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adding World's Fair external link to a World's Fair page

Greetings:

This concerns the page, "Century 21 Exposition". I added an external link, i.e., this:

• 1962 Seattle, a section of Jon Paul Sank's World's Fairs Page. The section has approximately 180 links, including to websites, television, newsreels, documentaries, home movies, lectures, interviews, video playlists, pictures, guides, maps, audio, digital collections, articles, items on exhibits, pavilions, and shows, and an especially large music subsection. Retrieved April 28, 2019.

A couple of weeks later, somebody reverted it, and it sparked the following exchange:

On what basis did you revert my edits to "Century 21 Exposition"? I am most concerned about the "1962 Seattle" one, because it has a lot of links that surely give people a lot more information about the Expo. My World's Fair page has been praised by bona fide World's Fair historians. There's nothing commercial about it. It doesn't seek donations. Its aim is to inform and give visitors a chance to experience the Fairs, purely. I'm serving the public and giving them an opportunity to learn and enjoy more than the Wikipedia article provides. They read the Wikipedia article, and my page is just as deserving as the other external links, because it gives Wikipedia visitors more. On what basis did you kill it? PaulSank (talk) 03:14, 13 May 2019 (UTC)

   @PaulSank: You must follow the External links policy when adding links to articles. Your website should not be linked by yourself without consensus from Wikipedia editors, like those at the EL noticeboard, and needs to follow the stricter guidelines on Conflict of interest and especially the self-promotion section. You are welcome to maintain your fansite, but it would also fall under links to avoid (specifically section 11). If someone else adds your site, then that's better in our view, but otherwise you must recuse yourself from adding your own links. (signature)

   @(The other guy): This bit about the EL Noticeboard appears to be made up by you, because it doesn't appear in the other links you have provided here. I don't see anything on the links-to-avoid list that applies to mine. I have no conflicts of interest. And the self pub paragraph starts, "Using material you have written or published is allowed within reason", and my 1962 Seattle is HIGHLY relevant. So AGAIN, I insist on specifics, ON WHAT BASIS?

PaulSank (talk) 18:08, 13 May 2019 (UTC)

   @(The other guy): You have replied to somebody else (below), but you have not replied to me. Good, because it suggests that I have successfully clarified my position. I will now restore my link, because it's highly relevant and useful, and I derive no benefit whatsoever beyond the pleasure of helping people learn more about and enjoy more of Century 21. PaulSank (talk) 02:42, 14 May 2019 (UTC)

       @PaulSank: It's not my job to handhold you through the various processes on Wikipedia. I will say this: your attitude so far is more akin to a desperate spammer than someone with the best interest of the project in mind, and I recommend that you try to seek out guidance from the noticeboard or another forum with multiple users who are better versed in COI than I. Your website appears to be a repository of links, which is helpful but not particularly useful, and may also fall under the WP:ELNEVER restrictions on copyright, which is taken very seriously. Please try to understand this site's policies and rules before attempting to re-add your links. (signature)

"Spammer", no way, I have nothing commercial to offer. As for the rest of what you say here, somehow it clarifies the issue better, so yes, I'll now go to the ELN. Thank you.

(end of quote)

What say you? Can I have my rich repository of highly relevant links as an external link, or not? Please make sure you actually look at my section and explore it for at least a few minutes before you judge. I can't even believe I have to have this discussion, because my 1962 Seattle is so highly relevant, offering Wikipedia visitors the opportunity to spend hours and hours in further exploration of the Exposition, and sharing it brings no benefit to me. Thank you.  PaulSank (talk) 03:26, 14 May 2019 (UTC)

WP:ELNO #11: avoid "Blogs, personal web pages and most fansites (negative ones included), except those written by a recognized authority". WP:ADV: "But in line with Wikipedia policies, you should avoid linking to a site that you own, maintain, or represent—even if Wikipedia guidelines seem to imply that it may otherwise be linked." No, your self-published and self-promotional links are not appropriate here. Seeing that you added links to your website with excessively detailed descriptions that included your own name to about 20 articles and that is the bulk of your edits, I would concur with SounderBruce's calling you a spammer. Also, if you spend a little time on this website you'll see that ELs do not require an access date: see WP:ELCITE. Reywas92^Talk 06:02, 14 May 2019 (UTC)

I am shocked, appalled, insulted, and highly OFFENDED at all this name-calling! Regardless of the facts, there are nicer ways of expressing oneself than to insult someone personally, e.g., "calling you a spammer". Because I'm so offended, I want to be removed from Wikipedia entirely. I want nothing more to do with a community that hurls insults at people. PaulSank (talk) 16:29, 14 May 2019 (UTC)

Hello, PaulSank,

I'm sorry that you've been having such a hard time over this. Wikipedia can be an overly complicated place. We've got a particular style (for example, no long descriptions in this section), and some – well, you probably wouldn't be surprised to hear that the English Wikipedia has to deal with hardcore commercial spammers (not to mention the occasional malware site) every hour of the day, and then we've got all these companies and people that dump promotional "articles" on us, and we do get a little overwhelmed and touchy about it sometimes. That's our fault, not yours.

So, first off, thanks for being a real person with a genuine interest in the World Fairs, who really just wants to share information and resources about it with other people. Second, because of this long history of problems – again, totally not your fault, but it will unfortunately affect you – we sometimes take a pretty strict approach about who can add links and how we handle them. I think this link could be considered under what we call WP:ELMAYBE #3, which is about "A well-chosen link to a directory of websites". (There's not actually any rule that says that directory of websites can't be on a website owned by an individual. It's more common to find links on library websites, non-profit organizations, or DMOZ and its successors, but we do have a few from private individuals.) If you'd like to try again, then I think that you could start a section at Talk:Century 21 Exposition and propose that someone else include the link. Your directory listing includes at least two of the external links on the page now, so it would have the net effect of reducing the length of the list. I believe that User:Jmabel has done some work on that article, and he might be able to evaluate it, if nobody else happens to be watching that page. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:59, 15 May 2019 (UTC)

• For what it's worth: yes, it does look to me like a (very) well-chosen collection of links about the topic. I doubt there is a significantly better one. Anyone who called someone a "spammer" for proposing such a high-quality link was totally out of line. - Jmabel | Talk 15:37, 15 May 2019 (UTC)
• Also for what it's worth @PaulSank: in the future, if you want to propose linking something you yourself have worked on, it's best to first propose it on the talk page and try to get a consensus before adding. But if you've never been through this before, there is no reason you should already have known that. - Jmabel | Talk 15:40, 15 May 2019 (UTC)

• @PaulSank: Doing something like this falls under our conflict of intrest guidelines. Walter Görlitz (talk) 17:04, 15 May 2019 (UTC)

Huffingtonpost.co.uk

When I go to huffingtonpost.co.uk[1] on my Mac, I get a popup that says the site needs my consent to access my device! I have no idea what that's about, but I sure as hell don't like it.

Sample article: Sheri Jacobson. Adoring nanny (talk) 12:42, 26 May 2019 (UTC)

It puts up a box that says:

HuffPost is part of Oath. Oath and our partners need your consent to access your device and use your data (including location) to understand your interests, and provide and measure personalised ads. Oath will also provide you with personalised ads on partner products.

Learn more.

Select 'OK' to continue and allow Oath and our partners to use your data, or select 'Manage options' to view your choices."

I don't think I've seen that before. This Reddit thread guesses that it is the equivalent of "You agree to cookies". WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:44, 26 May 2019 (UTC)

Is The Unz Review masthead credible as to their copyright licensing?

Regarding the disagreement here, does The Unz Review masthead FAQ assertion that, "The articles and columns that appear here are under legal copyright and the authors or their representatives have merely granted The Unz Review the right to publish them," allow us to link to this article from The Reporter from 1966 as the source of an early use of the term "white genocide"? EllenCT (talk) 04:06, 27 May 2019 (UTC)

@EllenCT: is citing the original alone not enough? Do we really need a copy-source? --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 04:12, 27 May 2019 (UTC)

I feel like being able to read the whole article gives a sense of the political climate and conflict history necessary for understanding the use of the term. It's not a huge deal, I just am astonished that everyone isn't willing to take The Unz Review at their word, since they clearly paid a lot to license hundreds of thousands of important historical news publications, and would have been sued to kingdom come decades ago if they weren't offering them on the up-and-up, that's all. EllenCT (talk) 04:32, 27 May 2019 (UTC)

Hi again, EllenCT. Generally, entire newspaper articles aren't uploaded to Wikipedia per WP:NFC simply so that someone can read the entire article; so, it seems unlikely such a file could be uploaded and then added as part of the citation; a link to the article, on the other hand, is often considered OK as long as it's not a problem per WP:COPYLINK or WP:ELNEVER. It seems to me that as long as the original source(s) were WP:PUBLISHED and are considered reliable, then it should be able to cite them per WP:SAYWHERE even if they cannot be currenty found anywhere online. If they can be found online uploaded to website other than one controlled by the original source, then perhaps as a WP:Convenience link could work using the parameter |via= like is often done with sites like Google Books, etc. The question then might be whether such a convenience link would be OK; it might for a website like "Newspapers.com", "Google News Archive", "Internet Archive" or "HighBeam Research", but maybe not so much from some kind of personal website hosting the content. Just from looking at Ron Unz#The Unz Review and other activities, I'm not sure how reliable of a website it would be as a source or how credible it would be even for just a convenience link just based upon what Wikipedia has to say about it; however, if do a Wikipedia search of the websites url, you'll find it being cited in quite a number of articles which might mean it's considered reliable for some things, which in turn might mean it's credible as a convenience link. (Note: This was originally asked about at WP:MCQ#Is The Unz Review masthead credible as to their copyright licensing?, but I suggested asking here at ELN since it seems to be more of an EL question than a file upload question.) -- Marchjuly (talk) 05:05, 27 May 2019 (UTC)

I am just saying that I do see the value of convenience links to material and that we should use them where ever we can (especially to make material easier to verify), but that does not mean that we HAVE to have a convenience link to material EVERYWHERE (and the same goes for archived copies). If there are no problems with the convenience link, fine, but I do not believe it is a problem if we cannot (or even try to be on the safe side). If there are serious suspicions about a site, then it is just better not to have the convenience link and only 'link' to an (even paper-only) original. I really don't see a problem with that. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 07:05, 27 May 2019 (UTC)

I agree with this and think SAYWHERE is more than acceptable solution to any link at all. I just mentioned a convenience link as one possibility, but I don't think their usage, especially in this case, should be seen as automatically OK. If there are ELNEVER concerns that cannot be fully resolved, then a convenience link shouldn't be used. -- Marchjuly (talk) 07:43, 27 May 2019 (UTC)

The dispute is about this edit, which is not in the ==External links== section. This is primarily a question about WP:LINKVIO when Wikipedia:Citing sources. One editor believes that the website has a suitable license, on the grounds that they claim to, and therefore that a link in the citation is acceptable. Another editor believes that the website does not have a suitable license (apparently on the grounds that they are bad people, and so can't be trusted in matters such as copyrights). WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:42, 15 June 2019 (UTC)

Paid and Commercial links on Rolls-Royce 20/25

Can someone take a look at the links on the article Rolls-Royce 20/25. I've twice removed them and they've twice been re-added by another editor. I'm looking at the links and they fail multiple points on WP:ELNO. For the first two links, https://archive.rrec.org.uk/ & http://www.rroc.org/

1. These links are general collectors club links, not links specific to the Rolls-Royce 20/25 model. Fails WP:ELNO #13
2. These links require paid subscriptions in order to access them, thus removing their encyclopaedic utility. Fails WP:ELNO #6

The third link, which was updated to be a little more specific, https://www.fiennes.co.uk/The-Cars/Rolls-Royce/20-25/

1. The link immediately provide no additional info beyond what the article already does. Fails WP:ELNO #1
2. This link is to a catalogue section of a commercial website and everything on and from that page is solely to sell replacement parts for the cars, not to provide encyclopaedic information. Fails WP:ELNO #5

I've tried to engage the user who keeps re-adding the links, but they're not listening and no longer replying to the points I'm making and are just reverting. Now I don't wish to get into an edit war here, but the user doesn't seem to get why some links may not be appropriate to an encyclopaedia. So I'm bringing this here to get some more eyes and to see if I'm being unreasonable in my removal of these sites. Looking for opinion. Note: These sites are not linked from any other specific Rolls-Royce sites, it seems the one user has a strong attachment to just this single article. Canterbury Tail talk 17:34, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

User:Mattporta, the first two seem like excellent sites, but charging a fee is a really serious failing – for the "External links" section itself. You can see this in the rules at WP:ELNO#EL6, "Sites that require payment or registration to view the relevant content". Now, if you happen to have paid that membership fee yourself, and you want to cite those excellent specific pages in the article as refs (usually done as a type of Wikipedia:Inline citation, and ending up in the ==References== section), then that's totally fine. Just not in the ==External links== section.

Canterbury, I'm less convinced by your description of the problems with the Fiennes link. The landing page isn't a great link, but there is information on that page that isn't in the article and might not belong there. For example, the term Hobson Telegauge appears in the link but not in the article. (Whether it ought to be in the article is outside my expertise.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:25, 28 June 2019 (UTC)

Infobox website link suitability

Could you please take a look at dankneen.com, used at Dan Kneen (deceased 2018)? I am unsure if it (now) complies with WP:ELOFFICIAL, particularly numbered points 1 and 2. Seems to be ostensibly 'retail/commercial' with a charity status from late Oct 2018.

Extract from Isle of Man index of charities: "To promote in the Isle of Man and elsewhere the relief of persons injured in motorsport events and the families of deceased competitors in need due to ill health, disability or financial hardship. To pomote (sic) public safety in motorsport and provision of improved safety facilities."

Just done an update on the article and unsure if this is appropriate to be shown. Thanks.--Rocknrollmancer (talk) 00:59, 2 July 2019 (UTC)

Rocknrollmancer, it's not "wrong" but it's probably also not "best". You could replace the link with one to https://web.archive.org/web/20180604073854/http://www.dankneen.com/ WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:46, 5 July 2019 (UTC)