedia will not "help" an (alleged) site owner.

Further, without authentication of the identity of the "site owner", how do we, as editors, know it's not a competitor merely trying to get us to reduce the visibility of the site? Only OTRS, as far as I know, is tasked with such authentication of requests, so we should refer all such requests to OTRS.

There may be a policy, guidellne, or WMF statement which speaks to this SEO issue. --Lexein (talk) 10:04, 23 August 2012 (UTC)

Ah, sorry; this is via OTRS :) --Errant ^(chat!) 10:48, 23 August 2012 (UTC)

Errant came here looking for advice, not obvious slogans. As no one has pointed to a guideline or previous case, perhaps there is nothing that can be said about precedent. The scenario is intriguing, and some advice from an SEO expert would be useful as those of us with an interest in external links should know whether the described situation is likely (it sounds plausible, but I think it would be a fairly new strategy). One issue is that most external links with really encyclopedic information should only occur in a couple of articles about the topic covered by the external website (although of course exceptions like media outlets are numerous), so one might speculate that only an over-used link would have an SEO problem (and if it is over used, it might be trimmed on that basis). Projects like WP:HighBeam and WP:CREDO are handing out free accounts to editors, and it seems the companies involved probably expect a benefit from having multiple links to their websites added here—I wonder what kind of external site would have the described SEO problem, if such a problem is real. Johnuniq (talk) 11:07, 23 August 2012 (UTC)

One obvious example I can think of would be Santorum (neologism) linking to Santorum's official web site, thereby contributing to a stronger association between Mr. Santorum and a highly undesirable definition of his name. It's quite conceivable that an external link on Wikipedia is undesirable for SEO purposes if it creates an association with notable negative coverage. ~Amatulić (talk) 14:48, 23 August 2012 (UTC)

Well basically the situation in this case is more technical SEO than that sort of thing. The problem that this site owner has been informed of is not the Wikipedia links, per se, but the Wikipedia mirrors. Because the link appears in multiple places with the exact same page content (i.e. the copied article) it is receiving a penalty via Google's algorithms. This is.. plausible, but not something I'd expect to see necessarily. They are requesting removal of the links so that this then propagates to the mirrors & their penalty is reduced. The links features in about 5 or 6 articles I think. --Errant ^(chat!) 15:03, 23 August 2012 (UTC)

I should say; the links are not critical, but could be useful to some readers. But I didn't want to remove them purely out of courtesy (after failing to find a policy or precedent of relevance) because it might set the wrong precedent :) If the answer is "there is nothing to advise use here" and we have to come up with something.. that's fine lets do that. --Errant ^(chat!) 15:06, 23 August 2012 (UTC)

Well, at the end of the day, WP:We don't care what happens to your website. If the links are desirable for us, then we should keep them. But if the links have marginal value, I don't mind them being pulled—because we basically don't care, and that goes both ways.

What I'd really like is to source the claim that Google is penalizing them for the mirrors. If that's true, then we want to plaster that fact all over any page that might be read by potential spammers. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:21, 23 August 2012 (UTC)

While a link on a handful of articles may penalize rankings due to mirrors (and this isn't our problem, it's something Google ought to fix themselves), hard-core spammers try to get their links on hundreds of articles, often using multiple redirect domains, which would likely compensate for any penalty. I don't think anyone would really believe such a notification.

I'd say, keep the links if useful, remove them if they are redundant with any others. In my opinion, the less external links we have, the better, so I'd favor removing them. And remember, anyone can edit. We don't have to do this for the link owner. ~Amatulić (talk) 19:45, 23 August 2012 (UTC)

My target is the small business owner who just heard a one-hour speech on SEO, and who didn't quite grasp that whole "nofollow" concept. The hardcore spammer won't care, but a regular person who's just trying to get the word out about his restaurant or real estate blog or whatever might care a lot. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:57, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

• I think the person requesting link removal doesn't know what they are talking about, and we should apply WP:EL and nothing more. If the links are valid, they stay. If they are spam, we remove them. Google will not penalize a site for having Wikipedia links. There are all kinds of mirror and scraper sites on the Internet; nobody can control them. Mostly they are ignored. Jehochman ^Talk 19:35, 26 August 2012 (UTC)

What does number 20 in ELNO even mean?

How can an external link be the sole entry, especially in very long lists? If it's a long list it's not the sole entry. If I take it to mean a list with one entry and ignore the "long lists" footnote, what is the point of this? For example, what's wrong with having an embedded "see also" that includes only one external link? Gigs (talk) 17:16, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

It means, do not create either whole pages or sections on pages that look like this:

 * [http://www.example1.com My restaurant]
 * [http://www.example2.com My best restaurant]
 * [http://www.example3.com My favorite restaurant]
 * [http://www.example4.com Another restaurant]

For "restaurant" in this example, substitute charity, business, magazine, book, or anything else.

However, you could theoretically have this:

 * [[My restaurant]]
 * [[My best restaurant]]
 * [[My favorite restaurant]]
 * [http://www.example4.com Another restaurant]

because we assume that the point of the one external link might be to verify the information (i.e., this restaurant exists and belongs in this list, even though no one has written an article about it yet), rather than to direct readers to outside websites. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:54, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

So what you are saying is that it actually means "List that consist entirely of external links". Then what about "External Links" sections? The whole item and its footnote needs a serious rewrite. I'd do it but I'm not really sure of the intention at this point. Gigs (talk) 18:24, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

"Then what about "External Links" sections?" is exactly why it specifies "stand-alone lists" and "embedded lists" rather than "lists that consist entirely of external links". A list that consists entirely of external links is permitted in three places: ==References==, ==Further reading==, and ==External links==. A "stand-alone list" or an "embedded list" that consists entirely of external links is not. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:32, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

Strange if I saw the last example4 in an article I would assume it was wrong and change it to:

*[[Another Restaurant]]<ref>[http://www.example4.com Another restaurant]</ref>

so I dont think ELs should they be in any lists, perhaps the wording need to be clearer. MilborneOne (talk) 18:28, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

Milbourne, that's exactly what should happen to that item, which is why we're trying not to sound like it's banned. We don't want people to remove verifiable information just because the person who added it didn't know how to add ref tags. Encouraging people to do what you have done, and not to remove the entry, is the purpose of the footnote. (Also, for some large lists and tables, a URL like that is actually the citation style that the editors have chosen. There are disadvantages to bare URLs as citations, but they're not absolutely prohibited.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:32, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

Why do we want to prohibit embedded lists that are entirely of external links in the first place? It's rare to see that happen, and even if it did, why is it such a big deal that they didn't put a section header titled "external links" before it? Can't we just change this to some clearer verbiage regarding stand-alone lists only? I would have never figured out what you have explained here with the current verbiage, that's for sure. Gigs (talk) 20:26, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

"To understand a rule/law, seek out the problem that it was created to solve."

I'm not sure which particular articles/lists led to this line's addition initially, but as an example, diffs like this where many of the redlinked entries are [linked or cited (depending on your perspective/interpretation of various wikilaw wordings)] to their official sites, are vigorously opposed by some editors. (With all the complex rationales, and edgecases, and consistency concerns, and linkfarm/webportal avoidances, and etc, that go along with this issue.)

In that example, the editors who watch the U.S. list have been restricting it to "Only orchestras that have an existing article" for a few years. The worldwide list has had a similar purging in the past (2009). Over at the European list, I recently removed all the external links, and replaced them with {fact} tags, to prevent a purging, and to encourage redlinks (because I'm an eventualist).

Hope that helps (provide context and perspective, and hope it doesn't start an editwar/argument anywhere... >.< ) -- Quiddity (talk) 21:17, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

No worries about an editwar, at least that's not why I brought it up. I brought it up because an unknowing editor was incorrectly citing it as a prohibition against an "External Links" section that contained only one link (I encountered this while giving a third opinion). I came here and read it and couldn't make sense of it at all. I'm still not entirely sure, actually. Your example wouldn't run afoul of the rule the way it's written, since only a few of the entries have external links (they aren't the sole type of entry). Gigs (talk) 19:38, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

Proposal: Remove ELNO #20, or at least radically rewrite it

I have gone through the history of ELNO#20, here is the evolution:

• External links as entries in stand-alone lists. List entries should always have non-redirect articles on Wikipedia or a reasonable expectation that such an article is forthcoming, and thus be internally-linked only.
• External links as entries in stand-alone lists.
• External links as entries in stand-alone lists and embedded lists.
• External links as sole entries in stand-alone lists and embedded lists. (List of commuter rail systems cited as rationale)
• External links as sole entries in stand-alone lists and embedded lists. (Footnote: Especially in very long lists, URLs are sometimes listed as reliable, primary sources that verify the fact that a company, media outlet, website, etc. actually exists and belongs in the list. Do not remove strangely formatted but legitimate WP:Inline citations to reliable sources under this criterion, because citations to reliable sources are not external links.)

The first version at least makes sense, and I think the comprehensibility of the entry has been going downhill since. The first version is wrong, since list inclusion criteria vary. The addition of "embedded lists" between version 2 and 3 is not supported by the current MoS on embedded lists; it only discourages having an article entirely made up of external links (wouldn't that be a stand-alone list anyway then?). If the problem here is that too much subtlety is required for a one-liner, then I think we should break this out into its own section, and just explain what is meant. It seems like a lot to ask to offer guidance on WP:LINKFARM in a one-liner that's shorter than the policy itself is. Otherwise, consider if much would be lost by just removing it. WP:ELMAYBE already has a statement against long lists of external links. Gigs (talk) 20:05, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

The first version is a direct contradiction of WP:LSC and thus makes no sense at all.

Here is where it started. Here is the discussion that led to it. Here are complaints about it and the addition of embedded lists.

The point is to discourage this:

List of foo

• Foo
• Bar
• Baz

regardless of whether that list is the sole contents of the page (a "stand-alone list") or merely on section of a larger article ("embedded list"). Additionally, we don't want to ban this:

List of foo

• Foo
• Bar
• Baz

because that is usually an indication of a poorly formatted WP:Reliable source rather than a true WP:External link (and therefore outside the scope of this guideline, as it says six or seven times).

I'll go along with any wording that meets the goal. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:12, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

How about just "long lists of external links", and link it to WP:LINKFARM? Gigs (talk) 16:43, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

The problem with stating: "long lists of external links, see WP:LINKFARM" is that the only sub-section of WP:LINKFARM to directly address external links points back to this page - so you end up with a circular reference. To me, it would be much more reasonable to create a subsection here that better explains the issues (or, alternately, to expand WP:LINKFARM, but I think it would be more logical to do it here). --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 18:14, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

That's fine with me. It seems like what we want to express is too complex for a short one line rule anyway (which I suspect is why it's become incomprehensible). Gigs (talk) 18:21, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

"Long lists of links" does not address the problem That first "list of foo" example is unacceptabe even though it is a short list. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:38, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

Looking at your evolution of #20, I can see where it might be confusing. I haven't tried to look through the history to see why it was changed so much, but, really, WP:ELPOINTS already covers inline external linking, which would, to me anyway, cover the stray external links in lists which aren't actually references. So I don't know that it is really needed. Also, I think the sections here speak to the type of links to be avoided (i.e. social media, etc.), not the style of too many external links in a series. If we want to specify that the first "List of foo" is inappropriate, it probably belongs more to ELPOINTS than ELNO. Perhaps the following could be put in ELPOINTS (Taking out ELNO#20 altogether):

• Stand-alone lists or embedded lists comprising only external links is not appropriate. These lists are primarily for internal navigational aids.

This would prevent the first example of the "List of foo". All others types of stray EL in lists would fall under the other ELPOINTS entries and should then be either deleted (if just an EL) or changed to reference (if just an inappropriately formed citation). Thank you. -- JoannaSerah (talk) 22:14, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

That sounds good to me. I also noted that the comment isn't really appropriate for ELNO, since the rest of the list mainly focuses on the type of links, rather than this which is more of a style issue/expansion of NOTDIR. I think it should say "are" instead of "is" in your proposed text. Also drop the last "for". Gigs (talk) 13:43, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

I see what you mean, so it should be: Stand-alone lists or embedded lists comprising only external links are not appropriate. These lists are primarily internal navigational aids. This would be a new number 6 under ELPOINTS. Any more thoughts from others? Otherwise, I think we should go ahead and remove (or put statement in that it was moved) and put in the new sentence under ELPOINTS. Thank you. -- JoannaSerah (talk) 03:32, 11 September 2012 (UTC)

My take on these lists is always that the individual items in that list should be notable for being mentioned here. These lists are often WP:SPAMHOLEs (even for non-commercial items). External links belong in the external link section, and any links in those lists should be converted to the combination of Wikilinks and primary references.

• "Blieb"

should be converted to

• "Blieb<ref>Blieb</ref>"

(or a more consistent way of referencing depending on the article).

And that is where the problem starts. Now, if that list also contains "* Foo", we know that Foo is notable enough for a Wikipedia article, and meets our standards. However, 'Blieb' is a redlink, and, at this point at least, not notable enough for an article. The only reference that we have is the primary one, and that is not necessarily enough to establish notability. I think that that is a thought that this point should reflect. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 05:39, 11 September 2012 (UTC)

WP:LSC specifically permits lists whose purpose is non-notable items. List of paracetamol brand names is an example. These should not have external links throughout, but neither should we pare the list down to just the two or three brands that are notable. The manufacturer's website would be a valid primary reliable source for the brand name, but it ideally would be formatted like the rest of the citations for the page. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:07, 11 September 2012 (UTC)

That is not completely the same as a list of software packages in a page on an application - I do presume that most paracetamol brands do have some regulations or approvals to pass, which is not true for a home-hacker who puts his software package on SourceForge for download. However, I still think that they should be formatted as '* brand name<ref>..</ref>' or '* brand name<ref>..</ref>, or '* brand name[2]' .. not as '* brand name' (and the latter especially not when others in the same list are wikilinked). --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 04:00, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

The point you make about (even for non-commercial items) is one of the key parts of this canofworms. Wikilaws are made to prevent reoccurring problems, and the more egregious-problems are prevented with the strongest rules; which has the unfortunate side-effect of then being applied in equal-strength to lesser-problems. (if you see what i mean). Ie. the rule that was pragmatically made to prevent list of travel agents or List of sailboat designers and manufacturers from being turned into a huge portal-page full of just external links, also gets applied to List of symphony orchestras in the United States and prevents hampers it from growing into a complete-and-eventually-featured list (which it could easily be). Wording of rules has to take all of that into account, and allow for context, and prevent misuse in both directions (too liberal, too conservative).

With the ever-present aspect of "if we had more editors, then we could maintain more extensive lists at a high standard, but we simply don't have the manpower"... —Quiddity (talk) 05:39, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

It is there common sense. If you write that list as a list of items, all 'referenced' it is already better than a list that is riddled with external links. Though also a list of symphony orchestra's will have the same problem with spam as the sailboat manufacturers - every one-man symphony can add themselves. Also Symphony Orchestras need 'recognition' to be in that list, I presume? Or can I ask my a friend who has a violin, and another one who has access to a recorder, and grab my triangle and call ourselves a Symphony orchestra, start a myspace and add myself to the list? --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 07:00, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

Darn, I forgot, we'd have to move to the US .. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 07:01, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

Sorry, I'd used that example just above, and didn't repeat the full context. Please see the paragraph in the subsection above, starting In that example, the editors who watch the U.S. list have been restricting it to "Only orchestras that have an existing article" for a few years. (that's a 3 year old diff) followed by the 2 other connected list examples and diffs. -- I'm completely for "notable" in the sense of "we allow redlinks in lists when there is good confidence or explicit-evidence that it is citable/reliably true". So hence i believe: Removing all items from every list "if the link isn't blue or currently ref'd" is a strongly-immediatist position, that WP historically tries to balance out with all the other perspectives (but with much less leniency in BLP and blatantly-commercially-motivated situations). —Quiddity (talk) 09:46, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

I completely sympathize with everything that's been said here; I have no desire to remove any ability to combat link spam. I think we may be getting a little off topic though, venturing into WP:LSC territory. I think we should not lose focus however, the primary thing I am concerned about is that the current wording is hopelessly confusing. I came here because someone used it to argue against lists with single entries, which clearly isn't the intent, but I see how he got there from the current wording.

• So how about: Stand-alone lists or embedded lists composed mainly of external links are not appropriate. These lists are primarily intended as internal navigational aids, not a directory of sites on the web. This does not apply if the external link is serving as a citation for a stand-alone list entry that otherwise meets that list's inclusion criteria Everyone happy with that maybe? Gigs (talk) 13:48, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

  Overall that's okay, but (for reasons of inbound links) I'd kind of prefer to re-phrase the start to fir the ELNO system and leave it there:
  Stand-alone lists or embedded lists composed mainly of external links. These lists are primarily intended as internal navigational aids, not a directory of sites on the web. This does not apply if the external link is serving as a citation for a stand-alone list entry that otherwise meets that list's inclusion criteria
  The 'lead-in phrase for all ELNOs is "one should generally avoid:" and this would fit grammatically. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:15, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

  OK, Good enough. I'm going to implement the wording as you have suggested it. If anyone has a problem with it, I'd prefer if they would try to move forward from the new wording rather than reverting to the old. Gigs (talk) 14:07, 13 September 2012 (UTC)

  Works for me. And yah, incremental changes towards a consensus, is often preferable instead of BRD. —Quiddity (talk) 00:10, 14 September 2012 (UTC)

How to open a window with no bars?

Hi, I'd like to know if it's possible to open a link in a new window with no bars (url bar, search bar, tool bar, status bar, ...)? It would be useful to open an internal web-based application where you cannot navigate elsewhere. Thanks for any advice! --Testyg (talk) 16:45, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

I can't imagine how this would be useful anywhere on Wikipedia. It's a common technique on other web sites to create pop-up windows. See http://www.yourhtmlsource.com/javascript/popupwindows.html for example. It wouldn't work here because the Wiki software detects these javascript injection attempts. ~Amatulić (talk) 16:54, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

Such tricks are extremely frustrating to me, and even if we could, I'd never want to see Wikipedia use them. Gigs (talk) 13:31, 17 September 2012 (UTC)

Custom bullets in external links

On the Hilbert's problems (last version before my edit) article I came across a very unusual link that had used a custom bullet and an non-Wikimedia Foundation interwiki link. I tracked the addition to this edit. As the entry was in the external links section, I changed the interwiki link to a regular link. I also removed the custom bullet. I see no need for external links to try to "advertise" by distinguishing themselves through a custom bullet. Fortunately, this matter seems to be rare at the present. Unfortunately, Wikipedia:External links does not yet say that custom bullets should not be used. I propose a sentence is added regarding that. Jason Quinn (talk) 17:06, 14 September 2012 (UTC)

This applies to all lists, not just external links, so is already addressed at WP:MOS#Bulleted and numbered lists. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 17:21, 14 September 2012 (UTC)

Thank you for the link. Jason Quinn (talk) 17:23, 14 September 2012 (UTC)

Now that I've perused them, I don't see this explicitly stated. It's sort of implied by "Use proper wikimarkup" but that's the closest I've found. In fact, since it is okay to use custom bullets in certain situations (e.g., using big bullets in some horizontal lists in templates) the matter is more complicated to isolate. Jason Quinn (talk) 17:30, 14 September 2012 (UTC)

To me, it is addressed by the "Use proper wikimarkup- or template-based list code", which then links to WP:Manual of Style/Lists, which gives the appropriate markup.

I have no objection to a brief mention being added here though that also links to those locations. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 19:28, 14 September 2012 (UTC)

It's addressed under "Templates": "All templates except those for WMF "sister" projects should produce a normal, single-line, text-based external link without any favicons or other unusual formatting." I suppose someone thought that since it was under "Templates" that it didn't apply to non-templated links. I'll go add "custom bullets" to the sentence, and perhaps you all can think about whether we need to repeat most of that elsewhere. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:32, 14 September 2012 (UTC)

I just didn't know the manual on links, you can remove the image from the link, it's OK. Regards, -jkb- (talk) 09:06, 15 September 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for your reply. There are hundreds of policies, guidelines, and advice pages on the English Wikipedia. Nobody could possibly know all the minor "rules" in this overly complicated place. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:50, 17 September 2012 (UTC)

WP:ELNO

Should we modify WP:ELNO point 3 so that it's an exception to the statement at the top of the list? There's currently a discussion at WP:ANI that relies on the "Except for a link to an official page of the article's subject" as its reasoning for keeping links to malware-infected websites; you can find it by going here and looking for the "Links to hacked and malware-infected websites" section. While it's definitely good to permit official websites in many of the cases given on the list, it's actively harmful for us to permit malware-infested websites on the grounds of them being official. Nyttend (talk) 00:21, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

Well, reading it over and thinking about it some, I wonder if it would be better, then, to move that point to WP:ELNEVER. I mean, really! There shouldn't be a link to any infected site whether it is "official" or not. If an official site is hacked and malware put on it, then we de-link the site. When we can see that the official page is corrected, then it can be re-linked. -- JoannaSerah (talk) 00:55, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

ELNO is what we choose to restrict. ELNEVER is what the Wikimedia Foundation forces us to restrict.

Also, sometimes there's a question about whether a site is (still) actually infected.

My suggestion is that malware be named in ELOFFICIAL as an exception. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:58, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

I was tempted to move this without discussion per WP:IAR, since the rule on this page was impeding me from the definite improvement of getting rid of links to malware, but I figured that discussion here wouldn't be too controversial and would have a lesser chance of being reverted. I do wonder — is it legal for us to host links to malware sites? Linking to copyvio sites is contributory copyright infringement; could we get in trouble for "contributory computer crimes" or something like that for knowingly linking to malware? I'm pretty sure that WMF forces us to restrict content that's illegal in Florida, so this might be a good ELNEVER candidate. Nyttend (talk) 01:36, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

I don't really know, but why would it not be sufficient to change ELOFFICIAL to require malware-free sites? WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:05, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

I would agree, there's no reason we should allow linking to sites with malware just because it's official. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 02:57, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

Just disable the link (even consider to maim it: "example dot com"), and put a very clear warning on it. Also, please meta-blacklist the site, and remove whitelisting rules that link to the site. Basic protection of our readers. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 06:43, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

Links to .onion domain?

It is unclear now how links to .onion pseudo-domain should be interpreted under the guideline. One prominent example of the page relying on such links, is Silk Road (marketplace). Such links (by definition) work only for those using Tor network, and won't work for others. On the one hand, such links are rather useless (and even worse - misleading) for the vast majority of users who're not using Tor, on the other hand - there are certainly some people who are indeed using Tor, and is no formal restriction on using such links. So the question is - shouldn't be the guideline changed to specify official position about such links to .onion pseudo-domain (I would argue that they should be prohibited - or required to be disabled - as non-accessible for vast majority of visitors, but will be ok with any interpretation as long as it is clearly defined)? Ipsign (talk) 09:43, 5 October 2012 (UTC)

It's covered under WP:ELNO#EL7, "Sites that are inaccessible to a substantial number of users, such as sites that only work with a specific browser or in a specific country." WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:34, 5 October 2012 (UTC)

As I understand it, WP:ELNO doesn't apply to 'official' links, and several pages (notably Silk Road (marketplace)) use it for the 'official' link, escaping WP:ELNO. Still, my feeling is that the whole thing is rather strange and unexpected for the casual Wikipedia reader. Ipsign (talk) 06:46, 6 October 2012 (UTC)

There was a discussion last year about blacklisting the .onion domain but there wasn't any consensus evident for doing it. If you see a chronic problem with .onion links, re-propose it at MediaWiki talk:Spam-blacklist and we'll revisit the issue. ~Amatulić (talk) 22:46, 5 October 2012 (UTC)

It is not a 'chronic problem' in a sense that there are only a few pages which are using .onion; on the other hand, situation with Silk Road (marketplace) is rather strange - there is an 'official' link to .onion, which escapes WP:ELNO (as official link); this link changes frequently (as probably many links in .onion), it is not really verifiable (except by going there via Tor, though it is not a 3rd-party verification). Overall feeling is "something is wrong here, but I cannot find out what exactly is wrong". Ipsign (talk) 06:46, 6 October 2012 (UTC)

Given that the link doesn't work (unless you have special software installed), I'm inclined to say that it isn't an external link at all, but rather some alternative method of contact, similar to a telephone number. I would not include it as a functional link (because it doesn't actually function), although I would probably discuss it in the text. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:24, 7 October 2012 (UTC)

References and citation sub-section

I think the last sentence of this section may need rewording. The phrase '...specifically devoted to the topic' could be applied too broadly. Wouldn't using the word 'article' be better? For example, if you had an EL for a general science site, would that be OK to 'double-up' as a cite if the article was about a particular scientist? Also, I'm not clear about what the bit on subpages is meant to say. Is it referring to when you have sub-sections within a site which do not have specific url's? Eldumpo (talk) 21:44, 29 September 2012 (UTC)

Well, there probably aren't too many external links specifically devoted to Wikipedia articles, although I'm aware of a couple. If the topic of the article is a scientist, then a link about general science isn't specifically about the topic of the article. If the topic of the article is a scientist, then the link needs to be about that scientist. Have you seen people having trouble with this?

The goal for the "subpages" clause is to keep you from removing a "duplicate" URL just because 1% of the pages on the website are being cited in the article. So let's say that you cite www.example.com/science/biology/concepts/genetics/DNA.html for some minor point in the article. Let's say also that there are about fifty pages on that website that might interest readers of this particular Wikipedia article. It's okay to link to www.example.com, or perhaps to a suitable section, like www.example.com/science/biology/index.html, so that readers have a good chance of finding the fifty relevant pages. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:15, 29 September 2012 (UTC)

Just to clarify, when I said '...cite if the article...' I was referring to the Wikipedia article, not the EL article. Re subpages, your explanation makes sense but I think this would benefit from clearer wording. I will consider suggested wording. Eldumpo (talk) 23:38, 29 September 2012 (UTC)

I know what you meant, but if we say "...specifically devoted to the [Wikipedia] article', as you suggested, then we'll have people believe that the EL must be about the Wikipedia article, e.g., http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2012/07/13/kate_middleton_s_wedding_gown_and_wikipedia_s_gender_gap_.html is okay for Wedding dress of Kate Middleton, but webpages that are about the dress are not. WhatamIdoing (talk) 08:00, 30 September 2012 (UTC)

I see the point you're making, but aren't you picking up on a pretty rare issue. How many times are there reliable sources talking about a specific Wikipedia article, rather than the subject of the article? Without specifying that 'doubling up' on EL's and cites is only acceptable when the EL is directly about the (subject of) Wiki article, and not just within the same broad topic area, it seems to be there would be very few cases where 'doubling up' could not be justified by editors. If this is not the intention then I suggest the wording be amended. It could change to 'specifically devoted to the subject of the Wikipedia article'. Eldumpo (talk) 08:28, 30 September 2012 (UTC)

We are "specifying that 'doubling up' on EL's and cites is only acceptable when the EL is directly about the (subject of) Wiki article, and not just within the same broad topic area". That's what "specifically devoted to the topic" means. What other topic, if not the topic of the Wikipedia article, could we be talking about here? WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:55, 30 September 2012 (UTC)

The use of 'topic' could be construed as meaning the same (broad) topic as the Wikipedia article, as per my science example, and not necessarily an EL that is dedicated to the (subject of) actual Wiki article. If it is intended that the EL should be specifically related to the Wikipedia article then why not change the wording to make it 100% clear? Eldumpo (talk) 15:09, 8 October 2012 (UTC)

• Notability guidelines also refer to the "topic", so I expect people to make the connection easily enough. Our policies and guidelines don't use the word topic to mean "general category" (like "biology" when the article is about a particular metabolic pathway).
• As I explained above, if we say that it is supposed to be "specifically related to the Wikipedia article", then people will expect the external website to talk about the Wikipedia article, not about the topic of the Wikipedia article. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:08, 8 October 2012 (UTC)