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Adding crowdfunding sites to ELNO 4

WP:ELNO#EL4 addresses the problem of GoFundMe sites in the generic, but they weren't really 'a thing' the last time we went through ELNO with a fine-toothed comb. I propose expanding it this way:

The target here is cyberbegging sites whose main purpose is to ask people for money. I do not intend this to cover typical non-profit websites, even though they doubtless contain opportunities for people to make donations, nor typical social media pages, even though someone could post a request for money there. Do you think that this is sufficiently clear? Do you support this expansion? WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:16, 4 September 2018 (UTC)

I support this addition. Did we not already blacklist some of these? --Dirk Beetstra T C 03:09, 5 September 2018 (UTC)
I like the idea, but how do you craft the wording to make an exception for non-profits without making it too wordy or too subject to wiki-lawyering? - Donald Albury 12:20, 5 September 2018 (UTC)
Why should non-profits be exempt? --Izno (talk) 12:39, 5 September 2018 (UTC)
We want links to charity websites such as https://nfb.org/ (even though that site probably contains a page for making donations) but we don't want links to gofundme.com/nfb (even if we're certain that it's the same charity). The point is "no GoFundMe" links, rather than "no sites that ask for donations on any page, in any way, shape, or form". WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:59, 5 September 2018 (UTC)

How about, with the exception of a single link in the article about an organization to the official website of an that organization, be it for-profit or non-profit, allow no links to any webpage that offers advertising or solicits donations? - Donald Albury 19:57, 5 September 2018 (UTC)

Are you here talking about the WP:ELOFFICIAL exemption? --Dirk Beetstra T C 00:19, 6 September 2018 (UTC)
Yeah, I guess I am. - Donald Albury 01:10, 6 September 2018 (UTC)
Because that's a major change to the guideline, and editors won't stand for it.
  • "No links to any webpage that offers advertising" means that you'd be banning any page that has any advertising on it, e.g., newspaper articles – not just pages with "objectionable" amounts of advertising.
  • "No links to any webpage that solicits donations" means that you'd ban every content-heavy non-profit webpage if they add a tiny little note that says "Click here to donate". We don't want to say that otherwise excellent external links, such as https://siteman.wustl.edu/prevention/ydr/ should get invalidated if they have a discreet link to a donation page, or if they add a banner that says you can donate. The point isn't to exclude anything on any normal website. The point is to exclude all pages on cyberbegging websites.
WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:18, 6 September 2018 (UTC)
Which, to me, means that except for the official domain link on the subject page of the crowdfunding Wikipage and some related primary references there, NO other links on Wikipedia should appear, not even as primary references (with very limited exceptions). That is similar to the situation with petition sites (which are blacklisted), which cannot be used anywhere, even not as primary references. --Dirk Beetstra T C 03:54, 6 September 2018 (UTC)
So, do we make a distinction based on identity, restricting access to web sites for organizations identified as crowd-sourced funding and petition sites, or do we base it on behavior, restricting access to web sites based on the presence of solicitations for sales, donations or signatures (i.e., some form of support)? Whatever we choose to do, the policy/guidance needs to be clear and easy to apply consistently. On the other hand, this is Wikipedia. There will be RfCs. - Donald Albury 12:27, 6 September 2018 (UTC)
We restrict links based upon what you call "identity" when a given site has become a problem. (And by "we", I mean "Dirk and the few other admins who maintain the spam blacklist").
Otherwise, we're looking at the content of the exact page that gets linked. For example, there is a critical difference between linking to "www.example.com/detailed-statistics" and linking to "www.example.com/donate-now". We have thousands of the first type, but we should have none (or almost none) of the second type. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:41, 8 September 2018 (UTC)
To go back to petition sites (that is, sites that host petitions, likechange.org): it was seen that a vast majority of the additions were of the 'Sign our petition NOW [here], to push (x) to do (y)', and the rest of them 'a petiotion was opened to ...(ref to active petition)' None of that is what Wikipedia is for. Hardly ever the remark is neutral and encyclopedic when direct links to petitions are involved. And that is still the case if you look at attempted additions (as many are blacklisted). Most of these are, even when added in good faith, abuse and unneccesary. However, most of the organisations behind it are decent, notable organisations (who, themselves, do not spam!).
Here, with crowdfunding, I feel it is similar. I don't think that there are many exceptions where linking to a page that solicits money is warranted, and therefore I would consider to enforce not linking to them, like blanket disallowing sites that are designed for carrying such pages. --Dirk Beetstra T C 09:06, 8 September 2018 (UTC)
I agree with you that it's similar in nature to the online petition sites.
I think we are generally agreed that this is the overall desirable goal for now:
  • Ban external links like gofundme.com/respectable-organization and www.kickstarter.com/new-widget (except in truly extraordinary circumstances, no plausible examples of which have occurred to me yet)
  • Very strongly discourage links like www.respectable-organization.org/donate-now and www.new-widget.com/buy-now, just as we have for years (although that's technically a matter for a different ELNO criterion).
  • Encourage links like www.respectable-organization.org/detailed-information and www.new-widget.com/comprehensive-statistics, just as we have for years, even if those pages contain a small/non-objectionable amount of donation requests, offers to sell something, etc.
  • Still accept, in the articles about Respectable Organization and New Widget, Inc., the official links to www.respectable-organization.org and www.new-widget.com (standard, well-established practice), just as we have for years, even if those pages say "Donate now", "Buy now", "Contribute to us on GoFundMe", or anything else.
Since there have been no objections (and some desire for an even stronger statement), I'll make this change now, and we can adapt it later as needed. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:15, 15 September 2018 (UTC)
There have been objections. I have not commented because it’s obvious it shouldn’t be added because it’s too broad. It should not be included. Walter Görlitz (talk) 06:17, 15 September 2018 (UTC)
What is too broad, the permitted sites, or the exclusions? If the problem is that the 4th pt is too permissive, I think it can be improved by changing it to
  • Still accept, in the articles about Respectable Organization and New Widget, Inc., the official links to www.respectable-organization.org and www.new-widget.com (standard, well-established practice), just as we have for years, even if those pages incidentally say "Donate now", "Buy now", "Contribute to us on GoFundMe", or anything else DGG ( talk ) 20:39, 16 September 2018 (UTC)
    • The proposal was to add only these three words, not to add the four long bullet points. Walter, it would be helpful if you would explain exactly what you think is "too broad" about those three words. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:47, 18 September 2018 (UTC)
      • As was stated earlier, we do not want to preclude websites where they appear. If a valid EL is removed because somewhere on the front page is a link to a crowdfunding campaign, the changed guideline has failed. I understand it's direct links to such pages, but I've seen it argued that references are actually external links so not everyone gets it. Walter Görlitz (talk) 17:46, 18 September 2018 (UTC)
        • Sure, people vary in both their competence and their motivation to willfully misinterpret any rule. But I don't think we're likely to end up with a consensus of editors agreeing that "a link to a crowdfunding site, located somewhere on an otherwise valid site" is the same as "a crowdfunding page" itself – especially if they read this discussion, which will be available in the archives. It is clear from this discussion that everyone accepts links to www.respectable-organization.org even if that webpage (at any given point in time) happens to contain a link to a Go Fund Me crowdfunding page. It is only the direct link to gofundme.com/respectable-organization that is prohibited. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:04, 22 September 2018 (UTC)

YouTube licensing (again)

The video which ends watch?v=nXiQtD5gcHU is a video of the 1972 song "Papa Was a Rollin' Stone" by US soul group "The Temptations". The video description says this:

"Licensed to YouTube by: UMG (on behalf of Universal Music); SOLAR Music Rights Management, EMI Music Publishing, CMRRA, UBEM, and 9 music rights societies"

This suggests to me that it has been published legally by YouTube and is not in breach of copyright law. In which case it can be legitimately linked by Wikipedia. Is this correct? Martinevans123 (talk) 17:57, 29 September 2018 (UTC)

WP:COPYVIO does indeed not seem to apply here (nor it's representative section in WP:EL). The rest of WP:EL may have other implications, still. --Dirk Beetstra T C 08:19, 30 September 2018 (UTC)
Thanks. Personally, I can't really think of a more appropriate External link. If there are no clear objections I intend to add it. Of course, it might also belong in the infobox. Martinevans123 (talk) 11:03, 30 September 2018 (UTC) p.s. 8,692,564 views says something, I think.

Using the Internet Archive version of an official website as EL

Steming from a minor dispute at Acclaim Entertainment, how wise is it to use a Wayback Machine-archived version of a defunct company's website as "Official website" in the ELs section? In this case specifically, the wildcard (*) is used, so that users may explore the previous versions of that website as well. Personally, I see no use in this for one because the company is defunct and the old website no longer represents a company's current state, values, news, an so on. Some comments would be appreciated, and if there is a consensus (for whatever side) it should probably be added to the ELDEAD section. Lordtobi (✉) 07:45, 30 September 2018 (UTC)

I think I would find it informative for an article to have a clearly marked internet archive copy of the official website linked (so not calling it 'official website', but 'archived copy of the official website at <date>' or something along the lines. The wildcard option I am less thrilled about, for a still working official website we only link to the current version, and do not provide links to previous versions (and I think that is outside of the scope of why we have WP:ELOFFICIAL). --Dirk Beetstra T C 08:15, 30 September 2018 (UTC)
@Beetstra and Lordtobi: By chance, I had just run into this on a page earlier. As a result of the above conversation, I decided to use {{webarchive}} template, so now it looks like this: Philippa Urquhart. Thoughts? Mathglot (talk) 08:42, 30 September 2018 (UTC)
I think formatting-wise "Official website" should just be the title instead of the article title. Lordtobi (✉) 09:04, 30 September 2018 (UTC)
I thought about doing that, but I'm usually loathe to change what a website says about itself as far as its title (except for stylistic things, like changing all-caps). That's why I put 'Official website' as a plaintext description following. I don't feel that strongly about it and would go with consensus, but that was the reason. Mathglot (talk) 09:12, 30 September 2018 (UTC)
Lordtoby said: because the company is defunct and the old website no longer represents a company's current state, values, news, an so on.
True, but then again we are dealing with a defunct company so it can't be put in the same category as a company that is still active, and the reasons for looking at the website aren't the same either. For example, I can't imagine anyone interested in viewing a 2002 version of Walmart's website save for a few enthusiasts who enjoy browsing old webpages (and these people already know about Wayback and wouldn't need Wikipedia to pursue their hobby anyway). But I can certainly see many reasons why the average common readers would want to check a 2002 version of the website of Acclaim Entertainment or any company that no longer exists as a source of information. While I personally see absolutely nothing wrong with the wildcard, Mathglot offers an alternative with the {{webarchive}} template to preserve a trace of the website of a defunct company. I would use it on the last working version of the company's website (probably late 2004 in Acclaim's case) if the wildcard is really that problematic.
At the end of the day, Wikipedia is an encyclopedia and it's perfectly normal for an encyclopedia to provide information about the website of a company (even a defunct one) regardless whether it's through the wildcard or the webarchive template.70.24.124.252 (talk) 09:54, 30 September 2018 (UTC)
Module:Official website should probably support archived items like Module:Citation/CS1. --Izno (talk) 14:12, 30 September 2018 (UTC)
As for star links rather than specific links, I don't really support that approach. Pick the most-representative (first? last? etc.) for the archive page. --Izno (talk) 14:13, 30 September 2018 (UTC)

In light of proposed law changes in the UK [1], which extend various anti-terror powers, it is suggested that WP:ELNEVER and WP:WLNO should be extended to include additional clauses as follows:

In WP:ELNEVER:

"3. Links to material or content which would place Wikipedia readers at unacceptable legal risk, due to such material being considered to be criminal or unlawful in certain jurisdictions. Examples would be extremist or obscene material, or links to "secret" material which has not been formally declassified."

In WP:WLNO amend clause 2 to : "2. Sites containing malware, malicious scripts, trojan exploits,Suspected malware sites can be reported by following the instructions at Wikipedia:Spam blacklist."

And insert new clause ( renumbering the list appropriately): "Sites that contain extremist, obscene or other material that is unlawful or illegal to access in the United States and/or other jurisdictions. Such links should be reported to ???? for removal"

ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 11:30, 13 October 2018 (UTC)

So, which jurisdictions are we going to care about and which are we not? How do we justify such bias? – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 12:49, 13 October 2018 (UTC)
Depends on where the servers are , so generally US, UK and EU I think. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 12:53, 13 October 2018 (UTC)
What do the servers have to do with any of this? I thought this was about what's illegal for the readers, not us. But as far as we are concerned, we obviously shouldn't burden ourselves with responsibilities that are not ours. Is it even illegal (where our servers are) to link to illegal content (besides copyvio)? I don't know. Our TOU only mentions one specific case: "Posting or trafficking in obscene material that is unlawful under applicable law". – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 13:29, 13 October 2018 (UTC)
On what basis will we decide what an "unacceptable legal risk" would be? Given that we (for the most part) aren't lawyers, how are we to determine which links are or aren't unlawful (except in the cases where a reliable source has declared one to be so)? Nikkimaria (talk) 12:53, 13 October 2018 (UTC)
Agreed. And this is confusing. The heading reads "sites" while the prose you supplied is "content". If the page being linked to is clean, but there is "illegal content" on other pages, would that acceptable?
This is also problematic as sites are now dynamic. When we check an EL on the day it's added, might be perfectly fine, but if the site is updated, whether intentionally or by a malicious agent (read: hacker), to have a sidebar that inserts "illegal material", we are still liable.
In short, we should not have this discussion in isolation here, it should involve a larger community, and likely legal counsel. Walter Görlitz (talk) 18:09, 13 October 2018 (UTC)
The proposal as written is impossible. Banning links to content that is "criminal or unlawful in certain jurisdictions" means banning links to most detailed maps of mainland China (according to China) and maps showing Kashmir as being disputed rather than part of India (according to India). WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:53, 17 October 2018 (UTC)
Amended wording :-

"3. Links to material or content which would place Wikipedia readers at unacceptable legal risk (based on applicable standards or US law). Examples would be extremist or obscene material, or links to "secret" material which has not been formally declassified."

In WP:WLNO insert clause 2 to : "2. Sites containing malware, malicious scripts, trojan exploits, circumvention mechanisms, or which exist solely to promote the same. Suspected malware sites can be reported by following the instructions at Wikipedia:Spam blacklist." ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 17:15, 25 October 2018 (UTC)

  • WP:ELNEVER and WP:COPYLINK are about editor behavior, not about readers. Editors are responsible not to post content that violates copyright - not in articles, and not via links, so that the project (and thus the WMF) doesn't violate copyright. The appropriate question to ask about the new law in the UK, is whether hosting content (or by extension links to content) covered by the law, puts the project (and thus the WMF) at risk of violating the law. I reckon that if it does, we will be hearing from the WMF. Jytdog (talk) 17:39, 25 October 2018 (UTC)
This wasn't about copyright actually, but about content which was illegal for other reasons. I'd still like to see the clause about not linking malware considered. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 17:48, 25 October 2018 (UTC)
If we want to include that, we need a policy (and likely a legal one) explicitly forbidding it. It is not up to a guideline to forbid material by itself. --Dirk Beetstra T C 18:05, 25 October 2018 (UTC)
The proposed "clause about not linking malware" seems to change "Sites containing...content that is illegal to access in the United States" into "Sites containing...circumvention mechanisms, or which exist solely to promote the same".
These don't look remotely similar. I'm also concerned that the scope covered here might not be obvious. Regional lockout#Circumvention contains a circumvention mechanism, but nobody wants to stop linking to Wikipedia. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:01, 15 November 2018 (UTC)

Can I take backlink for my bloggr Faizy Rahmani (talk) 18:41, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

To what end? As a reference, no. To link on your own user page, we can't stop it. Walter Görlitz (talk) 18:48, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

WP:EL#cite_note-7

This note might need to be tweaked a little because as currently worded it seems to be suggesting that a WP:ECITE be used even though embedding citations is a style which has been deprecated. It might be better to convert the syntax to a WP:INCITE instead. -- Marchjuly (talk) 07:10, 30 November 2018 (UTC)

The note looks like it's shooting for "make it better", not "make it best" (which is clearly a full on CS1 citation or similar). I don't think I'd object to adding another bullet to the item; something like "no", "better", "best" (where best is <ref>URL</ref>) in this particular case. --Izno (talk) 16:01, 30 November 2018 (UTC)
That's an interesting suggestion. An embedded citation (if that's the purpose of the link) is certainly better than embedding the link, but it's not as good as an inline citation; so, it will still technically need to be converted from "better" to "best". If that's the case, then maybe "embedded citation" and "inline citation" could be added in parenthesis with links to their relevant pages for further reference. -- Marchjuly (talk) 22:14, 30 November 2018 (UTC)
Cite.php doesn't support nested refs, and we don't want to have to mess with a workaround. Also, one of the important point isn't actually the formatting: it's the differences in the URLs.
Has this example actually led to any disputes? WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:54, 24 December 2018 (UTC)

Discussion at WT:NFCC#COPYLINK and sources for non-free content

 You are invited to join the discussion at WT:NFCC#COPYLINK and sources for non-free content. -- Marchjuly (talk) 05:03, 25 January 2019 (UTC)

I came to this page because I've been editing some articles about colleges and small towns, and I was wondering whether it's appropriate to include external links to the newspapers of record for those colleges/towns. I don't see any guidance on that (other than that people shouldn't link to media outlets that have paywalls), but I did find this discussion from 2011 about the matter. The discussion (at least as far as I can tell) hasn't been continued or resolved, nor was any consensus reached, so I wanted to bring it up again to try to reach a standardized policy if possible. - Sdkb (talk) 21:45, 23 December 2018 (UTC)

There were some good points in the previous discussion made on both sides which I won't repeat since they're worth reading directly. Personally, I was left leaning slightly in favor of including the links, mostly since I think including official sites but not newspapers would have the effect of introducing bias in the ELs toward the entity's self-presentation, which is normally positive (e.g. a college's website typically won't mention that it's current going through a major scandal, but the student newspaper probably will). - Sdkb (talk) 21:45, 23 December 2018 (UTC)
Pinging previously involved editors: @Herostratus: @Barek: @Beetstra: @WhatamIdoing: @C.Fred: @Mabdul: Feel free to weigh in on any updates. - Sdkb (talk) 21:50, 23 December 2018 (UTC)
I don't think that we can usually justify links to the college newspapers, because those ought to be available through the WP:ELOFFICIAL main website. However, if it's not, but the newspaper is mentioned in the article, then I'd usually accept a separate link.
For small towns, especially small rural towns (not suburbs or a legally separate town that is surrounded by another city), I think that links to a truly local newspaper, if one exists, is generally appropriate, and that it is always appropriate to describe local newspapers in the article.
As a side note, if you run across information that you think is more appropriate for a travel guide than encyclopedia, then please consider adding that to a Wikivoyage article. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:05, 24 December 2018 (UTC)
I don't think they're appropriate to include in either case. If they're truly outlets of merit, they'll be included in the articles, backed with independent, reliable sources. --Ronz (talk) 03:37, 24 December 2018 (UTC)
The newspapers will be mentioned in the articles, but that's not the same for an interested reader as a link directly to them.
It might be more interesting to put up a specific link from the newspaper, such as a direct link to the newspaper issue on the town's centennial anniversary (if one can be found online). WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:49, 24 December 2018 (UTC)
Yes, of course we should link to local papers IMO. I mean first principles: what are we trying to do here? Serve the readers (who have a variety of different needs). How? By answering their question, "What is the deal with this entity." That is the basic question that all articles are here to answer.
So does including a link to the local paper, so that those readers who want to can see the latest stuff happening? Yes, it does. Some readers only want to know the population, or the history, or the weather. Those people won't want to access the local paper. Note, though, that including a link to the local paper doesn't degrade those readers' experience. For other readers, knowing that the three town officials have been arrested for corruption, or that a proposed new highway bypass is a currently contentious issue, or that the town was recently named one of "Germany's 100 most pleasant towns" (or, conversely, of "Britain's 100 most decrepit localities"), or that the town council is concerned about the murder rate, etc. ...these things would help answer the question "what is the deal with this entity" for some readers I would think. Right?
We can't include this stuff in the article, because the article is an overview, and anyway of course we can't keep rotating recent events in and out of the article even it it was appropriate material. Well, external links to the rescue. This is precisely what external links are for.
I had a struggle a few years ago with a person who was very adamant that links to local papers not be in inhabited-place articles, and was methodically eliminating them. He was pretty determined, so I guess he won. If he's still around (I f'get his name), good luck with that.
I think one of his main arguments was that these are commercial sites with ads, and we should never link to sites with ads. I suppose that's not completely unreasonable, but I sure don't agree -- you have to be flexible about these things IMO. (It is true that there's always a lowkey phenomena of civilians adding links to their inappropriate commercial sites, but no need to throw out the baby with the bathwater.)
Here're some other arguments and my quick response: 1) We should only link to official sites of, or approved by, the town government. [Why? We're not here to promote the town, and official sites are not going to mention the high crime rate etc.] 2) Some local papers are rags. [So are some books. Differentiating between good and bad ones is why we have brains.] 3) Local news will contain negative info sometimes. A town is composed of living people, and articles in local papers will harm some of them sometimes. [Fair point; don't think I agree; too complicated to discuss quickly.] Herostratus (talk) 01:17, 25 December 2018 (UTC)

No, we should not link to the newspaper. It is an utterly indirect link. Itis not the subject of the page, and including them is just linkfarming. The content is also likely changing by the day, and mostnews does not lead to more information. Keep that type of links excluded, just like business directories, local musea, etc. --Dirk Beetstra T C 14:47, 25 December 2018 (UTC)

Generally no. The newspaper of record concept excludes both town newspapers and student newspapers. It means things like The New York Times and The Times of London, not the Clovis News Journal or Campus Times (U. of Rochester). It arguably is appropriate to link to the college/university newspaper in the "External links" section of the article on the college/university, as a sub-bullet under the link to institution's main website, if that publication doesn't have its own article or a section in the university article, since it's pertinent to the topic and one of the institution's publications and major student-led activities but we're not covering it yet. It's "further" material of likely interest to the reader of our article, unless and until such time as we have full coverage of the student press in the institutional article or a separate article on that press. However, that's not because it's a "newspaper of record", but because it's part and parcel of the topic of the article. Its not appropriate to link to the city/town newspaper of the city/town at which the college/university is located, because there is no connection between these topics but geographic coincidence. And there isn't a rationale to link to a city/town newspaper at a city/town article, because there is no official connection between them; newspapers are independent businesses (or, these days, pseudo-businesses that are just wholly owned intellectual property of major media conglomerates that have nothing to do with the town/city in particular). Except in towns and very small cities (and only some of them), there are usually multiple competing papers in various formats in any given city. WP:NOT#INDEX applies: it's not WP's job to list out every business of a particular kind in an article on a populated place. Nor (per WP:NPOV) do we favor a particular one, even if it's presently the only one or we think it might be.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:54, 27 December 2018 (UTC)
You are incorrect about the "newspaper of record" thing. That's an official, legally mandated designation in the US, and even a mostly rural area can have a newspaper of record. The City of Ottumwa, Iowa, population 25,000, has designated the Ottumwa Courier, circulation 6,000, as the newspaper of record. Every incorporated city and each of the 99 counties in that state is required to designate a paper as being the newspaper of record, and I doubt that we have articles on all of them. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:35, 30 December 2018 (UTC)
Your interpretation doesn't agree with either definition in our own article on the subject, which is what the proposer of this idea linked to. You appear to be confusing "newspaper of record" with "newspaper of public record" (a concept that varies across jurisdictions, but basically a newspaper that courts in the state or municipality will accept as good enough as publication venues for notices of name changes, bankruptcy filings, and other mandatory public notices – and there is often more than one per jurisdiction). Newspapers of public record are also covered at that article (though it could have a better lead, and perhaps you'd like to revise the article). Maybe some states actually do use the phrase "newspaper or record" for this, but I'm not turning up any evidence of that. Regardless, it has no import for this discussion; even if the phrase "newspaper of record" had and only had that particular meaning, it still wouldn't be a reason to force external links to such businesses into our place articles. Perhaps an argument could be made for having it as an infobox parameter, but I would almost bet money than an RfC to include it would not meet with success. It just has too little reader utility (i.e., WP:NOT#INDISCRIMINATE). If you need to publish a legal notice, the court or your own attorney will tell you what newspaper(s) you can do this in; it's not something anyone would or should be relying on Wikipedia for.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  16:40, 30 December 2018 (UTC)
  • Being a "newspaper of public record" constitutes the "official connection between" "a city/town newspaper" and its "city/town", despite your assertion above that no connection exists. Also, in the US, it's an excellent measure of utility, because most state laws require that the highest circulation newspaper be chosen.
  • This is not a question of forcing links into any article. This is a question of merely tolerating them when editors choose to add them to particular articles. Think of this as a question of whether a single spam warrior should be permitted to remove all links to all local newspapers en masse because they aren't official links for the town (which they aren't) and he doesn't personally think that readers will care. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:38, 28 January 2019 (UTC)
As a longtime student newspaper editor I might dispute the meaning of "newspaper of record", but I'd still oppose routinely adding newspaper external links to geography articles. Major newspapers should be discussed in the article; if sufficient sources exist to establish them as a newspaper of record they are probably notable, and so an external link would be well-placed in the article about that paper. Kim Post (talk) 13:07, 30 December 2018 (UTC)
To clear things up, I was referring to "newspaper of record" in a broad sense, so as to mean roughly "the most reliable recorder of happenings within a given domain, assuming that at least one reliable recorder exists". So the main student newspaper is the paper of record for a school, etc. The precise definition would probably be useful to clear up at some point for the newspaper of record article, but it's not really all that germane here — let's figure out what the consensus is on whether to make external links for clear-cut cases (e.g. your archetypal legacy small town paper) before diving into any questions about which newspapers ought to make the cut. - Sdkb (talk) 00:09, 31 December 2018 (UTC)
Yeah OK right. I mean, if your position is is "Well, people who access the article on East Possum, Tennessee might want to know various things about that place, but one thing they surely won't want to know is current news", I don't guess we have a lot to say to each other. If people are able to say "Well, there is an updated source of current news for this town. We don't have to compile it; somebody already is. And an editor put a link to it in the article. And it's a good source; we checked. And of course no reader is required to click that link: it's optional. But we should remove this link and prevent any reader from easily accessing this information, and this will enhance the reader's experience because ________________", that'd be good I'd be interested in seeing what goes in the blank, and if it's cogent we can talk. But I haven't seen anything yet.
That's for editors who are opposed to most any news paper/site being included. If you're willing to talk cases, that's different, and welcome aboard the happy train. Herostratus (talk) 00:46, 31 December 2018 (UTC)
I think it's a big mistake to talk about newspaper websites as though they are the same as websites for any other business. The function of most business websites is to advertise their product, which doesn't have much of anything to do with encyclopedic knowledge and is why we don't link to them. The purpose of a reputable newspaper website, by contrast, is to communicate information of importance to the public, which is very closely aligned with what we're doing here on Wikipedia, which leads me to think that there's a much stronger case for including them. - Sdkb (talk) 01:23, 31 December 2018 (UTC)
OK, maybe for "legacy" papers... the local paper that's been printed since 1923 and now has a site. Up here, those kinds of papers exist mostly in the past, so that's not what what we're mostly talking about.
Up here we entities like "Wickedlocal.com" and "Patch.com". They are big companies and they run a site for each town. Taking Walpole, Massachusetts at random, we have local news sites from Wickedlocal and Patch.
These sites 1) do exist purely for profit, and 2) suck. We should include them anyway though!
So about Patch: I hate them. They publish anonymous letters (the old "legacy" papers required you to provide your identity and they'd print it, probably because that it they way local people who are interested in the wellbeing of the town think public discussion should be handled, as opposed to soulless capitalists in an office in New York City interested only in eyes and clicks apparently think). This ruined my life, to a degree. They're awful people who suborn toxic gossip and anonymous libel. So what? Welcome to the age of the internet. Rupert Murdoch is awful, but we use the Wall Street Journal and The Times as sources.
So... Patch etc are kind of a new thing, the commoditization of local news, the replacement of the old cluttered-but-homely downtown news office with the gruff-but-lovable and dedicated/incorruptible editor (granddaughter of the founder) who everybody knows and greets when she eats lunch at Sal's Cafe (Sal knows just how she likes her grilled cheese) with a large national corporation with one-size-fits-all format, driven entirely by profit, who know nothing and care less about the town, and pay starvation wages to their local workers if they can.
This sucks. So what? None of that is our concern. We are writing an encyclopedia, not a Hallmark movie.
My only main question about the Patch etc. is "Is the information they publish true?". This depends first (but not only) on their fact-checking operation. I have secondary (but still important) questions, such as "do they have an agenda?" "Is there uneven coverage -- some things reported, equally important things ignored -- either because of an agenda or just incompetence?" "Are their news articles slanted?" "Is their material generally substandard or useless -- entirely fluff, for instance?"
You have to keep in mind that the business model for these operations does not include making stuff up. If they have an article "Mayor Proposes New Sewage Treatment Plant" then she probably did. If they just make up stuff like this out of thin air, people will stop reading the site, corporate will notice, and the local editor will be replaced with someone who doesn't make stuff up. If their article is overtly slanted -- "Mayor Foolishly Proposes Unnecessary New Sewage Treatment Plant" -- this also won't fit their business model, since this will alienate half the town. Beyond that, they are subject to more subtle slanting or cherry picking... but so is the New York Times (examples on request). There's a limit to how perfect we can expect our sources to be.
And we are not using these as sources! We are not saying "Here is a fact, and we stand by it, and here's our source, which you may rely on" as we do with article sources. We are saying "Here's a place where you can get supplemental information if you want. You are leaving the Wikipedia here, so you're on your own to a degree in deciding how to process this information".
So anyway... getting back to Walpole, let's see... front page is mostly ads (so what) and they are filling up the rest with state news, static links, the local weather, and other stuff... obviously they are creating a front page with as little human labor input required as possible. (FWIW the main ads are real estate... what is being advertised in a locality is data, and knowing what houses look like and sell for in Walpole is not necessarily something that 0% of the article's readers would find to be useful supplementary information in getting a broader picture of the entity "Walpole" IMO.)
So but there's a link "Local News" with sublinks, let's click "Schools"... first article is "Walpole HS Didn't Protect Teen From Vicious Bullying: Lawsuit" The article has details. It's old, though, it is from August of 2018, and that's the latest school news. Not a problem IMO.
OK, so is this something that 0% of readers would find to be useful supplementary information in getting a broader picture of the entity "Walpole", specifically the sub-entity "Walpole High School"? Anybody can sue anybody, some lawsuits have no merit, and maybe the alleged events didn't occur. But the article doesn't say that they did, it just describes the actual event of the suit being filed (and some of its contents). And besides, surely there are many things going on at Walpole High School besides lawsuits. Cheer tryouts! Honor students! Teachers of the year! And they paper is ignoring those.
But... as an exercise, let's assume that our readers are not morons and do not need to be protected from information because they won't be able to process it appropriately, or think that "event x has occurred" implies that no other events have occurred.
And so on. There are other similar type articles... a local business is leaving town... The Mariners drafted a high school ballplayer from Walpole... "Walpole Planning Board Candidate Accused Of Creating Anti-Muslim Facebook Post"... John Kingston III visited and blathered political pablum... and these are the better articles. Really to be honest, this site sucks. I think a lot of this is that not much happens in Walpole though; you can't blame the paper for that. There's a lot of fluff, it's poorly laid out, there're a lot of ads and clickbait links, and they only do like a couple dozen major articles a year it looks like... it's obviously a cheapo operation. But so what? We are not supposed to be snobs here, but provided supplemental information. The news information here is presented fairly, and it by all evidence its true. There's not a lot of it (its Walpole) but it's appropriate supplemental information
Wickedlocal (which seems to have absorbed the old Walpole Times), similar. Better layout and their articles are all recent. Headline is "Three-peat at Rivard for Walpole girls hoop", but then there's news at the news link... "Walpole celebrates new senior center"... "Next steps in Walpole middle school study"... "Walpole schools outline security improvements"... "Walpole previews [athletic] fields plan". I dunno, you tell me. Maybe instead of these links we should just have a notice "NOTHING IMPORTANT EVER HAPPENS HERE. IT'S WALPOLE.".
So I mean I'm not inclined to go around adding these links. At the same time, I'm not inclined to go around destroying them if someone has added them. I'm not of the mind "Well we want our readers to know where this place is located, what the climate is, who the founder was, and so forth, but whether they are currently considering building a new high school -- for the love of God, this our readers must never know. Herostratus (talk) 02:34, 31 December 2018 (UTC)

This is not about 'NOTHING IMPORTANT EVER HAPPENS HERE', this is about what we are writing here: an encyclopedia. We are not a replacement for Google. What does our reader want, you say. Maybe they are looking to start a business here, so lets include the business directory. Maybe they want to visit, so lets include the tourism board. Maybe they are interested in bridges, so lets include a link to their bridges. Yes, I understand, some readers may want to find some local news, see what happens there - but it is not in Wikipedia's scope to provide that information - see WP:NOT.

So I still feel that it is inappropriate. An article about a town is telling about the town, and has (if existing) an external link to the official website of the town. Links like their newspaper(s), the tourist board/office/website, their heritage group, their cultural centre, their chamber of commerce, their local weather, their church(es), .... If anything there is relevant to mention (that they have a local newspaper, that they have churches), it should be in the prose, but all those external links do not belong in the articles. And I see no reason to single out newspapers in that case. Yes, they ALL contain information that is pertaining to the subject and that is interesting for readers, but it is not wikipedia's task to include that linkfarm of links. That information should be removed, per WP:ELNO #13: "Sites that are only indirectly related to the article's subject: the link should be directly related to the subject of the article. A general site that has information about a variety of subjects should usually not be linked from an article on a more specific subject. Similarly, a website on a specific subject should usually not be linked from an article about a general subject. If a section of a general website is devoted to the subject of the article, and meets the other criteria for linking, then that part of the site could be deep linked." ALL those links should go into a directory service, and that one link (i.e. the directory service) would be something that we could consider. Not every individual link to churches, high buildings, shopping centra, newspapers, museums and coffee shops. --Dirk Beetstra T C 08:51, 7 January 2019 (UTC)

I agree with User:Herostratus about the relatively low journalistic value of sites like Patch.com. However, we differ in that I think those should not normally be included, and it appears that they normally aren't. I reviewed 500 links to Patch.com and found just one that was listed in the ==External links== section of a city. I found several links to local newspapers. There were more links to local tourism boards and school districts than to any form of media.
A place like Walpole, whose local newspaper has closed, simply should not have a link to any newspaper or newspaper-substitute. But for a city that does have a local newspaper, I think it's reasonable. A quick glance at https://www.ottumwacourier.com/ should tell you that the locals care about high school sports, agriculture, and the weather. I don't think that we should exclude such links (if editors of that article think they're worth including, which I expect to happen in only a fraction of articles). We should not stretch to find such links for every article, but we should not ban them or even encourage their removal. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:14, 28 January 2019 (UTC)

Restrict insecure URLs

The guideline states that "Sites containing malware, malicious scripts, trojan exploits, or content that is illegal to access in the United States" and "Suspected malware sites" are links to be avoided. Sites not using secured HTTPS are increasingly considered unsafe by modern web browsers, and it is now trivial to perform the required setup to provide HTTPS service. I personally think that given this environment, unsecured HTTP is just as dangerous to users as sites that contain malware content, and should constitute a link to avoid. ViperSnake151  Talk  16:01, 9 January 2019 (UTC)

"Sites not using secured HTTPS are increasingly considered unsafe by modern web browsers". I have seen no proof of that. I can go to a site served only on port 80 and my browsers (Firefox and Chrome) do not complain. You'll have to support this claim before you get any traction with me. Walter Görlitz (talk) 16:05, 9 January 2019 (UTC)
It's minor HMI kind of things, like the increasing presence of the "red unlocked" symbol in Firefox. --Izno (talk) 16:25, 9 January 2019 (UTC)
I would not put it anywhere near WP:ELNO or WP:ELNEVER. It might reasonably be a consideration in WP:ELMAYBE or even elsewhere on the page. --Izno (talk) 16:25, 9 January 2019 (UTC)
Past discussions resolved that when both http and https sites are available, we should link to the https one, and otherwise that we should ignore this as a factor. For clarity, which I hope is actually unnecessary, please note that "we should link to the https one" means "You are welcome to WP:VOLUNTEER to upgrade links from http to https yourself", but not anything even remotely close to "You are authorized to remove any or all links that aren't using https, and demand that anyone restoring the links do the work of finding an https URL themselves". WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:22, 28 January 2019 (UTC)

EL16 and live video streams

Does WP:EL#EL16 cover video live streams, which are technically temporary Internet content? I think we have to differentiate between different types of livestreams. Some live webcams are discussed here in 2014. There is a difference between "low-risk" cameras like those pointing to the sky or things like the Trojan Room coffee pot, and cameras in public places which are likely to be photobombed. I don't see any discussions with regards to sport live streaming websites, so that also belongs here. In recent years, YouTube and Twitch have become popular live streaming locations. These can also be distinguished between those streams that last for a couple of hours e.g. gaming championships, and those that last for months e.g. the live subscriber counter at PewDiePie vs T-Series. This is similar to live digital audio, but that's not the topic of this discussion, as I can't imagine a sound-only live podcast as an external link even if it lasts for more than a day. On the other hand, an external link to live radio should be allowed for the article about the radio. All of this seems too complicated to be explained by the concise EL16. I don't have any specific expansion proposal in mind, and the 2014 discussion didn't gain any consensus for changing EL, but the current guideline simply does not reflect reality. wumbolo ^^^ 10:54, 11 January 2019 (UTC)

Hmm. I don't know whether a live-stream would always be considered temporary content. A live-streamed camera above a highway that's prone to traffic jams could function for a decade, just with different content over time. Live-streamed sports events are presumably a problem because you have to show up at exactly the right time to get any content at all. What I think would be better in such cases is to link to a permanent page that links to the live-streamed content (and, ideally, to an archived recording, in case you missed it). To use an analogy, we normally link to the radio station's main page, rather than linking directly to the audio stream. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:34, 28 January 2019 (UTC)

Refspam in edit summaries

Help talk:Edit summary#External links in edit summaries claims that there is a problem with WP:REFSPAM in edit summaries, and proposes to discourage the use of URLs in edit summaries. Please comment there. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:36, 28 January 2019 (UTC)

Guideline question

Do tables count as "the body of an article" for purposes of this content guideline? Many longstanding tables such as the one in List of S&P 500 companies or those in 2018 FIFA World Cup have External links (often driven by widely transcluded templates), and recently an editor has, in good faith, removed many of these, citing this EL guideline. The external links clearly "contain neutral and accurate material that is relevant to an encyclopedic understanding of the subject and cannot be integrated into the Wikipedia article due to . . . amount of detail (such as professional athlete statistics, movie or television credits, interview transcripts, or online textbooks), or other reasons.", as the guideline requires, I don't see the issue with including them, and I think they are much better located in the table as opposed to putting them in an External links section at the bottom. Thoughts? UnitedStatesian (talk) 20:10, 30 January 2019 (UTC)

SEC filings and match reports are essentially references and as such may link externally. It's not about being in tables. Walter Görlitz (talk) 20:20, 30 January 2019 (UTC)
If they are "essentially references" (i.e. embedded citations), then they should be formatted as inline citations per WP:CS#Avoid embedded links. The adding of the links this way also seems problematic WP:ELLIST and WP:EL#cite_note-7. -- Marchjuly (talk) 01:18, 31 January 2019 (UTC)
That should be raised at the various projects that support this then. Walter Görlitz (talk) 02:00, 31 January 2019 (UTC)
WP:EL is a community wide guideline not really subject to a local consensus per WP:CONLEVEL; so, it doesn't really require individual WikiProject recognition to be enforced. Is there some policy/guideline reason why these link shouldn't be converted to citations if they are really references? -- Marchjuly (talk) 03:08, 31 January 2019 (UTC)
I understand that this should apply to the whole community, but it clear does not. I have no problems with the way it works. You should have no problems removing the in-line ELs from the articles where they have been manually placed, but where they are incorporated into templates, you're going to have a fight. That's not a fight I want to participate in. If you would like to lead the charge, be my guest. Dialogue may be more persuasive than telling other groups that they're wrong and trying to force this on another group. I've seen more than one discussion that has determined that local consensus outweighs a specific consensus. Walter Görlitz (talk) 04:14, 31 January 2019 (UTC)
I think the guideline does apply to the whole community; it's just that some are either unaware of it, or have decided to ignore it for whatever reason (perhaps IAR or simply for personal preference). It seems that many of the templates using this style of citation were created before embedded citations were deprecated and the older templates were never "fixed" so to speak; so, when a person creates a new version of the template, they basically tweak the older existing one using the embedded links. I agree that it's probably best to discuss such a change since it's likely to affect lots of current and future articles, but I'm not sure it's something which is going to be considered a high priority. -- Marchjuly (talk) 05:46, 31 January 2019 (UTC)
We are not a directory. The links in those tables functions precisely as a directory. --Izno (talk) 20:57, 30 January 2019 (UTC)
The main table in List of S&P 500 companies looks like a directory to me as well.
Where are they in 2018 FIFA World Cup?
What templates? --Ronz (talk) 04:56, 31 January 2019 (UTC)
To answer your second question, scroll down in 2018 FIFA World Cup#Group stage and you will see the individual matches played. In this tournament, they are incorporated in templates that are shared across several articles. There are sub-templates such as {{Football box}}, {{Football box collapsible}} and others that are used to report results such as this. Walter Görlitz (talk) 05:31, 31 January 2019 (UTC)
Starting at 2018_FIFA_World_Cup#Group_A. Thanks! --Ronz (talk) 16:50, 31 January 2019 (UTC)
This is the disputed edit at the S&P 500 list. Stesmo removed {{NyseSymbol}} from the stock ticker symbols and the entire column of SEC filing links.
I find that I can't get too worked up about these particular links. The article's about something affected by stock prices, so why not make it possible look up those stock prices? (And if there's no link, then why bother including the stock ticker code at all?) The SEC filings are exactly the kind of thing that "proper" citations aren't really needed for. They're all the same, they're all very extremely standard, and they're all labeled (in the column heading). If someday the links stop working, then having them encased in {{cite web}} is not going to help at all. I agree with UnitedStatesian that these links are more conveniently located in the table than in an ==External links== section, and I add to this that they're more conveniently located in the table than in a ==References== section. If you actually need to look up one company's information, then having to scroll to the end of the page, just so someone can say that this is a citation, is Not Helpful. We don't have a rule against this formatting approach, and if we did, then this would be a good reason to WP:IAR it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:18, 31 January 2019 (UTC)
There are rules/guidelines against this type of formatting as pointed out above. The links are still going to be located in the same location in the table if you convert them to citations; however, you will be able to add more information about the source, etc. which will show up in the "References section"; moreover, it's not going to really make things less convenient since hovering over the WP:FN#Overview should show the link, so there's no need real need to scroll down to the bottom of the page. -- Marchjuly (talk) 06:38, 31 January 2019 (UTC)
...assuming that the only kind of WP:Inline citation uses Cite.php.
...assuming you have Javascript enabled.
...assuming you don't have Reference Tooltips disabled (which is one of the few features that logged-out users can turn off).
...assuming you're on the desktop site, because the mobile site doesn't support hovering.
...assuming you're not using a mobile device, tablet, or other touchscreen device, so that you have a pointer to hover with.
That's rather a lot of assumptions, and between them, it knocks out more than half of our readers. So, yes, it will work for you and for me, but we're not really the target audience.
As for "rules/guidelines", this type of formatting is discouraged for most uses, but it's not actually prohibited – as was also pointed out above. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:21, 1 February 2019 (UTC)
(edit conflict) For some of these tables, it is more in the formatting of the table. The links there arecan be useful, sure, and they are more links to resources than references. But for me, having the abbreviation as the first column is having things backward. It is the company which should be the first column, thát is the encyclopedic information - it is the company that is listed. Then the abbreviation is likely of interest there, maybe as a second column (note, the external link does not lead me to ANY information, not even confirming that they are, in fact, listed - is that a random quirk, is that something that is true if you are outside of the US, what is the link to the abbreviation actually adding to the list over just mentioning the abbreviation). For the 'list of', then the date of listing is reasonably important and IMHO should be third. Then I don't see what the location of the company's headquarters and their date of founding are of interest in this list (it is on the linked company's wikipage). Then I do not see the relevance of the two GICS sector columns, and the CIK (but maybe someone can explain me why they are of interest in this table), and and wonder if the SEC filings (which I understand are of interest to someone who wants to know about the company but that is why they have a wikipage) are also needed in this list (note, neither the SEC filings nor the GICS are on 3M's oor Abbott Laboratories's wikipage ..). As I see it, where there headquarters is, or that they file SEC data is not the reason why they are on this list.
And what I miss is something like a 'relevant size' on the S&P ranking (is that 'annual revenue over a recent year' which is showing that reasonably). --Dirk Beetstra T C 07:52, 31 January 2019 (UTC)
I think that's a great point, Dirk, and it was a detail that had jarred me, too. UnitedStatesian has fixed it. But I think I should point out that he went to a huge amount of work to move those columns manually, and rearranging columns is like a three-click operation in the visual editor. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:30, 1 February 2019 (UTC)
Wanted to make sure that at the same time I could check pipe links, the SEC links, and alphabetization. But thanks for the public Wikishaming. UnitedStatesian (talk) 10:57, 1 February 2019 (UTC)
I'm sorry; I did not mean to embarrass you. I meant to point out that you had implemented this suggestion already, despite it requiring quite some time and effort, and to make sure that you knew that an alternative existed for the one aspect of that change, if you wanted a faster tool for that particular type of edit in the future. I'm certain that everyone here agrees that making extensive and tedious edits is a praiseworthy behavior. WhatamIdoing (talk) 07:13, 2 February 2019 (UTC)

I think though that we have to go back to the reasoning behind this WP:EL guideline in the first place: how does this guideline contribute to our building a better encyclopedia? Unfortunately the guideline is completely silent on that, as far as I can read. I see two reasons this guideline is here: 1, to guard against spam: and 2, to ensure the article prose is readable, since external links that fall in the article prose definitely are a distraction to the reader. Am I missing any other reasons? Neither of those reasons apply to the tabular data (or to infobox external links, for that matter). No one is arguing that these links are spam, and readability considerations do not apply to tabular data. These links have value to Wikipedia users, and I think they should remain in the tables, just like they should remain in infoboxes. UnitedStatesian (talk) 12:38, 31 January 2019 (UTC)

The concerns are of WP:NOT problems.
We want editors to make this encyclopedia better, rather than hyperlinking to outside resources. --Ronz (talk) 16:50, 31 January 2019 (UTC)
That's not what the guideline says: WP:ELYES recognizes that there are links that make the encyclopedia better. UnitedStatesian (talk) 20:16, 31 January 2019 (UTC)
WP:NOT is policy. --Ronz (talk) 20:26, 31 January 2019 (UTC)
I know, that, and I think you are misreading WP:NOTDIR. But feel free to nominate the list for deletion if you feel it violates policy. UnitedStatesian (talk) 10:59, 1 February 2019 (UTC)

There appears to be an ongoing dispute/cross-article edit war between User:AldezD, User:Risto hot sir and User:Knowledgekid87 regarding the addition of sister project links to articles. So I figured I'd open a discussion here for broader input.

Personally, I happen to think that, if we are going to include external links at all, then sister project links are the ones we ought to be including. I've personally added sister links to easily several thousand pages, and I'd also note for context that sister project links are transcluded at least several hundred thousands times on the English Wikipedia (and probably more like a couple million).

Local policy is a touch inconsistent on the issue. Guidance at Wikipedia:Wikimedia sister projects actively encourages these, while this page groups them under WP:ELMAYBE, with not much else in the way of deciding when to include them and when not to. GMGtalk 13:55, 31 January 2019 (UTC)

The detail for Legends of the Hidden Temple on the page in the sister link at Wikiquote is nothing more than a repository of fancruft, featuring four spiels and verbatim exchanges between the host and a character. Dialogue did not remain consistent for each episode. Linking Wikiquote does not add anything to the article. This is not content that holds any level of value. AldezD (talk) 16:34, 31 January 2019 (UTC)
Then there are Married... with Children series, some are linked, some not. Where's the logic? Almost all films and TV-series at Wikiquote are linked.--Risto hot sir (talk) 19:44, 31 January 2019 (UTC)
Same for Married... with Children. It's dialogue and jokes from episodes broken out by season. It's useless content that does not improve the article based upon guidelines in WP:FILMPLOT, WP:TVPLOT and WP:EPISODE. AldezD (talk) 19:50, 31 January 2019 (UTC)

I am personally strongly opposed to any automatism as regards links to Wikiquote. I have just removed several links that were also recently added by Risto hot sir. Wikiquote is a highly problematic project, with contents that are not subject to any effective NPOV policy, no quality control remotely comparable to that on Wikipedia, and with a very strong tendency to contain either the sort of pop-culture trivia trash pointed out above, or cherrypicked POV coatracking material (on pages with politically contentious topics). It is unacceptable for people to demand routine and automatic inclusion of highly visible, privileged links to such junk pages, just because they happen to be hosted on a site run by Wikimedia. Links to Wikiquote need to be evaluated individually on the same strict quality criteria as any other external link: they need to be a unique, educationally valuable resource that contains "neutral and accurate material that is relevant to an encyclopedic understanding of the subject". Many Wikiquote links, maybe most of them, don't do that. Fut.Perf. ☼ 20:00, 31 January 2019 (UTC)

  • Given fairly rapid fire reversions, and the fairly unhelpful edit summaries, it seems doubtful to what extent you have evaluated these pages individually for their educational value. Given that the sister link template is transcluded some 30,000 times on the English Wikipedia, and we reached a strong consensus in 2017 to even integrate Wikiquote into our search function, it also seems doubtful to what extent your views on the project as a whole are shared by the community at large. GMGtalk 20:25, 31 January 2019 (UTC)
  • I certainly did more to evaluate the quality of those pages than Risto hot sir did, who explicitly claimed he was adding them mechanistically without any regard to their quality at all. Fut.Perf. ☼ 20:50, 31 January 2019 (UTC)

So to summarize....a rough consensus exists to include Wikiquote whenever possible as an external link? - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 20:40, 31 January 2019 (UTC)

No. Fut.Perf. ☼ 20:50, 31 January 2019 (UTC)
No, certainly not on disambiguation pages. External links are prohibited on disambiguation pages and most such Wikiquote pages are about specific uses of a term that are not helpful for disambiguation purposes. older ≠ wiser 21:24, 31 January 2019 (UTC)
Wiktionary links are sister links, and they are particularly common on disambiguation pages (and officially endorsed by WP:DAB). WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:34, 1 February 2019 (UTC)
@WhatamIdoing: "...and official endorsed by WP:DAB' .. can you specifically show me the place where it says something about including sister links. The only thing I find is about not being a list of sister links. --Dirk Beetstra T C 05:34, 6 February 2019 (UTC)
Look in the section called "External links": "Do not include external links....An exception is linking to Wiktionary...." WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:14, 6 February 2019 (UTC)
Look at it in context at WP:EL#Important points to remember: "With rare exceptions, external links should not be used in the body of an article." This statement is tagged with the note "Links to Wiktionary and Wikisource can sometimes be useful." (emphasis mine) It does not provide a WP guideline or policy for always including links to Wiktionary. AldezD (talk) 15:18, 6 February 2019 (UTC)
I never said that there was a rule to "always" include those links. I said that the WP:DAB guideline (not WP:EL) specifically endorsed the inclusion of Wiktionary (not Wikisource) links, where they are normally placed at the top of the list (not "in the body of an article").
If you were confused by my recommendation to look at the "section" (not separate page) called External links, then here's a direct link: WP:DAB#External links. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:25, 6 February 2019 (UTC)
Wiktionary does not nearly contain the level of garbage at Wikiquote, the overall reason for this discussion. It's not a comparable argument. Just because helpful info is available at Wiktionary on the topic does not mean Wikiquote should also be linked in all cases. AldezD (talk) 15:35, 6 February 2019 (UTC)
If you read the comment immediately above mine, you will find that it asserts, without limit or qualification, that "External links are prohibited on disambiguation pages". This claim is not true. I corrected this small mistake by explaining that one particular type of external link is officially endorsed by WP:DAB. The purpose of my comment was to correct that accidental misrepresentation of the official guideline (and actual practice). The reason that I make such corrections is to reduce the likelihood that this error would be repeated in the future by less experienced editors. (Inexperienced editors tend to believe any "rule" that they're told, because nobody can know all the "rules" around here.)
My comment about Wikitionary links on disambiguation non-article pages did not express an opinion on whether you should be using mass rollback to remove Wikiquote links from non-disambiguation articles, or about whether other editors should be adding Wikiquote links to non-disambiguation articles. If the difference between "The statement (i.e., the statement about external links allegedly being banned on disambiguation pages) is wrong, because some external links are explicitly permitted there" and "I have an opinion about Wikiquote links in articles" remains unclear to you, then feel free to start a separate discussion on my user talk page, so nobody else has to listen to the explanation again. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:51, 6 February 2019 (UTC)
Well I would certainly say that there is some level of consensus in practice, in that these are regularly added when they are available, and have been thousands of times by an unknown number of editors mostly without incident. That goes the same for all sister links, and not only Wikiquote.
I would also opine that we do not avoid linking internally to other articles simply because those article need additional work, or may have multiple cleanup tags. Quite the opposite, it is precisely better integrating them that can help to improve them. If individual editors have problems with individual pages on Wikiquote, then they are welcome to help fix the issues. Simply saying "I have a strong opinion about a problem I can't be bothered to do anything so we should ignore it" isn't terribly useful to anyone. These articles are still linked in the sidebar, and if anyone gets an idea to start delinking them in Wikidata you're liable to be blocked for vandalism. GMGtalk 21:27, 31 January 2019 (UTC)
I have no interest whatsoever to "fix" pages on Wikiquote. I happen to consider Wikiquote as a whole an utterly worthless project devoid of any educational value, even when it comes to its not-particularly-crappy pages, so personally, I'm not going to touch it with a ten-foot pole. But what I do care about is keeping Wikipedia articles free from political advocacy crap. So as long as the pages are crap, I'll fight to keep them out. And just because somebody had the ill-conceived idea of creating a crappy page full of political POV advocacy junk on some external project doesn't mean I have to either feel responsible for "fixing" it or acquiesce to seeing it advertised on Wikipedia. Let those people who wish to improve things on Wikiquote improve that page first, and then link to it from Wikipedia. Not the other way round. Fut.Perf. ☼ 21:44, 31 January 2019 (UTC)
You're always such a pleasure to have a discussion with. Never one to deal in absolutes or hyperbole. GMGtalk 21:59, 31 January 2019 (UTC)
Nothing in what I said was in any way hyperbolic at all. Fut.Perf. ☼ 22:06, 31 January 2019 (UTC)
Agree 100% with Fut.Perf.. The pages are nonsense garbage and should be kept out of here while they remain nonsense garbage. If someone at Wikiquote wants to fix it, have at it. But it's not the responsibility of editors here to fix pages. AldezD (talk) 23:07, 31 January 2019 (UTC)
I would ask you both to consider the fact that there are plenty of articles on Wikipedia that could be just as poorly evaluated. All Wikimedia projects contain their share of detritus due to the open nature of the project lending itself to both abuse and well-meaning but incompetent contributions. I would also ask you to consider the fact that over the past several years, I have personally incorporated into Wikiquote the whole of the 1919 edition of Bartlett's Familiar Quotations the 1922 edition of Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations, and the 1989 Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations (in the public domain as a publication of the Congressional Research Service), as well as most of the 1904 Dictionary of Legal Quotations, the 1895 Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers, and the 1904 Harbottle Dictionary of Quotations: French and Italian. In short, there actually is a tremendous quantity of material in Wikiquote that is historically vetted material of high quality. bd2412 T 03:08, 1 February 2019 (UTC)

Wikipedia has articles about philosophers, novelists, poets, politicians etc. The facts are important, but those can be taught to robots. What the important thinkers have said/written can be read at Wikiquote. Without these the Wp-sites are useless.--Risto hot sir (talk) 23:18, 31 January 2019 (UTC) - Wrote a couple years ago, that it's difficult to find the golden needles from a hayshack at Wikiquote, but who am I to decide what the folks want to read?Risto hot sir (talk) 00:00, 1 February 2019 (UTC)

Then stop using the bots and tag worthwhile content at Wikiquote to Wikipedia articles manually. AldezD (talk) 01:32, 1 February 2019 (UTC)


I don't know exactly where the current community view is – there's a bit more "us against the entire world" feeling at the English Wikipedia than there used to be, and that may tend to result in people being more opposed to sister links than before – but I can tell you that past conversations on this subject generally ended with these views:

  • Pages at sister projects that had good-to-high quality (relative to that sister project) were worth linking, and that sub-stubs or other worse-than-typical pages weren't. For example, any Star guide at Wikivoyage should have a link here, but their mostly blank "Outline" pages should be linked only rarely.
  • Pages at Wiktionary and Wikisource were more acceptable than others. This means that editors could always link to Wikisource for a historical essay, even if it hadn't been proofread yet, but you wouldn't link a Wikibooks page of equivalently low quality.
  • Sometimes it's useful to link to a particular sister project for a particular purpose, e.g., add a link to Wikivoyage if the article seems to be a magnet for tourist touting, in the hope that it will redirect the problematic contents.
  • Most editors mostly don't care about sister links, except if the page was truly awful (e.g., a Wikibooks page written by the POV pusher that got banned here, so he took his garbage over to Wikibooks and is now trying to use that link to get his garbage back into the Wikipedia article).

WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:47, 1 February 2019 (UTC)


Finnish Wikipedia is currently employing the abuse filter to prevent any and all creation of new Wikiquote sister links. I'm not aware of any local community discussion or policy allowing such use of counter-vandalism tools to limit editorial discretion of regular editors. So this hostility towards other WikiMedia projects is nothing new and not unique to English Wikipedia. Who can mediate disagreements like this between sister projects? Every project in WikiMedia universe has its share of POV-pushed piles of junk but that should not lead to any blanket bans or extra work for those who are careful to only link to quality content of the sister site. jni(talk)(delete) 10:03, 1 February 2019 (UTC)

  • After last August there haven't been created new articles at Finnish Wikiquote, it's now mainly playground of vandals, as you can see in the edit history.Risto hot sir (talk) 13:41, 1 February 2019 (UTC)
  • In my opinion I think the English Wikipedia should get along with our sister projects, in the long run this will be beneficial. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 15:40, 1 February 2019 (UTC)
    • It's not about "getting along" with anybody, least of all with some "project" in the abstract. What it's all about is being responsible towards our readers and offering them quality content. There's nothing wrong with having Wikiquote links if it's to pages that aren't godawful. Such links are still not very useful, but at least not actively harmful to the encyclopedia either. Having links to POV crap is actively harmful, so it can't be tolerated. I as far as I'm concerned, I couldn't care less whether that makes some people on Wikiquote happy or not. Fut.Perf. ☼ 17:05, 1 February 2019 (UTC)
  • The key is that no external link should be automatic. Every link needs be evaluated by our editors to determine whether it is beneficial to the reader or not... on a case by case basis. Blueboar (talk) 17:15, 1 February 2019 (UTC)
  • I don't have problem with the sisterlinks, as long as they currently link to useful content (which means I oppose to automated adding them). I often run into sisterlinks to commons image categories, where commons hosts exactly one picture of the subject: the one here used in the infobox. If commons carries several pictures of the subject, then I see use of it, otherwise I will argue that it does not add anything, a rule that is spelled out for external links explicitly, but goes basically for anything (it is an interpretation of WP:NOT. --Dirk Beetstra T C 13:47, 2 February 2019 (UTC)

The behavior is continuing with spam links added to pages such as Doll and Attitude. These are not edits that improve these articles. AldezD (talk) 22:10, 5 February 2019 (UTC)

They appear to be non-intrusiven, informative and beneficial to the reader. Walter Görlitz (talk) 22:16, 5 February 2019 (UTC)
@Walter Görlitz: but as is clear from this thread, there is no consensus for inclusion (and this is not the first thread that we have about sisterlinks). Some are fine, others are utterly not fine. User:Risto hot sir is still adding them while this thread is up here, which is, at the least, pointy (especially when some are reverted and hence a normal BRD cycle should be followed by discussion). The above excuse '... some are linked, some not. Where's the logic? Almost all films and TV-series at Wikiquote are linked' and the non-informative editsummary ('Link') show that these are unconsidered additions. --Dirk Beetstra T C 05:29, 6 February 2019 (UTC)
So what? you offered an example and I'm weighing in with my opinion. These are examples of good uses of linking to sister projects.
I'm clearly watching this board so pining me is not necessary. Walter Görlitz (talk) 06:07, 6 February 2019 (UTC)
'So what'? You find them good uses, I don't really see it that way (at least not in all cases, if not most cases). And the whole point is that these are added without considering, just assuming that they are good links (and reverting them back in when someone objects). To take an example, this diff adds a link to wikiquote which is in my opinion utterly NOT a good use. I am sorry, I strongly oppose your general 'they are', some are but others (and for what I see, many) are not. --Dirk Beetstra T C 07:11, 6 February 2019 (UTC)

Does Wikidata consider which links are useful? Personally won't link entertainment anymore - saves time.--Risto hot sir (talk) 11:18, 6 February 2019 (UTC)

@Risto hot sir: Wikidata is for data, anything that is data is useful to them. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. We include stuff on pages when it is useful to that page (as per all guidelines, both those for sisterlinks as well as external links). Not just because it is related. I am sorry, but a link to quotes about attitude (generally the dictionary term) on a Wikipedia page that is about all terms associated with attitude (in the broadest sense of the term) is not useful to that page. --Dirk Beetstra T C 11:42, 6 February 2019 (UTC)
All data is useful to me also. And AldezD reverted the link of Doll without discussion. Maybe Sigmund Freud is not notable enough?--Risto hot sir (talk) 11:54, 6 February 2019 (UTC) - It's a dangerous way that can lead to totalitarism, like "I dislike that town, let's take the signs that guide to there away."Risto hot sir (talk) 12:12, 6 February 2019 (UTC)
@Risto hot sir: We are not writing this encyclopedia for you alone, and we are also not writing a replacement for Google. Wikipedia includes material that is, by consensus, deemed to be useful. Totalitarism .. fortunately that is not how Wikipedia is operating. We have our policies and guidelines, and where we have questions we have discussions which optimally lead to consensus. And similarly, dislike has nothing to do with it (I do not remove ALL links to commons because I dislike Commons, I remove those that do not add anything to the article on Wikipedia).
'AldezD reverted the link of Doll without discssion', you added it without discussion. Have you ever read WP:BRD? If something is disputed, we remove and discuss. That is the way it works. And as seems to me obvious in this thread, we do not seem to have consensus as to these links to be generally useful (so that they need to be added everywhere), and actually the applicable guideline seems to express a similar concerns.
The notability of Sigmund Freud has nothing to do with our need to include something. --Dirk Beetstra T C 12:25, 6 February 2019 (UTC)
Quotes of Freud are worth reading.Risto hot sir (talk) 12:57, 6 February 2019 (UTC)
As opposed to those of ... But lets take this to the logical end. How does a quote on dolls by Sigmund Freud help me in understanding the subject of dolls? Because that is our inclusion standard: how is the quoted about dolls by Freud useful to the reader of the article doll (beyond that the quotes are by Sigmund Freud) and how do quotes by Mr. Kara-Murza and Mr. Fogg fulfill the same purpose? --Dirk Beetstra T C 13:40, 6 February 2019 (UTC)
The sites complete each other. Dolls are symbols, too, not only facts. - And c'mon, the links are on the left whether you like it or not! Is this discussion about boxes really so important?--Risto hot sir (talk) 13:44, 6 February 2019 (UTC)
@Risto hot sir: Yes, the links are on the left, so it is already questionable whether they should be added again. If they are added again, they should be, per the guidelines, useful for the readers. You shifted the discussion to doll (which I did not comment on), but I do ask you the question: how is this addition useful for the reader (and that goes into our pillars why we add those things). --Dirk Beetstra T C 13:50, 6 February 2019 (UTC)
If the Wq-sites aren't useful they'll have no readers. Commons boxes exist, so logically Wq-boxes also should be shown. All this reminds me of fakemedia, fakenews, fake-CIA, fake-FBI, fake-Wikiquote...Risto hot sir (talk) 13:58, 6 February 2019 (UTC)
This link to doll on wikiquote adds no additional understanding or enhanced experience to the reader of doll. The quotes shift incoherently from dolls as sex toys to morality lessons in Toy Story to Shinto beliefs of treating dolls as humans. It's spam. It does not belong linked here on Wikipedia. We are not arguing that no article should ever link to Wikiquote. But if you are linking to the sister site, make sure the link is useful rather than running a bot and tagging every article with an existing sister link. AldezD (talk) 14:37, 6 February 2019 (UTC)
The details above in your comment re: fakemedia are absurd and further call into question your WP:COMPETENCE as an editor here. AldezD (talk) 14:37, 6 February 2019 (UTC)
Just a reminder: If anyone's hoping to get a topic ban for one editor adding sister links, then you are in the wrong place.
In general, if you think that the link to q:Doll is wrong, then you can remove it, and further discussion about including that link should happen about at Talk:Doll (i.e., not here). WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:20, 6 February 2019 (UTC)
Talk of a Big Brother. I support the freedom of expression and opinions.Risto hot sir (talk) 15:12, 6 February 2019 (UTC)
Well AldezD. There is one issue here of why you are using Twinkle rollback to undo sister links with no edit summary. There is also the issue of whether you are at all removing these links with any rationale as to why, for example, q:Attitude is not educationally useful, as it is, containing quotes from Winston Churchill, John Dewey, Albert Einstein, William James, and Thomas Jefferson to name a few. "I don't personally like Wikiquote and so I'm going to knee jerk revert anything I see" is every bit as disruptive as anything else being addressed in this discussion. GMGtalk 15:24, 6 February 2019 (UTC)
In the context of a different discussion about mass rollback, I encourage all editors to be particularly conservative with those buttons right now. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:53, 6 February 2019 (UTC)

Risto hot sir has stated that the info is not useful for this one editor. It seems that applying your preference to all editors will lead to a lot of other editors applying WP:IGNORE. I think it's safer to apply WP:DROP here and suggest that if sister links annoy you as an editor, don't look at them. Walter Görlitz (talk) 15:35, 6 February 2019 (UTC)

Fair enough. I'll follow consensus. Thanks for your input. AldezD (talk) 16:19, 6 February 2019 (UTC)
They do not annoy me, but I firmly believe that they do not belong everywhere. On pages about persons, a link to 'quotes by this person' is perfect. It is useful in understanding the subject. Links to quotes about an object on the page of said object is less useful and generally does not belong (but likely there are exceptions). Links to a commons category with 50 pictures of an object is equally useful, links to a 1 picture category where that picture is usedin the article is useless (and we are not a crystal ball to predict that that category at some point will contain more pictures, that only means that it should be added then).
'... if sister links annoy you as an editor, don't look at them'? If spam links, inline external links, and linkfarms of social networking annoy you, don't look at them. Better to delete the relevant guidelines regarding inclusion standards for sisterlinks and external links. Until then, there is no consensus to include sisterlinks always, just only when they are useful to the reader. --Dirk Beetstra T C 17:11, 6 February 2019 (UTC)
You're comparing apples to SPAM. Sister links are not potentially useful to some editors and add likely encyclopedic content. We all agree that SPAM does does not. Better to delete your flawed logic than sister links. Walter Görlitz (talk) 18:10, 6 February 2019 (UTC)
What "useful" means? Are the quotes of Groucho Marx, W.C. Fields and Mae West useful? Matti Nykänen, perhaps the best ski jumper ever, died last monday. He is known of stupid sayings (not intended to be such). Still his site was visited 25.000 times at-fi-Wq and 250 000 times at fi-Wikipedia on one day - that would be tens of millions in the English speaking world compared to population. If I'd removed the link I'd probably be lynched.Risto hot sir (talk) 19:09, 6 February 2019 (UTC)
Apparently there not to you. Can you claim they're not to all readers? Walter Görlitz (talk) 20:07, 6 February 2019 (UTC)
To all readers. I meant that "useful" is not the only important thing, Groucho, for example, makes people to think another way.Risto hot sir (talk) 20:47, 6 February 2019 (UTC)
If you're reading about Groucho Marx, a link to his quotes would be appropriate, but not if you're reading about Karl Marx. I can see a student who is writing an essay on the comedian and humorist who requires that very thing finding it useful.
The same goes for the other subjects: if you're reading about W.C. Fields links to his quotes and images would be useful, but links to water closets, fields, or outhouses in fields would not be.
If you do not trust sister projects to control their content, perhaps you should join them and bring them up to your standards. With that said, I just learned that my favourite Groucho Marx line, "Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana." has been mis-attributed to him. Thank you wikiquote. Walter Görlitz (talk) 21:26, 6 February 2019 (UTC)
I'm pretty sure you two started out agreeing with each other, and it looks like you both got confused and mistook the other for someone you disagreed with. GMGtalk 21:31, 6 February 2019 (UTC)
I'm pretty sure my first comment was that sister links "appear to be non-intrusiven, informative and beneficial to the reader." From the outset, I was of the opinion that well-placed sister links are beneficial to (some) readers. Walter Görlitz (talk) 21:39, 6 February 2019 (UTC)
Like I said, I'm pretty sure you two are in agreement, and for whatever it's worth, Risto Hot Sir is among the most prolific contributors to Wikiquote. GMGtalk 21:41, 6 February 2019 (UTC)

Well, haven't created many articles at en-Wq, my main work there is categorizing. The most contents have I made at et-, fi- and la-Wikiquotes.Risto hot sir (talk) 22:10, 6 February 2019 (UTC) - Site Democracy at Wikipedia tells us what it should be, Wikiquote what it's in reality.Risto hot sir (talk) 00:08, 7 February 2019 (UTC)

Usage of archived URL as external link?

Is it preferable to use an archived copy of the URL itself instead of the actual URL (to prevent link rot)? –Sanglahi86 (talk) 15:40, 18 March 2019 (UTC)

No. It is not forbidden, but it is not preferable. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:40, 19 March 2019 (UTC)


Here's one example.Metzora (parsha). It also has a Commentaries section with about 50 links, I deleted one of those earlier this week - surely that isn't within the guidelines either? Another example is at Ashtavakra. Doug Weller talk 12:05, 25 February 2019 (UTC)

Uff. Everything down from the references should be seriously cut down. We are not a replacement for google to find any commentary, review, or other material that somehow mentions or discusses the subject. In my opinion, nothing should be linked that is already in the article (which already generally amounts to literally almost 0 links on a 139-ref article ..). And with external links that are there, all of them have to supply unique information (which exponentially diminishes with every added external link).
In Metzora (parsha), most of the 'further reading' are fully linked as a reference (which almost always disqualifies them as further reading / external link - it generally amounts to the same information), and there is not a lot of material left over at 'yet another commentary' to go over the first commentary.
Regarding 'chanting'/'singing a song'/'reciting the text' - at most the original language, and in English, but certainly not a whole list of them (we also sometimes find youtube-lists of all artists that have covered a classic. --Dirk Beetstra T C 13:36, 25 February 2019 (UTC)
Doug, I agree with you about the ===Commentaries=== subsection. It's okay to have a couple, but the total number of all the links should normally be less than ten. I'm sure that someone knows more than I do (it wouldn't take much), but removing 80% of those links, even if you have to select them randomly, would improve that page wrt compliance with this particular guideline. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:27, 19 March 2019 (UTC)
Thanks all. Doug Weller talk 19:43, 19 March 2019 (UTC)

I have been challenged by user:ElKevbo on removal of 2 athletics sites in the external links sections of the universities (and I see in my history that another removal of me has been re-inserted).

I argue that these are against our (long standing) inclusion standards:

  • WP:ELOFFICIAL/WP:ELMINOFFICIAL - these are not websites controlled by the subject of the page, rather are the websites of a sub-organisation of the page, and are controlled by said sub-organisation. Moreover, the respective sub-organisations often have their own wikipedia page which is linked from the main subject (and often also elaborately discussed within the main subject). And it is listed on the main website of the organisation. (it is the official website of said 'sub-'subject and linked there as well).
  • WP:ELNO #13 - "A website on a specific subject should usually not be linked from an article about a general subject." (specific subject = athletics group; general subject = university).

This has been discussed [[2]] on the WikiProject Universities, with, to me, unclear consensus either way. (That would anyway be a local consensus overriding a long standing global consensus).

Some examples:

To me this is a slippery slope on WP:ELNO#13 and on WP:ELOFFICIAL. Is there consensus to include these links, overriding global consensus, and/or should we adapt our inclusion standards to be more specific on these? Or do these links fail our inclusion standards on these pages and should be excluded? --Dirk Beetstra T C 15:40, 22 March 2019 (UTC)

  • Oppose inclusion of athletics link; I took a look at a number of featured university articles, and all of them include the link to athletics. But, all of them also attained FA status >10 years ago without further review since. Personally, I don't see why the athletics link should be included. Some schools are quite notable for their athletics programs to be sure, but many schools are not. To place priority for the athletics department over other departments seems quite improper. To give an example, Johns Hopkins University is a large university that competes in DIII for athletics. The first thing that pops into my mind about them is medicine, not athletics. Why should athletics be added and not links to every other department, especially their school of medicine? Where do you draw the line? There are more than 2,100 4 year institutions in the U.S. Of those, only 351 are Division 1 and have a halfway decent chance of being notable for their sports programs. The reality is that very few DII and even fewer DIII schools are notable for their sports. So, we're advocating inclusion because ~17% MIGHT be notable? No. Oppose inclusion and remove existing implementations per WP:ELMIN. --Hammersoft (talk) 15:58, 22 March 2019 (UTC)
Note that that is a US-centric analysis,  User:Hammersoft, the importance of athletics is often different in other countries.  --Dirk Beetstra T C 16:27, 22 March 2019 (UTC)
  • In the USA, athletics are highly associated with universities, much more so than in Canada or the UK etc. (Thus the notability of athletic departments that allow them to retain their own separate articles.) I don't have a problem with inclusion if that university's athletic department does not have its own Wikipedia page. —МандичкаYO 😜 20:27, 22 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Thanks for opening this discussion, Dirk! I think that Hammersoft is correct that this is very much a U.S.-centric discussion/phenomena with some (but not much) extension into Canada. In my experience (as someone who has raised this exact concern previously), the idea has been that intercollegiate athletics are so important and extremely high profile for many U.S. colleges and universities that if the institution has a separate website (i.e., one with its own unique domain name and not just a subdirectory of the institution's main website) that including this link is helpful for readers and minimal enough not to be a policy issue. I don't think that has been extensively discussed but this does seem to be a long-standing de facto standard on hundreds and probably thousands of articles. I am not comfortable with one editor overturning a reasonable de facto standard without any discussion hence my pushback against Dirk's edits; my reverts are not a statement of personal agreement with the standard.
Since this is so widespread, I think that a change to this practice requires widespread discussion if someone thinks that it should be changed. I recommend an RfC with suitable invitations to participate extended to relevant projects e.g., WP:UNI, WP:College baseball, WP:CFB.
Personally, I lean toward agreement with Dirk and others who think that this practice contradicts this policy and practices in other areas of Wikipedia. I don't think that the importance and visibility of college athletics merits an exception to this policy especially since the official website of any college or university will have a prominent link to the athletics website anyway. I am also wary of a slippery slope of exceptions e.g., should we also be linking to the student newspaper, the parent institution or system to which the college belongs, the regional accreditor? ElKevbo (talk) 22:04, 22 March 2019 (UTC)
@ElKevbo: how is this 'helpful for the readers'? Can you show me one example of an US university that does not mention the athletics department in the prose of the article (at all)? We are not a replacement for Google, we are not here to make sure that people can find the athletics department of all universities of Atlanta. That is a red herring argument that does not hold - it is also unhelpful for the readers that Wikipedia is not giving ALL social networking sites for ALL BLPs, but we have to remember that we are writing an encyclopedia and not a linkfarm or a replacement for Google. IMHO, we are already way down the slippery slope, and many of these links have slipped in despite being against our inclusion standards.
Second, as I said earlier, there is other material that is widespread but still not in line with the encyclopedia. Unreferenced BLPs are widespread, inclusion of linkfarms of social networking are widespread (I have cleaned out hundreds over the last days). We are not every time going to have a discussion to see whether we maybe should consider that unreferenced BLPs are fine, or that linkfarms of social networking are fine - we clean up because they do not comply with our policies and guidelines. This guideline has had these discussions regarding indirect links, official links, social networking (IMHO, this discussion is superfluous, we have HAD this discussion). We only include twitter links next to an official link if that twitter is nearly a primary claim to the notability of a subject (Donald Trump). For the three universities where I encountered these and have removed them, the athletics department is a section in 'University life', it is far, far from a primary claim to the notability of the university. It does not pass the bar of WP:ELMINOFFICIAL (if we would consider the link of the athletics department to be an official website of the university), it is plainly indirect.
@Wikimandia: Re 'I don't have a problem with inclusion if that university's athletic department does not have its own Wikipedia page'. Then we are still on the slippery slope: why not the student newspaper, the alumni organisation? All universities have a newspaper, that is more widespread than the US (my Dutch alma mater had a newspaper that has an own article on en.wikipedia). I would argue that having access to the university newspaper would be more helpful than knowing their athletics program (no, this is not an argument to include the newspapers' links). I still don't see the argument to include the athletics links, even not on articles where the athletics department does not have an own article. --Dirk Beetstra T C 05:25, 23 March 2019 (UTC)
I am strongly in favor of including links to independent student newspapers in most cases, for the reasons I explained here. They are a unique case different than other university sub-groups (both because of their function and because they are often quasi-independent from the institution itself), and I think they merit a separated discussion. For athletics websites, the main topic of discussion here, I am more ambivalent. I'm sympathetic to the view that they have over-proliferated, but I do think we need to draw the line somewhere, and on a case-by-case level, there may be many schools where including them would be appropriate in my view. - Sdkb (talk) 20:01, 3 May 2019 (UTC)
  • I find the "slippery slope" argument from user:Beetstra compelling. It is common for a university, at least in the US, have multiple "officially approved" microsites or sub-websites, including for the college newspaper, the college radio station, alumni, fundraising, specific construction projects, employment, and, of course, athletics. I do not imagine that Wikipedia editors would be in favor of including links to all, and there's no criteria for choosing which subset to include. I am in favor of user:Wikimandia's suggestion on the policy. -- DanielKlotz (talk · contribs) 22:59, 29 March 2019 (UTC)

wp:ELNO #4

Most of these patreon links seem to break the "no crowdfunding links" rule listed under ELNO#4. 205.175.106.106 (talk) 21:57, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

So one is for Patreon itself and a few for its templates. There are talk pages that are listed. There are some instances where it's used as a reference, and so those are not external links.
Aside from those, I agree it's a problem if it's being used as a primary URL (such as at Paul Curreri) or is in the EL section. Walter Görlitz (talk) 22:12, 21 March 2019 (UTC)
@Wikimandia: what needs to be clearer than 'Normally, only one official link is included.' (original bolding)? In over 99% of the cases, a second official website can plainly go (and no, 'but the other official website does not link there' is NOT an excuse). --Dirk Beetstra T C 11:46, 22 March 2019 (UTC)
  • @Beetstra: "Normally" gives people a lot of room to make excuses and argue for its inclusion. Anyway, a Patreon link that's nothing but a shill for money shouldn't be included if it's the person's only official site, IMO. —МандичкаYO 😜 20:15, 22 March 2019 (UTC)
@Wikimandia: But 'only one' is bolded, already suggesting that that is a pretty narrow interpretation of 'normally', as well as the follow up sentence: "If the subject of the article has more than one official website, then more than one link may be appropriate, under a very few limited circumstances." That part is written in such a way that we need a pretty good reason to include the link, otherwise 'normally, only one' means basically 'only one'. --Dirk Beetstra T C 05:29, 23 March 2019 (UTC)

I honestly clicked randomly on one of the 300+ patreon links: Shingetsu News Agency. The patreon link is used to reference "The SNA also describes itself as a "fearlessly progressive" news source," which to me it looks like a self-published primary source, even though the wiki page has the direct link of the agency listed in its external links. Seems to me like at least in this case, one could argue that the link is a self-reference that seems to give the legitimacy of a third-party reporting that also "happens" to be a crowdfunding site. 205.175.106.106 (talk) 17:14, 22 March 2019 (UTC)

Not if it's supporting the claim that it describes itself as such. But again, references are not bound to EL policy. Walter Görlitz (talk) 18:00, 22 March 2019 (UTC)
Another one: Pomplamoose. Used as a reference for "Pomplamoose launched the second season of the webcast — a three-part sequel to the band’s early years, including but not limited to: videos, a tour, and an album (released on July 29, 2014)". This is again a self-published pseudo-third party reference used to insert information that I don't see how it would pass GNG if it is not covered by an actual third party. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 205.175.106.106 (talk) 18:43, 22 March 2019 (UTC)
Patreon links used as references are OK or at least not what we're discussing here. If you don't think this band is notable, nominate them for deletion. —МандичкаYO 😜 20:21, 22 March 2019 (UTC)
Inside the ==External links== section, it falls under WP:ELNO#EL4, "Links mainly intended to promote a website, including online petitions and crowdfunding pages."
If it's used as a ref, that might make it harder to blacklist the whole site. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:37, 7 May 2019 (UTC)

Please take a look at William Pope (naturalist)#Gallery. Are the external links in the image captions appropriate? -- RoySmith (talk) 00:14, 15 June 2019 (UTC)

These were removed. In the future, you may prefer to ask this kind of question at Wikipedia:External links/Noticeboard. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:08, 15 June 2019 (UTC)

Guideline needs to be revisited and conform to practice

Okay, so this guideline makes it quite clear that aside from sister projects, external links should not usually be placed in the body of the article. However, this is very counter to what I see happening in practice:

  1. Supreme court articles link to justia.com (example)
  2. Bible-related articles link to biblegateway.com (example)
  3. Articles on programming topics link to RFCs at ietf.org (example)
  4. Soccer articles link to match reports (example)
  5. Inline coordinates placed in text lead to the geohack on tools.wmflabs.org (example)
  6. In infoboxes:
    • Bare URLs to official websites (example)
    • Open source software articles link to github.com (example)
    • National Register of Historic Places articles link to nps.gov (example)
    • Chemical compound articles have a myriad of links to identifiers and MSDSs at inchem.org (example)
    • Language articles link to glottolog.org (example)

These are from such varied topics and subjects and happen so consistently that it seems this guidance isn't reflecting the reality of the situation. I doubt that all these are violating the guideline or they wouldn't have persisted and spread as far as they have. The guidance should be clarified.

Are there specific cases where it's okay for external links in the body? Are well-known databases okay? Are they fine in infoboxes? Is it okay to mask an external link to a non-sister wiki as internal using interwiki markup? ([[imdbtitle:]]; example) Would you want people to be able to link to their Toolforge projects?

It always felt strange to me that Wikipedia was a part of the Internet of yore, where the whole idea was to "build the web" and link out to everything. The original wikis were even meant to point to other specialized wikis, hence why the above imdbtitle link works. But instead, Wikipedia has turned into a walled garden, where either the topic has its own article, or else it will get zero presence or chance to be linked to. I understand that links have spam and rot issues, but this guideline takes a complete hardline stance against them anywhere but in their owns section.

Opencooper (talk) 00:08, 6 June 2019 (UTC)

Wikipedia is a top-rating website which is open for anyone to edit. The current guideline is essential to protect the encyclopedia against promotions, nonsense and general spam. WP:EL is a guideline where exceptions may arise for particular articles. What external link is needed that this guideline is preventing? Johnuniq (talk) 00:37, 6 June 2019 (UTC)
What I'm asking is for the guideline to be clarified so that it reflects the reality of how external links are currently being used on Wikipedia. Right in the first sentence of the page, it states "but they should not normally be placed in the body of an article". But I've posted examples of numerous types of links that are placed in the body all of the time. Is the widespread practice against the guidelines here, and thus all these links should be removed? Or is the guideline outdated and it needs to be clear in which cases they are permissible (refer to the questions above, where for example is it that only certain databases are permissible, and what about infoboxes)? If our documentation for editors is incorrect, it needs to be fixed. I'm aware of spam and all those issues, but I don't see how this affects that since my question is only about the placement of the links. Opencooper (talk) 03:28, 6 June 2019 (UTC)
I would not call the use of the {{external media}} template as "in the body". The sentence in context is meant to avoid ELs in running prose in the body, but side-boxes are fine. --Masem (t) 03:55, 6 June 2019 (UTC)
Huh? None of the examples I shared use that template. And many are not in side boxes either. Opencooper (talk) 17:40, 6 June 2019 (UTC)
Let's back up and think about these instances separately, because there are quite a number of different things happening here. I've numbered your categories for convenience.
  1. The Supreme Court article you linked contains a Justia link only in the ==External links== section. I'm therefore unable to tell you whether it should be located in the body, because it's not there.
  2. Template-based links to biblegateway.com (such as Template:bibleref2c-nb, which is at the top of Burning bush) have long been accepted as one of the "rare exceptions".
  3. Links to RFCs at ietf.org have long been accepted, perhaps primarily because MediaWiki software used to automagically supply those links whether you wanted them or not. If we have an article about the specific RFC, then it might be better to supply an internal link, but otherwise these are considered a type of Wikipedia:Inline citation, and therefore this guideline doesn't apply at all.
  4. The match reports in the table at 2014 Norwegian Football Cup Qualifying Rounds are being used as a type of Wikipedia:Inline citation that verifies that row's contents. If you look a little higher on this page, you will see me suggesting to User:Beetstra that he add an example of this, with suggested formatting, to this guideline, so that people will be less likely to think that citations only come in the form of little blue clicky numbers.
  5. The {{coord}} template is not normally used in the middle of a sentence (and one might wonder why the coordinates are given in that paragraph in Batiaghata Upazila#Geography). However, it is widely used in the infobox (resulting in the link appearing just above the infobox), so this template is usually an example of your last group.
  6. About infoboxes, the answer lies in reading all of WP:ELPOINTS #2, which says "With rare exceptions, external links should not be used in the body of an article. Instead, include appropriate external links in an "External links" section at the end of the article, and in the appropriate location within an infobox, if applicable" (emphasis added). So all of the infobox items are okay, because this guideline already says that inclusion of external links in the infobox is acceptable. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:29, 15 June 2019 (UTC)
Okay, everything you stated is correct. But like you said, there are exceptions. Now, the question is why? Is this guideline out of date? Do WikiProjects get to decide whether they want specific links allowed? Are only certain categories of links allowed? Or strictly some domains (such as RFC magic links; if so, they should be explicitly listed). There's something wrong when a guideline states in absolutes that "rare exceptions" apply, when in reality the inline external links are widespread. (btw, the Justia link was in an old revision; incidentally, I drafted this post a while back) Opencooper (talk) 16:26, 16 June 2019 (UTC)
There are exceptions because the occasional deviation from normal practice improves articles, of course. Next time, ask me a hard question. ;-)
In terms of a useful answer, WikiProjects don't own any articles, so they don't decide anything (although they're often an easy location for finding highly informed editors, of course).
You are correct that only certain categories of links are allowed in the body of an article, and I think you could describe those as links to free (always free as in beer; usually free as in freedom) textual sources that (a) we don't want to include in the article, but (b) some readers will need to read if they're going to learn what they're interested in. So Bible stories (about 5,000 articles), and SCOTUS rulings (but not other things written by SCOTUS; maybe another 5,000 articles), and RFCs (but not ISBNs and PMIDs, which were also magic links back in the day; there are only a few hundred of these links), and I can't actually think of another offhand that is generally used but isn't a sister project (Wiktionary and Wikisource links are permitted). We used to include links to stock tickers in the first sentence, but those have mostly been moved to infoboxes (because I complained quite a few years ago, actually, although I probably wasn't the only person who complained). Overall, that looks like one in 500 articles.
What's never permitted is one-off links to websites or personal websites, like "Big Company manufactures widgets". WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:31, 22 June 2019 (UTC)

You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Television#Netflix as external link. Sid95Q (talk) 15:42, 13 August 2019 (UTC)

This appears to be about linking to Netflix's official page for a Netflix-created show, as the official link in articles about those shows, when no separate official website exists. At a glance, people seem to be coming up with a reasonable plan. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:28, 15 August 2019 (UTC)

Social media clarification

I'd like to propose that we bring some clarification to the section on social media. We generally dissuade people from adding links to Social networking sites (such as Myspace, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram), but at the top of the WP:ELNO list in bolded text it says "Except for a link to an official page of the article's subject". So does this mean that if a celebrity has six social media outlets, we can include all of them so long as they are Green tickYVerified? Or do we want to clarify that with language like "You may include one link to a verified social media outlet" or whatever the community's preference is?

In common practice, people generally scrub all external links to these entities, so our practice is inconsistent with the language of the guideline. I think we need to flesh out #10 a little better. Cyphoidbomb (talk) 14:46, 1 August 2019 (UTC)

See WP:ELMINOFFICIAL for the entirety of your comment. The nutshell of that section: One website representing the subject is normal. More than that, especially if the one website provides navigation to the other online presences, is unnecessary and promotional. --Izno (talk) 16:24, 1 August 2019 (UTC)
@Izno: Thanks for your response. Is the preference though, for an official http://www.ActorOwnsThisSite.com website? If there is no official website structured like that, then can we add verified social media channels in the External links section? Alternatively, if we do the Official website in the infobox, can people add other social media sites in the External links section? Or is the first website enough? And again, if WP:ELMINOFFICIAL is the proper text, can we move words around so that people who read WP:ELNO get the gist of the guideline without having to make interpretive decisions? Obviously I don't mean that as a dig on you, I just want to make sure the ambiguous guidelines we typically point to are properly explaining the community's expectations. Cyphoidbomb (talk) 03:36, 2 August 2019 (UTC)
Generally the preference is for a topic.com website from what I've observed, since those websites are the most likely to provide the additional official information that we'd prefer them to provide (rather than us), such as their social media accounts and their announcements.
Sure, you can add one social media website if there are no official websites anywhere on the page. Usually I've seen "most useful" and "best known for" (e.g. Twitch for a video game player or Twitter for the US President). More than one website still runs afoul, but I've sometimes seen local consensus make the occasional exception.
As for "official website in the infobox and not in the External links", you're getting into a contrived example to some degree (though I'm sure someone somewhere is arguing about it--I won't go looking in your contributions). I would say that the one in the infobox, if that's the official website, should be the one also reflected in the External links section, or the external links section should go without the topic's official website, rather than add further (social media) links. (On an aside, I think 'official websites' and the like should be removed from infoboxes, but I do not think many people support that position.) --Izno (talk) 04:35, 2 August 2019 (UTC)
When a subject doesn't have a dedicated website but has presences on a number of social media sites, I've found that one usually stands out as, essentially, the subject's "website". If the subject has a Facebook page, that's generally the one. They'll put all the information about themselves there that they care to, and will generally link from there to their other presences. For a business entity, though, it might be LinkedIn.
If none of those exists but the subject has a Twitter or Instagram account, I'd say it's generally better not to bother. They don't usually serve the purpose of informing, which is supposed to be what the destinations of external links here do: the amount of space they provide a user to make an account of itself is minimal, and then, after that, it's nothing but tweets or photos. Though I might make an exception for, respectively, a person (such as a pundit or a reporter) for whom Twitter is a primary vehicle for their reporting/punditry; or a photographer who uses Instagram as their official outlet. Largoplazo (talk) 10:21, 2 August 2019 (UTC)
@Cyphoidbomb: I take WP:ELMINOFFICIAL rather strictly (as per the bolding and the 'under a very few limited circumstances'). Basically, we list only one. The one to chose is up to consensus, but generally boils down to the '<subject>.com'-type of link (which generally also links to all social networking anyway). But there are exceptions, where we only take a facebook, or only a twitter if that is significantly the more active page.
For the rest, the order is rather like User:Largoplazo describes: if there is no '.com'-type page, the facebook is generally a good second. For some it is however the Youtube (for youtube personalities) over facebook, or twitter (rather rare). I do also agree with their sentiment that if there is nothing but a twitter that it is often better not to bother, but a reverse argument there is that we should always list at least one outlet of the subject to show what a subject says about themselves (so, even if that is a hardly used twitter feed). On the thousands of pages where I have removed them there were only very few exceptions. That goes to the level of Donald Trump, where his twitter is so important for the person's notability (once worded as that every other twitter seems to hit world headlines) that it is deemed noteworthy besides the official website. That and one other one are the only exceptions on Twitter that I know of. Generally, if a quick skim of the article does not indicate major social networking importance then they are safe to remove. --Dirk Beetstra T C 13:17, 2 August 2019 (UTC)
Thank you all. I appreciate the responses. Do any of you think that we should clarify the wording of WP:ELNO? To me the "official page of the article's subject" sounds like we're encouraging any verified presence and creates confusion when contrasted with #10. I could see someone arguing that if three verified social media sites are verified, they meet the "official page" qualification. (No, Izno, I'm not involved in a specific debate about this.) I'd probably propose changing "page" to "website" (if that's what the community seems to prefer), and then in #10 adding "If no official website can be found for the subject, then one verified social media site can be used" or something similar. Cyphoidbomb (talk) 15:24, 2 August 2019 (UTC)
Cyphoidbomb, I looked at WP:ELOFFICIAL and didn't find an obvious/brief way to add something there. Are you primarily concerned about the "Except for a link to an official page of the article's subject..." language at the top of WP:ELNO (because Wikipedia:Nobody reads the directions, so it's doubtful that anyone will read ELOFFICIAL)?
I think the usual legalistic approach is to say that you're removing the long list of links "per WP:ELMINOFFICIAL". That usually seems to be effective in the end. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:26, 15 August 2019 (UTC)
@WhatamIdoing: Yes, I'm just not a huge fan of vague guidelines, and think there should be greater consistency across the rules page. Dat's all. Cyphoidbomb (talk) 05:46, 16 August 2019 (UTC)

Copying non-English URLs

I'm not sure where to document this, or even if it works in all browsers (I'm doubtful?), but this message describes a way to copy a URL from a non-English/non-Latin script Wikipedia site, and end up with something that's readable. If it works, it seems like it ought to be documented somewhere. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:22, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

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