User talk:Cruftbane

Online Library of Liberty
Liberty Fund may be a right-wing think tank, but the Online Library of Liberty also produces major reprints of old editions of works in the history of philosophy and political thought, which are freely available/downloadable. These editions are edited by/have introductions by people such as Wolfgang Leidhold, Knud Haakonssen, James Moore, and Michael Silverthorne, and are regularly used/cited in published academic work. The OLL has won awards from the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council, the US National Endowment for the Humanities, and the International Political Science Association. The OLL is a useful resource used by many people, including myself and colleagues, who do not share the political views of Liberty Fund. Endymion.12 (talk) 15:22, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Yes, it does. And these reprints of out of copyright material are also available from sources that are ideologically neutral, and thus preferred for Wikipedia. We should not link to royalty-free material on ideological sites unless there is no alternative. See, , , , , , , , , , , , , and note that econlib and libertyfund host identical content for these works. It looks very much as if the alternate domain is being used as an end-run around blacklisting in some cases, but regardless, where an ideologically loaded source is replaceable by a neutral one, Wikipedia's policy and ethos demands that we do so. Cruftbane 16:36, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
 * The editions themselves are for the most part free of ideological content. OLL editions are downloadable, searchable, and are much more easily navigable than archive.org or gutenberg.org versions. Econlib.org and oll.libertyfund.org are different websites. There is currently nothing in Wikipedia policies or guidelines which would prevent external links to OLL being included in articles where these may be useful. Endymion.12 (talk) 18:36, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
 * True, but they are hosted on a site promoting an extreme ideology and, given that the content is the same (these are, after all, out of copyright), there is no credible reason to link the think tank rather than a neutral free source. There have also been instances where the content is misleadingly presented, or where the attirbution is misrepresented here, or where the content is not, in fact, free, for example content published in the UK by authors who died less than 50 years ago. Cruftbane 21:01, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Can you give examples of where content has been presented in a misleading way, or where the "attribution is misrepresented", or where the content is not free? Endymion.12 (talk) 22:54, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
 * I'll take that as a "no". Endymion.12 (talk) 15:15, 18 June 2019 (UTC)