Wikipedia:External links/Noticeboard

Welcome to the external links noticeboard
This page is for reporting possible breaches of the external links guideline. Post questions here regarding whether particular external links are appropriate or compliant with Wikipedia's guidelines for external links. Provide links to the relevant article(s), talk page(s), and external links(s) that are being discussed. Questions about prominent websites like YouTube, IMDb, Twitter, or Find a Grave might be addressed with information from this guide. Sections older than 10 days archived by MiszaBot. (For help, see Wikipedia:Purge) If you mention specific editors, you must notify them. You may use {{subst:ELN-notice}} to do so.
Search this noticeboard & archives Additional notes: Concerns with links used as references should be handled at the reliable sources noticeboard. For cases involving blatant spamming, please file a report at the spam project. Obvious cases of corporate vanity can be tagged with {{db-g11}}. This board is not intended for generalized discussion about the external links guidelines themselves, which should be handled at the guideline talk page. To mark a report resolved, place {{Resolved|Your reason here ~~~~}} at the top of the section.
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Google "Hosted News"

I've seen several links from Google's "hosted news" site all go dead after a time. Perhaps we should blacklist http://www.google.com/hostednews/* to prevent this from happening? Since they eventually die anyway and other, more permanent sites carrying AP stories are pretty easy to find, there's not much point in adding such links in the first place. --Cybercobra (talk) 06:31, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

I don't think blacklisting is a viable option as the sites aren't malicious nor are they used for vandalism. Do we blacklist any other news site which goes dead after a period? Does archive.org work with google news? If so, that's an option for what to do with the dead news links. ThemFromSpace 05:24, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

I don't think that a blacklist is warranted, because editors might legitimately use that URL on a talk page. But perhaps a bot could deliver notices to articles that have the link in the main namespace, to warn them about the short lifespan.

I looked through about twenty-five thousand links for *.google.com and found none that contain the string hostednews. I found a lot at ap.google.com, however; perhaps they have changed their format. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:53, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

I was just throwing it out there; Forget I brought it up. --Cybercobra (talk) 08:06, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Link to www.lakhota.com at Lakota language

Over the past year or so various editors - often IP users - have repeated added a link to www.lakhota.com to the page Lakota language. Some editors have removed this link repeatedly; others have argued that the link is appropriate. I have suggested that this notice board may be an appropriate place to discuss the matter in order to reach consensus. See also Talk:Lakota language#Summary of discussion to date.

My own opinion is that there is little to recommend the site, as it offers little information about the language itself - though it does sell books on language, which I have not read.

(By the way, I wasn't sure if new discussions go at the top or bottom of the page. Sorry if I erred.) Cnilep (talk) 23:18, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

Cnilep, thank you for moderating the discussion on the relevance of keeping that site among the external links. I just wanted to comment that one of the Lakhota.com books (the dictionary) is now also sold on Amazon and it has the "Look inside" feature. If you look at the sample pages of that dictionary (http://www.amazon.com/New-English-Lakhota-Dictionary/dp/1440405352/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1259154581&sr=8-4#reader_1440405352) you will see that the level of inconsistency is beyond description. And that is the pervasive characteristic of the whole Lakota.com production. Thiyopa (talk) 13:13, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

• lakhota.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot-Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com

Accounts

Cancega (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · blacklist hits · AbuseLog · what links to user page · count · COIBot · Spamcheck · user page logs · x-wiki · status · Edit filter search · Google · StopForumSpam)
Tnwcreations (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · blacklist hits · AbuseLog · what links to user page · count · COIBot · Spamcheck · user page logs · x-wiki · status · Edit filter search · Google · StopForumSpam)
72.179.33.118 (talk • contribs • deleted contribs • blacklist hits • AbuseLog • what links to user page • COIBot • Spamcheck • count • block log • x-wiki • Edit filter search • WHOIS • RDNS • tracert • robtex.com • StopForumSpam • Google • AboutUs • Project HoneyPot)
72.179.35.225 (talk • contribs • deleted contribs • blacklist hits • AbuseLog • what links to user page • COIBot • Spamcheck • count • block log • x-wiki • Edit filter search • WHOIS • RDNS • tracert • robtex.com • StopForumSpam • Google • AboutUs • Project HoneyPot)
70.114.196.201 (talk • contribs • deleted contribs • blacklist hits • AbuseLog • what links to user page • COIBot • Spamcheck • count • block log • x-wiki • Edit filter search • WHOIS • RDNS • tracert • robtex.com • StopForumSpam • Google • AboutUs • Project HoneyPot)
--Hu12 (talk) 19:15, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Social networking sites

Why should links to social networking sites be avoided? Because some sites have video-sharing applications, is it okay to link an article to a video that's illustrating something related to what the article is about, especially if the one who created it is willing to show it for educational purposes? 202.69.189.215 (talk) 11:22, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Mainly it's because the majority of pages on those sites are vanity and/or fan pages with little useful content that can't be found elsewhere. Still, there's no blanket ban on such pages, so if there's ACTUALLY something useful, then it may be fine, though it should probably be discussed on the article's talk page. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 15:19, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Please be sure to read WP:EL#Rich media, WP:ELMAYBE #2, and WP:ELNO #1 first. Wikipedia occasionally has a bit of a problem with people adding links to videos that contain almost no information at all, and far less information than the article covers. We don't want to use a lot of computing resources (which some of our readers don't have) to repeat what they've already read, just with pretty moving pictures this time.

The best use of rich media links is to communicate something that cannot be adequately communicated in written text (like a complicated shape spinning around so you can easily see each side). WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:29, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Pete Townshend needs reviewing

it would be enormously helpful if experienced ELN editors could have a look at the Pete_Townshend#Other_notes section of the article to ascertain whether it's all in line with Wkipedia policies, particularly WP:ELNO#In biographies of living people. thank you Sssoul (talk) 08:22, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

What exactly is that long section of numbered external links supposed to be accomplishing? Saving readers the trouble of asking Mr Google for further information? WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:03, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

i don't know what purpose the section is meant to serve; part of the aim seems to be to add sensationalized quotes from tabloids in the form of "annotations". anyway i'd be grateful if you could add your assessment of it to the article's talk page, and/or if you could help clean that section up. there have been a lot of disputes on the page lately and outside opinions are direly needed. Sssoul (talk) 07:39, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Go ahead and remove it and see if anyone objects. When I remove many news stories/reliable sources at a time I usually place them on the talk page. That way anyone in the future who wants to build up the article will have a nice supply of sources to start with. But if you believe that they are of tainted viewpoints than you might want to get rid of them entirely. ThemFromSpace 08:44, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

thanks for the input - i've cleaned up a bit, and will continue later if there are no objections. Sssoul (talk) 10:00, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

One community member, showing up on the talk page, as requested. The talk page looks pretty wound up with some (unrelated) complicated issues, so if other people have a minute, I'm sure that a couple of positive/cheerful/non-disruptive comments from uninvolved editors would be deeply appreciated as a change of pace. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:40, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Special Constabulary + policespecials.com

I was just stumbling across the Special Constabulary page earlier today and i reversed the removal of the link mentioned above because it clearly is an invaluable source if you want move information about the specials. Yes it has adverts, like most sites do nowadays and yes it does allow you to become a paid member but you dont need to. You are not restricted to the information you can receive on the site or the forum if you don't pay. It's more of a donation than a membership.

The website is clearly viewed as a reliable source by the two police constabularies i am personally aware of because on the correspondence you receive upon applying you are given information on the best sources to aid your research you are actually told to go on the policespecials.com website. Also when i applied and interviewed i mentioned that i read the site i was asked official questions by the force specifically because they knew the answers we needed were on that site. It just seems a bit odd to remove a link to a site that offers itself as an excellent resource(just look at the forum it links to) for all things about the special constabulary and is recognised offically by the police themselves. Uksam88 (talk) 19:48, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

It's not an officially recognized website; it says "Not an official police site" and "Note that these views are my own, as are all of those on the web site, and don't represent the views of any police force or Special Constabulary."[1] It's just one person's website, with a discussion forum.

WP:ELNO #10 says that we avoid forums on general principle (the principle, in this case, being that Wikipedia editors that are providing a link should know what's on the page, and "what's on the page" changes every time someone posts to a chat room, so it's impossible to know what our readers will see).

I don't think that the website has an offensive amount of advertising (WP:ELNO #5), but the edit summaries might be indicating WP:ELNO #4, which is perhaps possible. Ultimately, this clearly isn't the worst link on Wikipedia, but I'm not convinced that it's a good link for the article. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:58, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the response, guess i appear to be a bit out of touch since i'm back from my hiatus. Guess its back to reading the rules. :) Uksam88 (talk) 21:22, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

I'm happy to tell you what I know; don't be afraid to ask, especially about borderline cases like this.

Please remember that WP:ELNO is not WP:ELNEVER. Editors at the article are allowed to provide links to a "normally avoided" website if they think it's valuable to the general reader (e.g., not past, current, or future constables). For example, some 'mostly forum' websites have a good history or FAQ page that could be linked directly and would be interesting to just about anyone that bothered to read our article. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:11, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

Links to knol articles appropriate?

Please look at 63.218.3.246's contributions. Are these links to knol articles acceptable? --NeilN ^{talk to me} 14:19, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

Has this anon done anything except add and update links to Knol?

Knol probably meets the standards for acceptable wikis (WP:ELNO #12), but links-only editing is discouraged (especially from IP addresses that have a reputation for being spam-friendly). WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:07, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

No they haven't. I was going to revert the lot but the knol articles actually looked well-sourced and useful. I couldn't find out much about the author though. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 20:16, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

All of the knols appear to be written by the same author, so it's highly unlikely that the IP is sprinkling random knols around Wikipedia. Also, the author doesn't appear to be notable in any way. Treating knols as a personal pages, the links would fail ELNO #11; and they also appear to be promotional. I say remove them. ThemFromSpace 22:51, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

Informationtennis.com

I was wondering about the suitability of player profiles on informationtennis.com for tennis player articles, which TennisSpecialOne (talk · contribs) has been keen to add}}. I'm wondering in particular about Sabine Lisicki, which seems to have adequate number of external links already. Informationtennis.com, on the other hand, is barely ranked [http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/informationtennis.com on Alexa and Google only returns 3 backlinks, so it is by no means a notable site. And I explained to the user that if it was a reliable site, then it would probably be better put to use as a source rather than an external link. Mosmof (talk) 15:27, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

Letter from the editor a valid external link?

This file is a letter from Fred Woodworth to the person that runs "The Classic Typewriter page." The letter is being used as an external link in Killian documents controversy. Is this a valid external link? Hipocrite (talk) 00:09, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Is the letter mentioned or discussed within the article? If so, a direct link to it would be nice as it adds extra information that's relevant to the article that we can't write directly due to space and copyright concerns. If the letter isn't directly applicable to the article, and isn't able to be mentioned within the text, I would say it would be superfluous. ThemFromSpace 22:44, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

It is not prohibited under this guideline. Woodworth's political views or official credentials are irrelevant; we're not trying to figure out whether it's a reliable source. We care whether it has accurate, on-topic, meaningful, and/or relevant. It meets those standards. It also doesn't fail any of the ELNEVER or ELNO lines. It is therefore not prohibited.

Thousands of links meet these standards, and editors have to use their own judgment about whether a "not prohibited" link should actually be included.

The section as a whole needs to be weeded with WP:NOTDIR in mind: Wikipedia does not provide a comprehensive directory of all the related documents, period. This is not WikiSource. The section also needs to be re-formatted to comply with the first sentence in WP:LAYOUT#Standard_appendices_and_footers. It might also be worth re-formatting some of the short lists of documents into a single link (like "CBS documents: 1, 2, 3, 4" instead of using four separate lines) to reduce the amount of screen real estate dedicated to external links. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:59, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov and User:205.152.158.201

• ncbi.nlm.nih.gov: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot-Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com
• 205.152.158.201 (talk • contribs • deleted contribs • blacklist hits • AbuseLog • what links to user page • COIBot • Spamcheck • count • block log • x-wiki • Edit filter search • WHOIS • RDNS • tracert • robtex.com • StopForumSpam • Google • AboutUs • Project HoneyPot)

I've seen these links popping up for some time now and I've generally disregarded them, but the spamming behaviour by the IP (over 100 links placed with no content added) is really concerning. I haven't reverted these to avoid the bruhaha that happened over the nzonscreen link, but I do think discussion of this situation is warranted. ThemFromSpace 22:21, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

GeneReviews are substantial, detailed, and free medical reports about usually rare conditions. They could certainly be used as refs for article content, but their content exceeds our scope and therefore complies with WP:ELNO #1. I'd rather have links to these than any number of "patient support fundraising groups".

Link-only editors aren't as valuable to Wikipedia as people that will make the effort to develop article content, but I think that stopping this editor simply because s/he isn't doing more at this time would harm the encyclopedia.

What I'd really like is to get this editor connected, with an account and a willingness to check in at WP:MED or WP:MEDGEN, and to turn these into WP:Reliable sources for high-quality article content -- but these links are better than nothing. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:43, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the input. I had an idea that the links had some merit, but I'll defer to your judgement if you're willing to vouch for them. The spamming behavour still irks me, although its less of a problem now. ThemFromSpace 22:55, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

GeneReviews has been added to {{Infobox_disease}}; see Template:Infobox_disease#GeneReviews for documentation. WhatamIdoing (talk) 07:30, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

What I generally do with these good links is check a bit, are they considerate in their additions (correct place, still adding to the page and not just linkfarming, not a spammy sentence that they add but a neutral format of the addition, etc. etc.), and if so, leave them. I do try to discuss with the editor if possible. If the editor is related to the site in some way, then I think Wikipedia:COI#Subject and culture sector professionals and maybe WP:GLAM may be applicable here. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 10:13, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

Description of external link in MigrationWatch UK‎ article

Hi. Input into a discussion I've been having at Talk:MigrationWatch UK about the text to use in an external link would be much appreciated. Cordless Larry (talk) 01:13, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

Hi, I replied over at that article's talk page. ThemFromSpace 01:58, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, much appreciated. Cordless Larry (talk) 10:03, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

Fiat Automobiles

I am disputing the addition of an EL here. This is a page on an international company and links to the websites of specific outlets seems contrary to policy. If editors here consider that the link is fine that's fine and I'll leave it. However, if it is thought to be inappropriate then I should welcome someone else removing it since I have now removed it twice which is my limit. Bridgeplayer (talk) 20:12, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

• Strong Keep - Significant to the article. section Fiat Marylebone. A useful and relevant EL to the official website. G87 22:06, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

This is not a keep/delete !vote; it is a discussion on the application of policy. Far from being 'useful and relevant' it is actually spam. Bridgeplayer (talk) 22:52, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

It's actually the official website of Fiat Marylebone, which is part of Fiat Automobiles. And I think you'll find that it does not violate WP:EL policy as it relates to main part of the article. Not spam and very relevant. G87 23:20, 12 December 2009 (UTC)