Wikipedia:External links/Noticeboard/Archive 21

AsianWiki.com and blog.asianwiki.com


AsianWiki links exist on 290+ pages. They are being added as an external link (even when they serve no additional value alongside sites like IMDB and HanCinema): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_Harassment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choi_Ri https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeong_Yong-ki

The most important thing is that AsianWiki is a user-generated website, which is not reliable WP:UGC. It also goes against WP:ELNO. Links normally to be avoided: (✓) Any site that does not provide a unique resource beyond what the article would contain if it became a featured article. In other words, the site should not merely repeat information that is already or should be in the article. Links for future improvement of the page can be placed on the article's talk page. (✓) http://blog.asianwiki.com/ Blog AsianWiki Blogs, personal web pages and most fansites (negative ones included).

They have been linking to their website instead of not linking, linking to other language Wikipedia using Template:ill, or keeping the link red. As what is happening on this page, Special Affairs Team TEN. Kang Sung-Min, Jang Won-Young, Song Yoo Ha, and Jang In-Sub are all linking to AsianWiki for no reason.

Moreover, instead of citing news articles (Which can easily be found for the pages I provided), they cite their database page as a source. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Han_Bo-bae#cite_ref-5 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yesung#cite_ref-39 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nam_Woo-hyun#cite_ref-30

In addition, the users affiliated with AsianWiki are under investigation for sock puppeting Sockpuppet investigations/24.252.92.90, which goes against WP:ADV. NTMun12 (talk) 12:22, 28 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Blacklisted. Please clean up as and when you can. Guy (Help!) 22:28, 28 April 2018 (UTC)


 * The blacklist seems harsh. I can't find any specific 1 or a small group of users applying the external links for spam purposes. In the case of mydramalist, a few threads up which I made, the problem was 1 person CherryPie94 created the wikipedia mydramalist page, arabic wikipedia mydramlist page (which is still up), external link mydramalist template, category pages organizing mydramalist titles to wikidata and linking to their website hundreds of times. Shouldn't there be some kind of consensus on whether a website should be blacklisted, especially if there isn't any type spamming? In the case of Sockpuppet investigations/24.252.92.90 of course it is CherryPie94 raising the issue. Nicemagnet (talk) 08:42, 29 April 2018 (UTC)
 * P.S. How did the person that posted this thread even know about the Sockpuppet investigations/24.252.92.90 that CherryPie94 reported ? Nicemagnet (talk) 09:10, 29 April 2018 (UTC)


 * This seriously proves you are affiliated AsianWiki. Thanks for tagging/notifying me and giving me evidence. You made an account and got another website banned, but now that your website is banned you are angry. I don't know the other user, you can do a sock puppet investigation if you want. Moreover, now it is confirmed that you are affiliated with AsianWiki and have a conflict of interest.  CherryPie94  &#x1F352;&#x1f967; (talk) 09:21, 29 April 2018 (UTC)


 * I just have a conflict of interest with you and your constant spamming on wikipedia/wikidata of mydramalist links. Also congrats on the Arabic Wikipedia Mydramalist page [ماي دراما ليست] you still got up with your "Watch DramaFever directly on MyDramaList!" affiliate link embedded in the article. There is no conceivable reason why you created an Arabic Wikipedia page for an English language website, other than you are spamming links to your own website. Nicemagnet (talk) 09:37, 29 April 2018 (UTC)


 * How did the person that posted this thread even know about the bogus Sockpuppet investigations/24.252.92.90 claim that only CherryPie94 knew about (he is the only person that made the report)? Nicemagnet (talk) 09:58, 29 April 2018 (UTC)


 * Well the only way the person that posted this thread knew about the false Sockpuppet investigations/24.252.92.90 claim is that they and CherryPie94 are the same person or same person through proxy. CherryPie94 is the only person to have made the false report of a sockpuppet (which ironically he seems to be doing here) and to have known about the false report. This is just some of the other highly questionable actions CherryPie94 has taken (listed in chronological order)
 * Created mydramalist page on Arabic language Wikipedia (now deleted)
 * Created mydramalist page on English language Wikipedia (now deleted)
 * Created mydramalist page on Wikidata (still up here)
 * Created Wikipedia external link templates to mydramalist (now deleted)
 * Created Category pages to organize links between Wikidata and mydramalist (now deleted)
 * Asked by another Wikipedia user about having conflict of interests with mydramalist, but denied it.
 * Changed his username
 * continued to add hundreds of external links to mydramalist (now deleted)
 * continued to add hundreds of links on wikidata to mydramalist (still up) Nicemagnet (talk) 00:29, 1 May 2018 (UTC)


 * This has gone for long and it is blatant Harassment. I told you I don't know the other user and you may do a usercheck if you want. Sockpuppet investigations/24.252.92.90 has over 366 views in the last 30 days, the user might be one of them. Moreover, stop with the false claim "continued to add hundreds of links on wikidata to mydramalist (still up)", I have not been adding wikidata link, except for the official links of TV series since T:ITV was updated. MyDramaList template was deleted (after I requested that), what more do you want? If you are not sockpuppeting, the user check would show it. Personally, I find it weird that you only created your account to Harass and have not contributed at all to Wikipedia. If you don't mind, I would appropriate not being tagged every couple of days by you, as I have other pages to help edit on Wikipedia.  CherryPie94  &#x1F352;&#x1f967; (talk) 08:16, 1 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Out of all the questionable actions I just listed, all you can refute is the amount of external links you have added on Wikidata to mydramalist? Why don't you deny that you created the mydramalist arabic wikipedia page, the mydramalist english wikipedia page, the mydramalist wikidata page, the mydramalist wikipedia external link templates, that you added external links to mydramalist on wikipedia articles and wikidata? Because taken as a whole or even in parts, that clearly shows your conflict of interest. Nicemagnet (talk) 14:28, 1 May 2018 (UTC)


 * What does COI have to do with this page? I have not been adding mydramalist recently, even requested it to be deleted to show that I have no COI, and the pages have been deleted. So there is no use to keep claiming I have COI when I have not be editing related articles or even mentioning that website. Also, per WP:COI, "If an editor edits in a way that leads you to believe they might have a COI, raise the issue in a civil manner on the editor's talk page citing this guideline. Avoid making disparaging comments about the subject of the article, its author, or the author's motives. When investigating COI editing, the policy against harassment takes precedence." Therefore, this is not the right place for this.   CherryPie94  &#x1F352;&#x1f967; (talk) 15:14, 1 May 2018 (UTC)


 * Conflict of interest has to do with this page because the original poster referenced the false Sockpuppet investigations/24.252.92.90 claim that only you knew about and reported. Your reply that the page "has over 366 views in the last 30 days, the user might be one of them" doesn't explain how the original poster knew about the false sockpuppet report that only you knew about. That page has 366 views because it was linked to from this thread. The original poster also never appears again in this thread, but of course you are here. Look at your history of blatant biased spamming of mydramalist. None of which were deleted until after your website was blacklisted a few weeks ago (except the English language mydramalist page which got nuked by another wikipedia editor pretty fast after you made it and even then you tried to argue why it should not be deleted by claiming "it's one of the most famous 5,000 websites by Alexa").
 * Created mydramalist page on Arabic language Wikipedia (now deleted)
 * Created mydramalist page on English language Wikipedia (now deleted)
 * Created mydramalist page on Wikidata (still up here)
 * Created Wikipedia external link templates to mydramalist (now deleted)
 * Created Category pages to organize links between Wikidata and mydramalist (now deleted)
 * Asked by another Wikipedia user about having conflict of interests with mydramalist, but denied it.
 * Changed his username
 * continued to add hundreds of external links to mydramalist (now deleted)
 * continued to add hundreds of links on wikidata to mydramalist (still up) Nicemagnet (talk) 00:06, 5 May 2018 (UTC)


 * As a recap the Sockpuppet investigations/24.252.92.90 cited by the original poster of this thread was a false report and closed by those that monitor those reports. Meanwhile, the original poster of this thread made their account only to post on this thread and cited wikipedia rules like an experienced editor. Furthermore, the original poster cited Sockpuppet investigations/24.252.92.90 that only one Wikipedia editor should have known about and that person is CherryPie94. He is the only person to have filed the false Sockpuppet report and the original poster of this thread should not have known about it unless they are the same person. The original poster also never appears again in this thread, but CherryPie94 does appear instead. Nicemagnet (talk) 09:43, 11 May 2018 (UTC)

Inline links to public domain scripture


I found a number of inline links to biblica.com and a vastly greater number to biblegateway.com. these are mostly to out of copyright work such as the King James BIBLE. is this appropriate? Guy (Help!) 08:53, 13 May 2018 (UTC)
 * ( Can you link to some examples?)
 * We generally discourage in-text external links, and I don't see why we have to link to these text in-line, we link to subjects. On these subjects an external link to said work may be appropriate (though there I question whether we should link to n external works which all have the same text which in some cases is then also available on WikiSource).  I think we should write about a subject ...
 * We could consider that we could inline link to WikiSource .. but even that seems 'surprising' to me. --Dirk Beetstra T  C 11:01, 13 May 2018 (UTC)
 * We have bibleverse to link to various versions of the bible on wikisource:. Isn't that more appropriate? & keeps the traffic on the wiki? Cabayi (talk) 18:04, 13 May 2018 (UTC)
 * For the links that are templated, it is trivial to convert those. For the rest a bot could likely do a lot of good.  —Dirk Beetstra T  C 20:29, 13 May 2018 (UTC)

request to add P2477 (BDRC ID) in Authority Control template
I would like to request the inclusion of BDRC ID in the Authority Control template. Would that be reasonable? If so I can change the template myself.Élie Roux (talk) 15:48, 27 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Please link to a couple of articles where that item would display something, and include the links that would be shown. Johnuniq (talk) 22:46, 27 May 2018 (UTC)

MusicBrainz
Is MusicBrainz an appropriate external link to add to a large number of articles? See for example the entry for Don Cossacks Choir Russia. Nikkimaria (talk) 11:58, 15 May 2018 (UTC)
 * No link is appropriate to add to a large number of articles, except if a proper consensus exists for that. The external link has to comply with our inclusion standards, which needs to be evaluated on a case-by-case basis.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 12:11, 15 May 2018 (UTC)
 * To rephrase: that link is already being added to a large number of articles within authority control; I'm looking for some input on whether people on this board think that is or isn't a good idea. Nikkimaria (talk) 21:54, 15 May 2018 (UTC)


 * MusicBrainz looks like somewhat notable. The entry for the choir mainly mirrors Wikipedia, which is disappointing when you expect new information. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 16:32, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Currently the MusicBrainz inclusion in the authority control box is too narrow imho, i.e. only musicians. For instance, "Bist du bei mir" has the MusicBrainz work ID in its Wikidata item, but that authority control number does not show up in the authority control box at the bottom of the "Bist du bei mir" article. "Musicians" is also only a small selection of mankind, so if only MusicBrainz musician IDs can be included in the authority control box that is imho too much hassle for too small a scope. Either all MusicBrainz IDs, i.e. from all of their categories, are carried by the authority control box, or none, imho. --Francis Schonken (talk) 18:39, 20 May 2018 (UTC) (updated, see below 08:39, 24 May 2018 (UTC))
 * It currently appears on Jan van Eyck, who certainly was not known as a musician, and where the link is pretty useless. Unfortunately it apparently isn't possible to suppress display of the link in such cases, except by removing the template. Nikkimaria (talk) 18:56, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Agree, the Van Eyck link to MusicBrainz is pretty stupid. So, in sum, I'd propose to remove the MusicBrainz ID from the authority control box until several issues are addressed, including (but not necessarily limited to) [1] possibility to suppress a MBID link on individual pages; [2] possibility to include useful MBID links on other pages than those of musicians. --Francis Schonken (talk) 19:22, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
 * For clarity, there is an interesting connection between Van Eyck and music (e.g. 2015 exhibition, 2016 recording, ...), but since none of that remotely appears on the MusicBrainz page about Van Eyck, linking to it from the English Wikipedia page on the painter is indeed pretty silly. --Francis Schonken (talk) 20:19, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
 * There's nothing wrong with MusicBrainz as part of the authority control per se. But this problem with van Eyck hints at the larger issue we have with templates that show data from Wikidata. Because of the two projects' differing aims, we sometimes want to suppress displaying some data from WD here at WP. But this shouldn't be an all-or-nothing choice; good templates allow us to suppress individual data entries. The template already allows us to override, but not suppress, individual parameters. We should simply update it to allow suppression as well. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 09:22, 22 May 2018 (UTC)
 * I can work on adding a parameter to the template to suppress MusicBrainz IDs if that would help assuage your concerns. Legoktm (talk) 19:25, 23 May 2018 (UTC)


 * It would be extremely helpful to add options to suppress individual identifiers of all stripes without requiring them to be removed from Wikidata. Nikkimaria (talk) 18:18, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
 * and that is exactly the solution I don’t want to see: either this solution becomes that we transclude all from WikiData except the fields we suppress, or only fields we explicitly enable. Both are confusing to editors.  Only an all-or-nothing solution will do.  —Dirk Beetstra T  C 19:47, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Agree with my colleagues below: remove MusicBrainz from the authority control box ASAP. --Francis Schonken (talk) 15:37, 23 May 2018 (UTC)


 * Drop it from authority control. It is a wiki, which should disqualify it immediately. Furthermore, the first example I looked at, for Queen, starts since 2012 with an "annotation note": "Note: Please add any 2011 Remaster releases to either Universal Island Records or Hollywood Records and not Island Records. Any previously added releases which fall under this category should be edited." which is irrelevant. Then you get ... the Wikipedia article you just came from. No thanks. Looking at a lesser known musician like Tom Vanstiphout, you get on Musicbrainz a woefully incomplete discography. The Radios links to the wrong Musicbrainz page (a related page, but not really useful). The correct link would have been this, which lists three singles instead of the 15 charting singles they had (plus perhaps non-charting ones). The Waikikis get one album at Musicbrainz, but a truckload at our article and at Discogs. De Kreuners released their first five albums between 1981 and 1986, but according to Musicbrainz four of these were released in 1990, and the fifth one is missing. Will Tura had, according to our article, 128 albums released. Musicbrainz lists 4 of them... These are (apart from Vanstiphout) really big names, household names in Flanders (feel free to check with any Flemish editor here), not an attempt to find one obscure thing they have missed.
 * Basically, it adds little for well-known artists and is utterly unreliable for lesser-known ones (with lesser-known meaning "very popular elsewhere, but not in USA/UK"). Please remove it. Fram (talk) 12:05, 23 May 2018 (UTC)


 * Deprecate now and remove expeditiously. As above, it is not a reliable source, so fails the definition of "authority". Guy (Help!) 12:24, 23 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Just to clarify, the term "authority" in authority control mostly refers to that it's a unique ID issued (or generated) by that organization AIUI. Legoktm (talk) 19:24, 23 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Hi, I originally proposed adding these to the template back in 2013 (discussion). In my experience, MusicBrainz IDs are generally the standard identifiers for artists and albums. IIRC Amazon, last.fm, and a bunch of other sites and software use them as the canonical identifiers. I'm not sure whether it's fully within guidelines to include a link to MusicBrainz at the bottom of these articles, but I do think it is valuable to include the identifier itself. Legoktm (talk) 19:30, 23 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Why? We don't link to amazon, last.fm, ... anyway, so why would we need the identifier issued by an unreliable site and used by these other sites? It's on Wikidata, if someone really needs an unreadable long string to connect to amazon or so instead of just using the search function like 99.9% of users do. But we normally don't link to unreliable wikis, and this one clearly is such (see my post above). Fram (talk) 19:47, 23 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks for linking the old discussion, however that discussion is, afaics, way before authority control started to extract links from Wikidata, and I even doubt that at the time it was recommended to inlude that box on almost any article. Anyhow, under current conditions it leads to widespread linkspam. There are a variety of "external link" type of templates supporting MusicBrainz IDs (e.g. MusicBrainz artist), but I doubt such templates are usable on a broad scale: in most cases they would obviously be too spammy to be acceptable in an external links section. Including them in the authority control is defeats the purpose of that box and leads to institutionalised linkspam. --Francis Schonken (talk) 08:39, 24 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Yes - Keep it It's a significant identifier, used, among others, by the BBC. Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 23:10, 24 May 2018 (UTC)
 * That's their problem. Why would we add an unreliable wiki to our articles? Having the identifier on itself does nothing to help our readers understand the topic better, and using the identifier brings them to unreliable, incomplete, and often wrong information. Such identifiers are fine at Wikidata, but please explain how they help our readers, which is the only reason we should display anything in an article. Fram (talk) 04:33, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
 * They help our readers to uniquely identify subjects, which is the purpose of Authority control. Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:11, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Can you give a practical example of where a musicbrainz ID would help our readers identify the subject better than the actual article does? I have e.g. looked at the 3 bands called Nirvana, and I don't see what the musicbrainz ID does for a reader to identify the band which isn't already clear from the very article you start from (and which is the start of the musicbrainz entry anyway). Fram (talk) 13:29, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
 * If that's your argument, TfD is available. Good luck. Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 14:15, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
 * No, my argument is that this identifier is a wiki, is unreliable, with too many errors, and that therefor this identifier should be removed from the template. That's not what TfD is for. Your argument to keep is "it is an identifier", which is rather circular reasoning, and doesn't explain how this identifier helps our readers in reality. It doesn't help to uniquely identify the subject (you get a one-on-one with the article you come from in the best of cases, or you get to something wrong in other cases), and the other information it provides is not sufficiently reliable and informative to keep the ID anyway. Other identifiers in the template are much more reliable and (at least with some identifiers) a lot more informative, even though many others are debatable (either shouldn't be shown in this template at all, or are only useful for a subset of all articles they are shown on now). But this discussion is only about musicbrainz, and I ask you to provide some supporting evidence for your statements, just like I have done in my "drop it" above: I have shown multiple cases where the info on musicbrainz is significantly worse than our article, or just wrong. Fram (talk) 14:45, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Widely used certainly is a conditio sine qua non, but it's not the only thing that matters in this context. ISBN numbers are much more widely used (not only by the BBC and a variety of vendors), but not included in the authority control box. The wider picture is that it is now recommended that authority control is placed on every article: even if it doesn't show anything at all it is considered harmless. Well, we mass-removed the persondata—harmless, didn't show anything—but if I remember well Andy can relate to the fact that we took the effort to remove them all nonetheless. If it is not in keeping with the WP:EL guidance, "harmless" is not the correct qualification anyhow. A few false positives I could live with too (... if it were only the musical Van Eyck, I'd let it slip), but in general, I'd think that for a template that is thus widely used we have to ask ourselves what it brings to most of the articles. I'd say that then far too often it brings a rather spammy MusicBrainz external link. Thus I'd limit what can appear in the authority control box at English Wikipedia to a few well-chosen high quality identifiers such as BnF or comparable calibre. --Francis Schonken (talk) 09:26, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
 * ISBNs identify editions, not works, so are not suitable for authority control. Got any other straw men you'd like me to debunk? Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:11, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Exactly, there's more to the picture than just "signi[fi]cant identifier" and "used, among others, by the BBC". These are just platitudes, hardly meaningful rationales for inclusion or not in the authority control box. --Francis Schonken (talk) 13:54, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
 * "Significant identifier" is not a platitude; it is precisely why something should be included in Authority control. Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 14:12, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
 * As established, ISBN is a "significant identifier", so that's an empty qualifier as far as inclusion in the authority control box goes. Because there's a broader picture. Being a significant identifier does not suffice for inclusion in that box. --Francis Schonken (talk) 14:53, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
 * As established, ISBN is a "significant identifier" for editions, not works; our articles are generally for works not editions. Still a straw man.  Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 16:09, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
 * The MusicBrainz work identifier does not show up in the authority control box (see above). --Francis Schonken (talk) 07:17, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Indeed. Where did I say it did? Another straw man. Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 16:55, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
 * No straw man at all: reasons for inclusion in/exclusion from the authority control box can not be reduced to "significant identifier, used, among others, by the BBC", as I said all along. The given counter-examples illustrate that. --Francis Schonken (talk) 05:42, 27 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Another counter-example: Köchel catalogue (K) numbers:
 * "significant identifier, used, among others, by the BBC"
 * & about "works", not "editions"
 * ... yet, not included in authority control (nor would I think that a good idea, for clarity)
 * In sum, "significant identifier, used, among others, by the BBC" is a red herring. --Francis Schonken (talk) 06:42, 27 May 2018 (UTC)


 * Where do you see BBC using K for authority control? —Freso (talk) 15:55, 1 June 2018 (UTC)


 * Also, I just found out that CiNii, currently included in the authority control box, is about editions, not works. And far less used than ISBN. --Francis Schonken (talk) 14:41, 1 June 2018 (UTC)


 * «[CiNiis] are also assigned to authors of books, and of journal articles» according to the CiNii article, which is likely what they're used for in the context of Wikidata] and, by extension, the authority control box. ([[Wikidata doesn't identify books and music releases etc. to the level of the specific edition/release, so a CiNii edition identifier doesn't seem like it would be appropriate for WD to begin with.) I don't see how it's relevant for the current discussion about excluding MBIDs. —Freso (talk) 15:55, 1 June 2018 (UTC)


 * Remove from the template. En.wikipedia is not a database.  Any identifier in that template should be chosen on a case-by-case evaluation, and there is never need to have all of them there (there are over 40 choices, where 2-3 at max will do).  The way this is currently implemented overrules our content policies.  —Dirk Beetstra T  C 19:47, 26 May 2018 (UTC)


 * Yes - Keep it – if MusicBrainz is good enough to be used as authority control for ISNI, it should be good enough for Wikipedia. MusicBrainz is no more and no less reliable than Wikipedia, so the idea that MusicBrainz isn't proper for authority control because it's a wiki seems a bit odd. (Then again, I am biased.) —Freso (talk) 22:11, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Another thought: MusicBrainz is an open source, open data project (as far as I know the only of its kind to be both). The MetaBrainz Foundation and Wikimedia Foundation's projects have a significant overlap in their goals (and a decent one for contributors) and many projects under the two have a history of working well together too. (One of the contractors of MetaBrainz is even currently on the board of Wikimedia Estonia.) Unless there's a heavy weighing policy reason to remove/block MusicBrainz links from the authority file blurb, I don't see why this teeny tiny way of giving some support and maybe even traffic to a fellow "open everything" project needs to demonised away. (And again, I am biased.) —Freso (talk) 22:11, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Also note that the Help:Authority control page specifically mentions MusicBrainz: «Authority control enables researchers to search more easily for pertinent information on the subject of an article, without needing to disambiguate the subject manually. For example, authority control is used on music articles so that the information in the article can be easily cross-referenced with the popular MusicBrainz database. This enables many media applications to display information from the relevant Wikipedia article when a song is played.» — Preceding unsigned comment added by Freso (talk • contribs)
 * authority control does not display information about songs, so I removed that erroneous explanation from the help page. --Francis Schonken (talk) 05:39, 27 May 2018 (UTC)
 * "if MusicBrainz is good enough to be used as authority control for ISNI, it should be good enough for Wikipedia." I see that MB includes the identifier on ISNI, but where does ISNI list the identifier from MB? E.g. Arcade Fire on MB has the link to ISNI, but the reverse seems not to be true (it has links to VIAF, DNB and BNF though). Fram (talk) 14:23, 28 May 2018 (UTC)


 * Tommy Sands' ISNI page has an "MUBZ" link, which is them linking to MusicBrainz. —Freso (talk) 14:18, 1 June 2018 (UTC)


 * Keep with option to suppress We should definitely not remove the ability to list MBIDs in the article completely, but maybe MB Artist IDs should be enabled on a per-article basis (or suppressed with an empty  if not wanted, like we do with WikiData in infoboxes).
 * I also think that the MB Work IDs should be added to the template, since they would be more useful for song and album articles. Plus, they may have a better accuracy rate, since, at least in my experience, a majority of the editing effort in MusicBrainz happens at the work/release level anyway.
 * And finally, I agree with 's points above. MusicBrainz is a very useful database, and if problems or inaccuracies are found with the data, we could employ the same tactics we use here on Wikipedia, and improve it. Disclaimer: I am also a MusicBrainz editor. — AfroThundr (t•c) 16:51, 27 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Keep because some people (waves) actually find it useful to have these identifiers. And most those people would never find this obscure back-room discussion page. Plus I don't understand why so many comments above are dead set against reciprocal links to a fellow non-profit wiki, which is a nice thing to do and consist with the CC ecosystem. Plus all this crap about it not being a reliable source is irrelevant bollocks, since it's not being used as a reference, it's not even in the reference section. JLJ001 (talk) 18:53, 27 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Keep it, and allow the template to suppress display of individual parameters if article-level consensus has decided so. There is nothing "confusing" or difficult about it. It's a widely used identification. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 13:56, 29 May 2018 (UTC)

Should this be an RfC?
I'm wondering if maybe we should turn this into an RfC covering MBIDs in general, not just Artist IDs. Something like:

Then we could get the wider community to weigh in on this. — AfroThundr (t•c) 19:13, 27 May 2018 (UTC)


 * We could do that, sure. I'm wondering, was this discussion raised in a MusicBrainz forum of some kind? Nikkimaria (talk) 20:58, 27 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Not as far as I'm aware, although maybe if the MusicBrainz staff were aware of our concerns with linking their data, they could work on directing efforts to improve it. — AfroThundr (t•c) 21:05, 27 May 2018 (UTC)


 * MusicBrainz editors work all the time to improve MusicBrainz data, just as I'm sure Wikipedia editors work all the time on improving Wikipedia's data. I'm not sure what you're suggesting (or trying to suggest). —Freso (talk) 14:18, 1 June 2018 (UTC)
 * I would consider to make this for the whole of the authority control template, per my concerns below. —Dirk Beetstra T  C 05:22, 28 May 2018 (UTC)

Challenging MusicBrainz info in authority control box
See below (first example), please discuss that example there, in order to keep the discussion in one place. --Francis Schonken (talk) 14:32, 28 May 2018 (UTC)
 * ... and (which currently also contains a MusicBrainz example). --Francis Schonken (talk) 15:36, 28 May 2018 (UTC)

links to interactive chess games
WP:CHESS has traditionally used the website chessgames.com to link to interactive chess boards so that interested readers can play through notable chess games if they wish. User:Aircorn has raised an objection to this and tagged the article on Magnus Carlsen (the current world chess champion). My view is that the use of these links add encyclopedic value to the article, meaning this is an appropriate exception to WP:ELPOINTS No.2, per WP:IAR. MaxBrowne2 (talk) 06:48, 16 May 2018 (UTC) @AirCorn No there is no explicit exception for this covered by WP:ELPOINTS. This is why it is called "ignore all rules". It comes down to what will make the article/encyclopedia better? Linking to an interactive board so that readers can easily review a chess game for themselves improves our chess articles, and improving the encyclopedia trumps all "rules". MaxBrowne2 (talk) 00:25, 17 May 2018 (UTC)
 * As I said on the talk page, if this is deemed important I would not object to it being presented in the External Links section (this could even be under its own header if desired). I am not seeing an IAR justification (WP:ELPOINTS contains a few exceptions and this is not one of them) to lead our readers to an external site from the body of the article. AIRcorn (talk) 07:35, 16 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Some thoughts ... Nearly all "Notable games/Illustrative games/Sample games" secs in WP:CHESS bios (and there are many) use these ELs. As a result these secs have essentinally become a sort of secondary "External links" sec. Your suggestion to move to EL sec essentially amounts to moving these secs in bio articles to their own EL sec subsec. (I'm neutral on that idea.) Two minor but related points: 1) In the Magnus Carlsen "Notable games" sec there is the disclaimer All links in this section lead to an external site., which almost never occurs in other "Notable games" secs, but seems to be overlooked by you as possible solution to problem of misleading readers regarding links that lead to outside sites. 2) Most "Notable games" secs are located towards the ends of the articles, many times the last-occurring sec prior to "See also" and "References" secs. Yes they are technically in the article body, but typically at end of the body, close as possible to "External links" sec w/o actually being in that sec. --IHTS (talk) 10:41, 16 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Last, technically all w/ be well (consistent w/ policy) if the ELs in "Notable games" secs w/ be converted to ref citations ending up in "References" secs. The only "problem" w/ that is it amounts to massive amounts of technical markup busy-work, which hasn't typically been done (I think I've seen only one WP:CHESS bio article that did it), probably because it seems overly fussy & returning minimum payback beyond keeping strict to guideline (no ELs in body). Again the fact that most "Notable games" secs are toward or at the article body bottoms probably explains why those markup efforts have not been done (deemed low-payback/low-benefit/low-consequence). --IHTS (talk) 11:05, 16 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Not everyone agrees that this improves the encyclopaedia though. AIRcorn (talk) 18:33, 18 May 2018 (UTC)

To me, these should either be in the external links section - though there it may linkfarm to a significant number. Or, they should be in a list-like format in the text (or as a separate list-article) - say a table with notable matches, when played, opponent, who won, and maybe some game statistics (how long, how many moves, winning situation ..), and that could have a column with an external link, header 'game on chessgames.com', and in each cell a link. Note that I would expect that the list is referenced, as to show why the specific notable game (or all of them) belong in this list in the article. I don't think the links belong in-prose. --Dirk Beetstra T C 10:54, 16 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Are they not currently in a list-like format in the text? A separate article (List of notable chess games, a redirect to List of chess games) exists but I do not think it is the right place for the games in these sections (there has been a long discussion about these embedded lists, see WT:CHESS), and separate articles such as List of Magnus Carlsen's notable chess games seem like a non-starter. Carlsen's article is not the best example of the section, but look for example at Bobby Fischer. The external links to chessgames.com are supplementary, and allow interested readers to go through the games themselves. As for reliability, chessgames.com is a reputable website, and nearly all chess biographies already link to it in the EL. (There exists a template——to link to a player's profile.) In any case, this seems like it could be solved if the widget discussed at WT:CHESS, and already in use at Hebrew Wikipedia, was added. Hrodvarsson (talk) 01:42, 17 May 2018 (UTC)
 * The format used in Bobby Fischer is exactly what we try to avoid. Linking sentences externally in prose is bad format.  —Dirk Beetstra T  C 03:58, 17 May 2018 (UTC)
 * I would say that the Bobby Fischer example ism just as bad, if not worse. This is obviously a systemic problem with chess articles. If we can't resolve it here it might need a RFC. AIRcorn (talk) 18:33, 18 May 2018 (UTC)

Seems like a good time to remember that two people have worked on tools/templates to display interactive chessboards in Wikipedia. See WikiProject Chess/Interactive chess boards. Attempts to implement either one went off track (more than once), but they're both workable to some degree. As long as it is possible to have these games built into Wikipedia, there's no exigency to include a bunch of external links in an article body. That said, I think there are plenty of ways to format the links to move them out of the body while remaining contextual (e.g. using a ref notes section called "notable games" with a footnote [game 1] pointing down to the EL in that section). &mdash; Rhododendrites  talk \\ 14:41, 18 May 2018 (UTC)
 * I've been looking at these again for the first time in a while. We have two pretty solid means of displaying interactive chess boards and have already established a pretty strong consensus to do so. This is unrelated to ELs, though. I'm going to re-re-reopen the discussion at WTCHESS. &mdash; Rhododendrites  talk \\ 14:59, 18 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Using footnotes would work. My main concern is disguising the external links as links to other Wikipedia articles (the small text disclaimer doesn't really cut it). AIRcorn (talk) 18:33, 18 May 2018 (UTC)
 * OK, so move forward on the interactive tools so that the chessgames links are no longer required. Meantime, they serve their purpose well and should be tolerated. MaxBrowne2 (talk) 10:51, 22 May 2018 (UTC)


 * You need a consensus if you are going to invoke IAR as the reasoning. AIRcorn (talk) 21:32, 23 May 2018 (UTC)
 * A more functional approach (in my experience with external links) is a form of WP:CHALLENGE. Disrupt the status quo to more-or-less enforce he improvement.  Can someone convert all those links into references (so there is loss of functionality, not of data).  —Dirk Beetstra T  C 03:38, 24 May 2018 (UTC)
 * I seem to have missed some of this because I was on vacation.
 * I was wondering what you meant by, "... disguising the external links as links to other Wikipedia articles", but looking more closely at Magnus Carlsen, I think you have a point. Take a look at Emmanuel Lasker.  Do you think the style of presentation of the notable game links there is an improvement?  Each one explicitly mentions chessgames.com, and in addition, there are quotation marks just in case the reader doesn't notice.  It might be possible to improve on this style of presentation; if there is a style of presentation that really unambiguously doesn't look like a Wikilink, and is not too clumsy, it would be possible to retroactively modify other chess bios, especially popular ones like Magnus Carlsen, to use the superior style.
 * Chess game scores play a huge role in chess literature. In the print world, it is common knowledge that there is more chess literature than literature on all other sports combined; and most printed chess literature is game scores, with or without commentary (which chess players call "annotation").  There are "chess encyclopedias", such as Hooper and Whyld, and in these, almost every biographical article includes a game score.  I have not poked my nose into non-chess encyclopedias in many years, but even they sometimes included game scores in articles about famous chess players.
 * So the inclusion of "Notable games" sections in Wiki chess biographies is not some aberration, but rather, a logical extension of what chess players are accustomed to seeing in both print and electronic chess literature. The question of how these sections are to be adapted to the standards of scholarship and presentation we expect from Wiki is legitimate and interesting.  Bruce leverett (talk) 02:25, 31 May 2018 (UTC)
 * I don't think any of us are against the content, nor the sites used - the problem is the style of linking which is not in line with our guidelines. That is also true for Emmanuel Lasker.  For me, such lists should be a bullet list of the games, with either an overall reference or per-point reference of why these are/this is deemed to be worth mentioning in the list.  Each of the statements there could then be followed by a template linking to 2-3 of the bigger/more important chess sites that show/analyse the game (or as references).  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 16:42, 31 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Agree. There are many different ways to do these links so I see no reason why they have to be included in the prose. AIRcorn (talk) 09:42, 2 June 2018 (UTC)


 * What do you think about this version using a table. AIRcorn (talk) 10:11, 2 June 2018 (UTC)
 * Not convinced it's an improvement. MaxBrowne2 (talk) 11:06, 2 June 2018 (UTC)


 * Why not? It seems much more readable to meAIR<b style="color: green;">corn</b> (talk) 11:18, 2 June 2018 (UTC)


 * The tabular format is not bad-looking.
 * It occurred to me that for contemporary players like Carlsen, we could in many cases do better than chessgames.com; we should be going to the "chess press", where there are interactive games with annotation by grandmasters. For example, this: https://en.chessbase.com/post/tal-memorial-rd2-carlsen-beats-gelfand.  I found another exposition of that game at chess.com, but it is a video; I don't know how suitable that would be.  For historical players, such as Lasker, we will usually have to refer to some print book or print periodical for grandmaster commentary, but then link to chessgames.com for an interactive version.  Bruce leverett (talk) 15:34, 2 June 2018 (UTC)


 * For being big & clunky, it also drops info often contained in the simple list format (i.e. city, player colors, opening, game result). --IHTS (talk) 22:29, 2 June 2018 (UTC)
 * It is easy enough to add other info if it is deemed important. This is more proof of concept, that there are alternatives ways to display this information. From an asthetic viewpoint I think it looks fine. It allows us to link to other wikipedia articles within the table (like oponent or tournament. It is much cleaner without the long blue link and most importantly is policy complient. AIR<b style="color: green;">corn</b> (talk) 23:00, 2 June 2018 (UTC)
 * All those things can be done w/o a table. --IHTS (talk) 23:13, 2 June 2018 (UTC)
 * Can you show me an example of how you would present it. AIR<b style="color: green;">corn</b> (talk) 01:45, 3 June 2018 (UTC)
 * Yeah I can, how those things can be done in simple list form. But it doesn't mean that's my recommendation to do. (It'd bury editors in busywork, w/ little payback except adherance to Guideline.) --IHTS (talk) 02:00, 3 June 2018 (UTC)
 * If you do one so I can see exactly how you want it, and everyone else is happy, I would be prepared to impliment it on all the Good Article chess biographies at the least. AIR<b style="color: green;">corn</b> (talk) 02:17, 3 June 2018 (UTC)
 * Again, it's not necessarily my recommendation. Ok, I did for Magnus Carlsen. --IHTS (talk) 02:50, 3 June 2018 (UTC)
 * This is indeed not a solution, the reference there to chessgames does not support the statement. It is linking to a graphical representation of the game.  For the first item, I could see an in-depth analysis with a graphical representation to be of interest to the later statement that he had serious winning chances .. but I do not see why this link has to be used (let alone being linked inline), there is no justification to IAR on the guideline.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 06:11, 3 June 2018 (UTC)
 * The Chessgames.com refs don't support "statements", they just ref the fact the game exists (exists on Chessgames.com, where the reader can play through the game on the Chessgames.com graphical interface). (Refs *follow*, they don't *precede* the material they support. That's basic WP.) The refs put the links in Reference sec, so there are no "inline" links. (What are you talking about?) Comments, annotations, or analysis on games on Chessgames.com are never used or referenced on WP, they are not RS. The refs that support game descriptions aren't Chessgames.com refs, someone else provided them, I didn't touch or evaluate them. --IHTS (talk) 06:47, 3 June 2018 (UTC)
 * 'they just ref the fact the game exists' - so they should not be there, that the game exists (and is notable to be mentioned in the list) is in the other refs supplied by others (comments, game descriptions). I still fail to see the actual use for the chessgames.com links.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 08:17, 3 June 2018 (UTC)
 * The link sends the reader to where she can interactively play thru the game. (That seems to me an advantage, or "use".) Nearly *all* games in all 'Notable games' secs have the Chessgames.com ref/link if the game is on Chessgames.com. Many many many of those listed games do *not* have any other supporting ref. Only recently has the issue of list inclusion criteria come up (at WT:CHESS) along w/ the idea of supporting each listed game w/ a ref, & I'm not sure what the consensus is there or what the new ref requirements are, if any, for listed games. But the idea of dispensing w/ links to Chessgames.com completely is a new one, I've never seen it proposed before, except by you just now, so that topic obviously can't be this thread's topic ("the problem is the style of linking which is not in line with our guidelines."). I've explained why they have accumulated in WP:CHESS bio articles 'Notable games' secs to-date & I showed how a table wasn't necessary by converting the refs in Magnus Carlsen from "inline" to References sec, so I rate myself successful here. I'm not going to veer by debating whether Chessgames.com refs are desirable or necessary or not. You failed to recognize I removed the inline links from Magnus Carlsen#Notable games, misleading thread readers that I didn't. I won't be responding further, unless something further misrepresentative is stated here. --IHTS (talk) 08:59, 3 June 2018 (UTC)
 * This is an improvement over what used to be there, in that the citations to chessgames.com really look like citations (and use citation templates). The use of conventional citation techniques is an important step forward, yet it is uncontroversial.  Thanks!  Bruce leverett (talk) 14:29, 3 June 2018 (UTC)

As somebody with no connection to Chess or Chess-related articles I dont see why an exception to adding external links in the body of the article is justifiable. I presume that chessgames.com is a reliable source (although it looks a bit like a fan site and promotes advertising and the like) then it should be just used as a reference. Adding a link to the external site (particularly one that dosnt add anything to the actual article) is not what wikipedia is here for, we should not do it. MilborneOne (talk) 11:30, 2 June 2018 (UTC)
 * Oppose the tabular format, too. We should use external links to point readers to a resource that extends beyond what Wikipedia can provide. As chess games are not copyrightable, and as we can display interactive chess boards if we wanted to, there's no reason to include them. The solution is to get the interactive boards implemented, not to defer to a third party site for the same thing. (so, to be clear, if we had no way to do this locally, I would not be opposing here FWIW) &mdash; Rhododendrites  <sup style="font-size:80%;">talk \\ 16:35, 3 June 2018 (UTC)
 * One could make a large .png with all the boards .. not to display but to scroll through (so a link to file). —Dirk Beetstra T  C 17:56, 3 June 2018 (UTC)
 * Sure if there is a better way to display information then we can do it when it is available, but I am looking for a current solution to the current problem. Do you have any issue with the this version of [this version] over this one? AIR<b style="color: green;">corn</b> (talk) 23:26, 3 June 2018 (UTC)
 * That is better in the way that it does not display the external link for the text. However, these are not references.  I have an idea, which I will try to implement (though I have never done this before).  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 05:13, 4 June 2018 (UTC)
 * I have made this version where I group the chessgames 'references' into a notes section here. Now that 'reference' does not necessarily show that the game 'exists' (it does not prove anything), and it nicely groups outside of the 'regular' references.  Feel free to revert, or to name the pieces more aptly (groupname to 'interactive game' and rename section that displays this group?).

Reddit AMAs
I believe that Reddit AMAs are appropriate external links per WP:ELYES #3 since they can be construed as interview transcripts. w umbolo  ^^^  12:13, 17 June 2018 (UTC)
 * ELYES, ELMAYBE and ELNO are never blankets per website, they always have to be decided on a case by case evaluated. Even if they do not violate anything 8n ELNO, they can still be inappropriate as to being the umptieth link that is there.  Others may be not directly discussing the subject (rather the subject discussing something else).  What link were you thinking of?  —Dirk Beetstra T  C 19:23, 17 June 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the answer, got what I needed. w umbolo   ^^^  19:33, 17 June 2018 (UTC)

"Further reading" section in "Contents"
I recently had a lively exchange with another editor about whether the “Further reading” section in an article should be linked to the “Contents” section. The article in question is Alt-right. The other editor did not object to including a “Further reading” section, but he/she said the “Further reading” heading should stand alone – that it shouldn’t appear in the article hierarchy or in the “Contents” section at the top of the article. The other editor thought that "Contents" would be cluttered if "Further reading" appeared there. I disagreed. Unless “Further reading” appears in “Contents,” I argued, readers will likely not notice the “Further reading” section; the section will be lost in the article. Does the community have any thoughts on this? Should “Further reading” always be linked to “Contents,” or can this heading stand alone? (I hope this is the right place to bring up the subject. I also brought it up at Wikipedia talk:Further reading.) Chisme (talk) 18:28, 19 June 2018 (UTC)
 * This is WP:BADHEAD and MOS:LAYOUT. The article should include further reading in the contents section and the user should change his ways. The better place to notify is WT:Accessibility and WT:LAYOUT. --Izno (talk) 19:10, 19 June 2018 (UTC)

Authority control
This is running out of hand. The template allows for over 40 identifiers, all linking to external databases. I seriously doubt that these links mostly pass our inclusion standards, and there are articles with complete linkfarms of identifiers (where I even doubt that the data provided by the first one would even provide us with more data than what is already in the article, see intro of WP:EL.

An example coming from above thread: Jan van Eyck currently has 19 identifiers in authority control (and even more external links). At the time of implementing (diff) there were 2 identifiers locally, now all of them (probably ‘because we have them available’) are transcluded, with the potential of more than doubling this number.

Suggestion: bring it back to 2-3, making the other ones invisible to allow for incoming searches (or get rid of them altogether .. most of them will hardly ever result in searches aimed at finding the Wikipedia article (in this language) - people looking for a KulturNav number aree more likely looking for the KulturNav record. (Note - this discussion is likely also of interest to certain infoboxes and similar template systems).  —Dirk Beetstra T  C 20:05, 26 May 2018 (UTC)


 * FYI, a bot was approved earlier today to add the template to every article where it displays something. Nikkimaria (talk) 21:43, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
 * And that is a good thing, but we should have a choice as to WHAT the template displays. I mean, as an external link, VIAF is even useless.  —Dirk Beetstra T  C 03:49, 27 May 2018 (UTC)


 * It seems to be working fine, I suggest discussing individual IDs that are shown on the template talk page, not here. Mike Peel (talk) 22:10, 28 May 2018 (UTC)
 * It may indeed be a good idea to start an RfC on the template page (or somewhere more visible, as this is hitting most of Wikipedia, one of the VPs). The reason I brought it up here is that all translate at the moment to external links, and that by far most of them (including the most important one) fail our inclusion standards as defined by our external links guideline.  But you are right, as I realized later in this discussion, I think the whole of it fails WP:NOT as well.  (there are ways of displaying only what we deem important, turning the other ones in to invisible, though rendered 'meta tags'.  I see, as heavily discussed here, no reason to display, nor link to, MusicBrainz, but I can see that we want to have a Google search on that identifier to show our article as a result.  (and as I noted, there are many other similar situations which fail the WP:EL/WP:NOT combo, which are plain 'identifiers', and are not in authority control - even cases where I have heavily advocated earlier to have as much as possible).  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 05:10, 29 May 2018 (UTC)
 * I'd suggest somewhat less procedural discussion. For the time being this discussion is fine where it is. Yes, it touches upon big policy matters (WP:NOT and WP:BLP have been mentioned), and upon matters with a much finer granularity (whether or not David Shapiro (poet) is also a musician – he reportedly plays the violin pretty well). None of that is a priori excluded from this discussion. This discussion should only move elsewhere when means to reach consensus here would have been exhausted before reaching such consensus. In that case the discussion may as well move to WP:VPT for a broader RfC, or whatever seems most useful at that point. Somewhat more content and less procedure would be fine in the comments, thanks. --Francis Schonken (talk) 09:08, 29 May 2018 (UTC)
 * This template is basically turning us into DMOZ. There's no significant oversight over the reliability of sources, and in some cases they are earning massive ad revenue from us (though the chances of killing off IMDB links, to name but one are limited, I guess). Adding one of these sites tot he template actively encourages people to add to the link count. There's a huge benefit to getting your site added and autospammed on Wikipedia, but the benefit to the reader is not so easy to see and the benefit to us is very hard to see. Guy (Help!) 14:25, 29 May 2018 (UTC)
 * agree w/ Guy--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 01:23, 6 June 2018 (UTC)

Examples of problematic linking via the authority control box
I spent some hours trying to disentangle various David Shapiros: --Francis Schonken (talk) 14:04, 28 May 2018 (UTC); Updated (filmmaker still alive in 2015) 19:05, 28 May 2018 (UTC)
 * I count half a dozen musicians with that name (a bass player, a composer, a drummer, a music producer, a pianist and a songwriter), nonetheless, according to the MusicBrainz link provided in the authority control box, a poet with the same name would be a musician, listed among a selection of composers in this release (which would rather be the composer with that name).
 * Then, according to the recently approved bot mentioned above, the bass player with that name (dead since 2011, and according to our article, with "a history of erratic behavior and severe psychiatric problems") would be identical to a filmmaker, Laurie Gwen Shapiro's brother, who, afaik, is still very much alive (at least still gave an interview in 2015), and about whom no external source seems to have claimed "a history of erratic behavior and severe psychiatric problems". So apparently this wanders in WP:BLP-sensitive realms... For me at least enough to temporarily shut down the bot, until such mishaps can be avoided.
 * I now reverted the BLP-offending bot, the "wrong" version is still visible here . --Francis Schonken (talk) 14:16, 28 May 2018 (UTC)
 * With the method explained at WP:RSN, I WP:CHALLENGEd the apparently erroneous MusicBrainz info in the authority control box at David Shapiro (poet) ("wrong" version still visible here) . --Francis Schonken (talk) 14:28, 28 May 2018 (UTC); Updated (both "wrong" versions no longer visible while questionable info was removed from Wikidata) 17:12, 28 May 2018 (UTC)


 * A correct action for transclusion of unreliable data .. however, it is in this thread completely besides the point (this is NOT RS/N). What I am questioning is transclusion of up to 40 IDs with external link in the first place.  Even if all 40 are correct, it is excessive.  —Dirk Beetstra T  C 15:36, 28 May 2018 (UTC)
 * The first example is a perfect illustration that MusicBrainz should be thrown out of authority control ASAP. This supports your point to reduce the number of included IDs; The second example illustrates that reducing the number of IDs doesn't solve everything. So yes, that second example is also relevant to your proposal to reduce the number of included IDs: it suggests that mere reduction in numbers is a solution in search of a problem. So, based on these examples, I'd say "no" to your proposal as written (because of the second example); but "yes" to remove MusicBrainz (based on the many examples that this often amounts to linkcruft). --Francis Schonken (talk) 16:07, 28 May 2018 (UTC)
 * The box is a violation of WP:NOT on multiple cases. —Dirk Beetstra T  C 16:09, 28 May 2018 (UTC)

Just looked at the last few entries of the bot (which is already voluntarily on hold, thanks), I saw, which I reverted. Not a bot error as such, but another indication of why this bot shouldn't run and why blind (or any?) addition of authority control (or other external links) is a bad idea. The ID added,, si the ID for Michael Thompson (photographer), not for Michael Thompson (karateka). This was added by a bot to Wikidata in 2015, and not corrected since. Importing such errors into our BLPs is not the way to go, and it looks as if too many of these identifiers are wrong.

Even when it may be right, it too often is useless. Davie Cooper also had AC added in the last bot run. It links correctly to VIAF, which has one "work", sourced to the Library of Congress. It seems to be impossible to verify this at the LOC site though, and I have no idea what "work" they might be referring to. So not a bot error, not a Wikidata error, but still a useless external link. Fram (talk) 09:45, 29 May 2018 (UTC)
 * The template documentation currently has (last two paragraphs of the Description section):

If there is no information in Wikidata for the specific subject, an empty instance of this template will be dormant, meaning it will be invisible on the rendered page. Thus, using this template on a page with no authority information is harmless.

An empty instance of this template stays dormant in an article, until values are added to Wikidata, when it will then display them, so this template should be added to all biographies, whether or not there are authority control identifiers in Wikidata already.
 * I'd remove the "harmless"/"should be added..." language:

If there is no information in Wikidata for the specific subject, an empty instance of this template will be dormant, meaning it will be invisible on the rendered page. Thus, using this template on a page with no authority information is harmless.

An empty instance of this template stays dormant in an article, until values are added to Wikidata, when it will then display them, so this template should be added to all biographies, whether or not there are authority control identifiers in Wikidata already.
 * Maybe rather advise against dormant implementation:

If there is no information in Wikidata for the specific subject, an empty instance of this template will be dormant, meaning it will be invisible on the rendered page. Dormant use of the template is discouraged.
 * Further, I'd add some more explicit language to Template:Authority control that it shouldn't be assumed at face value that links shown in the template are correct or are even appropriate for the article: it is up to the editor who adds the template to check and, if needed, update that before hitting the "Publish changes" button. It is preferable not to include the template over including it with erroneous or misleading information. Similar with inappropriate information, including, but not limited to, information that fails WP:ELNO. Merely redundant information (e.g. doubling what is in an "External links" section) should in most cases be avoided too, should at least not be inserted with a bot operation. --Francis Schonken (talk) 10:42, 29 May 2018 (UTC)
 * There is the same problem again, Francis: "it shouldn't be assumed at face balue that links shown in the template are correct or are even appropriate for the article: it is up to the editor who adds the template to check ...". The fun of WikiData is that these templates were already in the article years ago (before WikiData existed?), that the template has been edited so it transcludes WikiData after the fact of transclusion (see request below), or that WikiData data is added to WikiData far after the fact that the template is transcluded.  Neither of these are checked by the ‘...editor who adds the template...’.  Seen that authority control is of prime interest to our BLPs (much less than for, say, Oat) it is of prime interest that the data gets checked when it is added to the article - but we have NO control about that.  Per your suggestion: I challenge ALL cases where data from WikiData is added to en.wikipedia through filtered and unfiltered transclusion.  We should NOT be transcluding data from WikiData in any form to our articles (especially to WP:BLP) unless WikiData data becomes verified, reliable and unmutable.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 12:28, 29 May 2018 (UTC)

Another example (regarding "need to check before hitting the 'Publish changes' button"): Einstein Tower apparently has two VIAF numbers: and  – the former, however, generates a faulty "WorldCat Identities" link in the authority control box. Nonetheless, the "wrong" number was used at WikiData. I haven't found a way to check (at Wikidata) whether the derived WorldCat Identity (WCI) is valid, afaik it can only be checked by calling the WCI elsewhere, so that it displays as a link. Problem now solved at Wikidata for this particular example, however not sorted for future similar problems. I agree with Dirk that there are other issues to sort too, however the update to the template documentation can be performed without delay, and would anyway remain valid even after other changes as long as the template exists. --Francis Schonken (talk) 13:40, 31 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Sigh - it is just as possible that the second VIAF is added after Einstein Tower was saved with the transclusion. --Dirk Beetstra T  C 14:51, 31 May 2018 (UTC)
 * When the authority control was transcluded it was displaying '236936180'. That transclusion was not "check[ed] before hitting the 'Publish changes' button" - it was transcluded by bot.  Similarly, this has implications for updating templates to start transcluding WikiData where they earlier did not - that will result in, sometimes thousands of, changes to pages which are not "check[ed] before hitting the 'Publish changes' button".  Such edits to templates, coincidently, will not show up in page history while suddenly transcluding data from WikiData (that fullfils the 'filtering' rules).  This is a good example to show how little control we have about what is coming from WikiData.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 16:17, 31 May 2018 (UTC)

Bot is organising a linkfarm

 * See WP:LINKFARM policy; see this revert ("wrong" version here); see my comment here (yeah, MusicBrainz, again). --Francis Schonken (talk) 15:24, 28 May 2018 (UTC)
 * You did the wrong thing - the external link fails our inclusion standards, I have reverted and removed the external link. Still besides the point, though.  —Dirk Beetstra T  C 15:39, 28 May 2018 (UTC)
 * In which case both the external link and the authority control box should be removed from that article: the box can not be used as an excuse to insert external links that otherwise would not be acceptable. --Francis Schonken (talk) 15:45, 28 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Handled – thanks . Now let's get to the real problem: how can the MO of this bot be improved so that it doesn't infringe on a policy every few steps? thoughts? --Francis Schonken (talk) 15:51, 28 May 2018 (UTC)
 * From what I can see here the bot is just adding authority control to biographies. This activity is also listed on the bot's page:
 * Perhaps the bot should check for (and possibly remove) an existing external link that duplicates the information first.
 * I think authority control is a more useful inclusion than that link, as it can contain other identifiers in the future. Thoughts? — AfroThundr (t•c) 15:53, 28 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Anyhow current MO of the bot is unacceptable. --Francis Schonken (talk) 15:57, 28 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Anyhow current MO of the bot is unacceptable. --Francis Schonken (talk) 15:57, 28 May 2018 (UTC)


 * Another MusicBrainz related revert. Again, linkspam which I removed. --Francis Schonken (talk) 16:31, 28 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Did you find anything wrong on the MusicBrainz side, or did you just remove it out of principle? —Freso (talk) 15:42, 1 June 2018 (UTC)
 * I found it failing WP:NOT. --Francis Schonken (talk) 16:04, 1 June 2018 (UTC)


 * It's not all bad of course, for instance I appreciated this one on a person who is variously known as Lilian Baels and the Princesse de Rhéty: uniquely identifying the person with authority control is a good thing in such case. So, can we have more of that, and less of the questionable authority control additions? Would appreciate some input on how to make that happen. --Francis Schonken (talk) 16:31, 28 May 2018 (UTC)
 * WP:LINKFARM doesn't apply here imo. Broken down into its components:
 * 1) Wikipedia is neither a mirror nor a repository of links, images, or media files. - if this is the main point of contention then Authority control should be discontinued
 * 2) Wikipedia articles are not merely collections of External links or Internet directories. - not the case here
 * 3) There is nothing wrong with adding one or more useful content-relevant links to the external links section of an article - ok
 * 4) however, excessive lists can dwarf articles and detract from the purpose of Wikipedia. - also not the case here
 * 5) Remaining points regarding Internal links [...] Public domain or other source material [...] Photographs or media files [...] - don't apply
 * So inaccurately citing policy I don't think is the solution. A reasonable solution, however, can be that the placement of Authority control be further restricted by omitting IDs which have either 1) no references, or 2) 'imported from &lt;lang> Wikipedia' as a reference. This criteria would have skipped Vampire Lovers (band), but not The Motet. Or, perhaps skip any/all music/band-related pages if that space is not well maintained on Wikidata (as opposed to the taxonomic space, for example).  ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  13:37, 29 May 2018 (UTC)


 * While it probably doesn't dwarf the article, having e.g. 13 authority links in William Vance (recently deceased comics artist, famous, but not really a worldwide household name) is excessive. But the problem (to me) with this template is that it is created in an all-or-nothing situation: every identifier which is included in the template is added to every article possible, even when that identifier adds absolutely nothing here. For example, for William Vance we have this, the Italian Catalogo del Servizio Bebliotecario Nazionale. Why, on enwiki, and for a Belgian author, are we giving a link to an Italian database which gives nothing what isn't already in the article, and is already repeated countless times in the other authority links? It isn't even updated, and shows the artist as "living". Looking at the other 12: Worldcat is OK, bibsys is of very limited value, BNE is the Spanish equivalent of the Italian one, BNF is relevant for this artist (and is up-to-date!), though only having the "Data" page and not the other would be sufficient; DNB is not really necessary here (it's up-to-date and in general more interesting than the Spanish and Italian one though); ISNI doesn't contain any useful information for readers; LOC is good for enwiki (but not up-to-date); RKD is somewhat useful here; SNAC starts of with incorrect information (links to collections => archival collections is completely unrelated, and not the first time I notice this); the same applies to the "related names" they have, which are not related to this person at all; IDref is useful though more of the same; VIAF is probably useful though it's a rather hard to navigate site.
 * All in all, there are at least 5 links from the 13 which can be removed without any loss for enwiki readers of this article, even though they may be the best authority we have for other articles. Fram (talk) 14:04, 29 May 2018 (UTC)
 * I have nothing against the identifiers being in the article, but the display of them adds nothing to the article, and the same is true for most of the external links. The only problem that I have with the identifiers is that they are (filtered or unfiltered) transcluded from a unreliable source.  —Dirk Beetstra T  C 15:20, 29 May 2018 (UTC)
 * I've proposed some solutions to this and other concerns at Template talk:Authority control and Template talk:Authority control.  ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  22:58, 29 May 2018 (UTC)
 * I'm not entirely certain that the contents of the authority control template is truly "external links", in the main sense meant by WP:EL. There are a lot of links that go to external websites, and yet aren't "external links" (e.g., links to reliable sources).  Some of these are themselves reliable sources.  As one example, consider the ICD-10 database for medical conditions, or the CAS registry numbers for chemicals.  We have readers who are specifically reading Wikipedia articles because they need those codes.  The links are in one sense reliable sources (to verify that this is, indeed, the code for the subject of this article), but they're formatted like external links, and placed either in an infobox or at the end of the appendices.  It doesn't make sense to say that they're normal ==External links==, but we also don't really have a carefully defined guideline that says exactly what they are.  I am thinking that many of the authority control links may be similar.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:37, 5 June 2018 (UTC)
 * I am indeed also not sure if these are strictly spoken external links as discussed in WP:EL. However, seen that we have articles with up to 22 identifiers in here, I wonder whether that is what we need to be either.  We are not writing a database, we are writing an encyclopedia.  We are also not a replacement for Google to find any identifier that may be of interest to a certain person (and what are the chances of someone coming to Wikipedia to find the ID for a Spanish database where the person in question has maybe once had one of his books translated in Spanish).  Another problem here is reliability: would you really come to Wikipedia to find the identifier of a subject in some obscure database, or do you go to the authority that hands out that ID itself.  (however, WikiData could carry all those identifiers, but that does not mean that we have to transclude ALL on Wikipedia, which seems to be becoming current practice).
 * I agree that other infoboxes and templates have the same problem - for some subjects there are many authorities and there is good reason to make sure that someone on a google-search on identifier X does find the Wikipedia article - I do however wonder whether it is pertinent that we show all, and that we link out to all. My current feel is to include only the ones that are of major importance (VIAF, CAS) standard, and that ALL OTHERS should be on a per-article choice for being displayed (they could be there in a 'vcard' type of way, invisible).
 * A related discussion is going on on template talk:Authority control where there are ways discussed to curtail the number of displayed. --Dirk Beetstra T  C 06:13, 5 June 2018 (UTC)


 * These identifiers tie topics into other classification systems and many are not really "external link"s. Similarly we often include ICD 9 and 10 numbers as well as the MeSH IDs as these are used extensively by a certain category of users (people billing for medical procedures) as our search engine is way way better than what ICD provides or Google. These details are being placed at the bottom of the page so not taking up important room. ORCID is another fairly important identifier. Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) 09:46, 5 June 2018 (UTC)
 * but do you think that it is appropriate to have (as is currently the case) 22 identifiers on a subject, of which many will be 'just because it is mentioned in said database and got assigned a number'? (Noting that the template handles about 43 currently, and WD has even more that could be handled).  My main problem is that I don't think it is useful/helpful to display all (they do not help understanding the subject in any form).  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 12:03, 5 June 2018 (UTC)
 * The idea of having a template of identifiers IMO is not unreasonable. Are the number excessive and are some of these minor such that they need not be mention within the template? Possibly but as it is not my area expertise will not comment on the individual items. I just know we do something similar for medical articles but we use a smaller number of items. The discussion to adjust the number should occur at the template in question. Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) 13:25, 5 June 2018 (UTC)
 * It is also discussed there. —Dirk Beetstra T  C 14:04, 5 June 2018 (UTC)


 * This discussion seems to have died down - what are the next steps? Nikkimaria (talk) 21:35, 23 June 2018 (UTC)
 * from here, the AC template should not duplicate ELs and vice versa (which is a problem with bot additions and the blind automagical transclusion of lateradded identifiers, sometimes outside of our control). Then the next two problems I don’t know .. IMHO there are too many identifiers displayed through AC (which is a discussion for AC).  And whether we then here resort to displaying the identifiers that are not displayed in ACis again a linkfarm problem for here.  As I expected, we will need some RfCs on this matter regarding that.  —Dirk Beetstra T  C 04:43, 24 June 2018 (UTC)

Use of Wikidata_property in External Links
A Templates For Discussion has been opened regarding whether it is appropriate to link to Wikidata property. Comments are invited at that discussion page. Alsee (talk) 21:58, 27 June 2018 (UTC)

PissedConsumer.com
While reading Talk:ActBlue (the article refers to a company which processes donations to Democratic Party campaigns), I noticed that the edit history for our article ActBlue shows that an edit requested by their employee BostonianMaggie (who disclosed her potential WP:CoI beforehand), removal of the text: "'ActBlue is also known for accessing credit card- and PayPal- accounts of former donors without the donors' knowledge and setting up recurrent withdrawals without the account holders authorization. There are currently 42 unresolved reported fraud cases on ActBlue. Source: ScamGuard'" was done by an unregistered editor User:2603:3007:2704:83f0:e9d1:cb6f:b507:bb6f without any previous discussion on Talk:ActBlue.

We ought to have had talk page discussion, and perhaps an RfC on the question of excluding the information which was requested to be deleted. The source which BostonianMaggie linked to as evidence that ScamGuard.com was unreliable turned out to be an advertisement by a law firm specializing in reputation management, selling their services in removing reports from ScamGuard.

I ran a Google search, "ActBlue billing dispute" to determine if ScamGuard.com was the only such site reporting issues with ActBlue billing. Two other such sites also reported having received reports of disputed charges by ActBlue to customers' credit cards, bank accounts and PayPal accounts.

One of these sites, actblue.pissedconsumer.com, reported on their page for ActBlue:"'3 RESOLVED 136 TOTAL REVIEWS $120K CLAIMED LOSSES $2.3K AVG LOSS" In trying to start a discussion on this matter in Talk:ActBlue I found I couldn't even publish to Talk:ActBlue or my sandbox if I linked to the reports on actblue.pissedconsumer.com/review.html. We can't even see this information in order to reach a consensus on whether or not to include it in the article. The block on the external link actblue.pissedconsumer.com/review.html prevents a consensus from being reached.

Why is actblue.pissedconsumer.com/review.html blocked? loupgarous (talk) 10:28, 1 July 2018 (UTC)
 * The site was added to the blacklist here. A previous request to have it removed is here. If you'd like a specific URL to be whitelisted, you can make a request at MediaWiki talk:Spam-whitelist. None of that seems necessary; you can have a discussion on the article's talk page by including a non-active link, just as you did above. Kuru   (talk)  12:56, 1 July 2018 (UTC)

communityvoices.post-gazette.com
I'm not sure where to post this, if at all, but I wanted to point out that it seems URLs from this website can be altered in any way and still appear valid. Example: http://communityvoices.post-gazette.com/arts-entertainment-living/tuned-in/item/41103-i--can-put-anything-here

The text after the number sequence appears to be irrelevant to the actual article, and can be used in sneaky vandalism to Folsom make it appear as if the reference supports the edit, when the actual article is completely different. Example:.

Please ping me in replies.  Eve rgr een Fir  (talk) 01:14, 6 July 2018 (UTC)

Linking to GitHub
Under what circumstances is it appropriate for a user to insert a link to their own GitHub? I keep encountering users doing this while I'm on patrol. Aspening (talk) 18:04, 9 July 2018 (UTC)
 * to me, most fail under WP:ELMINOFFICIAL, often they are just another official link of the subject, the main website is sufficient. —Dirk Beetstra T  C 21:00, 9 July 2018 (UTC)

Inappropriate inclusion of links to social media sites
The article Body modification keeps having links to social media websites, namely "malebodymods.com" and "malemods.com", added to the "Seel also" and "External links" section. Attempts to remove them or mark them as inappropriate are excessively reverted by User:Mc4bbs, and attempts to discuss the issue have been ignored. --Equivamp - talk 15:41, 13 July 2018 (UTC)
 * , if the user has been warned and persists it is generally the way forward (we could try a block through AIV, but experience learns that that is often not helping). —Dirk Beetstra T  C 18:08, 13 July 2018 (UTC)

Playbill and Netflix as external links?


Are links to sites like www.playbill.com (/person) or dvd.netflix.com with a clear focus on selling stuff and advertising acceptable as external links? See Alec Baldwin as a usage example (in the edit history). Such links seem to be a clear violation of WP:ELNO #1 and #4, but I'd appreciate additional opinions before going on a mass-deletion spree (only for links in EL sections to be clear). GermanJoe (talk) 17:31, 8 July 2018 (UTC)
 * For me, you can start your nuke process. Tell me what those links add on a case-by-case basis, and I might change my mind (because they don't ..).  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 10:49, 9 July 2018 (UTC)
 * I have removed most of the EL occurences (may have missed a few), thanks for the feedback. GermanJoe (talk) 13:27, 15 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Netflix links are suitable as el's for their original programming. This would not be the case for their DVD subdomain. --Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 16:30, 15 July 2018 (UTC)
 * You mean, the netflix page of a program made by netflix would function as the official website of the subject .. that one makes sense .. all other netflix links are likely inappropriate external links. --Dirk Beetstra T  C 17:30, 15 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Yep. I mean exactly that. Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 17:34, 15 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Agree, I only focussed on the dvd subdomain for this cleanup. GermanJoe (talk) 17:41, 15 July 2018 (UTC)

Women in STEM fields - two links
An IP has added a link from a conservative political group to Women in STEM fields ("The narrative falls apart"), referencing a brand-new primary source. I maintain that 1) the first link is a textbook case of an unreliable source; 2) the second link is a WP:PRIMARY source -- and a new one at that -- so not useable by itself. Thoughts? --Calton | Talk 00:30, 30 July 2018 (UTC)
 * I agree with your assessment of the refs and removal of the link. I'll respond on the article talk as well. --Ronz (talk) 02:26, 30 July 2018 (UTC)

User talk:Wvarchives


I would like of some of you to have a look at the contributions of this editor. I've had to block the account, obviously, for a user name violation, but I hope they will request a name change to take care of that. The links are to archives at WVU, and I have no judgment on them prima facie, but I know that our practice is that not all archives are the same; that is, not all are worth listing, or have individual holdings that are worth linking in articles. Your input is appreciated. Thanks, Drmies (talk) 18:14, 8 August 2018 (UTC)


 * Hmm. I have added two messages to their talk page, "Welcome-personal" and "Uw-coi". Above your report, I have included a link summary of wvculture.org and a user summary of User:Wvarchives. I think that we should probably wait at least one week for a response before deciding what to do next. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 18:41, 8 August 2018 (UTC)


 * (copied from User talk:Wvarchives – diff) ~ ToBeFree (talk) 19:26, 8 August 2018 (UTC)
 * (copied from User talk:Wvarchives – diff) ~ ToBeFree (talk) 19:26, 8 August 2018 (UTC)


 * I have responded by thanking them for the clarification and encouraging them to improve the articles in multiple other ways too, not only by adding external links (diff). About the specific link, I'd like to see the COIbot report. I am currently unable to poke the bot, probably due to a bug or a configuration issue, which I have now reported at User_talk:Beetstra (diff). ~ ToBeFree (talk) 19:31, 8 August 2018 (UTC)


 * The COIbot bug has been solved, thanks to Beetstra :)
 * Links to wvculture.org have been added by multiple unrelated, experienced users. See WikiProject_Spam/LinkReports/wvculture.org.
 * I personally see no reason to take any general action against using this link. If someone with a conflict of interest, affiliated with the website, adds it to many articles, that might be a reason for warning the specific user and asking them to stop. I think that all possible problems with this link are user-specific, not link-specific. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 20:16, 10 August 2018 (UTC)

Hashtag United FC


I have now multiple times been reverted on Hashtag United F.C. where editors have included the Twitter as the official website, whereas the club has a registered domain, http://www.hashtagunited.co.uk/. This domain redirects to https://www.youtube.com/user/spencerbets/, their youtube channel. The intro of the article reads: 'they gained notability due to recording their matches, making videos around them, and posting them on YouTube to the Spencer FC Channel.', 'They later moved to the Hashtag United YouTube channel.', 'They are the first YouTube team of their kind to become a registered semi-professional team.', which, to me, clearly shows that the youtube is their most prominent official site, not the Twitter. I further note that the 'about' section on their youtube links to their Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.

I therefore think that the youtube is the official website, which can be linked through their dedicated domain, or directly. Can I have a second opinion on which link we should use? --Dirk Beetstra T C 18:53, 12 August 2018 (UTC)
 * As the Twitter link was there at the start of this dispute, I think it's fairer to say that you've reverted several times in an attempt to impose your preferred EL on the article. If we have to choose between the two, then personally I think the Twitter link is preferable as it provides much more frequent updates than the Youtube channel. Also, I can't see that the Youtube account links to their Twitter account, but the Twitter account posts all the videos from Youtube.
 * Perhaps also worth noting that the club also uses http://hashtagutd.com (this is the link provided on their Twitter account), which redirects to a club shop. Number   5  7  19:07, 12 August 2018 (UTC)
 * I have double checked, again, but the Youtube channel carries a link to the same twitter feed as that is inserted in the article.
 * Interestingly, the article has contained as official website, for a long time, 'http://www.hashtagunited.co.uk', until it was replaced (by the same user that originally placed it) with https://spencerfc.bigcartel.com/ on 28 June 2018. That link is to the shop (IMHO, certainly inappropriate).  That link then stood until it was replaced with "-" on August 8, 2018 (seen that user's talkpage, I guess vandalism).  You then added the twitter shortly after the (vandalising?) removal of the shop link.    I find it therefore a bit difficult to swallow that you think that I think that it is my 'preferred link', where that link has stood as the official link for 8 months, and the shop for over a month.  And I wonder whether the dispute started when you added the Twitter last week, or when I started removing it.  (Note that the editor who added the official link in the beginning, and later replaced it with the shop link appears to have a COI with the club - but they would know what they consider to be the official website).
 * Now, putting away the 'Beetstra prefers X' (whatever that may mean), it seems to me clear that Hashtag United F.C. pays for the domain 'hashtagunited.co.uk', and that they decided to redirect that to their YouTube. If they would regard the Twitter to be their official website, to me it makes then more sense that their domain would redirect there.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 19:56, 12 August 2018 (UTC)
 * The reason the article previously contained the link to http://www.hashtagunited.co.uk is that until a few weeks ago, there was a proper official website at that address (you can see it at the Web Archive here). I suspect it was changed to the shop link after it had been converted into a redirect to the Youtube channel. Number   5  7  20:19, 12 August 2018 (UTC)
 * That it previously contained a 'proper' website shows that the domain is owned by the club, but that they decided to change it to a redirect to YouTube. Maybe they did not want to pay the hosting fees (but kept the domain registration), or decided that this is a better reflection of their origin .  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 04:05, 13 August 2018 (UTC)
 * But likewise, http://hashtagutd.com is also clearly owned by the club and redirects somewhere else. Ultimately, the club has several different official presences online – Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, the online shop. If we're limiting ourselves to a single link, then we have to decide which one is the most approporiate. As I've said, I think the Twitter is preferable. Number   5  7  07:46, 13 August 2018 (UTC)
 * Yes, hashtagutd.com is also theirs, but that is the shop, which would not be the preferred official link. Again, seen that the official domain is redirecting to the youtube makes me believe that the club considers that as the official website.  Moreover, it is what we mention as where the club gained a large part of their notability.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 10:09, 13 August 2018 (UTC)

Mass addition of lepidoptera.eu links by website owner


Per Administrators'_noticeboard/IncidentArchive989, I should probably ask here for consensus:

I would like to undo all these external link additions, at least those to lepidoptera.eu, with an appropriate edit summary, linking to this discussion and the ANI discussion, also taking the time to fix edits that are not the "current" version of the pages anymore.

The website contains non-free images that should instead be uploaded to Commons by the photographer. The massive promotional addition of external links has already partly been undone, and I would like to finish the process. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 18:38, 2 August 2018 (UTC)
 * Two Itried were dead links. Suggest to remove, wp:not and wp:el issues.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 18:45, 2 August 2018 (UTC)
 * Just an addendum. All links were added by:
 * I would suggest to remove all links added with currently no prejudice for re-addition by uninvolved editors (though I think that they make bad external links per our guidelines, and unless the creator of the website is a known, recognised specialist in the field, I would also say that they are not suitable as references as more authorative works do exist for this data). --Dirk Beetstra T  C 19:30, 2 August 2018 (UTC)
 * I would suggest to remove all links added with currently no prejudice for re-addition by uninvolved editors (though I think that they make bad external links per our guidelines, and unless the creator of the website is a known, recognised specialist in the field, I would also say that they are not suitable as references as more authorative works do exist for this data). --Dirk Beetstra T  C 19:30, 2 August 2018 (UTC)
 * I would suggest to remove all links added with currently no prejudice for re-addition by uninvolved editors (though I think that they make bad external links per our guidelines, and unless the creator of the website is a known, recognised specialist in the field, I would also say that they are not suitable as references as more authorative works do exist for this data). --Dirk Beetstra T  C 19:30, 2 August 2018 (UTC)


 * Oh! Wow. Now that I see that COIbot has revealed a long-time issue, I'll now go ahead. I'll take some time, I don't want to make a hasty bad edit. No need to rollback, I'll deal with it. Thank you for the confirmation. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 19:34, 2 August 2018 (UTC)
 * I have mass rollback feature, all top edits are reverted (as far as I could see, only external links). That should clear out a lot of them already.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 19:39, 2 August 2018 (UTC)
 * Ah -- the list of their contributions will not be nicely sorted between "done" and "needs extra care" then, however. Would it be useful to do the rollback after the special cases have been dealt with? ~ ToBeFree (talk) 19:42, 2 August 2018 (UTC)
 * Edit: Rollback already done, I have a new idea: Could we poke the bot a second time to get only current links? Thanks for the rollback already ~ ToBeFree (talk) 19:44, 2 August 2018 (UTC)


 * I have yet to see a link that actually is needed. As above, I think that this fails our inclusion standards (all this information could be incorporated easily into Wikipedia, WP:ELNO #1).
 * Literally ALL these links were added by these two accounts. Over 8 years not a singular independent editor has deemed the site to be useful for inclusion.  As ALL the edits are COI-edits, I would remove ALL of them.  No special cases, wipe.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 19:49, 2 August 2018 (UTC)
 * For the leftover links, please use the linksearch function (first links in summary template, 'en' and 'https'). The bot report is about additions, not about actual links.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 19:49, 2 August 2018 (UTC)
 * Wow .. still 900 links left. --Dirk Beetstra T  C 19:50, 2 August 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the search link, that's awesome. HTTPS done, continuing with HTTP. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 23:03, 2 August 2018 (UTC)
 * Note that a few of the edits made by plwiki were not linkspam, but the correction of misspelled genus names, or the inclusion of valid species with WP articles that needed links; be careful with these mass reversions, please (e.g., see Antheraea, Agrius (moth) and Theretra nessus). Dyanega (talk) 02:55, 3 August 2018 (UTC)
 * Thank you for pointing these out and fixing them. I think that the edits should have contained a notice about it being a mass reversion. I also agree that care is needed. It should maybe be noted, however, that false positives can be unavoidable if someone makes a huge number of bad edits, and very few good ones among them. In this case, the number of good edits appears to be below 1 percent. Depending on the number of edits, a mass reversion may unaviodably create false-positive reverts, which does not always, in every case, have to be a huge problem. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 03:59, 3 August 2018 (UTC)


 * I’m just observing the discussion arranged by my “mass edit” and still can’t understand what you are talking about… I’ve started to edit articles on Wikipedia in April 2015 – so during this time I was created something like 500 additions. But the real number should be less because many times I’ve edited the same page few times. Huge number for almost 4 years? I don’t think so. I’m a well-known and respected entomologist, not whipster who is trying to promote a fake website. I don’t need any kind of promotion here because my website is well known for all enthusiasts of butterflies. When you would try to make some Google queries then you’ll see that the website is always in top 5 results – so your suggestion that it’s a “promotion” links is in my opinion unjustified and unjust.
 * Also I would like to take your attention for yet another aspect of this issue: if I would like add a link to website X – your answer is OK but if I would like to add a link to website Y – it’s not OK. If anybody else would add a link to website Y – it’s also OK but if I would do exactly the same – it’s not OK. I’m sorry but for me it does not make any sense. The normal user just reading Wikipedia content doesn’t care who has added/entered data – but it seems that you don’t treat me as a “normal user” but rather as a bandit/cheater.


 * I’m working – but maybe it’s better to say WAS working - for the community. Always. For thousands of people focused on butterflies and moths to give them much more information as possible. Always for public bono, I don’t have ANY profits for that. I gave the people my knowledge and my time – always for free. You’ve made here a hood court, but in my opinion you’re wrong and completely don’t understand the fundaments of community sharing knowledge. In my opinion you’ve made the worst thing you could do – DELETE ALL without any rules or verification. In results you have destroyed a lot of valuable data, not for me – for the community. I don’t think I would like to share my very limited time adding small pieces to the large project called Wikipedia when some proud administrators could demolish it in a second…
 * And one more thing – in one of the previous posts user ToBeFree had an argument, that I can’t add links to the pages where used pictures are copyrighted. I have never heard such a stupid justification… Try to imagine that some other projects – like for example my website – works on different rules. I do respect someone else's property, it seems – you not. 99% of external Wikipedia links has different kind of warnings – usually in a page footer that the contents cannot be used without an owner permission and that it’s not free to use. I can give you tones of examples. Based on motivation like yours – you should complete close external links section here because almost all used links also have a content that is a property of someone. I think you have not thought about what you said.


 * I think the topic is CLOSED. I’m not going to edit anything more here but I would like to plant your thoughts in your heads that not everything you do here is correct. Please think twice before you’ll make another action like that. (Lepidoptera~plwiki (talk) 10:28, 3 August 2018 (UTC))


 * I find it very hard to believe that you, self identifying as Christopher Jonko on your Wikipedia userpage are any other user than user:Chris lepidoptera (and even if it is not a new account of yours, it is someone who is very closely related to your website). Thát 'Chris', like you, got numerous remarks regarding their link additions, and that since 2010.
 * Your link additions on >500 (more likely >1000) pages on en.wikipedia suggests that you are interested in SEO practices, and therefore of course that your website is a top result in Google. It strikes me as utterly unbelievable that no other entomologist on Wikipedia has EVER added a link to your site.  Not a single one.
 * Plainly stated: your link fails our inclusion standards. On some pages it does not add anything, on others it is in conflict with what is already on the page it is linked from, and where it does tell something that is not on Wikipedia, it can be incorporated.  Moreover, you have a plain conflict of interest with linking to the site, you are not the person to decide whether that link is a service or not to the reader.  Of course you think that it is a service to the reader, but fact remains that no other editor has found it necessary to add a link (or better, a reference) to this site.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 11:48, 3 August 2018 (UTC)
 * wrong ping:  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 11:51, 3 August 2018 (UTC)
 * Hi . I am surprised about the reasons you're naming:
 * Unlikely, see above. There seem to be skeletons in the closet.
 * Why are you promoting then, and complaining about the removal of this promotion?
 * I guess this might be because of actions exactly like the one you made on the English Wikipedia, and is unlikely to be a good reason for continuing to do so. Also, it might be because of the fitting domain name, which increases your Google page rank without necessarily having to provide an encyclopedically relevant website. By the way, the "top 5 results" when I google for free software have often been adware-infested in the past.
 * The community appears to be unhappy about the external links, though. There has not been a single complaint about the removal of the links; all I got so far was multiple "thank you"s from active, respected community members who had not found the time to do something they would have done themselves otherwise. Also, you appear to have been ignoring well-established community guidelines and warnings about conflicts of interest and spamming since 2010. If you actually want to help the community, please listen to their advice. By uploading your photos to Wikimedia Commons, for example, you could actually help the community.
 * You mostly gave them external links to your personal website. How selfless. Emoji_u1f609.svg Instead, you could license your photos under a free license, and actually give something very nice and useful to the community that way. It is not too late to start with this, and I think that I can promise that nobody will complain or laugh if you decide to edit again even after your previous statement, but this time not for promotion, but actually making Wikimedia Commons and the English Wikipedia articles a more beautiful place.
 * The best way to do so would be adding reliably sourced content to Wikipedia articles, not keeping it behind an external link on your personal website. You are, and have always been, very welcome to do so.
 * Really? If you have been receiving warnings about the same issue since 2010 and still continue to do the same thing, we might even have been too lax in this regard.
 * Sorry, no. It makes me sad to summarize it like that, but the mass rollback has not destroyed valuable data. After all, this is why the mass rollback has been done. It would not have been done if you had added "a lot of valuable data" to Wikipedia. Now would be a wonderful point to actually have a clean start and to start adding valuable data to Wikipedia. This could, for example, be: Reliably sourced information, and freely licensed images.
 * I have not said nor meant that, ever. I was only replying to your statement that your website is "based on the same rules as Wikipedia: it's open and free.". I tried to explain to you why this is not really true.
 * Sadly no; I'm still busy cleaning up the links. The amount of links I'm encountering makes it hard for me to believe that there was no time to make some actually useful contributions to Wikipedia instead. This could, for example, have been: Adding reliably sourced information, uploading freely licensed images.
 * I would be more than happy to help with uploading photos to Wikimedia Commons. Should you ever decide to upload more photos, I'll always be there to answer any questions that might arise. The "commonist" tool, which I have already left you a message on your talk page about, might be very useful for this task. I've had great fun using it, and I will happily help with fixing potential problems. Please give it a try one day; don't let this external link thing ruin your whole Wikipedia experience. Let's move on. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 21:53, 3 August 2018 (UTC)

I'm almost done with processing the edits now. Something new has come up during my research. These have later been replaced by .eu by and/or ; the original domain is no longer available


 * Special:Contributions/62.121.64.89
 * User_talk:62.121.64.89
 * Special:LinkSearch/*.lepidoptera.pl
 * Special:LinkSearch/https://*.lepidoptera.pl
 * Special:LinkSearch/https://*.lepidoptera.pl

http://web.archive.org/web/20080501162745/http://www.lepidoptera.pl:80/start.php?lang=UK

"All images on this website remain the exclusive copyright of the photographer and may not be reproduced or exploited in any other way without the permission of the copyright owner. Copyright ©2007 by Chris Jonko"

There seems to be a deep deep hole dug long ago. My personal suggestion: Own up to it, without accusing others of their patience in this matter, and move on. It is never too late. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 03:58, 4 August 2018 (UTC)

Status update: HTTPS for lepidoptera.eu was already done. HTTP for lepidoptera.eu is now done. HTTPS for lepidoptera.pl is now done (was just 1 link). HTTP for lepidoptera.pl remaining. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 04:47, 4 August 2018 (UTC)
 * You should check some of these sites too. --Izno (talk) 11:18, 4 August 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks -- as far as I could see so far, the others (except .eu and .pl) do not appear to have any affiliation to this specific incident. They might be unreliable sources as well, and might need to be removed as references as well, but that would be something I'd do after working through the list of links involved in this specific mass link addition here. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 14:38, 4 August 2018 (UTC)

Just leaving another note here...

Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Spam/2010_Archive_May_1 (permanent link)

Monitored by WikiProject Spam since 10:48, 9 May 2010 (UTC). ~ ToBeFree (talk) 16:19, 4 August 2018 (UTC)

✅ cleaning up the links, for both lepidoptera.eu and lepidoptera.pl, HTTP &amp; HTTPS. Here is a list of about 1090 edits involved with the cleanup process, taking 3 days: Permanent link I have not used any tools or scripts, just Firefox, hundreds of open tabs and the default keyboard shortcuts. Peak RAM usage for the browser alone was somewhere between 7 and 8 gigabytes; this strategy doesn't work on every machine. To sort the backlog into multiple categories, I used the "insource" feature of MediaWiki's search engine. For the edit summaries, has created a handy permalink that I updated during the cleanup process.

During the investigation, as already written above, it became apparent that the dimension of this spam wave, and the amount of warnings received, has been unexpectedly large. Here is a (possibly still incomplete) timeline:


 * 2010-05-07, 20:12 -- 21:39: : 13 abusefilter warnings for "adding external links to many different Wikipedia pages in rapid succession". (warning permalink, abusefilter log, example spam). In 12 of these cases, the warning has been seen, ignored and the edit has been resubmitted.
 * 2010-05-09, 08:45: is registered on enwiki. (CentralAuth, sort by "Attached on")
 * 2010-05-09, 09:00 -- 10:36: : 11 abusefilter warnings for "adding external links to many different Wikipedia pages in rapid succession". (warning permalink, abusefilter log, example spam). In all 11 of these cases, the warning has been seen, ignored and the edit has been resubmitted.
 * 2010-05-09, 09:40: : uw-spam1 by at User_talk:Chris lepidoptera (diff)
 * 2010-05-09, 10:56: : uw-spam2 by at User_talk:Chris lepidoptera (diff)
 * 2010-05-10, 10:02: Mass revert of 's spam edits by (see this list)
 * 2010-05-10, 10:03: : uw-coi by at User_talk:Chris lepidoptera (diff)
 * 2010-05-10, 10:04: Mass revert of 's spam edits by (see this list)
 * 2010-05-10, 10:05: : uw-spam2 and uw-coi by at User_talk:62.121.64.89 (diff)
 * 2010-05-10, 16:37 -- 17:13: : 5 abusefilter warnings for "adding external links to many different Wikipedia pages in rapid succession". (warning permalink, abusefilter log, example spam). In all 5 of these cases, the warning has been seen, ignored and the edit has been resubmitted.
 * 2011-08-07, 21:29: : 1 abusefilter warning for "adding external links to many different Wikipedia pages in rapid succession". (new warning permalink, abusefilter log, example spam). The warning has been seen, ignored and the edit has been resubmitted.
 * 2013-03-20 -- 2015-01-31: continues to add links to lepidoptera.pl, and later lepidoptera.eu, nearly always marked as "minor edits", except when the edit is actually minor. See Special:Contributions/Chris_lepidoptera. Example "minor" edits: Diff 1, Diff 2. Example "non-minor" edits: Diff 1, Diff 2.
 * 2015-02-01, 1:35: last addition of lepidoptera.eu by Chris lepidoptera: Diff.
 * 2015-04-20, 16:49: is registered on plwiki. (CentralAuth, sort by "Attached on")
 * 2015-04-22, 14:58: is attached to enwiki. (CentralAuth, sort by "Attached on")
 * 2015-04-25 -- 2015-08-11: fixes an article error (diff) and replaces two "lepidoptera.pl" links by their "lepidoptera.eu" counterparts (diff 1, diff 2).
 * 2016-01-12: last edit of
 * 2016-01-12 -- 2016-01-13: makes 10 edits to just 3 pages, each one changing the spelling of one specific word. These could very well have been combined into 3 edits. Diffs: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10
 * 2016-02-02 -- 2018-07-31, 08:35: As an autoconfirmed user, the abusefilter doesn't apply to anymore. They receive no warnings, nobody even welcomes them, they're flying under the radar. Nearly all their edits are marked as "minor". The only exceptions are:
 * The removal of a link. (diff)
 * Creation and expansion of their userpage (diff 1, diff 2)
 * Removing "www." from a link on their userpage (diff 3)
 * Restructuring an article link and link text without changing the domain. (diff)
 * 2018-07-31, 08:39 -- 08:53:, for the first time since registration, makes link additions which are not marked as minor edits. 2 of these edits are announced as "Username overlaps with domain" by COIbot on IRC. (diffs: 1, 2, 3, 4)
 * 2018‎-07-31, 08:55: : Welcomespam by at User_talk:Lepidoptera~plwiki (diff)
 * 2018-07-31, 09:12: (as "ToBeCloud") on #wikipedia-en-help: "Hi :) Could someone with experience in Conflict of Interest and SPAM editing please have a look at Special:Contributions/Lepidoptera~plwiki to see if I'm correct about this rather being promotional than encyclopedic? I don't want to open an entry on an admin noticeboard yet, not before they have disagreed and continued afterwards. But there are these edits, which have already been done, as "MINOR" edits..." (full quote, pasted by ToBeFree, may be copied freely)
 * 2018‎-07-31, 09:16: : Custom worded warning by at User_talk:Lepidoptera~plwiki ("This mass addition of that domain both quantifies original research as well as conflict of interest and these edits need to stop and your changes need to be removed") (diff)
 * 2018‎-07-31, 09:57: responds on User_talk:Lepidoptera~plwiki ("[...] unfortunately I don't agree with you that my editions are some kind of advertising.") (diff)
 * 2018‎-07-31, 10:56: asks for clarification at User_talk:Lepidoptera~plwiki. ("Is this your website?") (diff)
 * 2018‎-07-31, 12:49: responds at User_talk:Lepidoptera~plwiki: ("yes it's my website. It's not a secret information - you can find it on my Wikipedia profile.") (diff)
 * 2018‎-07-31, 13:57: : Custom worded warning by at User_talk:Lepidoptera~plwiki ("Please do not continue, however, to make promotional edits for a non-free image site to Wikipedia. Wikipedia is not a free advertisement provider.") (diff)
 * 2018‎-07-31, 13:59: : uw-minor by at User_talk:Lepidoptera~plwiki (diff)
 * 2018‎-07-31, 14:25: makes another "minor" edit to the external links section of a main namespace article (diff)
 * 2018‎-07-31, 14:33: uploads File:Aglia tau IMG 0982.jpg to Wikimedia Commons.
 * 2018‎-07-31, 14:55: reverts the "minor" link edit ("No! Please look at your talk page.") (diff)
 * 2018‎-07-31, 17:28: notices the upload and makes multiple "thank you" edits including a collapse of the Welcomespam message in favor of a Welcome-belated message. (multidiff)
 * 2018‎-07-31, 19:08: uploads File:Satyrium pruni IMG 6365.jpg to Wikimedia Commons.
 * 2018‎-08-01, 06:46: continues like before, adding a link to lepidoptera.eu to a main namespace article, as a "minor" edit. (Special:Diff/852917151/prev diff)
 * 2018‎-08-01, 18:39 -- 21:32: makes 6 more edits, all marked as "minor". One fixes an lepidoptera.eu link, the 5 others add new lepidoptera.eu links. (diffs: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6)
 * 2018‎-08-01, 21:52: creates Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents (diff)

And that's how we got here. There have been 30 abusefilter warnings, 9 talk page warnings, and 2 mass reverts. Lepidoptera~plwiki continued to spam anyway. Only after that, the ANI thread has been created. Only after that, the mass rollback has been done. Only after that, I have removed all the links to lepidoptera.eu and lepidoptera.pl. We have not been unfair here. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 04:19, 5 August 2018 (UTC)
 * I would support an addition to the blacklist, Beetstra. --Izno (talk) 10:59, 5 August 2018 (UTC)
 * That has been done already earlier today. --Dirk Beetstra T  C 12:43, 5 August 2018 (UTC)

As one last note, a sockpuppet investigation (permalink) has formally determined today that, based on their behavior, there is a plausible relation between and :

This concern has been explicitly voiced by multiple administrators (1, 2a, 2b, 3). An explanation of possible connection types, and why Wikipedia considers these to be abusive, can be found at Sock puppetry and Meatpuppetry. Please note that neither of these terms are meant to be derogatory. I think that there should ideally be neutral terms for describing people, but these two terms have been historically established in the Wikipedia community.

My personal view and explanation of the specific issue here: I think that using multiple accounts, in the way Lepidoptera~plwiki appears to have done, is normally not a problem. It just seemed to be an unconventional way of renaming one’s account, by creating a new account and abandoning the old one. As you can see at User:ToBeFree (old account), I have even been doing exactly that in the past, probably because I did not know that "renaming" is possible. This is perfectly okay.

The only real problem here was denying, multiple times, that there is a connection between these accounts. The following part of Wikipedia’s "Sock puppetry" policy describes this:

(Sock_puppetry)

Because the link has been added to the blacklist already, and because Lepidoptera~plwiki has already stopped adding the link to Wikipedia articles, there is no need for a block. Blocks are not meant to punish editors; they are only being used if really needed to prevent disruption. This is described in the blocking policy: Blocking policy

Lepidoptera~plwiki: Whenever you like to, and possibly even years in the future, please feel free to give Wikipedia a second chance. A good way to finally have a clean start would probably be:


 * Adding a notice to your user page that explains the connection between "Chris lepidoptera" and your current account. The easiest way to clean the whole situation would be accepting and acknowledging that it happened, and moving on. It does not have to be a large infobox, it can be a small text note. It should not be a pillory -- the important part is not that it's visible, the important part is that it comes from you personally, as a reliable confirmation of what has happened in the past. It could probably even be hidden inside a HTML comment, and would still be a nice gesture.
 * Adding a notice to Chris lepidoptera's user page. If you have lost your password, and if you have no access to the e-mail address anymore, you could write exactly that. If you are logged in as Lepidoptera~plwiki, you can edit the old account's user page. This works because you are "autoconfirmed".
 * If you like to: Adding a short explanation of the situation on your talk page, where others can respond and wish you a good new start. Even if it might look different, we are not angry at you. We have actually never been. We are trying to help, and I will happily offer new cookies if you decide to rejoin Wikipedia in a few years.

I think that this can be archived now. It feels amazing to be able to add the following text to this section:

Done

~ ToBeFree (talk) 05:05, 14 August 2018 (UTC)

New Stack Exchange site for Wikipedia users
I have just created a proposal on new Question and Answer site for helping Wikipedia users and editors. The link is here:

https://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/119659/wikipedia?referrer=TGMbWAy-uiSoq1C-pMbTMw2

--Mladifilozof (talk) 18:58, 19 August 2018 (UTC)

Linking to a newspaper's col2l2exction of artixcles on a subject
Sorry, k1eyboard just went sout-h. Is a good link? Doug Weller talk 08:57, 19 August 2018 (UTC)


 * No. That's a link to search results, which ELNO disapproves of.
 * Even if it weren't on the ELNO list, I don't think that a link from that particular newspaper would be my first choice for such a thing. I think I'd pick something bigger and more obviously mainstream (e.g., Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Chicago Tribune, Washington Post...)  WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:42, 25 August 2018 (UTC)

Feedback on Project!
Hello, I am looking for some opinions on a variety of documents. I am currently working with the Rhode Island State Archives to add relevant external links to articles on Wikipedia. I am wondering if I could obtain some feedback on these articles (user There'sNoTime has been very helpful in getting me to this point!) A quick side note, the Archives are currently updating its catalog system, so sometimes the links do not work. If one of the links does not open, please let me know. Also, I was wondering if some of these would be better off as me composing a new sentence and attaching it as a footnote instead. The proposed footnotes are below:

1. Battle of Rhode Island map: https://catalog.sos.ri.gov/repositories/2/digital_objects/26 Battle of Rhode Island page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Rhode_Island

2. Declaration of Independence: First Newport printing by Solomon Southwick facsimile: https://catalog.sos.ri.gov/repositories/2/digital_objects/38 Solomon Southwick: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solomon_Southwick

Possible sentence with footnote: On July 4th, 1776, the first printing of the Declaration of Independence took place. On July 6th, a copy was sent to the Governor of Rhode Island. Southwick used this copy to print and distribute a Newport edition of the Declaration.

3. Guide to the Station Nightclub Victims’ Collection: https://catalog.sos.ri.gov/repositories/2/digital_objects/134 The Station Nightclub Fire: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Station_nightclub_fire

4. Guide to the Rhode Island School for the Deaf records and photographs: https://catalog.sos.ri.gov/repositories/2/digital_objects/122 Rhode Island School for the Deaf: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhode_Island_School_for_the_Deaf

5. Kings County Courthouse photograph: https://catalog.sos.ri.gov/repositories/2/digital_objects/249 South Kingstown, Rhode Island: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Kingstown,_Rhode_Island

Possible sentence with footnote: The building that currently serves as the Kingston Free Library used to be the King’s County Courthouse. This courthouse also served as one of the five original state houses between 1776-1791. In 1959, the General Assembly sold the building’s title to the Kingston Free Library Corporation.

6. Rocky Point Ferris Wheel photograph: https://catalog.sos.ri.gov/repositories/2/digital_objects/220 Rocky Point Amusement Park: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocky_Point_Amusement_Park

Possible sentence with footnote: As early as 1895, Rocky Point also featured a Ferris Wheel.

7. The Rhode Island Building: Louisiana Purchase Exposition St. Louis: https://catalog.sos.ri.gov/repositories/2/digital_objects/235 Louisiana Purchase Exposition: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louisiana_Purchase_Exposition

8. People's Constitution: https://catalog.sos.ri.gov/repositories/2/digital_objects/168 Dorr Rebellion: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorr_Rebellion

Revise this sentence with a footnote from: In October, they held an extralegal People's Convention and drafted a new constitution which granted the vote to all white men with one year's residence.

To: In October, they held an extralegal People's Convention and drafted a new constitution, known as the People’s Constitution, which granted the vote to all white men with one year's residence.

9. Ratification of the United States Constitution: New Shoreham: https://catalog.sos.ri.gov/repositories/2/digital_objects/176 Block Island: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Block_Island#New_Shoreham

Possible sentence with footnote: On March 24, 1798, a vote was conducted in New Shoreman to ratify the United States Constitution, with those in attendance voting against it.

10. First Petition for Women's Suffrage in Rhode Island: https://catalog.sos.ri.gov/repositories/2/digital_objects/53 Elizabeth Buffum Chace: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Buffum_Chace

Possible sentence with footnote: She played an integral role in women’s suffrage in Rhode Island with her assistance in creating the First Petition for Women’s Suffrage in Rhode Island to the General Assembly.

Any constructive feedback would be amazing! Thank you! Rcar01 (talk) 19:07, 15 August 2018 (UTC)


 * Hello, Rcar01,
 * Have you found the WP:GLAM folks yet? They might have some useful advice for you.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:47, 25 August 2018 (UTC)

External links when to use them?
A couple of days ago I read the article Major scale. I checked the two external links at the bottom of the article and found out that one of the link is a dead link and another is a link to another website. So I decided to add my link, this is not my website/ affiliate). I added this link because I'm sure someone will find the information there useful. However many editors here on Wikipedia did not like that and reverted my edit. I address this issue here because a User:WhatamIdoing guided or instructed me.I want answers from you all experience editors ( User:Just plain Bill,  User:Feline Hymnic, User:Chrissymad )who reverted my edit, if you think my link  is not worthy to be on the article Major scale, why the other two links are there? One of the link there is a dead link, why no one bothers to fix it? Just because I am a new editor here doesn't mean I've never heard of Wikipeida.  I wanted to thank User:WhatamIdoing  for instructing me to address this issue here. Any editors who understood my message please restore my editJEric94 (talk) 04:01, 25 August 2018 (UTC)


 * Thanks for this note. Bill has helpfully replied at the article's talk page, so let's centralize the discussion there.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:49, 25 August 2018 (UTC)

tnecampus.org

 * (previously "Straydogcommunications", a name that may indicate promotional/shared use)

Message on my talk page asking for advice: Diff

One example of a probably acceptable addition is the Tennessee Board of Regents article. Diff

I would like to reply, but I should first know if this link is acceptable anywhere else than in the Tennessee Board of Regents article. Editors who have already undone additions of this link to "External links" sections:
 * (Diff 1, Diff 2, Diff 3)
 * me, (Diff 1, Diff 2, Diff 3, Diff 4)

~ ToBeFree (talk) 18:33, 27 August 2018 (UTC)
 * It does not belong anywhere else. To show where people can find more infois not in Wikipedia's scope.  And the editor seems to havea COI, so maybe should stay on the talkpages.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 19:12, 27 August 2018 (UTC)
 * I agree with Dirk. This is the WP:ELMINOFFICIAL problem:  Yes, it's a real, valid, and even potentially useful link (if you happen to be a current or prospective student).  But we only need one official link for those schools.  The schools themselves can promote the Tennessee eCampus project on their own websites.  As for where it could be linked:  it might be appropriate in the TBR article, and it might even be a notable entity itself.  But beyond that, I doubt that we will find another article where it truly belongs.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:51, 27 August 2018 (UTC)

List of manual image annotation tools
Could someone look at List of manual image annotation tools and suggest what should be done with this list? I tagged it for cleanup as a WP:LINKFARM. Biogeographist (talk) 18:35, 27 August 2018 (UTC)
 * Turn column 1 into wikilinks, anything redlinked needs an independent reliable reference to show they belongin the list. The prose also needs a cleanup.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 19:09, 27 August 2018 (UTC)
 * If those links are meant to be reliable sources (e.g., to prove that the thing exists and that it belongs in this list), then it's okay (not beautiful, but okay). That's what the last sentence in WP:ELLIST means.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:53, 27 August 2018 (UTC)
 * WP:ELLIST refers to valid "citations", links that could be reasonably seen as reliable sources. Almost all of the links are not reliable nor do they establish any credible encyclopedic relevance for list inclusion (everyone can publish their personal code projects on GitHub or create a fancy promo website in a few hours). The excessive link farm created by various COI-editors should be trimmed, cleaned up and based on independent reliable sources as Beetstra suggested. Wikipedia is not a link directory or product catalog of unremarkable minor products. GermanJoe (talk) 11:02, 28 August 2018 (UTC)
 * GermanJoe, I think you might be confusing verifiability with neutrality. Any typical website from a software maker – including a GitHub page – that says "Widget™ is a manual image annotation tool" is actually a reliable source for the fact that their Widget is a manual image annotation tool.
 * That doesn't mean that we have to include Widget in the list (see: several years of debates at WT:V over whether verifiability is a force for inclusion), but the maker's own website is a proper reliable source for that statement.  It is not an independent source for that statement, and it is not a secondary source for that statement, but it is nevertheless still a "reliable" source for that statement.  That's mostly because people actually do "rely upon" sources like that.  People don't usually see a website that says "Widget™ is a manual image annotation tool.  Buy Widget now!" and think that Widget is probably something else entirely.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:06, 28 August 2018 (UTC)
 * I believe you misunderstood me (and I probably wasn't really clear). The occasional careful usage of self-published sources for uncontroversial non-promotional claims is OK if no better sources exist. But independent sources are generally more reliable and preferred - we shouldn't use inferior sources, when better independent sources should be readily available for all notable topics and noteworthy aspects. We are getting a bit off-topic here though. But I'd be glad to discuss this aspect on another forum another time. GermanJoe (talk) 00:22, 29 August 2018 (UTC)
 * 'existence' is not a reason to include it, in that case all spam should be included - it all exists, they really all sell viagra, see their website.  Stand-alone_lists is the guide we should go by. Everything that does not have a Wikipedia article, and hence is not notable by itself, needs a reliable, independent reference to show that it is worth to be mentioned in a list.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 13:03, 28 August 2018 (UTC)
 * Existence is not a reason to include something, but non-existence (i.e., it's a hoax, or at least that it's unverifiable) would be a reason to ex clude something. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:57, 28 August 2018 (UTC)
 * Sure, now we know that all exist, now we need to get rid of those that are not passing inclusion standards. --Dirk Beetstra T  C 02:26, 29 August 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I added the above instructions to the cleanup template on the list. I'm not sure if I will find time to do the cleanup myself. Biogeographist (talk) 17:26, 28 August 2018 (UTC)
 * There is already a discussion on the talkpage. I will start turning the external links in the frstc column into Wikilinks, tagging all that are redlinked which have no independent, reliable sources to show they have reason to be there.  After a monthor so I will remove all that are still in that state.  For those where there are independent references(or which showtheir own notability) can then be re-inserted.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 02:26, 29 August 2018 (UTC)
 * The purpose of the discussion on the talk page is to determine what the "inclusion standards" are. There is no set rule; it is up to the editors of an article to decide what makes most sense for that subject.
 * That said, Dirk, the next time you decide to re-arrange columns in a table, I recommend switching to the visual editor. It can insert and move columns in just two or three clicks.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:59, 30 August 2018 (UTC)

Musical artists and albums pages being excessively linked to Amazon or iTunes
What's the rule about linking to places that sell mainly sell products like Amazon or iTunes, but provide no real useful encyclopedic information? There is currently a lot of album and artist articles associated with Bethel Music group and the Bethel Music singer Brian Johnson that contain many links to both sites. The links are not used properly as citations either and seem to only be there for the purpose of sending readers to a place where they can buy the artists work. Or to make it look like the subjects of the articles are more notable then they are. Further, Any attempts made by me or others to change the links have have been reverted and led to arguments. So I would like to know if they are actually usable or not in this context. There is also many links to a place selling lyrics and sheet music, but provides no encyclopedic usefulness, that Id like to know the appropriateness of. --Adamant1 (talk) 23:40, 1 August 2018 (UTC)
 * WP:ELNO #5 says those links should not be included. Feel free to remove them again, linking to that point and leave a uw-spam warning on the usertalk of restores it.  If I'm on and active, feel free to ping me when you warn them. Ian.thomson (talk) 23:52, 1 August 2018 (UTC)
 * can you link to a couple of pages with this problem? --Dirk Beetstra T  C 04:03, 2 August 2018 (UTC)
 * Sure. Unfortunately I already went through the worst offenders, but here's a few We Will Not Be Shaken (Live), Without Words (Bethel Music album), This Is Jesus Culture, Starlight (Bethel Music album) (has like six references to both Amazon and iTunes), No Longer Slaves, Amanda Cook (singer) (has 8 references to iTunes), You Make Me Brave: Live at the Civic, Have It All (Bethel Music album) (Has a link to a tweet about how to pre order the album on Spotify. Along with four references to iTunes), Have It All (Bethel Music song) (eleven links to iTunes and Spotify). — Preceding unsigned comment added by Adamant1 (talk • contribs)
 * that all are references. This guideline is concerned with external links.  Most of these are indeed hardly ever suitable as external links, but used in the right context they can serve as primary references for certain information.  It does seem a bit overdone, though.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 08:50, 2 August 2018 (UTC)
 * Many of the commercial citations don't verify the information they're cited for. For example, We Will Not Be Shaken (Live), iTunes is cited for the date "January 26, 2015," though the iTunes entry seems to only support "2015."  It also is cited for writers and worship leaders, though the iTunes entry just lists artists.  This leaves me inclined to view that citation as WP:REFSPAM.  In Without Words (Bethel Music album), Amazon, iTunes, and Spotify are cited.  Once again, the iTunes page generally fails to completely support everything its cited for.  Spotify contains even less information.  Amazon supports probably the most information that it's cited for out of all the commercial references, but I can't say its perfect.  I probably would defend its use were it not accompanied by the other instances of refspam.
 * All of these links (and many of the articles) seem to have been added by, who, after a couple of years of productively and laudably making or expanding a variety of articles concerning mostly Zimbabwean academics and athletics, suddenly rather switched on 27 Nov 2016 to making and expanding only articles about a branch of the American music industry that targets churchgoers -- specifically topics immediately connected to Elevation Worship and Bethel Music, who have performed together. (Furthermore, Leeland (band) has releases through both Elevation's Essential Records and Bethel Music's own label).  This one edit is the only exception to that pattern.
 * So we have a number of articles, many of which limp by on WP:NM while otherwise failing WP:GNG, all created by a single purpose account that drastically switched topics, that all contain weak references to sites that sell products for two connected organizations. Now, I can imagine that there's a perfectly innocent explanation, especially if the user in question promises to do better with referencing in the future (maybe stop citing sources that sell the music entirely).  I would have a harder time buying such an explanation if the explanation were accompanied by an attempt to defend citing iTunes and Spotify when those citations contain almost no useful information.  Ian.thomson (talk) 21:48, 2 August 2018 (UTC)

Musical artists and albums pages being excessively linked to Amazon or iTunes - while I was on vacation
An editor who has been edit warring to remove references to music releases from iTunes and Amazon on the After All These Years (Brian & Jenn Johnson album) article and others ( decided to come where while I was on vacation (I'm not suggesting the editor knew I was on vacation at the time) and failed to notify me of the discussion (which was in the editor's purview). The discussion was at Wikipedia:External links/Noticeboard/Archive 21. First, these are not external links, but references so why was this being discussed here?

Second, fell for the bait and stated that we cannot use commercial site per WP:ELNO. correctly identified them as references and that this guideline does not apply. was mentioned as well.

Let me correct Ian.thomson and Adamant1 (who just incorrectly reverted again claiming that ""), ELNO does not apply to references. If either of you want remove the offending references and supply some from other reliable source such as or the others in the article, feel free to, but, and this is an official warning to Adamant1, the next time you remove references from the article and tag it incorrectly as you did in the diff linked above, I will take you to 3RR for long-term edit warring. In short, wrong place to discuss this issue, improve don't make article worse. Walter Görlitz (talk) 15:29, 25 August 2018 (UTC)
 * Walter Görlitz, if its an incorrect claim and I tagged it incorrectly, prove it. You haven't provided a shred of evidence and all you have done instead is threaten me. As you continue to do here. Because I am not providing reliable sources to replace the offending ones is no excuse to leave the offending ones there. If they are offending, they should be removed that's it. You say so yourself they are offending. They aren't "references" either. As they don't "reference" anything. Its not on me to provide better links either. If you think there should be other links, put them there yourself. Its not my responsibility to make sure the article is well sourced.
 * Also, if anyone is long term editing warring you are. Since I discussed it with a moderator before I made the changed and you reverting based on an old feud and despite that. So who is really doing the edit warring here? Removing inappropriate links is improving the article. Its not like you haven't reverted other edits I did on those same pages, like fixing grammatical errors etc, for the same petty reasons anyway and badgered me in those cases also. you seem to be suffering from Wikipedia:Ownership of content. You don't own the articles and they aren't yours to dictate every little detail of what is done on them. The fact that your doing it based on a grudge is also evident by your threat of having my account suspend on my talk page for "blanking" pages. When I wasn't blanking pages. All you have is threats. Otherwise, you would of done something about it by now or contact a moderator like I did. Otherwise, prove your right by filling a dispute instead of just resorting to these petty tactics and baseless threats. Otherwise, you have nothing and you never have. --Adamant1 (talk) 15:42, 25 August 2018 (UTC)
 * Hey, Walter Görlitz, I've pulled the old discussion out of the archives for you. It's okay to re-open archived discussions here.  That way, we can have everything in one place.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:07, 25 August 2018 (UTC)
 * What follows is a point-by-point response:
 * I did just prove it: references are not external links.
 * I provided a few links that are the evidence.
 * I'm not threatening you, I am providing you with notice, which is what is required in cases like this.
 * No admins. No moderators. Only editors.
 * Yes, it takes two to edit war. And thanks for finally discussing rather than edit warring, even if it is in the wrong forum.
 * The fixes to grammatical and other issues were reverted because of the other underlying problems.
 * The problem is that the references are not offending any reference guideline so they should not be removed. That's the underlying problem with your edits all along. You keep thinking that the references cannot be used when I keep telling you that they can and have guidelines to support the claim.
 * No ownership issues. The articles you're editing are on my watchlist and I treat your edits like any other that violate policies, guidelines, manuals of style and community consensus. However, when you hit revert, it sets off a big red flag.
 * The blanking template is clear, it's about content on a page, not specifically a whole page.
 * Again, you have not contacted moderators.
 * I hope that clears things up. Walter Görlitz (talk) 16:08, 25 August 2018 (UTC)
 * I looked at one of the contested edits. This is the wikitext for one of the "external links" that appears to have been contested:

"You're Gonna Be OK", the song led by Jenn Johnson was released on May 8, 2017, as the lead single from the album.
 * Adamant1, that is not an external link, and WP:EL says that it doesn't apply to refs at least three times (twice in bold-face text at the top!), not counting seven footnotes on that subject. If you see ref tags at the end of a sentence, then it's not an external link, full stop.  If that's not clear from the EL guideline to someone as experienced as you, then please let me know, because I'm tempted to copy that wikitext into the guideline, in a big box, with a title that says, "Seriously, people:  If it looks like this, then you are in the wrong place".
 * If you think that URL doesn't lead to a source that adequately supports this statement, then your options at this point are to go to WP:RSN, or to replace that URL with a source that (in your opinion) does adequately support this statement. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:17, 25 August 2018 (UTC)


 * Walter, maybe you could try considering that someone who comes up with a conclusion you disagree with is not stupid? I didn't "take the bait," I considered ELNO in light of WP:REFSPAM.  The prior discussion shows that I found a rather prolific refspammer who was citing pages that often had nothing but the link to buy the album and no real information about it.  Do not treat saying that we should remove links that don't support the material they're cited for as "taking bait" -- which implies that Adamant1 is some sort of troll and that I'm a fool for listening.  If you're going to be so overly emotional about this that you insult others, you need a Wikibreak.  I have not followed Adamant1's behavior since, that's a separate issue that I've not been a part of, so don't ping me to blame me for how he chose to interpret from there.  Ian.thomson (talk) 16:23, 25 August 2018 (UTC)
 * I never used the word stupid, and that's not what I think of Adamant1. And you did take the bait as the editor is either WP:FORUMSHOPPING (although this is the first place the editor went, but it's a misplaced request) or just has no clue (in which case, we should supply one—not stupid, clueless). If you were thinking of refspam should have directed the editor to that guideline. I pinged you because the editor assumed you were an admin and took your words as liberty to once again remove the references. You are an involved editor. Walter Görlitz (talk) 16:29, 25 August 2018 (UTC)
 * Walter Görlitz, One, you didn't prove anything. Its also about the way its used. At least in my opinion. Just putting a ref in it doesn't make it any less of an attempt to draw users to a site where they can buy the album. As Kuda188 was clearly doing by the fact that 99% of the links to Itunes and Amazon where either added to cells that had encyclopedic content they were referencing or as secondary links added onto the end of already exiting reverences. Its my impression that references are meant to be used inline as a way to cite something being said in an article. Not as "hey here's a random link to Itunes that relates to this paragraph or article in no what so ever." Also, I was told by an administrator and another person that the links where offending. So whatever case I am wrong on, its partly because I took their word for it. Since they are suppose to be authorities on the subject. I think its telling that Koda188 is had his account suspended multiple times for having a conflict of interest and he was the one that put the links there in that way in the first place. He obviously has connections to Bethel that he failed to disclose. Its mentioned all over his social accounts. He repeatedly deleted any attempts me or anyone else made on his talk page to discuss it to. So the intent of the links to be spammy and sell albums was clear from the start. Even if you disagree with me on the particulars of the rules, you can't deny it. How things are presented and why they are presented that way is just as important as being able to cite some obscure rule. The fact that they where originally put there by someone who clearly has a conflict of interest matters. I brought that issue up to you multiple times before and you ignored it though.
 * Two, you did threaten me by saying you where going to have my account blocked for blanking pages on talk page, including saying it was my only warning, without making an attempt to discuss the issue with me first. There was no reason you couldn't of asked me why I deleted the links in a civil manor and I could of explained it to you. You decided to come at me right off the bat with your threatening, aggressive tone though. So yes, you did threaten me. "don't blank pages or I will have account suspending. This is your only warning" is a threat. As Wikipedia says "Threatening another person is considered harassment. This includes any real-world threats, such as threats of harm, and threats to disrupt a person's work on Wikipedia." There is also a quote somewhere that I can't find now about how a threat is a statement made with the intent to intimidate the person into not doing something or something like that. Which you where clearly doing.
 * Third, I've discussed not edited warring with you multiple times in the past. You just got an attitude and refused to discuss things except to talk down to me and ignore anything I said. So i don't know what your point there is.
 * Forth, There were no other "underlining problems" when you reverted for me making grammatical changes etc except your own need to control the situation and be right at all costs. That was made clear by your comment on my talk page about how you where follow all my edits even on unrelated pages and the things I did on them also.
 * Fifth, its ownership if you refuse to let people make even minor edits to the pages you watch and if you give none sense reasons for why you are refusing to let them edit the pages. As you did with me multiple times as I have already stated, along with many other people. If you revert someone just because you don't "like" their edit, you are claiming ownership of the article and that's clearly what you have been doing.
 * It might be about content, but it doesn't suddenly become blanking just because you don't like the edit. I can't claim someone is blanking and threatened to have them banned because they removed a sentence that wasn't well sourced when I wanted it to stay there. Which is exactly what you did with the links. There is no rule against changing or deleting links. You just don't like it.
 * P.S. I said there were two people that told me to go ahead with it. Altough one of them was Ian.thomson, I never claimed he was the moderator. The other person was. I can't remember their name is now though unfortunately, but it wasn't Ian.thomson. Obviously I know the difference between a normal editor and a moderator. --Adamant1 (talk) 16:54, 25 August 2018 (UTC)
 * The word you used in your revert was "administrator". Diff provided above. Walter Görlitz (talk) 18:02, 25 August 2018 (UTC)
 * Ian has been an admin since 2015; you can see his user rights on Special:ListUsers. However, this isn't an admin question; it's a reliable sources question, on which point there is no significant difference between a normal editor and an admin.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:43, 25 August 2018 (UTC)
 * I stand corrected. I checked his user page and must have missed it, not his rights page. Thanks again. Walter Görlitz (talk) 20:58, 25 August 2018 (UTC)
 * Walter, that's the problem with you when it comes to this whole thing, you find the one thing to cherry pick that is semantics and then you use it as a way to ignore everything else. Even if your wrong about it. There's no reason you couldn't of just took my word for it. Unless Ian.Thomson is right about you thinking I'm stupid. Its a minuscule thing anyway.
 * WhatamIdoing, do you mind if I ask you question? Maybe its not relevant to this section or whatever, but I rather just get this stuff dealt with instead of having the Walter monkey on my back for the rest of forever, and I don't have the time to parse through all the minutia of bureaucracy or rules that dealing with people like him properly entitles. So, there is an article about Steffany Gretzinger who is a Bethel Music artist. A while back she edited her own page without disclosing the conflict of interest. At the time there was a discussion/argument with her and a couple of other users about those edits and blew them off ignored them. One of those edits happen to be a social media link to her Twitter page announcing that she was pregnant. Maybe it was wrapped in a "ref" or whatever and that those types of links can normally stay, but the twitter message also had an affiliate link to a place selling cloths. So it might of been a baby announcement on the surface, but it was also trying to up sell people baby cloths. So I deleted it. Walter immediately jumped on me about it though by sending me a smarmy messaging and reverting me. The reason he gave was because "social media links are allowed." I sent him a reply to his smarmy message explaining the up selling, but he just got more smarmy and reverted more of my edits in retaliation. Sp even if the link is in a "ref" and social media accounts might be allowed sometimes, which I don't really know one way or another about, and Walter can argue all he wants about how it might or not be an external link due to having a "ref" in it or not, even though the Wikipedia guideline you quoted me above says something like "external links are any links to pages outside of Wikipedia" or something like that, but still seems like an inappropriate link. How the link the is matters as much as having a die hard almost religiously strict knowledge of obscure rules does it not? Or am I wrong here and links that are explicitly put on the articles for the purpose of up selling products should remain on the pages because "Hey man, WP:WikiRule24-14 whatever, right?." If this isn't the appropriate place for the question, where should I take it then? All I knew originally was that it was a thing dealing with external links and that's what the name of this board is. --Adamant1 (talk) 11:46, 26 August 2018 (UTC)
 * So you just made a claim without proof or links. Which edits on Steffany Gretzinger were made by the subject? How are they a CoI? What does this have to do with external links? I have never edited that article prior to your earlier edit today for the same misguided reasons you have displayed here, so you weren't in a debate with me. And stop ignoring MOS:INDENTGAP when replying! Walter Görlitz (talk) 14:33, 26 August 2018 (UTC)
 * And once again the rules that govern references are not the same as those that govern what is acceptable in the external links section of an article, even if the reference contains a link to an external source. This project only deals with direct external links—those that are found in the external links section of an article and occasionally in the body of an article. The last sentence in the fifth paragraph of this guideline (WP:EL) makes that clear: "Guidelines for sourcing, which include external links used as citations, are discussed at Wikipedia:Reliable sources and Wikipedia:Citing sources." It has links to the appropriate guidelines. Walter Görlitz (talk) 02:53, 27 August 2018 (UTC)

Hey, Adamant1, I like your question. I think I have about 80% of an answer for you, and if you don't think that's enough, then feel free to come chat with me on my talk page.

The first thing that I want to say is that WP:Ignore all rules is a formal policy, because that idea matters to us. If you think some action (or inaction) makes the encyclopedia worse, then you personally shouldn't do it, even if there's a written rule that says someone "should" do it. The goal is improving articles, not following the rules.

But there are two relevant caveats to that:
 * 1) People sometimes have different ideas about what makes the encyclopedia worse.  So, for example, if you blank a source because there are affiliate links on the cited page, then I'd say that you made the article worse (e.g., by increasing the amount of uncited material, especially for something so WP:BLP-significant as a pregnancy).  If you add content, I think you should SAYWHEREYOUGOTIT, even if you got it from some less-than-perfect source.  But someone else might say that it's an improvement because, in the unlikely event that some innocent reader clicked through to the source, then there is a small chance that the reader might then also click the affiliate link without realizing that it was an affiliate link, and so the removal could (very slightly) protect the privacy of, well, maybe as many as one reader every couple of years.  But there are points of agreement:  All of us would be satisfied if someone replaced a tweet with a magazine article that said the same thing.
 * 2) Once you reach out to the bureaucracy (for example, by requesting help at a noticeboard), there are some things that the bureaucracy won't accept.  One of those things is settling questions of whether a source is reliable at the external links board.  That's because the "rules" are different, and some of the problems so subtle that most of us don't want to bother mastering more than one or two sets of "rules".  So, for example, I happen to know a lot about external links and reliable sources, so I can easily tell you that a tweet, from any person's verified Twitter account, that says something like "I'm pregnant!" is a reliable source for a statement in an article that says "She announced her pregnancy on ."  I can also tell you that the same tweet would not be accepted in the ==External links== section, even if the article was "Pregnancy announcement of the new Royal Baby".  But I have spent a lot less time dealing with NPOV issues, so I'd probably decline to give an opinion on whether a sentence about the subject getting pregnant belonged in the article at all.  So if you turn up here with a question that doesn't fit here but does fit elsewhere, then we're likely to redirect to you the "perfect fit", in the hope that you'll get better advice.

WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:32, 26 August 2018 (UTC)


 * As earlier mentioned, all of these are used as references, not 'plain' external links. A better place to ask would be the reliable sources noticeboard.  My take on these references however is that IF better references exist (like independent reviews of the material) then those should be used as references, not the commercial sites that carry that (maybe same, maybe even more detailed) information.  Where possible, the links to these commercial sites can be removed as superfluous.  'Better sources' could even be primary sources like the website of the item itelf (or in case of a print-only book, the masthead pages of a book - we do not NEED an external link, we only need a way to verify information).  I think that satisfies the criterion of making the encyclopedia better (improving the quality of the source), without loss of verifiability and a gain of protecting privacy in some cases.  Note that Amazon is mentioned both in Identifying reliable sources/Perennial sources and External links/Perennial websites, and I would say that iTunes is similar (but the latter should maybe be checked in past discussions in WP:RS/N).  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 08:08, 27 August 2018 (UTC)
 * WhatamIdoing and Beetstra, thank you both for the clear, concise answers. Both of them were kind of what my gut feeling was but it is nice to have confirmation. I can see where replacing a link instead of getting rid of it outright might be a better option with the Twitter link, and maybe in some cases with Amazon and iTunes also, its the intentionally deceptive and opportunistic way they are being used in those particular articles that makes me inclined to just get rid of them outright. Especially Amazon and iTunes, and knowing that they are listed in unreliable sources. I noticed there that it says basic information taken from Amazon doesn't have to be cited. So I might go with that. I think a lot of the problem with Walter Görlitz is that most of the Bethel related articles are iffy on notability and have no good sources. So he rather take shoddy ones on those articles over the risk of them being deleted. Although I can understand where he is coming from, I don't think its a good reason to keep the links there or act the way he did about it. Anyway, thanks again to both of you for the information. I'll contact Beetstra on his talk page if I have any other questions. I feel like its adequately resolved for now though. Hopefully Walter Görlitz considers the things mentioned here also. --Adamant1 (talk) 13:19, 27 August 2018 (UTC)
 * There is no deception or opportunism in using the link. Stating that does not WP:AGF.
 * How is the potentially borderline state of an article become a problem with me? I have no need to keep borderline cases and regularly run WP:BEFORE and either redirect, PROD or take this kind of article to AfD. I do not gut articles just because I misunderstand a guideline or misapply advice. What I will do is replace or tag refs that are questionable. I'm not sure what I have to consider as I have no behaviour to change. Walter Görlitz (talk) 14:14, 27 August 2018 (UTC)

This is now officially a problem
gave some incorrect advice and essentially threatened with removal of references and accused the editor of a CoI. The recurring theme here from editors who are not Adamant1 has been that EL guidelines are not to be applied to references, yet the advice clearly conflates refs and ELs. That the Wikipedia:External links/Perennial websites essay is linked in the see also section of Wikipedia:Identifying reliable sources doesn't help.

I attempted to clarify this for Kuda188 and explained that while Amazon and iTunes Store links are not ideal, they may be used. I'm tempted to request a topic ban for Adamant1 if he gets this confused again. Any comments or advice for any of the three of us? Walter Görlitz (talk) 23:31, 29 August 2018 (UTC)


 * Editors are "not allowed to link to copyrighted stuff on YouTube unless you own the copyright for it"?, where did you ever get this idea?  Where, for that matter, did you get the idea that Walter "failed"?  We decided here that Walter was actually correct.
 * Let me be clear:
 * It is OKAY for Wikipedia editors to link to YouTube, as long the YouTube account (note: NOT the Wikipedia editor!) is not a copyright violator.
 * ✅ Yes, you can link to a music video that was uploaded by the official channel for a musical artist.
 * No, you cannot add links to a music video that was pirated by some kid.
 * It is OKAY for Wikipedia editors to link to iTunes in a citation. It might be "unnecessary", but it is NOT prohibited (and certainly not on the basis of a two-month-old essay that doesn't even mention that site).
 * It is OKAY for Wikipedia editors to link to Amazon's content (Note: NOT reviews written by customers) in a citation.  It might be "unnecessary", but it is NOT prohibited.
 * These are the actual rules. Do you understand this now?  I assume that User:Kuda188, who has made thousands of edits over six years, already knows that your claims are wrong, but it would probably still be a good idea to correct your comments there.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:15, 30 August 2018 (UTC)