User:Fadix/EL

Wikipedia is not a web directory. However, adding a certain number of external links is of valuable service to our readers. No page should consist solely of a collection of external links. Wikipedia always prefers internal links, even to non-existent articles, over external links. See also When should I link externally.

What to link to
In Wikipedia, it is possible to link to external websites. Such links are referred to as "external links". Many articles have a small section containing a few external links. There are a few things which should be considered when adding an external link.
 * 1) Is it accessible?
 * 2) Is it proper? (useful, tasteful, etc?)
 * 3) Is it entered correctly?

In general, external links should be accessible by the widest audience possible. That is, try to avoid sites requiring payment, registration, or extra applications (Flash, Java, etc.) to see the relevant content, at least if there is a simpler site available. If the best/only site does have such requirements, it is best to include a note to that effect. For people with a slow connection, also mention the size if that is large. Examples: "(requires Java)", "(1 MB PDF file)", "(requires registration)". The same applies to any sites with ads that spawn new windows.

What should be linked to

 * 1) Official sites should be added to the page of any organization, person, or other entity that has an official site.
 * 2) Sites that have been cited or used as references in the creation of a text. Intellectual honesty requires that any site actually used as a reference be cited. To fail to do so is plagiarism.
 * 3) If a book or other text that is the subject of an article exists somewhere on the Internet it should be linked to.
 * 4) On articles with multiple Points of View, a link to sites dedicated to each, with a detailed explanation of each link. The number of links dedicated to one POV compared to another should be dependent to the proportion to its representation among experts on the subject, or among the concerned parties.
 * 5) One should attempt to add comments to these links informing the reader of what their POV is, and the presentation of the comment should respect Neutral Point of View, since it is part of the article.
 * 6) High content pages that contain neutral and accurate material not already in the article. Ideally this content should be integrated into the Wikipedia article at which point the link would remain as a reference.

Maybe OK to add

 * 1) For albums, movies, books: one or two links to professional reviews which express some sort of general sentiment. For films, Movie Review Query Engine, Internet Movie DataBase, Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic offer especially large collections of reviews. To access the list of other collections of movie reviews available online, please use this link.
 * 2) Web directories: When deemed appropriate by those contributing to an article on Wikipedia, a link to one web directory listing can be added, with preference to open directories (if two are comparable and only one is open). If deemed unnecessary, or if no good directory listing exists, one should not be included.
 * 3) Fan sites: On articles about topics with many fansites, including a link to one major fansite is appropriate, marking the link as such. In extreme cases, a link to a web directory of fansites can replace this link.

What should not be linked to

 * 1) Wikipedia disapproves strongly of links that are added for advertising purposes. Adding links to one's own page is strongly discouraged.  The mass adding of links to any website is also strongly discouraged, and any such operation should be raised at the Village Pump or other such page and approved by the community before going ahead.  Persistently linking to one's own site is considered Vandalism and can result in sanctions.  See also External link spamming.
 * 2) Links to a site that is selling products, unless it applies via a "do" above.
 * 3) Links to sites, which are freely hosted, and which the domain name is the one of the hoster, are strongly discouraged, unless a notable person is the author and that his name and contact(example, email address) is present in the site.
 * 4) Links to sites, which is principally the opinion of an individual(original research), about the subject, unless the person is notable, or has written a notable book, in the domain treated in the article.
 * 5) Links to sites, when the material included in it, is already present in other links already included in the article.
 * 6) Of course, links to sites, which the subject has little to do with the subject of the article.
 * 7) Ideally, sites which take position, and mostly treats about elements of the subject of the article, should not be included, if those elements are not covered in the article. More particularly, when those elements covered are disagreed by most of experts on the subject, or among the concerned parties. Edit the article and cover it, and present the different positions concerning that point, and then, you could include that site. This restriction does not apply to a site, that does not take position, or an official site of a position.

What can be done with a dead external link
External links to dead URLs are of no use to Wikipedia articles. Such dead links should either be removed or updated with archived versions, which may be found at the Internet Archive Wayback Machine.

Note that some dead links are caused by vandalism (for example, a vandal disabling links to products competing with vandal's favorite product). It may therefore be worth checking to see if there is a working link in earlier versions of article. Some vandalism of this type is quite subtle, e.g., replacing ASCII letters in the URL with identical-looking Cyrillic letters.

External links section
There are two basic formats for external links. The most common is to add a list of external links at the end of an article. Put here, in list form, any web sites that you have used or recommend for readers of the article. The standard format for these is to have a top level header named "External links" followed by a bullet list of links.

If an article has a large number of external links, it may be helpful to use subheaders to classify them. This can be done using another level of section heading, which will then appear in the table of contents, or with the "semi-colon" syntax, like this: which yields:
 * External Links
 * Link 1
 * Link 2
 * External Links
 * Link 1
 * Link 2

If you link to another website, you should give your reader a good summary of the site's contents, and the reasons why this specific website is relevant to the article in question. If you cite an online article, try to provide as much meaningful citation information as possible.

"External links" vs "External link"
Some editors use the header "External link" if there is only one link, but others use "External links" in all cases. There is currently no consensus on which is better. Editors who always use the plural form may prefer it for any of the following reasons:


 * 1) experience shows that future editors often add links without changing the section heading
 * 2) people may be dissuaded from adding links to a section titled "External link" since it seems that there should only be one link
 * 3) using "External links" gives greater stylistic consistency to Wikipedia

The converse arguments are:
 * 1) Wikipedia's community-editing leads to prompt correction of such oversights.
 * 2) There is no evidence that a significant number of people would be dissuaded from adding links.  Besides, additional links would often be redundant.
 * 3) Use of "External links" to is fundamentally incorrect, a poor precedent to set in an encyclopedia