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Sorry if this has been asked/answer/dealt with. I am seeing mywikibiz(i think thats it, correct me if Iam wrong) links in bios. Is this approriate or does it fail one of the criteria for inclusion? Thanks, -- Tom (talk) 14:57, 3 July 2009 (UTC)
Wow it has a complete listing for Cahiers de l’Institut du Moyen Âge grec et latin . And the complete text in Latin of Peter of Cornwall's sophisma Every man exists. Peter Damian ( talk) 17:05, 4 July 2009 (UTC)
It does not qualify as a valid EL. Claims above that it has same problems as Wikipedia and is treated the same way are odd, in that w do not link to other Wikipedia style projects. Ditto for the claim that we aren't trying to blacklist Wikia -- we aren't supposed to link to Wikia generally either. Only those wikis will stable content and etc. should be linked to. Lots of our links on various pages to wikis shouldn't be there either. Saying we link to those so why not this is just WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS. DreamGuy ( talk) 17:41, 4 July 2009 (UTC)
The conversation appears to be veering from the original posters question, but I think we have reached a pretty much community consensus (to steal from Nihiltres): "MyWikiBiz links can and should be examined just as any other links—there are" a few "cases where they may be appropriate, and" many "cases where they may not be appropriate."
Have I captured the conversation? -- The Red Pen of Doom 19:45, 4 July 2009 (UTC)
The conversation isn't over yet. MyWikiBiz is... a free Wiki. It's contents are no better or worse than any other free wiki project. It's usage should be addressed case by case, article by article. We can't blanket-ban such a project because of it's nature, which would go against our mission to spread free knowledge. A perfect model of how these links need to be treated is how we treat Wikia.com links, another free wiki-based project of sometimes good, sometimes great, and sometimes worthless content--like any wiki. rootology ( C)( T) 04:17, 5 July 2009 (UTC)
<-- (outdent) You'd better be very careful what you define as a threshold minimum for active editors for a wiki to be considered legitimate, because I will take that information and use it as my authority for deleting certain Wikia links, and when those links get re-added by other members of the Hive-Cult, then I'll have grounds for blacklisting all of Wikia as a "persistent spam site, in violation of our minimum editors threshold for inclusion". Think about it. Do you really want to go there, then have to backpedal on why the Wikia links are okay, but the MyWikiBiz links are not okay? -- Thekohser 04:09, 7 July 2009 (UTC)
I know that in the distant past I added a mailing list and was told it was against our EL guidelines. When I looked into them I realised why and agreed. I removed a Yahoo group/mailing list from Qawwali today and it was put back, twice, the 2nd time with an edit summary "our guidelines are not inflexible rules. this newsgroup contains a wealth of useful information not available anywhere else, so it is a useful reference". [3] True or not, this is an argument that I can see being made everytime anyone says 'that shouldn't be linked'. Shall I just go away and ignore it now? I know I've seen people say talk page consensus overrides guidelines, which in turn means a small group of editors could hypothetically do what they want to (I've raised on the same article's talk page the same editor's insistence that no articles and evidentally no evidence is required to add someone to a list of 'well-known qawwals'). Dougweller ( talk) 17:14, 5 July 2009 (UTC)
Your arguments for including the Yahoo Groups link, however, are not compliant with WP:EL rules in any way.
Since WP:EL rules are actually guidelines, not inflexible rules, I have no idea what it means that my arguments "are not compliant with WP:EL rules in any way."
Maybe you can spell out in what way WP:EL "rules" make my arguments invalid? -- Sarabseth ( talk) 23:40, 6 July 2009 (UTC)
You don't seem to understand my last 2 comments here.
I wasn't trying to argue any more for retaining the Yahoo groups link in the Qawwali article. I conceded that point when I wrote: "I take the point about the Files area being accessible only after registration".
All I've been asking is why everyone believes that this guideline, which specifically allows for exceptions, as you just spelled out, should be applied in practice as if it is an absolute prohibition, with no exceptions ever allowed or considered. Because that had very much been the tenor of this discussion up till now. (For example, "It completely fails WP:EL and there is never a valid reason for adding a Yahoo Group to any article".) This last comment is the first time after Dougweller raised the issue that anyone has made any kind of statement that exceptions can even be considered.
You want your link to be one of the "occasional exemptions" - convince us why this link should be one of the exceptions that will improve the encyclopedia.
That's hilarious, because this of course is exactly what I tried to do (see Dougweller's second comment above). Kind of hard to do, though, when the argument you make is just reflexively dismissed, without any reference to the merits of the argument, because Yahoo groups are, apparently by definition, unreliable e-mail chat groups. Only Milo even considered my argument. The suggestion of an open-ended poll is constructive, but I'm wary of investing time and effort figuring out how to conduct one, and then actually doing it, if the editors who have been opposed to this specific link (given all the circumstances) would just come along and remove it again. Anyone care to comment on whether an open-ended poll, conducted as Milo suggests, would be accepted as justifying an exception?-- Sarabseth ( talk) 11:46, 7 July 2009 (UTC)
Dougweller wrote:
I am aware of their file sections and the sorts of things that are in them
I'm not aware that there are any universal rules about the sorts of things that are in the Files section of Yahoo newsgroups. Perhaps some groups may have unique sorts of things in their Files section?
TheRedPenOfDoom, thanks for the gracious apology; much appreciated! -- Sarabseth ( talk) 22:45, 9 July 2009 (UTC)
There's a question about whether a "professional reading list on the paraphilias" [5] is an appropriate external link at Talk:Paraphilia#Disclosure.
The author-and-Wikipedia-editor is clearly an expert (a sexologist whose research area is paraphilia and who works for the institution widely recognized as being the world's leader in research on paraphilia), so I have no concerns about complying with WP:ELNO #11, but I'm not sure whether external "further reading" lists are desirable.
(Fair warning: a couple of the editors on that page appear to have a long-standing, in-real-life personal feud.) WhatamIdoing ( talk) 01:30, 6 July 2009 (UTC)
Please remember that we are discussing a plurality of links [6] [7], not just one, and a growing host of wikipedians that James Cantor is accusing of bias [8]. BitterGrey ( talk) 05:19, 7 July 2009 (UTC)
(outdent) The only personal feud here is User:WhatamIdoing's long-running attempts to use Wikipedia to settle her personal grudge over my off-wiki actions. I'd characterize it as the most fixated anyone has ever been on me here on Wikipedia. Her disingenuous claim of non-involvement is part of a scheme she uses to win arguments on Wikipedia. She's quite adept at gaming the system by attempting to WP:canvass uninvolved editors via policy pages, but it's also quite transparent after you've seen her do it a dozen times. She's a bit of a time sink, so it's not really worth getting in long discussions about her behavior. Better to stay focused on content issues, as we are on the main discussion regarding this external link COI. Jokestress ( talk) 08:42, 8 July 2009 (UTC)
Sorry in advance for the remedial question. Should contested ELs be:
Previously, I thought #1 was the answer, but given the previous discussion (#3) started by an apparent regular here, I might be wrong. BitterGrey ( talk) 03:16, 10 July 2009 (UTC)
Somone who likes to delete stuff went around and took out a bunch of EL I put in to help people get going on filling out stubs. These were generally links to google or specialized searches. While I appreciate anyone could type terms into these engines, it seemed to be a convenience at least for stubs. This is especially true if the stub is questionable on notability. What's the deal with this? Also, in the post tree killing era, while a "curated" set of facts that goes into the article is still a good idea, just freezing it at a time point is questionable. These shouldn't deprive search sites of revenue by repackaging their results nor should it lead readers into commercial or specific POV sources. But often recent updates are very important and "current events" while not of encyclopedic quality, certainly if not curated, are probably of interest to most people who found the article. If you already know the material, you don't need an encyclopedia. If you are learning, some general unbiased search terms may help ( most journal articles list keywords ) and full one-click access seems like a great addition that the paper pushers couldn't have accomodated. There is no reason for a wall of separation between article and recent results that potentially could be cited. Nerdseeksblonde ( talk) 09:19, 13 July 2009 (UTC)
Folks, I have seen some editors removing links to newspaper obituaries and the like from EL sections in biographical articles. Is there a consensus that such links are inappropriate? If so can someone please point me to the relevant discussion? Thanks. – ukexpat ( talk) 13:57, 16 July 2009 (UTC)
This page has an open RfC on whether an article about a tennis player should include a link to an unofficial fansite and to a Twitter feed.
Supporters of the links have asserted that the relevant rules (ELNO #10 and #11) favor the inclusion of unofficial fansites and Twitter feeds. The argument seems to be deteriorating into an ad hominem attack, bordering on WP:OUTING, against a newbie editor that opposes the links.
It's often difficult to get outside responses to RfCs, so I hope that many of the editors here will take a look at the links and the relevant rules (now pasted directly into the discussion), and provide their impartial advice on what's best for the article. Thanks, WhatamIdoing ( talk) 06:03, 17 July 2009 (UTC)
Regarding this edit, I've got a few puzzled questions/comments:
It seems to me that ELMAYBE #4 clearly contradicts an arbitration ruling. Links to be considered #4
Sites which fail to meet criteria for reliable sources yet still contain information about the subject of the article from knowledgeable sources.
From Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Prem_Rawat_2#External_links
Resources which are not sufficiently neutral or accurate to stand alone, but which nevertheless provide useful material, should similarly be incorporated into the article, where context and complementary material may be provided to address the problem of neutrality or accuracy. If this is not possible or not appropriate in the circumstances, then the resource should not be linked to.
"not sufficiently neutral or accurate to stand alone" sure sounds to me like something which fails WP:RS, yet ELMAYBE #4 says that kind of link should be considered for EL. Unless we can overturn this arbitration ruling, ELMAYBE #4 has to go. 83.199.254.171 ( talk) 16:12, 18 July 2009 (UTC)
Your opinions about whether and under what circumstances tennis biographies should include links to fansites would be welcome on the Andy Murray discussion page and at WP:tennis. Chidel ( talk) 04:32, 12 July 2009 (UTC)
I've determined that the underlying problem here is over-regulation.
WP:EL#ELNO#11 reads: "Links to ... most fansites, except those written by a [WP:V#SPS] recognized authority (this exception is meant to be very limited; as a minimum standard, recognized authorities always meet Wikipedia's notability criteria for biographies)."
Notice how wordy it is – typical of attempts to force micromanagement regulation on many editors who do not consense to the guideline. A claim of consensus for this part of ELNO#11 should be investigated for a bully consensus imposed by a clique – or – a WP:OWNing WP:GANG.
Worse, ELNO#11 attempts to force WP:V#Self published sources and WP:Notability on external sites without authority-in-principle to do so: WP:V#SPS and WP:Notability are intended for article content, not external sites. Many self-published sites contain useful resources that WP articles can't include, from which readers would benefit – for example, copyrighted photographs used with permission.
Major fan sites are published by non-notable people, yet such sites become recognized by major media, influential blogs, or many comments by individuals. A guideline can't attempt to anticipate authorized means of successful publicity, because publicity is about "breaking out" of old rules that limit publicity. What really matters is the value of the external site per the other guidelines, and that can be determined by consensus.
The problem seems easily fixed. Rewrite WP:EL#ELNO#11 as: 'Links to ... most fansites, except by a consensus that they meet the other guidelines here.' Milo 00:48, 14 July 2009 (UTC)
1. ELNO#11 covers "blogs, personal web pages and most fansites,". If repeated, explicit requests about fansites generate that much controversy and text, it is an important enough type of link to have its own numbered subsection not shadowed by the preceding two. Even when it is technically a personal web page written by one person, fansiting is a social phenomenon which has evolved beyond that simplistic categorization.
2. There is undoubtedly a consensus to avoid linking to non-useful or poor quality web pages, but a significant number of fansite-like sites are useful. ELNO#11 currently presumes fansites to be non-useful or poor quality, which leads to unnecessary discussion, conflict, and WP:GAMEing over the good ones. If one claims that this prescriptive presumption should have worked, descriptively it has not worked and needs to be revised as a guiderule consensus failure.
3. The algorithm you have proposed for local consensus to approve a fansite-like link includes WP:IAR. Any locally repeating process that is expected to invoke WP:IAR is de facto not a consensed process. That's proof of the need to overhaul ELNO#11 as no longer consensed (if it ever was; a bully consensus being counterfeit).
4. How can there exist a bone fide Wikipedia-wide community consensus on fansites if there is no clear definition of what exactly, is a fansite? (Also spelled "fan site" and "fan-site"). As Justice Potter Stewart on obscenity, 1964, one may think one knows a fansite when they see it; but, consensus and guiderules can't be understandable, or fair, or avoid cyclical conflict, without a definition that in practice separates useful sites from those which are non-useful. Maybe the "fansite" term should simply be dropped in favor of more objective terminology. Consider these views:
Escape Orbit (17:01, 15 July 2009):
"This side-steps arguments of what is, or isn't, a fan-site..."
David T Tokyo (06:29, 11 July 2009):
"For me, a key part of the problem here is the use of the word "fansite". Typically, fansites are poorly designed and constructed, woefully short on content, low on facts and high on opinion. I'm sure we've all seen those kind of sites and clicked away immediately. However, there is another kind of site, one that I believe is better described as a "factsite". These sites take a subject and attempt to be authoritative, objective, comprehensive and professional. In this respect they are poles apart from regular fansites."
User:2005 (09:50, 13 July 2009) has characterized Find A Grave as a fansite:
"One fansite, Find A Grave, has thousands of links, and while some of those links may not be very good, it is plainly obvious that a very large number of Wikipedia editors recognize that fansites should sometimes be linked."
Assuming that characterization to be possible – might be so – current ELNO#11 is dead. Milo 01:50, 17 July 2009 (UTC)
←WhatamIdoing (17:09): "The "except" clause applies to all three kinds of pages, not merely the last type in the list."
It's ambiguously phrased, so that's possible (or actual, if you know of the rulecrafting intent). No doubt that it's yet another uncertainty that needs to be fixed.
If the latter text also applies to blogs and personal websites, ELNO#11 is even more dysfunctional than I thought. The " [WP:V#SPS] recognized authority" provision, is a crypto-reliable-sources requirement, which contradicts WP:EL#Links to be considered#4: "Sites which fail to meet criteria for reliable sources yet still contain information about the subject of the article from knowledgeable sources."
WP:EL has no mandate to erase the practical distinction between reliable sources and external links of all three types. Lacking a mandate, this ELNO#11 latter text is a policy/guide POV fork of WP:V/WP:RS.
The fork's construction also suggests a cover-up of forking. The fork is disguised by using the weasely, wikilawyering, inscrutably-linked wikitext phrase:
"[[WP:V#SPS|recognized authority]]").
Being a fork it must be fixed, since WP policy/guide forks are strongly disconsensed (see this MfD'd example: WP:MfD/WP:Discuss and Vote). In consequence, any consensus here that external links should be reliable sources – defaults to deletion of ELNO#11's latter text – as any such proposal must be made at WP:RS or WP:V. One of WT:EL regular editors' favorite games to oppose change, stonewalling, won't save ELNO#11 either. Enforcement against policy/guide forks is accomplished by MfD as linked above.
Now, if you want to be relevant, let's work together to rewrite ELNO#11.
Milo
05:24, 18 July 2009 (UTC)
←User:2005 (10:48): "...it's certainly no fork..." My reasoning is summarized as follows:
Milo 19:14, 18 July 2009 (UTC)
OK, I've been trying to follow this discussion, and it seems to me that the biggest problem here is not so much what ELNO #11 says (though I would probably agree with Milo that it is too wordy), but the title and opening line of the section. "Links normally to be avoided" and "one should avoid" is a rather authoritative tone, even though this is merely a guideline. How about changing the section title to something like "Links of which to be wary", and re-doing the opening sentence. Maybe even merge ELNO with the sections above into a list of positives and negatives when considering External Links. PSWG1920 ( talk) 21:21, 18 July 2009 (UTC)
←I'll consense to a complete rewrite of the ELNO section. One of the things that needs to precede a rewrite is deciding the principles of the section. This should be done the way that Arbcom votes on proposed arbitration statements. Milo 22:53, 18 July 2009 (UTC)
Recently I've removed a number of external links from Spanish articles. Some of these have been blatant spam in the form of holiday rentals / real estate agencies but some have been less clear cut. One removal that has been reverted is this one which looked innocent enough on the surface but contains sections which promote local properties. Could someone confirm that links such as that are indeed spam? Thanks, Valenciano ( talk) 14:37, 20 July 2009 (UTC)
Apologies in advance for naive errors of etiquette.
I'd like an opinion on external links. I recently had a discussion with Ronz about adding external links to Proof66.com ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Ronz#More_on_Proof66)--a website which I own and I agree that I am already on shaky ground with some policies.
That being said, I have the following case to make.
The obvious question is, Why not merely improve the article on wikipedia with this list of awards as has already been attempted by the examples you yourself cite above?
The answer lies in the format of Wikipedia itself. It is, by nature, aimed mainly at producers. For example, Glenlivet's entry is (rightly) about the Glenlivet disitllery and gives scant attention to the incidental and mutable "expressions" of whisky coming out of it. Moreover, the list of entries from the combined institutions is long and--if we were to update the award for each expression coming out of the distillery--would lead to unnaturally large and unwieldy articles. In short, an eyesore and undesirable for many parties involved. As an example, Glenlivet would have six expressions comprising a total of twenty-eight awards. That is a substantial list of bullet points! I feel the purpose of directing readers to these awards is better served by an external link they follow if and only if they are interested.
This merely follows the practice of linking to other resource websites such as IMDB, Rotten Tomatoes, oscar nominations, or any website devoted to additional information.
There is a laudable effort to constrain the number of external links (though I myself often find them a joy to follow). But that effort does not, in my opinion, apply in cases where contributors are making honest efforst to improve the value of the article. This can be done not only by text in the article itself but also by external linking to resources that are outside of the scope of an encycolpedia article.
I appreciate your thoughts and will adhere to recommendations. Phizbin ( talk) 05:08, 21 July 2009 (UTC))
Template:US-airport-mil (and others? I haven't looked) includes a link to current weather conditions. I know that this is generally deprecated for non-airport locations (the weather at this precise moment, as opposed to a description of the year-round climate, is non-encyclopedic), but what about for airports? WhatamIdoing ( talk) 17:32, 22 July 2009 (UTC)
I am the editor of a website for information about the village of Athens, New York. As I saw Athens was included in Wikipedia, I attempted to add a link to the site: www.athensny.org but was unable to make it blue highlighted words that would take the visitor to the site. I tried using the external link widget in the toolbar but apparently without success.
you can see it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athens_(town),_New_York
advice appreciated, thanks, Keith —Preceding unsigned comment added by Keith rodan ( talk • contribs) 19:09, 23 July 2009 (UTC)
There are a number of templates that have been created to link to this site [19] . Is the consensus that this is a generally valid external link or is this just a spamfest promotion and the templates should be deleted? [20] [21] -- The Red Pen of Doom 06:53, 22 July 2009 (UTC)
Dear all, with respect to all comment I am questioning you , why are call gomolo is not RS. I don't understand.I am working arround Bengali Cinema and cinema list cast crew etc. Yes I created two template Gomolo name Gomolo title as like imdb. If it will be proved that this is really not RS, I should not used as a external links. But first proved that it is not RS. Dear AnmaFinotera why are comment its a spamfest. Please explain. I am not so techsavy as you.- Jayanta Nath ( Talk| Contrb) 18:58, 23 July 2009 (UTC)
A minor edit war has broken out on Egremont, Cumbria where User:Chacufc has been adding in a link to [23], "Labour's Voice in Egremont & District", and User:Charlesdrakew has been reverting citing the External Links policy. Current policy does not make it ultra-clear to me whether or not this link is acceptable (though I have my own views on its acceptability). Input would be helpful. Regards, -- Alexandr Dmitri (Александр Дмитрий) ( talk) 17:33, 27 July 2009 (UTC)
See Metzora (parsha) which has a navbox consisting solely of external links - 26 of them in fact, which seems excessive to say the least, and I believe a number of them probably fail WP:EL as well. There are quite a few articles with this navbox in them, or similar navboxes. All, I think, created by the same editor last year, this is one I dismantled but has been restored to what the editor calls "series form". Dougweller ( talk) 14:06, 27 July 2009 (UTC)
why not? Jaydlewis ( talk) 00:46, 30 July 2009 (UTC)
ELNO 17 as of today:
This appears to conflict with ELNO 6 as of today:
Notably, The New York Times has been known to use the referral argument as a password of sorts to skip its registration requirement. Would it be wise to amend 17 as follows?
I would be bold if this were an article, but the last time I was bold on a policy or guideline, I got reverted for no consensus. -- Damian Yerrick ( talk | stalk) 12:07, 25 July 2009 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Linking#External links should be merged into this article. Wikipedia:Linking has the overarching name, because most principles that hold for internal links also hold for external links, but in practice there is not much overlap, since it is rare that external links appear in the text body like an internal link. Please check that every detail mentioned in that section is covered here. This is important, even if we decide not to merge, because this is the more specific article, where people turn to for detail information. — Sebastian 17:45, 1 August 2009 (UTC)
I put this proposal on another page, but someone told me it didn't belong there. Exiled, it settles here.
As you know, much of Wikipedia's growth has come from swallowing up & citing other encyclopedic, public domain sources. (For example: articles marked with {{ 1911}} contain stuff from the 1911 Britannica; similar sources have been listed here. For a journalist's description of the phenomenon, do a full-text search for "Britannica" in this article.)
I think we should try to systematize the process by which these special sources are identified, assigned to articles, and then incorporated into these articles. If we did so, this content would be incorporated into Wikipedia at a much faster rate, and yet also in a more controlled and supervised fashion.
I created a template that performs these functions in a rudimentary way. This is only a proof of concept; I just am looking to find people who might collaborate with me to improve this system.
You insert {{ refideas}} at the top of an article's discussion page, and include a hyperlink to one or more of these special sources. The text of the template reminds editors that such content, properly cited, can be added to an article without infringing copyright.
Here's the important part: these pages are automatically aggregated in a single category. Hopefully, some people will view this category as a "portal" pointing to articles where they can make mindless, yet high-quality, contributions. For example, over the last month I created approximately 1000 articles using this Congressional Research Service Report, and credited the source using {{ CRS}}, a new template created for the purpose. I expect that some of the most transformative edits to articles on this list will be made by middle-school students who have no knowledge of the topic whatsoever -- simply by copying, pasting, and citing.
Thoughts? Andrew Gradman talk/ WP:Hornbook 05:55, 3 August 2009 (UTC)
Wondering about standards for 'Comparison of type of software' articles, (i.e. Comparison of WAMPs, Comparison of browser synchronizers). These articles are regularly hit with the {{externallinks}} tag, but it seems that since they list multiple products, it seems natural to a have one link per product. Some comparisons use internal links where available, but it there seems to be a lower standard of notability to be included on these comparison tables - as many are products are listed that don't have their own wiki-article. I was thinking that perhaps the guideline should be to have one 'external link' allowed per product on these comparisons. Even for the products that have their own article, I imagine a web viewer upon viewing this comparison, might want to select a certain product for trial or download. Hope this starts some conversation. Cander0000 ( talk) 05:22, 17 July 2009 (UTC)
"The spirit of BLP" is a potentially confusing phrase and subject to misinterpretation. For example it would be hard or impossible to defend a link against an accusation that a link is "against the spirit of BLP" when inclusion may actually be supported by the "text of BLP". Would anyone like to clarify this statement?— Ash ( talk) 13:14, 5 August 2009 (UTC)
http://*.websters-online-dictionary.org/ 358 links, is that spam? -- 213.168.121.113 ( talk) 23:35, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
I suggest that we should remove explicit references to the name YouTube because YT does not have a monopoly on video sharing. YT has improved its process of removing copyright violations and now provides full-length videos that are obviously with permissions through new features such as http://www.youtube.com/shows . The problem is with "video sharing" in general, even with an individual sharing a single video from a personal web site.-- Writelabor ( talk) 00:59, 11 August 2009 (UTC)
While I'm at it, the prohibition on blogs needs some qualification in arenas where the mainstream media has major shortcomings, or even policies of "private censorship", or where that media is state-controlled. It's not just a question of notability, e.g. a reporter's blog such as http://billtieleman.blogspot.org or http://transmontanus.blogspot.com, which are from two notable reporters in British Columbia, the latter writing very often on global issues; but they are notable in wiki terms. But there are a few dozen sites or more in CAnada which pick up the slack left by the editorial narrowness of the mainstream media, especially in cases like the BC Legislature Raids trial, or the Donald Marshall case and continentalization - http://bctrialofbasi-virk.blogspot.com (aka the BC Mary blog - though Mary, whether she likes it or not, is approaching "notability" in Wiki terms - and http://www.vivelecanada.ca; sites listed on the left on Mary's blogpage also qualify as "notable news sources". What I'm getting at is that blogs which are not personal, but are news-copy oriented, have a place in citations if the news items and facts in them are unavailable by any other means; in these cases because newspapers owned by Canwest Global are notoriously censored and controlled and in the habit also of being archly POV and misrepresentative of the facts. This is s much clearer situation with issues/places like Tibet or other places where the state-controlled media is unreliable or censored, but it happens in the so-called "First World" too. So the parameters of Article 11 should be fleshed out a bit further, rather than simply pointing to notability. It's similar to the personal site vs amateur history issue in the section previous; in this case the dichotomoy is between "citizen journalism" and "yellow journalism"..... Skookum1 ( talk) 12:24, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
In light of overall EL criteria, #Avoid undue weight on particular points of view seems impractical as written. In a given article, it is quite possible that there will be only one suitable External Link and that link will support a minority viewpoint. This is because links supporting a majority viewpoint are all the more likely to be reliable sources which should be referenced in the article. The presence of an EL with a minority view does not mean that we should add 2 or more links which endorse the majority view just for the sake of having them.
The section in question appears to have originated as "What should be linked to" #4, when this page (and perhaps Wikipedia in general) barely distinguished between External Links and source citations. [24] Subsequently the mention of undue weight was added. [25] PSWG1920 ( talk) 04:20, 11 August 2009 (UTC)
"...the number of links dedicated to one point of view should not overwhelm the number dedicated to other equal points of view..."
PSWG1920, no offense, but I see your name cropping up all the time trying to change policy and guideline pages to your own rather peculiar beliefs and interpretations. Considering how many times you've been reverted and how many times your desires have been shown to be not in line with longstanding consensus, perhaps you ought to spend more time following these policies and guidelines instead of trying to change them. DreamGuy ( talk) 13:02, 12 August 2009 (UTC)
Re article 11 in Section 4, re blogs, personal sites etc.....this page was cited as the reason to remove a very good amateur history site from Maple Ridge, British Columbia, as if it were a "personal site". Personal sites are about the person, but when someone composese an amateur history site for their community, or in the case of bios for genealogies, there's no reason why it can't be included; in this particular case the removed link (which I have reinstated) is funded by the British Columbia Heritage Trust and features photos from the BC Archives and Vancouver Public Library; it carries no advertising. I have such a site myself - http://www.cayoosh.net - and know of oters, which fill in the blanks where "official" sources fall short...and quite often amateur sites have more accurate info than those on commercially-operated history sites e.g. http://www.britishcolumbia.com which nonehtless also has info not to be found anywhere (it's tolerated in BC wikispace exactly for that reason, though it has accuracy problems in some cases; but they are open to correctin/submission/improvement). So far, I am unaware of anyone removing references to my website on the basis of WP:ELNO, but I would aver that online "official" sources are very sketchy and few and far bhtween; it's not in the government's busienss or interest to pay for history sites, and academics tend to focus on their own agendas; community and amateur historians are entirely valid; so there should be some sort of qualification on article 11 about distinguishing between "personal sites" and "amateur history/science/geography" sites, which are many and often uniquely valuable. Skookum1 ( talk) 12:24, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
In general amateur history sites are personal sites, as are amateur cooking sites and amateur anything else under the sun sites. If you read "personal" meaning people blogging about their cats or whatever then you are misreading the intent of that line quite dramatically. Certainly some amateur history sites are valid, especially those well on their way to being considered reliable sources, but in general they should be avoided. Frankly, if the only place for some information is from an amateur site, then that information usually isn't notable enough to be included. We are not here to provide all information that exists, we are here to provide dependable and notable information. DreamGuy ( talk) 22:31, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
Wait a minute!! forums and groups can be very very relevant to sharing knowledge! I suggest that this rule be removed, as it is it needs protection for music genre articles!! idm needs the intelligent dance music groups to be linked as the relevance is there! —Preceding unsigned comment added by John hannan ( talk • contribs) 09:23, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
So we're essentially banning references to any (digital) datasource invented after roughly 1970, though we'll grudgingly allow HTTP? That's a bit silly, I'd say.
-- Kim Bruning ( talk) 18:23, 16 August 2009 (UTC)
Overall the problem seems to be stereotyping.
Some editors have had bad personal experiences with discussion venue Z, and want to retaliate by banning all discussions on venue Z, or just to make sure, all discussions everywhere on the net. But wait – I had a good experience at my well-moderated car repair venue Y. Why should it be banned along with Z (that may deserve banning)?
Other editors have noticed that most venues X are poorly constructed, so some years ago they wrote avoid all X. However, since then venues X may have improved by percentage to the point where "avoid" is unreasonable. When things rapidly change like the net does, case-by-case analysis makes more sense, just as is done with each article.
Another problem is that the venues to "avoid" are avoided to such an extreme degree that the pretty good X venues are effectively required to meet impossible standards. ('But we're a Google Publisher!' 'So what, the WP:ELNO guide says you should be avoided.')
Yet another problem is packing together widely varying types of venues under a single "avoid" label.
Some of these problems might improve if the various venues were unpacked, and standards for each were developed as to what ranges of construction and performance are acceptable.
One proffered reason for not unpacking the "avoid" venues is that the WP:ELNO numbering would change. Ok, why renumber them? Just create a small standards section for each venue and the numbering problem goes away.
Milo
20:25, 16 August 2009 (UTC)
It's not correct that we shouldn't link to sites that require payment. That would preclude us from linking to, say, an interesting article in the New York Times archive. As the policies have to be descriptive as well as prescriptive, this should be removed. SlimVirgin talk| contribs 21:14, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
Pay sites should not be listed. Wikipedia is a free encyclopedia, and we should offer only free alternatives. Kingturtle ( talk) 17:49, 15 August 2009 (UTC)
I'm having trouble thinking of concrete examples where such links would be helpful. Is there a real example in dispute here? I expect it would be a situation where the linked material 1) isn't the subject's own work or official site, 2) isn't used as a source, and 3) isn't a courtesy link to a print source listed under "Further reading"; but nonetheless provides either a) a unique resource or b) information from a reputable authority on the subject that would not be contained in the article itself if it were of Featured Article quality. So what's the example, beyond the generic concept of a newspaper or journal article about an unspecified subject? -- RL0919 ( talk) 18:57, 15 August 2009 (UTC)
11. Links to blogs, personal web pages and fansites, except those written by a recognized authority (this exception is meant to be very limited; as a minimum standard, recognized authorities always meet Wikipedia's notability criteria for biographies).
1) If a site is written by a recognized authority, then it is not a fansite.
2) Where can I read about this consensus that fansites are okay?
Kingturtle ( talk) 21:24, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
No, I think the problem is that the fansites are here (I included the text at the top of the section) named together with the blogs and the personal webpages. The former two can be written by a recognised authority, whereas that for fansites is hard to imagine. A rewrite could give:
But that might be even more confusing. -- Dirk Beetstra T C 22:00, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
I don't have a particular external link in mind. I am just concerned that the language here gives too much wiggle room for fan site advocates. Usually, those advocating fansites here have a vested interest in the site, and the external link becomes spam-like in nature. We need to work on the language very carefully and specifically so there is no mistaking what is acceptable and what is not. Kingturtle ( talk) 22:17, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
Here is a specific discussion of the inclusion of a fansite: [28]. Dlabtot ( talk) 23:36, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
It appears 2005's point is that the name (NO) doesn't match the content (SELDOM). -- Damian Yerrick ( talk | stalk) 01:12, 17 August 2009 (UTC)
As I understand WP:RS, "source with a good reputation for fact-checking" and "reliable source" are synonyms. Your "Do reliable sources describe the site as having such a reputation?" could be rephrased as "Do reliable sources describe the site as reliable?". This makes "reliability" look like a directed acyclic graph, where sources are nodes and a descriptions of another source as reliable are edges. This raises the question: which nodes are the roots of this DAG? If this is "irrelevant sophistry", would this be better discussed on WT:RS? -- Damian Yerrick ( talk | stalk) 01:12, 17 August 2009 (UTC)
Some of the links of the 'forum type' are a continuous source of debate, and one of them (twitter) is at the moment a source of debate in a deletion discussion for the {{ twitter}}.
We generally say here, for these links (blogspot, myspace, twitter, facebook), that they make poor external links, they often do not add to the page, they are often not stable, and there are quite often cases where the 'official' link is not officially the one of the subject of the page, or the 'official blahblah forum', is not actually maintained by blahblah, but by someone who names his forum thé official forum.
However, for celebrities and similar, these links make part of their 'web presence', and that is certainly something that is of encyclopedic value.
I would therefor suggest to set up a {{ Web presence}}, which boxes up the common and more important web-presence links into a box on the right of the page (where there is also the 'Wiktionary has more info on this subject'). As parameters the box can have 'twitter' (adding 'twitter=Jimbo Wales' to the template results in a twitter link for Jimbo), and so on for myspace, youtube-channels, facebook, name them all. Maybe even common things like imdb could have their place in such a box (yes, imdb is a generally accepted link as external link, though I often think that they do not tell anything that is not also already mentioned on the page itself, and hence it does not add to the page).
I know that it is touchy on the 'we are not a directory' type of thinking, but then, we also have links to commons, wiktionary and 'species, and though they are on sister projects, they are external links (they are still wikis, and some pages don't tell anything really). But these do add to the understanding of the person, though they are there not strict external links anymore.
It has some advantages: they move out of the external links section, so the links can more distinctively be about pages which follow the introduction of the guideline (and not, 'it is the official myspace, so it belongs here'), it might give less warring about the questionable cases (we are not a web directory, so we don't need them all, but which one is now more important than the other), it helps in forming metadata on the person (the template can be bot-scanned or read from the db to get the metadata, like in the persondata template), and even would give possibilities to check and control them by monitoring changes by bot. Moreover, the templates that we now have for all these links, can be deleted (as they should be obsolete), and we can use simple external links for those (selecting those which are useful and appropriate to move into the web-presence box) very few cases where another myspace or similar is yet another addition (which really should not happen too often). Thoughts? -- Dirk Beetstra T C 20:09, 17 August 2009 (UTC)
Regarding limits. One could think to fill only 7 or 8 really important ones there, and either fill the rest of the parameters with a <!-- don't add more, there are enough --> (and come up with some nifty edit filter to control it). Or maybe it would be possible to make the template 'count' the number of filled fields (or write an edit filter for that), and if it is more than 10, it autocategorises them.
From that point there is a practically total no on any other of these links, though there may be some exceptions here and there (an authority that is writing a blogspot totally devoted to the subject.
I did not mean to point the proposal to WP:BLP' only, the same technique can be applied for WP:DEO's (Descriptions of Existing Organisations :-D ) as well, some of them also have an official web-presence. Here e.g. the above discussed forum for a car might get a place, if the forum is 'officially supported' by the company (not when the forum is just declared official, but is 'totally devoted' to the subject of the page; then it might be an external link, which needs to pass merits for inclusion. -- Dirk Beetstra T C 06:08, 18 August 2009 (UTC)
Regarding a comment made above about consistency and limiting the number of fields, I think this something handled easily enough. The template can be formatted to provide the consistency, and the number of fields can be controlled. The key is to come up with a consensus on what are reasonable fields to include and how many. For example, here is a possible list of fields:
The "description" fields are to allow for some description of different websites or blogs the subject might have. For example, a notable academic might have a university website and then a personal website, which could be described accordingly. The Facebook, etc., fields can be described automatically, similar to the existing templates for these links. The example above would have eight links total, assuming a subject has something to fill in for every field. There could be situations I'm not thinking of (more sites, some other social network, etc.), but the template would have a specific number of fields, so it can be kept to some reasonable number, whatever folks think that is. -- RL0919 ( talk) 00:06, 19 August 2009 (UTC)
Jimbo Wales |
---|
official website |
Web Presence |
Blogspot |
MySpace |
That does indeed also make sense, but the 'problem' is, that the 'own website' is of a different nature than the blogs &c., it provides another type of information. But that is not an impossible problem, what about this box -> -- Dirk Beetstra T C 09:05, 20 August 2009 (UTC)
{{Web presence
| Name = example
| homepage =
http://www.example.org
| blogspot = example
| twitter = example
| myspace = example
}}
I have created the template {{
Web presence}} (plus a handful of redirects). With 'the official one', I mean here that that generally is something like
http://www.subject.com, if the myspace is thé official page, then that should be used there, and the 'myspace=' field stays empty. 'Official homepage' (now encoded as the field 'homepage') is hence what the subject would consider their main web presence. It may contain links to all the other web presences. We could consider to make an extra homepage field for the odd case where the subject is considered to have to main homepages. --
Dirk Beetstra
T
C
09:33, 20 August 2009 (UTC)
I will put some testcases on the template, reply to 2005: yes, omitting one of the fields does (well, should at least) take out the lines that are not needed. -- Dirk Beetstra T C 09:38, 20 August 2009 (UTC)
I agree. -- Dirk Beetstra T C 17:30, 20 August 2009 (UTC)
OK, one more time for the people who refuse to get it: We are WP:NOT a web directory. Providing links to a laundry list of sites is NOT at all what an encyclopedia is for and serves no encyclopedic purpose. We link to the main site. If the person or organization in question doesn't feel that listing Twitter/MySpace/Facebook/Forums/Blogs etc. prominently on their own home page is important to them, then why would it be important to an ENCYCLOPEDIA? And if they do link prominently to them, then the main site link already accomplished the goal anyway. We are not Google or Yahoo or anything of the sort. If someone wants to find a link to somebody's full "web presence" it takes all of a couple of seconds for them to pop it into their browser's search bar and go find it. Some people here just need a major reality check. The last thing we need is another obnoxious infobox on tons of pages for no purpose. DreamGuy ( talk) 16:18, 21 August 2009 (UTC)
If a person/company/whatever has a web presence, we should link once to the best page that presents that. That, nearly all the time, is their website. If that person/company/whatever also has twitter and myspace and blog and other feeds, great - but it is not our place to fully outline every possible venue about that entity. If they haven't taking the steps to clearly advertise their additional web presence, it's not our place to make up for that.
If the entity doesn't have a website but has one or more of the other types of feeds, we should include one of those, starting with something blog-like (myspace) before having to go to something like twitter. But there is still no need to repeat all such feeds; if that entity hasn't put their tweeter feed in their myspace page, it's not our responsibility to fill that for them.
More importantly, I think we need to be careful of selectively weighing certainly social online services. Myspace and Twitter are huge, and 99% of the time, that's where someone's presence will be if they don't have a web page, but we're still artificially supporting these services if we include these links in addition to other links to official websites. --
MASEM (
t)
16:38, 21 August 2009 (UTC)
I am with 2005 here. A persons web presence is encyclopaedic. The problem is, they are not proper external links, they simply do fail that very often. Given that the real myspace of a subject is a piece of information which is encyclopaedic (but the content contained on the myspace may not be! (replace myspace with facebook, digg, twitter, youtube, &c. as required)), then promoting them out of the strict external links into a web-presence is not linkfarming per se, it is correct, and, in my opinion, encyclopaedic information. And no, I would not restrict it down to three or four. If a person is of an importance that they have and keep sites on 10 of these sites, then all should be linked (and not only because otherwise the war on these links would continue .. "is <subject>'s Myspace more important than <subject>'s Twitter?", no, they all contribute to the persons web-presense.
Lets face it, we should on the same merits discuss here the sisterlinks template! That also contributes to linkfarming, the links are to wikis, where the articles linked to sometimes hardly give any extra information (does it still link to wikiquote?), and as such could very well fail the external links guideline. Why do we link to them? -- Dirk Beetstra T C 07:15, 22 August 2009 (UTC)
I want to re-iterate one of the points that I made above: it is necessary to remember that all those services like myspace and facebook and twitter are commercial venues, and while they may be "free" to use, the companies behind those are, in the end, trying to make a buck. We try to avoid engaging such links as that serves to help advance their business and that is against the spirit of being an free content encyclopedia. Yes, we do link to commercial sites all the time: most movies have an IMDB link, we have links to most company web pages, and heck, much of our sourcing is through online commercial news sources. But, in these cases, these sites are provide unique resources that cannot be found elsewhere that is essential for a WP article on that topic. When an entity already has a website, a link to any other web presence is duplication, and no longer unique. Including those other web presence commercial services when they are not unique compared to a web site is pushing their commercial goals - to widely have people use their service. (This, in counterargument to Beetstra: sisterlinks to other Foundation-sponsored projects is in no way attempting to achieve commercial gain given their free nature alongside WP.)
Also, there's a "where does this end" arguemnt. If we do include twitter and the like, why not include their IM names? Their email addresses? Why stop in the electronic space and publish addresses and phones - that's their physical presence and just as "important" as their myspace and twitter pages at least to some people? I know there are people that have set up accounts on those services but keep them as private as the service lets them to interact with friends, but this is a very loose sense of privacy. We cannot assume that just because an entity has web presences besides a web page that they want people to actively know of their other presences. A web page is information that has to be pushed out and thus must be information the entity wants known, but the same is not true for the rest of these presences. We need to consider the privacy issues here as well. -- MASEM ( t) 12:34, 22 August 2009 (UTC)
Since a lot of the proposed links to be included in this template are currently discouraged, this seems backwards. First, seek a new consensus to include them, and then this proposal might make sense. Dlabtot ( talk) 20:49, 22 August 2009 (UTC)
I apologize in advance for posting a note here, yet as there is no external links noticeboard to go to I'm posting here to seek further input on how a particular section of the article Garden sharing floats with this guideline. I don't want to get into an edit war, but this section recently put in [29] has been challenged by two editors, yet one editor strongly feels it should be in here and has just called my removal of it "vandalism". I'd like to see where the consensus lies for sections such as this. I have posted relevant points of this guideline on the article's talk page, yet the user insisting on keeping them has given what I feel to be inadequate answers. Is he in the right here? Also, since this is a guideline board, where should I bring up questions such as this in the future. I'm thinking of developing an external links noticeboard and I think cases like this are prime examples of where it would be useful. Them From Space 02:51, 24 August 2009 (UTC)
I'm unclear about the best way to link to external sites that doesn't confuse readers and still complies with the Wikipedia guidelines. At the end of Soybean#Uses, there are references to two of the major soybean trade associations that have significant additional information on various types of soybean products, recent biodiesel research papers, etc. These associations aren't tied to any one particular company and so don't seem to violate any of the guidelines for an external link. However, to comply with the guideline on not having external links in the article body, I made the body references wiki links to the External References section, which in turn has the actual external links. Is this a good thing to do? It seems a bit confusing that a user would click one of the wiki links and get dumped at the end of the article without knowing why they are there. The other choice would be to create articles on the trade associations themselves, but I don't think this is really appropriate. They are notable for the extra information they provide to the topic of soybeans, but not really notable in their own right. I've read all the guidelines on external links and I can't find an answer to this dilemma. UncleDouggie ( talk) 04:50, 27 August 2009 (UTC)
Hello,
I want to include my website's link to wikipedia, please suggest me the best way to do My website name is http://www.health-prism.com and it is purely based on general health and wellbeing.
Regards, —Preceding unsigned comment added by Viyan11 ( talk • contribs) 08:20, 27 August 2009 (UTC)
Should wikia sites be included in external links? Just wondering as i personally think they borderline on fansites, so wondered what official was? -- SteelersFanUK06 ReplyOnMine! 23:58, 2 September 2009 (UTC)
I have stumbled into a debate that I think could do with some wider discussion. A few weeks ago I noticed that an editor was adding links to pages on the Newberry Library website to a large number of articles. When I followed many of the links I felt that they were inappropriate for the external links section of the articles. For example, a link was added to the Chicago article to this web page—as far as I can tell, the linked web page basically tells the reader that the Newberry Library has some photographs of the Chicago lakefront (the photos cannot be viewed via the website). After looking at a number of other such links I decided to revert the additions. This led to protests from the Newberry Library and a couple of other editors. You can read these disscussions on my talk page. I have suggested that, where the Newberry Library holds unique collections, it might be appropriate to mention the collections in the main article text with the web pages used as citations rather than just adding links to an external links section. Do other editors feel that these links are acceptable as part of the external links section of an article? Thanks, — Jeremy ( talk) 17:54, 15 August 2009 (UTC)
A closely related matter is being discussed here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Conflict_of_interest#Archives
I am inclined to agree that "external links" is in most cases a misleading heading. I suggest the wording "Research resources as separate from "external links." 69.92.10.161 ( talk) 19:23, 5 September 2009 (UTC)
I agree with UncleDouggie that pointers to archives should not be under external links unless the archive has put original material on line. (Some of them have started doing that, and external links make sense in that case.)
I have not used archives very often, but back in the early 80s I was working in the Houston area and visited the Texas City library. They had (and certainly still have) an extensive collection of articles and photographs about the 1947 disaster. Some of this material they organized into a web page [30] that is linked from the Wikipedia article. In this case it is fairly obvious that the library has archival materials. I don't think it should be objectionable or a COI violation for someone from that library to add a note that they have x inches of photos and articles about the disaster in their collection.
I am inclined to the more general wording "Research resources" because special collections and libraries also hold such material. But "Archives" is shorter.
As for putting such pointers on the talk page for the use of editors, Wikipedia rules don't permitted the use of original sources. So if there is any link at all, it is for those who are using Wikipedia and are interested in where they can find original materials.
There has been related discussion here [31] Keith Henson ( talk) 02:47, 8 September 2009 (UTC)
![]() | This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 20 | ← | Archive 24 | Archive 25 | Archive 26 | Archive 27 | Archive 28 | → | Archive 30 |
Sorry if this has been asked/answer/dealt with. I am seeing mywikibiz(i think thats it, correct me if Iam wrong) links in bios. Is this approriate or does it fail one of the criteria for inclusion? Thanks, -- Tom (talk) 14:57, 3 July 2009 (UTC)
Wow it has a complete listing for Cahiers de l’Institut du Moyen Âge grec et latin . And the complete text in Latin of Peter of Cornwall's sophisma Every man exists. Peter Damian ( talk) 17:05, 4 July 2009 (UTC)
It does not qualify as a valid EL. Claims above that it has same problems as Wikipedia and is treated the same way are odd, in that w do not link to other Wikipedia style projects. Ditto for the claim that we aren't trying to blacklist Wikia -- we aren't supposed to link to Wikia generally either. Only those wikis will stable content and etc. should be linked to. Lots of our links on various pages to wikis shouldn't be there either. Saying we link to those so why not this is just WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS. DreamGuy ( talk) 17:41, 4 July 2009 (UTC)
The conversation appears to be veering from the original posters question, but I think we have reached a pretty much community consensus (to steal from Nihiltres): "MyWikiBiz links can and should be examined just as any other links—there are" a few "cases where they may be appropriate, and" many "cases where they may not be appropriate."
Have I captured the conversation? -- The Red Pen of Doom 19:45, 4 July 2009 (UTC)
The conversation isn't over yet. MyWikiBiz is... a free Wiki. It's contents are no better or worse than any other free wiki project. It's usage should be addressed case by case, article by article. We can't blanket-ban such a project because of it's nature, which would go against our mission to spread free knowledge. A perfect model of how these links need to be treated is how we treat Wikia.com links, another free wiki-based project of sometimes good, sometimes great, and sometimes worthless content--like any wiki. rootology ( C)( T) 04:17, 5 July 2009 (UTC)
<-- (outdent) You'd better be very careful what you define as a threshold minimum for active editors for a wiki to be considered legitimate, because I will take that information and use it as my authority for deleting certain Wikia links, and when those links get re-added by other members of the Hive-Cult, then I'll have grounds for blacklisting all of Wikia as a "persistent spam site, in violation of our minimum editors threshold for inclusion". Think about it. Do you really want to go there, then have to backpedal on why the Wikia links are okay, but the MyWikiBiz links are not okay? -- Thekohser 04:09, 7 July 2009 (UTC)
I know that in the distant past I added a mailing list and was told it was against our EL guidelines. When I looked into them I realised why and agreed. I removed a Yahoo group/mailing list from Qawwali today and it was put back, twice, the 2nd time with an edit summary "our guidelines are not inflexible rules. this newsgroup contains a wealth of useful information not available anywhere else, so it is a useful reference". [3] True or not, this is an argument that I can see being made everytime anyone says 'that shouldn't be linked'. Shall I just go away and ignore it now? I know I've seen people say talk page consensus overrides guidelines, which in turn means a small group of editors could hypothetically do what they want to (I've raised on the same article's talk page the same editor's insistence that no articles and evidentally no evidence is required to add someone to a list of 'well-known qawwals'). Dougweller ( talk) 17:14, 5 July 2009 (UTC)
Your arguments for including the Yahoo Groups link, however, are not compliant with WP:EL rules in any way.
Since WP:EL rules are actually guidelines, not inflexible rules, I have no idea what it means that my arguments "are not compliant with WP:EL rules in any way."
Maybe you can spell out in what way WP:EL "rules" make my arguments invalid? -- Sarabseth ( talk) 23:40, 6 July 2009 (UTC)
You don't seem to understand my last 2 comments here.
I wasn't trying to argue any more for retaining the Yahoo groups link in the Qawwali article. I conceded that point when I wrote: "I take the point about the Files area being accessible only after registration".
All I've been asking is why everyone believes that this guideline, which specifically allows for exceptions, as you just spelled out, should be applied in practice as if it is an absolute prohibition, with no exceptions ever allowed or considered. Because that had very much been the tenor of this discussion up till now. (For example, "It completely fails WP:EL and there is never a valid reason for adding a Yahoo Group to any article".) This last comment is the first time after Dougweller raised the issue that anyone has made any kind of statement that exceptions can even be considered.
You want your link to be one of the "occasional exemptions" - convince us why this link should be one of the exceptions that will improve the encyclopedia.
That's hilarious, because this of course is exactly what I tried to do (see Dougweller's second comment above). Kind of hard to do, though, when the argument you make is just reflexively dismissed, without any reference to the merits of the argument, because Yahoo groups are, apparently by definition, unreliable e-mail chat groups. Only Milo even considered my argument. The suggestion of an open-ended poll is constructive, but I'm wary of investing time and effort figuring out how to conduct one, and then actually doing it, if the editors who have been opposed to this specific link (given all the circumstances) would just come along and remove it again. Anyone care to comment on whether an open-ended poll, conducted as Milo suggests, would be accepted as justifying an exception?-- Sarabseth ( talk) 11:46, 7 July 2009 (UTC)
Dougweller wrote:
I am aware of their file sections and the sorts of things that are in them
I'm not aware that there are any universal rules about the sorts of things that are in the Files section of Yahoo newsgroups. Perhaps some groups may have unique sorts of things in their Files section?
TheRedPenOfDoom, thanks for the gracious apology; much appreciated! -- Sarabseth ( talk) 22:45, 9 July 2009 (UTC)
There's a question about whether a "professional reading list on the paraphilias" [5] is an appropriate external link at Talk:Paraphilia#Disclosure.
The author-and-Wikipedia-editor is clearly an expert (a sexologist whose research area is paraphilia and who works for the institution widely recognized as being the world's leader in research on paraphilia), so I have no concerns about complying with WP:ELNO #11, but I'm not sure whether external "further reading" lists are desirable.
(Fair warning: a couple of the editors on that page appear to have a long-standing, in-real-life personal feud.) WhatamIdoing ( talk) 01:30, 6 July 2009 (UTC)
Please remember that we are discussing a plurality of links [6] [7], not just one, and a growing host of wikipedians that James Cantor is accusing of bias [8]. BitterGrey ( talk) 05:19, 7 July 2009 (UTC)
(outdent) The only personal feud here is User:WhatamIdoing's long-running attempts to use Wikipedia to settle her personal grudge over my off-wiki actions. I'd characterize it as the most fixated anyone has ever been on me here on Wikipedia. Her disingenuous claim of non-involvement is part of a scheme she uses to win arguments on Wikipedia. She's quite adept at gaming the system by attempting to WP:canvass uninvolved editors via policy pages, but it's also quite transparent after you've seen her do it a dozen times. She's a bit of a time sink, so it's not really worth getting in long discussions about her behavior. Better to stay focused on content issues, as we are on the main discussion regarding this external link COI. Jokestress ( talk) 08:42, 8 July 2009 (UTC)
Sorry in advance for the remedial question. Should contested ELs be:
Previously, I thought #1 was the answer, but given the previous discussion (#3) started by an apparent regular here, I might be wrong. BitterGrey ( talk) 03:16, 10 July 2009 (UTC)
Somone who likes to delete stuff went around and took out a bunch of EL I put in to help people get going on filling out stubs. These were generally links to google or specialized searches. While I appreciate anyone could type terms into these engines, it seemed to be a convenience at least for stubs. This is especially true if the stub is questionable on notability. What's the deal with this? Also, in the post tree killing era, while a "curated" set of facts that goes into the article is still a good idea, just freezing it at a time point is questionable. These shouldn't deprive search sites of revenue by repackaging their results nor should it lead readers into commercial or specific POV sources. But often recent updates are very important and "current events" while not of encyclopedic quality, certainly if not curated, are probably of interest to most people who found the article. If you already know the material, you don't need an encyclopedia. If you are learning, some general unbiased search terms may help ( most journal articles list keywords ) and full one-click access seems like a great addition that the paper pushers couldn't have accomodated. There is no reason for a wall of separation between article and recent results that potentially could be cited. Nerdseeksblonde ( talk) 09:19, 13 July 2009 (UTC)
Folks, I have seen some editors removing links to newspaper obituaries and the like from EL sections in biographical articles. Is there a consensus that such links are inappropriate? If so can someone please point me to the relevant discussion? Thanks. – ukexpat ( talk) 13:57, 16 July 2009 (UTC)
This page has an open RfC on whether an article about a tennis player should include a link to an unofficial fansite and to a Twitter feed.
Supporters of the links have asserted that the relevant rules (ELNO #10 and #11) favor the inclusion of unofficial fansites and Twitter feeds. The argument seems to be deteriorating into an ad hominem attack, bordering on WP:OUTING, against a newbie editor that opposes the links.
It's often difficult to get outside responses to RfCs, so I hope that many of the editors here will take a look at the links and the relevant rules (now pasted directly into the discussion), and provide their impartial advice on what's best for the article. Thanks, WhatamIdoing ( talk) 06:03, 17 July 2009 (UTC)
Regarding this edit, I've got a few puzzled questions/comments:
It seems to me that ELMAYBE #4 clearly contradicts an arbitration ruling. Links to be considered #4
Sites which fail to meet criteria for reliable sources yet still contain information about the subject of the article from knowledgeable sources.
From Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Prem_Rawat_2#External_links
Resources which are not sufficiently neutral or accurate to stand alone, but which nevertheless provide useful material, should similarly be incorporated into the article, where context and complementary material may be provided to address the problem of neutrality or accuracy. If this is not possible or not appropriate in the circumstances, then the resource should not be linked to.
"not sufficiently neutral or accurate to stand alone" sure sounds to me like something which fails WP:RS, yet ELMAYBE #4 says that kind of link should be considered for EL. Unless we can overturn this arbitration ruling, ELMAYBE #4 has to go. 83.199.254.171 ( talk) 16:12, 18 July 2009 (UTC)
Your opinions about whether and under what circumstances tennis biographies should include links to fansites would be welcome on the Andy Murray discussion page and at WP:tennis. Chidel ( talk) 04:32, 12 July 2009 (UTC)
I've determined that the underlying problem here is over-regulation.
WP:EL#ELNO#11 reads: "Links to ... most fansites, except those written by a [WP:V#SPS] recognized authority (this exception is meant to be very limited; as a minimum standard, recognized authorities always meet Wikipedia's notability criteria for biographies)."
Notice how wordy it is – typical of attempts to force micromanagement regulation on many editors who do not consense to the guideline. A claim of consensus for this part of ELNO#11 should be investigated for a bully consensus imposed by a clique – or – a WP:OWNing WP:GANG.
Worse, ELNO#11 attempts to force WP:V#Self published sources and WP:Notability on external sites without authority-in-principle to do so: WP:V#SPS and WP:Notability are intended for article content, not external sites. Many self-published sites contain useful resources that WP articles can't include, from which readers would benefit – for example, copyrighted photographs used with permission.
Major fan sites are published by non-notable people, yet such sites become recognized by major media, influential blogs, or many comments by individuals. A guideline can't attempt to anticipate authorized means of successful publicity, because publicity is about "breaking out" of old rules that limit publicity. What really matters is the value of the external site per the other guidelines, and that can be determined by consensus.
The problem seems easily fixed. Rewrite WP:EL#ELNO#11 as: 'Links to ... most fansites, except by a consensus that they meet the other guidelines here.' Milo 00:48, 14 July 2009 (UTC)
1. ELNO#11 covers "blogs, personal web pages and most fansites,". If repeated, explicit requests about fansites generate that much controversy and text, it is an important enough type of link to have its own numbered subsection not shadowed by the preceding two. Even when it is technically a personal web page written by one person, fansiting is a social phenomenon which has evolved beyond that simplistic categorization.
2. There is undoubtedly a consensus to avoid linking to non-useful or poor quality web pages, but a significant number of fansite-like sites are useful. ELNO#11 currently presumes fansites to be non-useful or poor quality, which leads to unnecessary discussion, conflict, and WP:GAMEing over the good ones. If one claims that this prescriptive presumption should have worked, descriptively it has not worked and needs to be revised as a guiderule consensus failure.
3. The algorithm you have proposed for local consensus to approve a fansite-like link includes WP:IAR. Any locally repeating process that is expected to invoke WP:IAR is de facto not a consensed process. That's proof of the need to overhaul ELNO#11 as no longer consensed (if it ever was; a bully consensus being counterfeit).
4. How can there exist a bone fide Wikipedia-wide community consensus on fansites if there is no clear definition of what exactly, is a fansite? (Also spelled "fan site" and "fan-site"). As Justice Potter Stewart on obscenity, 1964, one may think one knows a fansite when they see it; but, consensus and guiderules can't be understandable, or fair, or avoid cyclical conflict, without a definition that in practice separates useful sites from those which are non-useful. Maybe the "fansite" term should simply be dropped in favor of more objective terminology. Consider these views:
Escape Orbit (17:01, 15 July 2009):
"This side-steps arguments of what is, or isn't, a fan-site..."
David T Tokyo (06:29, 11 July 2009):
"For me, a key part of the problem here is the use of the word "fansite". Typically, fansites are poorly designed and constructed, woefully short on content, low on facts and high on opinion. I'm sure we've all seen those kind of sites and clicked away immediately. However, there is another kind of site, one that I believe is better described as a "factsite". These sites take a subject and attempt to be authoritative, objective, comprehensive and professional. In this respect they are poles apart from regular fansites."
User:2005 (09:50, 13 July 2009) has characterized Find A Grave as a fansite:
"One fansite, Find A Grave, has thousands of links, and while some of those links may not be very good, it is plainly obvious that a very large number of Wikipedia editors recognize that fansites should sometimes be linked."
Assuming that characterization to be possible – might be so – current ELNO#11 is dead. Milo 01:50, 17 July 2009 (UTC)
←WhatamIdoing (17:09): "The "except" clause applies to all three kinds of pages, not merely the last type in the list."
It's ambiguously phrased, so that's possible (or actual, if you know of the rulecrafting intent). No doubt that it's yet another uncertainty that needs to be fixed.
If the latter text also applies to blogs and personal websites, ELNO#11 is even more dysfunctional than I thought. The " [WP:V#SPS] recognized authority" provision, is a crypto-reliable-sources requirement, which contradicts WP:EL#Links to be considered#4: "Sites which fail to meet criteria for reliable sources yet still contain information about the subject of the article from knowledgeable sources."
WP:EL has no mandate to erase the practical distinction between reliable sources and external links of all three types. Lacking a mandate, this ELNO#11 latter text is a policy/guide POV fork of WP:V/WP:RS.
The fork's construction also suggests a cover-up of forking. The fork is disguised by using the weasely, wikilawyering, inscrutably-linked wikitext phrase:
"[[WP:V#SPS|recognized authority]]").
Being a fork it must be fixed, since WP policy/guide forks are strongly disconsensed (see this MfD'd example: WP:MfD/WP:Discuss and Vote). In consequence, any consensus here that external links should be reliable sources – defaults to deletion of ELNO#11's latter text – as any such proposal must be made at WP:RS or WP:V. One of WT:EL regular editors' favorite games to oppose change, stonewalling, won't save ELNO#11 either. Enforcement against policy/guide forks is accomplished by MfD as linked above.
Now, if you want to be relevant, let's work together to rewrite ELNO#11.
Milo
05:24, 18 July 2009 (UTC)
←User:2005 (10:48): "...it's certainly no fork..." My reasoning is summarized as follows:
Milo 19:14, 18 July 2009 (UTC)
OK, I've been trying to follow this discussion, and it seems to me that the biggest problem here is not so much what ELNO #11 says (though I would probably agree with Milo that it is too wordy), but the title and opening line of the section. "Links normally to be avoided" and "one should avoid" is a rather authoritative tone, even though this is merely a guideline. How about changing the section title to something like "Links of which to be wary", and re-doing the opening sentence. Maybe even merge ELNO with the sections above into a list of positives and negatives when considering External Links. PSWG1920 ( talk) 21:21, 18 July 2009 (UTC)
←I'll consense to a complete rewrite of the ELNO section. One of the things that needs to precede a rewrite is deciding the principles of the section. This should be done the way that Arbcom votes on proposed arbitration statements. Milo 22:53, 18 July 2009 (UTC)
Recently I've removed a number of external links from Spanish articles. Some of these have been blatant spam in the form of holiday rentals / real estate agencies but some have been less clear cut. One removal that has been reverted is this one which looked innocent enough on the surface but contains sections which promote local properties. Could someone confirm that links such as that are indeed spam? Thanks, Valenciano ( talk) 14:37, 20 July 2009 (UTC)
Apologies in advance for naive errors of etiquette.
I'd like an opinion on external links. I recently had a discussion with Ronz about adding external links to Proof66.com ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Ronz#More_on_Proof66)--a website which I own and I agree that I am already on shaky ground with some policies.
That being said, I have the following case to make.
The obvious question is, Why not merely improve the article on wikipedia with this list of awards as has already been attempted by the examples you yourself cite above?
The answer lies in the format of Wikipedia itself. It is, by nature, aimed mainly at producers. For example, Glenlivet's entry is (rightly) about the Glenlivet disitllery and gives scant attention to the incidental and mutable "expressions" of whisky coming out of it. Moreover, the list of entries from the combined institutions is long and--if we were to update the award for each expression coming out of the distillery--would lead to unnaturally large and unwieldy articles. In short, an eyesore and undesirable for many parties involved. As an example, Glenlivet would have six expressions comprising a total of twenty-eight awards. That is a substantial list of bullet points! I feel the purpose of directing readers to these awards is better served by an external link they follow if and only if they are interested.
This merely follows the practice of linking to other resource websites such as IMDB, Rotten Tomatoes, oscar nominations, or any website devoted to additional information.
There is a laudable effort to constrain the number of external links (though I myself often find them a joy to follow). But that effort does not, in my opinion, apply in cases where contributors are making honest efforst to improve the value of the article. This can be done not only by text in the article itself but also by external linking to resources that are outside of the scope of an encycolpedia article.
I appreciate your thoughts and will adhere to recommendations. Phizbin ( talk) 05:08, 21 July 2009 (UTC))
Template:US-airport-mil (and others? I haven't looked) includes a link to current weather conditions. I know that this is generally deprecated for non-airport locations (the weather at this precise moment, as opposed to a description of the year-round climate, is non-encyclopedic), but what about for airports? WhatamIdoing ( talk) 17:32, 22 July 2009 (UTC)
I am the editor of a website for information about the village of Athens, New York. As I saw Athens was included in Wikipedia, I attempted to add a link to the site: www.athensny.org but was unable to make it blue highlighted words that would take the visitor to the site. I tried using the external link widget in the toolbar but apparently without success.
you can see it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athens_(town),_New_York
advice appreciated, thanks, Keith —Preceding unsigned comment added by Keith rodan ( talk • contribs) 19:09, 23 July 2009 (UTC)
There are a number of templates that have been created to link to this site [19] . Is the consensus that this is a generally valid external link or is this just a spamfest promotion and the templates should be deleted? [20] [21] -- The Red Pen of Doom 06:53, 22 July 2009 (UTC)
Dear all, with respect to all comment I am questioning you , why are call gomolo is not RS. I don't understand.I am working arround Bengali Cinema and cinema list cast crew etc. Yes I created two template Gomolo name Gomolo title as like imdb. If it will be proved that this is really not RS, I should not used as a external links. But first proved that it is not RS. Dear AnmaFinotera why are comment its a spamfest. Please explain. I am not so techsavy as you.- Jayanta Nath ( Talk| Contrb) 18:58, 23 July 2009 (UTC)
A minor edit war has broken out on Egremont, Cumbria where User:Chacufc has been adding in a link to [23], "Labour's Voice in Egremont & District", and User:Charlesdrakew has been reverting citing the External Links policy. Current policy does not make it ultra-clear to me whether or not this link is acceptable (though I have my own views on its acceptability). Input would be helpful. Regards, -- Alexandr Dmitri (Александр Дмитрий) ( talk) 17:33, 27 July 2009 (UTC)
See Metzora (parsha) which has a navbox consisting solely of external links - 26 of them in fact, which seems excessive to say the least, and I believe a number of them probably fail WP:EL as well. There are quite a few articles with this navbox in them, or similar navboxes. All, I think, created by the same editor last year, this is one I dismantled but has been restored to what the editor calls "series form". Dougweller ( talk) 14:06, 27 July 2009 (UTC)
why not? Jaydlewis ( talk) 00:46, 30 July 2009 (UTC)
ELNO 17 as of today:
This appears to conflict with ELNO 6 as of today:
Notably, The New York Times has been known to use the referral argument as a password of sorts to skip its registration requirement. Would it be wise to amend 17 as follows?
I would be bold if this were an article, but the last time I was bold on a policy or guideline, I got reverted for no consensus. -- Damian Yerrick ( talk | stalk) 12:07, 25 July 2009 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Linking#External links should be merged into this article. Wikipedia:Linking has the overarching name, because most principles that hold for internal links also hold for external links, but in practice there is not much overlap, since it is rare that external links appear in the text body like an internal link. Please check that every detail mentioned in that section is covered here. This is important, even if we decide not to merge, because this is the more specific article, where people turn to for detail information. — Sebastian 17:45, 1 August 2009 (UTC)
I put this proposal on another page, but someone told me it didn't belong there. Exiled, it settles here.
As you know, much of Wikipedia's growth has come from swallowing up & citing other encyclopedic, public domain sources. (For example: articles marked with {{ 1911}} contain stuff from the 1911 Britannica; similar sources have been listed here. For a journalist's description of the phenomenon, do a full-text search for "Britannica" in this article.)
I think we should try to systematize the process by which these special sources are identified, assigned to articles, and then incorporated into these articles. If we did so, this content would be incorporated into Wikipedia at a much faster rate, and yet also in a more controlled and supervised fashion.
I created a template that performs these functions in a rudimentary way. This is only a proof of concept; I just am looking to find people who might collaborate with me to improve this system.
You insert {{ refideas}} at the top of an article's discussion page, and include a hyperlink to one or more of these special sources. The text of the template reminds editors that such content, properly cited, can be added to an article without infringing copyright.
Here's the important part: these pages are automatically aggregated in a single category. Hopefully, some people will view this category as a "portal" pointing to articles where they can make mindless, yet high-quality, contributions. For example, over the last month I created approximately 1000 articles using this Congressional Research Service Report, and credited the source using {{ CRS}}, a new template created for the purpose. I expect that some of the most transformative edits to articles on this list will be made by middle-school students who have no knowledge of the topic whatsoever -- simply by copying, pasting, and citing.
Thoughts? Andrew Gradman talk/ WP:Hornbook 05:55, 3 August 2009 (UTC)
Wondering about standards for 'Comparison of type of software' articles, (i.e. Comparison of WAMPs, Comparison of browser synchronizers). These articles are regularly hit with the {{externallinks}} tag, but it seems that since they list multiple products, it seems natural to a have one link per product. Some comparisons use internal links where available, but it there seems to be a lower standard of notability to be included on these comparison tables - as many are products are listed that don't have their own wiki-article. I was thinking that perhaps the guideline should be to have one 'external link' allowed per product on these comparisons. Even for the products that have their own article, I imagine a web viewer upon viewing this comparison, might want to select a certain product for trial or download. Hope this starts some conversation. Cander0000 ( talk) 05:22, 17 July 2009 (UTC)
"The spirit of BLP" is a potentially confusing phrase and subject to misinterpretation. For example it would be hard or impossible to defend a link against an accusation that a link is "against the spirit of BLP" when inclusion may actually be supported by the "text of BLP". Would anyone like to clarify this statement?— Ash ( talk) 13:14, 5 August 2009 (UTC)
http://*.websters-online-dictionary.org/ 358 links, is that spam? -- 213.168.121.113 ( talk) 23:35, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
I suggest that we should remove explicit references to the name YouTube because YT does not have a monopoly on video sharing. YT has improved its process of removing copyright violations and now provides full-length videos that are obviously with permissions through new features such as http://www.youtube.com/shows . The problem is with "video sharing" in general, even with an individual sharing a single video from a personal web site.-- Writelabor ( talk) 00:59, 11 August 2009 (UTC)
While I'm at it, the prohibition on blogs needs some qualification in arenas where the mainstream media has major shortcomings, or even policies of "private censorship", or where that media is state-controlled. It's not just a question of notability, e.g. a reporter's blog such as http://billtieleman.blogspot.org or http://transmontanus.blogspot.com, which are from two notable reporters in British Columbia, the latter writing very often on global issues; but they are notable in wiki terms. But there are a few dozen sites or more in CAnada which pick up the slack left by the editorial narrowness of the mainstream media, especially in cases like the BC Legislature Raids trial, or the Donald Marshall case and continentalization - http://bctrialofbasi-virk.blogspot.com (aka the BC Mary blog - though Mary, whether she likes it or not, is approaching "notability" in Wiki terms - and http://www.vivelecanada.ca; sites listed on the left on Mary's blogpage also qualify as "notable news sources". What I'm getting at is that blogs which are not personal, but are news-copy oriented, have a place in citations if the news items and facts in them are unavailable by any other means; in these cases because newspapers owned by Canwest Global are notoriously censored and controlled and in the habit also of being archly POV and misrepresentative of the facts. This is s much clearer situation with issues/places like Tibet or other places where the state-controlled media is unreliable or censored, but it happens in the so-called "First World" too. So the parameters of Article 11 should be fleshed out a bit further, rather than simply pointing to notability. It's similar to the personal site vs amateur history issue in the section previous; in this case the dichotomoy is between "citizen journalism" and "yellow journalism"..... Skookum1 ( talk) 12:24, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
In light of overall EL criteria, #Avoid undue weight on particular points of view seems impractical as written. In a given article, it is quite possible that there will be only one suitable External Link and that link will support a minority viewpoint. This is because links supporting a majority viewpoint are all the more likely to be reliable sources which should be referenced in the article. The presence of an EL with a minority view does not mean that we should add 2 or more links which endorse the majority view just for the sake of having them.
The section in question appears to have originated as "What should be linked to" #4, when this page (and perhaps Wikipedia in general) barely distinguished between External Links and source citations. [24] Subsequently the mention of undue weight was added. [25] PSWG1920 ( talk) 04:20, 11 August 2009 (UTC)
"...the number of links dedicated to one point of view should not overwhelm the number dedicated to other equal points of view..."
PSWG1920, no offense, but I see your name cropping up all the time trying to change policy and guideline pages to your own rather peculiar beliefs and interpretations. Considering how many times you've been reverted and how many times your desires have been shown to be not in line with longstanding consensus, perhaps you ought to spend more time following these policies and guidelines instead of trying to change them. DreamGuy ( talk) 13:02, 12 August 2009 (UTC)
Re article 11 in Section 4, re blogs, personal sites etc.....this page was cited as the reason to remove a very good amateur history site from Maple Ridge, British Columbia, as if it were a "personal site". Personal sites are about the person, but when someone composese an amateur history site for their community, or in the case of bios for genealogies, there's no reason why it can't be included; in this particular case the removed link (which I have reinstated) is funded by the British Columbia Heritage Trust and features photos from the BC Archives and Vancouver Public Library; it carries no advertising. I have such a site myself - http://www.cayoosh.net - and know of oters, which fill in the blanks where "official" sources fall short...and quite often amateur sites have more accurate info than those on commercially-operated history sites e.g. http://www.britishcolumbia.com which nonehtless also has info not to be found anywhere (it's tolerated in BC wikispace exactly for that reason, though it has accuracy problems in some cases; but they are open to correctin/submission/improvement). So far, I am unaware of anyone removing references to my website on the basis of WP:ELNO, but I would aver that online "official" sources are very sketchy and few and far bhtween; it's not in the government's busienss or interest to pay for history sites, and academics tend to focus on their own agendas; community and amateur historians are entirely valid; so there should be some sort of qualification on article 11 about distinguishing between "personal sites" and "amateur history/science/geography" sites, which are many and often uniquely valuable. Skookum1 ( talk) 12:24, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
In general amateur history sites are personal sites, as are amateur cooking sites and amateur anything else under the sun sites. If you read "personal" meaning people blogging about their cats or whatever then you are misreading the intent of that line quite dramatically. Certainly some amateur history sites are valid, especially those well on their way to being considered reliable sources, but in general they should be avoided. Frankly, if the only place for some information is from an amateur site, then that information usually isn't notable enough to be included. We are not here to provide all information that exists, we are here to provide dependable and notable information. DreamGuy ( talk) 22:31, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
Wait a minute!! forums and groups can be very very relevant to sharing knowledge! I suggest that this rule be removed, as it is it needs protection for music genre articles!! idm needs the intelligent dance music groups to be linked as the relevance is there! —Preceding unsigned comment added by John hannan ( talk • contribs) 09:23, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
So we're essentially banning references to any (digital) datasource invented after roughly 1970, though we'll grudgingly allow HTTP? That's a bit silly, I'd say.
-- Kim Bruning ( talk) 18:23, 16 August 2009 (UTC)
Overall the problem seems to be stereotyping.
Some editors have had bad personal experiences with discussion venue Z, and want to retaliate by banning all discussions on venue Z, or just to make sure, all discussions everywhere on the net. But wait – I had a good experience at my well-moderated car repair venue Y. Why should it be banned along with Z (that may deserve banning)?
Other editors have noticed that most venues X are poorly constructed, so some years ago they wrote avoid all X. However, since then venues X may have improved by percentage to the point where "avoid" is unreasonable. When things rapidly change like the net does, case-by-case analysis makes more sense, just as is done with each article.
Another problem is that the venues to "avoid" are avoided to such an extreme degree that the pretty good X venues are effectively required to meet impossible standards. ('But we're a Google Publisher!' 'So what, the WP:ELNO guide says you should be avoided.')
Yet another problem is packing together widely varying types of venues under a single "avoid" label.
Some of these problems might improve if the various venues were unpacked, and standards for each were developed as to what ranges of construction and performance are acceptable.
One proffered reason for not unpacking the "avoid" venues is that the WP:ELNO numbering would change. Ok, why renumber them? Just create a small standards section for each venue and the numbering problem goes away.
Milo
20:25, 16 August 2009 (UTC)
It's not correct that we shouldn't link to sites that require payment. That would preclude us from linking to, say, an interesting article in the New York Times archive. As the policies have to be descriptive as well as prescriptive, this should be removed. SlimVirgin talk| contribs 21:14, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
Pay sites should not be listed. Wikipedia is a free encyclopedia, and we should offer only free alternatives. Kingturtle ( talk) 17:49, 15 August 2009 (UTC)
I'm having trouble thinking of concrete examples where such links would be helpful. Is there a real example in dispute here? I expect it would be a situation where the linked material 1) isn't the subject's own work or official site, 2) isn't used as a source, and 3) isn't a courtesy link to a print source listed under "Further reading"; but nonetheless provides either a) a unique resource or b) information from a reputable authority on the subject that would not be contained in the article itself if it were of Featured Article quality. So what's the example, beyond the generic concept of a newspaper or journal article about an unspecified subject? -- RL0919 ( talk) 18:57, 15 August 2009 (UTC)
11. Links to blogs, personal web pages and fansites, except those written by a recognized authority (this exception is meant to be very limited; as a minimum standard, recognized authorities always meet Wikipedia's notability criteria for biographies).
1) If a site is written by a recognized authority, then it is not a fansite.
2) Where can I read about this consensus that fansites are okay?
Kingturtle ( talk) 21:24, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
No, I think the problem is that the fansites are here (I included the text at the top of the section) named together with the blogs and the personal webpages. The former two can be written by a recognised authority, whereas that for fansites is hard to imagine. A rewrite could give:
But that might be even more confusing. -- Dirk Beetstra T C 22:00, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
I don't have a particular external link in mind. I am just concerned that the language here gives too much wiggle room for fan site advocates. Usually, those advocating fansites here have a vested interest in the site, and the external link becomes spam-like in nature. We need to work on the language very carefully and specifically so there is no mistaking what is acceptable and what is not. Kingturtle ( talk) 22:17, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
Here is a specific discussion of the inclusion of a fansite: [28]. Dlabtot ( talk) 23:36, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
It appears 2005's point is that the name (NO) doesn't match the content (SELDOM). -- Damian Yerrick ( talk | stalk) 01:12, 17 August 2009 (UTC)
As I understand WP:RS, "source with a good reputation for fact-checking" and "reliable source" are synonyms. Your "Do reliable sources describe the site as having such a reputation?" could be rephrased as "Do reliable sources describe the site as reliable?". This makes "reliability" look like a directed acyclic graph, where sources are nodes and a descriptions of another source as reliable are edges. This raises the question: which nodes are the roots of this DAG? If this is "irrelevant sophistry", would this be better discussed on WT:RS? -- Damian Yerrick ( talk | stalk) 01:12, 17 August 2009 (UTC)
Some of the links of the 'forum type' are a continuous source of debate, and one of them (twitter) is at the moment a source of debate in a deletion discussion for the {{ twitter}}.
We generally say here, for these links (blogspot, myspace, twitter, facebook), that they make poor external links, they often do not add to the page, they are often not stable, and there are quite often cases where the 'official' link is not officially the one of the subject of the page, or the 'official blahblah forum', is not actually maintained by blahblah, but by someone who names his forum thé official forum.
However, for celebrities and similar, these links make part of their 'web presence', and that is certainly something that is of encyclopedic value.
I would therefor suggest to set up a {{ Web presence}}, which boxes up the common and more important web-presence links into a box on the right of the page (where there is also the 'Wiktionary has more info on this subject'). As parameters the box can have 'twitter' (adding 'twitter=Jimbo Wales' to the template results in a twitter link for Jimbo), and so on for myspace, youtube-channels, facebook, name them all. Maybe even common things like imdb could have their place in such a box (yes, imdb is a generally accepted link as external link, though I often think that they do not tell anything that is not also already mentioned on the page itself, and hence it does not add to the page).
I know that it is touchy on the 'we are not a directory' type of thinking, but then, we also have links to commons, wiktionary and 'species, and though they are on sister projects, they are external links (they are still wikis, and some pages don't tell anything really). But these do add to the understanding of the person, though they are there not strict external links anymore.
It has some advantages: they move out of the external links section, so the links can more distinctively be about pages which follow the introduction of the guideline (and not, 'it is the official myspace, so it belongs here'), it might give less warring about the questionable cases (we are not a web directory, so we don't need them all, but which one is now more important than the other), it helps in forming metadata on the person (the template can be bot-scanned or read from the db to get the metadata, like in the persondata template), and even would give possibilities to check and control them by monitoring changes by bot. Moreover, the templates that we now have for all these links, can be deleted (as they should be obsolete), and we can use simple external links for those (selecting those which are useful and appropriate to move into the web-presence box) very few cases where another myspace or similar is yet another addition (which really should not happen too often). Thoughts? -- Dirk Beetstra T C 20:09, 17 August 2009 (UTC)
Regarding limits. One could think to fill only 7 or 8 really important ones there, and either fill the rest of the parameters with a <!-- don't add more, there are enough --> (and come up with some nifty edit filter to control it). Or maybe it would be possible to make the template 'count' the number of filled fields (or write an edit filter for that), and if it is more than 10, it autocategorises them.
From that point there is a practically total no on any other of these links, though there may be some exceptions here and there (an authority that is writing a blogspot totally devoted to the subject.
I did not mean to point the proposal to WP:BLP' only, the same technique can be applied for WP:DEO's (Descriptions of Existing Organisations :-D ) as well, some of them also have an official web-presence. Here e.g. the above discussed forum for a car might get a place, if the forum is 'officially supported' by the company (not when the forum is just declared official, but is 'totally devoted' to the subject of the page; then it might be an external link, which needs to pass merits for inclusion. -- Dirk Beetstra T C 06:08, 18 August 2009 (UTC)
Regarding a comment made above about consistency and limiting the number of fields, I think this something handled easily enough. The template can be formatted to provide the consistency, and the number of fields can be controlled. The key is to come up with a consensus on what are reasonable fields to include and how many. For example, here is a possible list of fields:
The "description" fields are to allow for some description of different websites or blogs the subject might have. For example, a notable academic might have a university website and then a personal website, which could be described accordingly. The Facebook, etc., fields can be described automatically, similar to the existing templates for these links. The example above would have eight links total, assuming a subject has something to fill in for every field. There could be situations I'm not thinking of (more sites, some other social network, etc.), but the template would have a specific number of fields, so it can be kept to some reasonable number, whatever folks think that is. -- RL0919 ( talk) 00:06, 19 August 2009 (UTC)
Jimbo Wales |
---|
official website |
Web Presence |
Blogspot |
MySpace |
That does indeed also make sense, but the 'problem' is, that the 'own website' is of a different nature than the blogs &c., it provides another type of information. But that is not an impossible problem, what about this box -> -- Dirk Beetstra T C 09:05, 20 August 2009 (UTC)
{{Web presence
| Name = example
| homepage =
http://www.example.org
| blogspot = example
| twitter = example
| myspace = example
}}
I have created the template {{
Web presence}} (plus a handful of redirects). With 'the official one', I mean here that that generally is something like
http://www.subject.com, if the myspace is thé official page, then that should be used there, and the 'myspace=' field stays empty. 'Official homepage' (now encoded as the field 'homepage') is hence what the subject would consider their main web presence. It may contain links to all the other web presences. We could consider to make an extra homepage field for the odd case where the subject is considered to have to main homepages. --
Dirk Beetstra
T
C
09:33, 20 August 2009 (UTC)
I will put some testcases on the template, reply to 2005: yes, omitting one of the fields does (well, should at least) take out the lines that are not needed. -- Dirk Beetstra T C 09:38, 20 August 2009 (UTC)
I agree. -- Dirk Beetstra T C 17:30, 20 August 2009 (UTC)
OK, one more time for the people who refuse to get it: We are WP:NOT a web directory. Providing links to a laundry list of sites is NOT at all what an encyclopedia is for and serves no encyclopedic purpose. We link to the main site. If the person or organization in question doesn't feel that listing Twitter/MySpace/Facebook/Forums/Blogs etc. prominently on their own home page is important to them, then why would it be important to an ENCYCLOPEDIA? And if they do link prominently to them, then the main site link already accomplished the goal anyway. We are not Google or Yahoo or anything of the sort. If someone wants to find a link to somebody's full "web presence" it takes all of a couple of seconds for them to pop it into their browser's search bar and go find it. Some people here just need a major reality check. The last thing we need is another obnoxious infobox on tons of pages for no purpose. DreamGuy ( talk) 16:18, 21 August 2009 (UTC)
If a person/company/whatever has a web presence, we should link once to the best page that presents that. That, nearly all the time, is their website. If that person/company/whatever also has twitter and myspace and blog and other feeds, great - but it is not our place to fully outline every possible venue about that entity. If they haven't taking the steps to clearly advertise their additional web presence, it's not our place to make up for that.
If the entity doesn't have a website but has one or more of the other types of feeds, we should include one of those, starting with something blog-like (myspace) before having to go to something like twitter. But there is still no need to repeat all such feeds; if that entity hasn't put their tweeter feed in their myspace page, it's not our responsibility to fill that for them.
More importantly, I think we need to be careful of selectively weighing certainly social online services. Myspace and Twitter are huge, and 99% of the time, that's where someone's presence will be if they don't have a web page, but we're still artificially supporting these services if we include these links in addition to other links to official websites. --
MASEM (
t)
16:38, 21 August 2009 (UTC)
I am with 2005 here. A persons web presence is encyclopaedic. The problem is, they are not proper external links, they simply do fail that very often. Given that the real myspace of a subject is a piece of information which is encyclopaedic (but the content contained on the myspace may not be! (replace myspace with facebook, digg, twitter, youtube, &c. as required)), then promoting them out of the strict external links into a web-presence is not linkfarming per se, it is correct, and, in my opinion, encyclopaedic information. And no, I would not restrict it down to three or four. If a person is of an importance that they have and keep sites on 10 of these sites, then all should be linked (and not only because otherwise the war on these links would continue .. "is <subject>'s Myspace more important than <subject>'s Twitter?", no, they all contribute to the persons web-presense.
Lets face it, we should on the same merits discuss here the sisterlinks template! That also contributes to linkfarming, the links are to wikis, where the articles linked to sometimes hardly give any extra information (does it still link to wikiquote?), and as such could very well fail the external links guideline. Why do we link to them? -- Dirk Beetstra T C 07:15, 22 August 2009 (UTC)
I want to re-iterate one of the points that I made above: it is necessary to remember that all those services like myspace and facebook and twitter are commercial venues, and while they may be "free" to use, the companies behind those are, in the end, trying to make a buck. We try to avoid engaging such links as that serves to help advance their business and that is against the spirit of being an free content encyclopedia. Yes, we do link to commercial sites all the time: most movies have an IMDB link, we have links to most company web pages, and heck, much of our sourcing is through online commercial news sources. But, in these cases, these sites are provide unique resources that cannot be found elsewhere that is essential for a WP article on that topic. When an entity already has a website, a link to any other web presence is duplication, and no longer unique. Including those other web presence commercial services when they are not unique compared to a web site is pushing their commercial goals - to widely have people use their service. (This, in counterargument to Beetstra: sisterlinks to other Foundation-sponsored projects is in no way attempting to achieve commercial gain given their free nature alongside WP.)
Also, there's a "where does this end" arguemnt. If we do include twitter and the like, why not include their IM names? Their email addresses? Why stop in the electronic space and publish addresses and phones - that's their physical presence and just as "important" as their myspace and twitter pages at least to some people? I know there are people that have set up accounts on those services but keep them as private as the service lets them to interact with friends, but this is a very loose sense of privacy. We cannot assume that just because an entity has web presences besides a web page that they want people to actively know of their other presences. A web page is information that has to be pushed out and thus must be information the entity wants known, but the same is not true for the rest of these presences. We need to consider the privacy issues here as well. -- MASEM ( t) 12:34, 22 August 2009 (UTC)
Since a lot of the proposed links to be included in this template are currently discouraged, this seems backwards. First, seek a new consensus to include them, and then this proposal might make sense. Dlabtot ( talk) 20:49, 22 August 2009 (UTC)
I apologize in advance for posting a note here, yet as there is no external links noticeboard to go to I'm posting here to seek further input on how a particular section of the article Garden sharing floats with this guideline. I don't want to get into an edit war, but this section recently put in [29] has been challenged by two editors, yet one editor strongly feels it should be in here and has just called my removal of it "vandalism". I'd like to see where the consensus lies for sections such as this. I have posted relevant points of this guideline on the article's talk page, yet the user insisting on keeping them has given what I feel to be inadequate answers. Is he in the right here? Also, since this is a guideline board, where should I bring up questions such as this in the future. I'm thinking of developing an external links noticeboard and I think cases like this are prime examples of where it would be useful. Them From Space 02:51, 24 August 2009 (UTC)
I'm unclear about the best way to link to external sites that doesn't confuse readers and still complies with the Wikipedia guidelines. At the end of Soybean#Uses, there are references to two of the major soybean trade associations that have significant additional information on various types of soybean products, recent biodiesel research papers, etc. These associations aren't tied to any one particular company and so don't seem to violate any of the guidelines for an external link. However, to comply with the guideline on not having external links in the article body, I made the body references wiki links to the External References section, which in turn has the actual external links. Is this a good thing to do? It seems a bit confusing that a user would click one of the wiki links and get dumped at the end of the article without knowing why they are there. The other choice would be to create articles on the trade associations themselves, but I don't think this is really appropriate. They are notable for the extra information they provide to the topic of soybeans, but not really notable in their own right. I've read all the guidelines on external links and I can't find an answer to this dilemma. UncleDouggie ( talk) 04:50, 27 August 2009 (UTC)
Hello,
I want to include my website's link to wikipedia, please suggest me the best way to do My website name is http://www.health-prism.com and it is purely based on general health and wellbeing.
Regards, —Preceding unsigned comment added by Viyan11 ( talk • contribs) 08:20, 27 August 2009 (UTC)
Should wikia sites be included in external links? Just wondering as i personally think they borderline on fansites, so wondered what official was? -- SteelersFanUK06 ReplyOnMine! 23:58, 2 September 2009 (UTC)
I have stumbled into a debate that I think could do with some wider discussion. A few weeks ago I noticed that an editor was adding links to pages on the Newberry Library website to a large number of articles. When I followed many of the links I felt that they were inappropriate for the external links section of the articles. For example, a link was added to the Chicago article to this web page—as far as I can tell, the linked web page basically tells the reader that the Newberry Library has some photographs of the Chicago lakefront (the photos cannot be viewed via the website). After looking at a number of other such links I decided to revert the additions. This led to protests from the Newberry Library and a couple of other editors. You can read these disscussions on my talk page. I have suggested that, where the Newberry Library holds unique collections, it might be appropriate to mention the collections in the main article text with the web pages used as citations rather than just adding links to an external links section. Do other editors feel that these links are acceptable as part of the external links section of an article? Thanks, — Jeremy ( talk) 17:54, 15 August 2009 (UTC)
A closely related matter is being discussed here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Conflict_of_interest#Archives
I am inclined to agree that "external links" is in most cases a misleading heading. I suggest the wording "Research resources as separate from "external links." 69.92.10.161 ( talk) 19:23, 5 September 2009 (UTC)
I agree with UncleDouggie that pointers to archives should not be under external links unless the archive has put original material on line. (Some of them have started doing that, and external links make sense in that case.)
I have not used archives very often, but back in the early 80s I was working in the Houston area and visited the Texas City library. They had (and certainly still have) an extensive collection of articles and photographs about the 1947 disaster. Some of this material they organized into a web page [30] that is linked from the Wikipedia article. In this case it is fairly obvious that the library has archival materials. I don't think it should be objectionable or a COI violation for someone from that library to add a note that they have x inches of photos and articles about the disaster in their collection.
I am inclined to the more general wording "Research resources" because special collections and libraries also hold such material. But "Archives" is shorter.
As for putting such pointers on the talk page for the use of editors, Wikipedia rules don't permitted the use of original sources. So if there is any link at all, it is for those who are using Wikipedia and are interested in where they can find original materials.
There has been related discussion here [31] Keith Henson ( talk) 02:47, 8 September 2009 (UTC)