Wikipedia talk:External links/Archive 37

YouTube videos
The following was recently added:
 * Also, links designed to attract readers to videos produced by the article's subject, rather than to inform the reader about the subject, is an unacceptable use of Wikipedia (see WP:PROMOTION).

This addition was not discussed. Linking to videos is frequently used in musician and band discography sections, specifically to link to the video. That makes this patently false as it does inform the read about the subject, whether it is the song or the style of the song. Walter Görlitz (talk) 14:47, 27 June 2017 (UTC)
 * I think it needs slight clarification. Articles about musicians and bands tend to be very bad, prime examples of WP:PROMOTION. Videos that demonstrate noteworthy technique, style, expertise, etc should be considered. Attempts to link to all videos of all productions are blatantly inappropriate. There's room for compromise between the two extremes, but editors need to be aware that they're compromising over NOT, NPOV, and usually BLP. --Ronz (talk) 16:41, 27 June 2017 (UTC)
 * Agree on the quality scale. But a link to a video on a discography page that lists the video is appropriate. An inline external link to the video, mid-sentence, when discussing its release as a single is not appropriate. Before adding that back in, or some variant, we should include the singles and possibly musicians wiki projects here. Walter Görlitz (talk) 16:48, 27 June 2017 (UTC)
 * (ec) An inline external link to the video, mid-sentence, when discussing its release as a single is not appropriate. I hope that such grossly inappropriate situations are not a concern.
 * designed to attract readers to should be reworded/clarified. Yes, Linking to videos is frequently used is correct, but it is also consistent with what was added, Also, links designed.... --Ronz (talk) 16:53, 27 June 2017 (UTC)

Linking for the purpose of promotion is contrary to Wikipedia's policy on promotion, and that is so whether it is mentioned in this guideline or not, so it is not "patently false". For some reason Walter Görlitz seems to have taken the wording to indicate that linking to videos is always wrong, which is not what it says at all. Linking for the purpose of attracting readers to web content, rather than for the purpose of providing information on the subject of a Wikipedia article, is contrary to Wikipedia policy, whether the linked web content is a video or anything else. The fact that links to videos can exist for legitimate purposes no more invalidates that point than the fact that links to a company's web site can exist for legitimate purposes invalidates the point that linking to them for the purpose of attracting customers is contrary to policy. (By the way, I don't understand why the section heading restricts the topic to only YouTube videos.) The editor who uses the pseudonym "JamesBWatson" (talk) 19:10, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

Linking to youtube videos that explain a subject is fine, but linking to a video in a list just because it is the subject of that item is EXACTLY the same as linking to a non notable company in a list of companies that produce subject X. In that sense it is plainly promotional and not helping the reader to understand (necessarily). That is exactly what our policies prohibit. I therefore also agree with this addition, and think that wikipedia should be cleared of such lists similar to what is prctice with company lists: if they are redlinks they need proper independent sourcing, not external links to YouTube or company websites or whatever. Discographies should not have these links anymore than lists of software that have a certain feature. There simply is no reason to link a video on youtube there. –Dirk Beetstra T C 20:04, 30 June 2017 (UTC)
 * Not exactly the same. If there is a list of videos that a performer has released, it's quite encyclopedic to link to videos assuming they're not copyright violations. There is no attempt at promotion. Walter Görlitz (talk) 20:20, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

And it was added back here, but the consensus was that the original wording is not appropriate. Walter Görlitz (talk) 21:56, 30 June 2017 (UTC)
 * (ec)
 * Just because a performer releases a video doesn't make it appropriate to add an external link to it, nor does a discography in an article automatically create a case for links to videos of the entries in the discography.
 * but the consensus was that the original wording is not appropriate What consensus are you referring to? --Ronz (talk) 22:02, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

As Fram so persuasively reminded me, not so long ago, YouTube videos should be linked only if there is no suspicion at all that the video may be in breach of copyright, whether that linking is in article mainspace or not. But provided the video has been posted officially by the musician(s) concerned, I see no great problem with using it to illustrate, for example, a given notable composition or performance. I'd take exception to Ronz's assertion that "Articles about musicians and bands tend to be very bad, prime examples of WP:PROMOTION." This seems to me to be a gross and unfounded over-simplistic generalisation, especially where classical music is concerned. Martinevans123 (talk) 22:10, 30 June 2017 (UTC)
 * Sorry you don't like the generalization. How would going into details on this sub-topic help this discussion? --Ronz (talk) 22:15, 30 June 2017 (UTC)
 * You think Amadeus is equally up for promotion as, say, Tinie Tempah? Martinevans123 (talk) 22:22, 30 June 2017 (UTC)
 * You didn't answer my question, and are clearly taking this discussion off track. --Ronz (talk) 22:48, 30 June 2017 (UTC)
 * I see. So would you like me to clearly strike out my contributions? Quite regardless of WP:CM, I think it's a little misguided to claim that "Articles about musicians and bands tend to be very bad, prime examples of WP:PROMOTION." Are The Beatles still up for promotion? Not that they have a wealth of YouTube videos, of course. Perhaps you mean "bands which have YouTube videos" or even "bands which have no commercial videos, but only some on YouTube"? Either way, I think you should say. For some notable bands, there is only YouTube? I think it's very difficult to separate "promotion" from "an up-to-date example of the band's work". Martinevans123 (talk) 22:55, 30 June 2017 (UTC)
 * Exceptions to the rule can always be found and the exceptions do not indicate that there is not a general tendency.
 * '68 (band)
 * 12 Stones
 * 7 Horns 7 Eyes
 * Aaron Gillespie
 * Abandon (band)
 * Adam Gontier
 * Aletheian
 * Angels & Airwaves
 * Ashes Remain
 * August Burns Red
 * August Burns Red discography
 * Austrian Death Machine
 * Big Smo
 * Blessthefall
 * Blessthefall discography
 * Capital Kings
 * Capital Kings discography
 * and pretty much any article that Metalworker14 has touched. He has created a convenient list at User:Metalworker14. This list is a sampling of my watchlist, and as you can see, I go to the Cs and stopped. The list is to demonstrate poor quality, not links to videos. Walter Görlitz (talk) 23:37, 30 June 2017 (UTC)
 * I must admit, I had heard of none of those musicians and bands before. But to me all of these articles seem to be reasonably well-written. No-one has suggested deletion, so the subjects must be notable. I see that Aletheian has a single YouTube video link in External links - although I get the This video is unavailable error. But that's the only link I can see. Is that because someone's removed them all already? Are you saying that because all of these articles are "poor quality", and are obviously promotional, that they can't have any YouTube videos linked? Martinevans123 (talk) 08:20, 1 July 2017 (UTC)
 * I'm saying that we need to avoid making exceptions to policies and guidelines because of what we find in poor quality articles. --Ronz (talk) 14:37, 1 July 2017 (UTC)
 * And I'm saying "is that what we find in the articles above?" Are these examples that show that exceptions should be made, or examples that show that exceptions shouldn't be made? Martinevans123 (talk) 15:20, 1 July 2017 (UTC)

If we're done discussing policy, guidelines, and consensus, then I'd like to restore the content once again. No one is arguing that it is appropriate to have links to videos that are clearly promotional rather than demonstrating encyclopedic content. --Ronz (talk) 14:37, 1 July 2017 (UTC)
 * Sincerely apologies. I had thought the topic here was YouTube videos in Eternal links. Martinevans123 (talk) 15:20, 1 July 2017 (UTC)
 * User:Ronz, I object to this because I can't figure out what's included and what's not in the set of "links designed to attract readers to videos produced by the article's subject".
 * I understand some of the things it doesn't include (e.g., a video of anyone playing any music written in the 18th century or earlier, in articles about that music or its composer, because that couldn't be "videos produced by the article's subject", or indeed, any videos in any articles about songs, because songs [being inanimate] can't produce videos, and therefore it is impossible for "videos produced by the article's subject" to exist). I'm not sure that you meant to exclude these things, but they are excluded by this wording.
 * But I'm not sure what it does include. Does it include a link to a video by a band, in an article about a band, that shows a typical or representative part of a performance?  (Don't you suppose that people learn a bit about Elvis by watching a performance instead of merely reading about it?)  A dying prof famously gave a "last lecture" a few years ago.  The lecture was recorded, and it is a core feature of his notability.  Is that "a video produced by the article's subject", and is it intended to be banned?  What if the subject of the article is Apple Inc. advertising, and the proposed link is to videos of their most famous or representative advertisements?
 * What does it mean for the link to be "designed to attract readers"? Is this about the motivation of the person adding the link, or the likelihood that a person who is trying to learn about a group (e.g., to write a paper for a class) will want to click on it?  Is the same link going to be okay if it is "designed to discourage readers"?
 * I'm not sure what problem you're really trying to solve here, but I don't think that this precise wording solves more problems than it creates. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:26, 2 July 2017 (UTC)
 * Good points, and thank you for getting us back on track.
 * I agree, "designed to attract readers" isn't clear enough.
 * I gave specific cases of what should be allowed (Videos that demonstrate noteworthy technique, style, expertise, etc should be considered.), which I believe is what you are asking for as well. I object to the assumption that Just because a performer releases a video doesn't make it appropriate to add an external link to it, nor does a discography in an article automatically create a case for links to videos of the entries in the discography.
 * Anyone disagree about including the former, or want to explain situations where the latter might be appropriate? --Ronz (talk) 16:08, 2 July 2017 (UTC)
 * I'd also like us to consider parity across multiple types of media. When a copy of a book/poem/song lyrics/sheet music is available (free and without copyvios, e.g., at Gutenberg Press or at the author's website), then we normally link to it in the article about the book and/or the author.  When a recording of song/speech/film/poetry recitation/book reading is similarly available, then why shouldn't we treat those recordings the exactly same way?  WhatamIdoing (talk) 07:39, 3 July 2017 (UTC)
 * Good points. When an article is about the book, and such a copy is available, then we tend to link it. Of course, such links are available long (many decades) after the material has been released.
 * With authors, we generally do not link to copies of their books. Again, the exceptions are to highly noteworthy books (that demonstrate noteworthy technique, style, expertise), long after they are released (and not if the books have their own article). --Ronz (talk) 15:33, 3 July 2017 (UTC)
 * So what is our policy on links to YouTube videos which are simply short extracts of famous books, plays or poems, being read, perhaps by a notable actor? And how do we decide whether such videos are or nor "promotional"? Thanks. Martinevans123 (talk) 11:17, 7 July 2017 (UTC)
 * Content and content policy matters: the content of the video (or other media) and the relationship with the subject. A short extract may highlight the very notability/noteworthiness of the subject (performance style, expertise, etc), or it may be just a preview of an upcoming larger work. The latter is promotional. I'd say that any extract that isn't tied to the subject's notability/noteworthiness by independent, reliable sources is at great risk of being promotional or otherwise failing NOT (and related content policy) criteria. --Ronz (talk) 14:28, 7 July 2017 (UTC)
 * I thought about what you wrote about generally not linking to copies of books, and I thought I'd check a few pages. Anna Sewell only wrote one book, and I see multiple links to her book (including Gutenberg Press, audio recordings, etc.) at the end of the article.  Boris Pasternak has a similar situation.  Margaret Mitchell links to a copy of her book.  Emily Brontë and Sylvia Plath have multiple links.  I checked five articles, and all five of them contain at least one link to their writings.  I think it is reasonable to conclude from this data that we generally do link to author's (public domain or otherwise non-copyvio) publications, even when we have separate articles about their books.  You may of course disagree about the desirability of this, but the normal practice appears to be providing such links in every (non-copyvio-ing) case.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:15, 11 July 2017 (UTC)
 * What's your point? They all fit the specific situation I described, right? --Ronz (talk) 15:24, 11 July 2017 (UTC)
 * Unless you think a link to every single thing ever published by an author is how we "demonstrate noteworthy technique, style, expertise", then I have to answer "no".
 * More relevantly, I was responding to your comment from 3 July. I found that there were links in 100% of the author articles, which does not fit your earlier assertion that "With authors, we generally do not link to copies of their books".  I found links to books in author bios even when the book has its own article, which does not fit your assertion of "not if the books have their own article".  In short, I don't think that the community's actual practice is nearly as restricted as you claimed above.  The actual practice appears to be "Yes, please, links to all full-text/free/non-copyvio publications, and sometimes multiple semi-redundant links".  WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:10, 14 July 2017 (UTC)
 * And I'm wondering why you're still choosing to ignore my other comments on the matter, but continuing:
 * So we have links to printed works. Should they be there if our policy and guidelines were being followed? Is the comparison between printed works and YouTube videos appropriate? --Ronz (talk) 20:21, 14 July 2017 (UTC)


 * If community practice has diverged this far from (at minimum, your interpretation of) the written rules, then the written rules need to be updated to reflect the actual practice of thousands of editors.
 * I think that a comparison between printed and recorded works is reasonable and appropriate. (Note that "recorded works" is not as narrow as "videos on YouTube".)
 * I have looked at your other comments. I find that I agree with some and disagree with others.  For example, I think that a link to a film trailer, although intended by its creators to promote the film, might actually be appropriate.  I'm pretty sure that people can learn something from viewing it that they can't learn from reading about it.  Also, film articles routinely lead with posters, which are produced by the same people, and with exactly the same promotional goal.  I see no logic in putting one form of advertising directly at the top of an article while disclaiming a discreet, labeled link to another at the end on that grounds that it, too, is advertising materials.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:38, 15 July 2017 (UTC)
 * then the written rules need to be updated to reflect the actual practice of thousands of editors That's not how consensus-making works, let alone enforcement of policies and guidelines. It does mean we need to be cautious with changes to any relevant policies and guidelines.
 * You want to treat very different media the same. I don't believe Wikipedia does elsewhere, and I don't see anything but problems by trying to do so here.
 * I do think trailers cross the line into SOAP. --Ronz (talk) 14:49, 15 July 2017 (UTC)
 * Prescriptive advice, when it contradicts the demonstrated practice of literally thousands of editors, tends to be worthless words that get IAR'd into irrelevance. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:47, 22 July 2017 (UTC)
 * I expect that thousands of banned editors agree with you. They're still banned.
 * As well as Wikipedia not being a soapbox, Wikipedia is not a democracy where consenus is established by voting or blindly editing without regard to policy. --Ronz (talk) 15:43, 22 July 2017 (UTC)
 * The main source of all policy is what editors collectively do.
 * Also, I don't see anyone agreeing with you. If there were actually a consensus that tens of thousands of articles are wrong to include links to the subject's works, then surely other editors would be agreeing with you, and maybe even helping blank all those links from the articles.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:33, 29 July 2017 (UTC)


 * I'd like to suggest that the participants in this discussion please read the section about videos in WP:LINKSPAM. Thanks Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 15:54, 11 July 2017 (UTC)
 * That section needs some work to remove the self-contradiction. In the first sentence, it says that videos that promote a product are never okay, and the last paragraph says that videos that promote a a film are fine.  It does not seem to remember that films are products.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:39, 15 July 2017 (UTC)

Port Elizabeth
I have attempted to remove all external links from this page except the official local government page under WL:ELNO #13. however, a user has taken quite an exception to this. Port_Elizabeth. LibStar (talk) 08:08, 6 October 2017 (UTC)
 * I have independently removed them all. Most are not about the subject of the page, and hence fail directness.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 08:36, 6 October 2017 (UTC)

Official website template
I see there was some edit warring this week over how strongly to encourage the official website template. I've never particularly used this template myself, but I've got nothing against it. It doesn't add any decorative formatting (which I'm glad of), but it sounds like it does make it possible to find out whether the link currently in the article is the same as the link in Wikidata's records (if any). This was given as a reason to encourage it, and it was reverted with the claim that "Data comparison with Wikidata is not a goal of enwiki or the articles".

I'm willing to believe that very few editors actually do compare it, but I wonder whether we ought to be doing more of that. We've had some occasional problems with spammers replacing "official websites" with their own. It seems to me that this kind of spam would be easier to find if we compared our links against Wikidata's entries, and then manually checked any discrepancies to make sure that the article hadn't been targeted by a spammer or vandal. WhatamIdoing (talk) 07:00, 1 October 2017 (UTC)
 * I am in favour of discouraging the comparison on en.wikipedia, and quite strongly so. Our policies and guidelines are written to improve en.wikipedia.  Checking whether what we have is the same, different or unavailable on WikiData is not our business.  I would be in favour of deleting the maintenance categories that are used to compare those (Category:Official website different in Wikidata and Wikipedia, Category:Official website not in Wikidata, Category:Official website missing URL; they exist for Twitter and some others as well).  If WikiData wants to know whether the data is the same, different or that we have it and they don't is their problem.  They can easily use database-dumps to get that data, we don't need to categorise it here.  I don't care whether the link we use is different from WikiData, we may have very good reason to do so, and it does not signify it is wrong.  Other 'official links' are correct and double checked on WikiData (Twitters), but we do not need to transclude them in the first place.
 * (note, we could consider to move the categorisation to Category:Official website transcluded from WikiData (where we do not supply it here, but it gets transcluded from WikiData), Category:Official website not available, or keeping Category:Official website missing URL (where there is an 'empty' official website template, and the data is not available on WikiData either). --Dirk Beetstra T  C 07:48, 1 October 2017 (UTC)
 * WikiData was created exactly in order that various Wikipedia projects display the same or similar data in their inoboxes and that in general the information given by Wikipedia projets is the same when it comes to data given because in fact Wikipedia is (or at least should be) the same when it comes to facts indepentently of language. In order to do that all communities have to cooperate. Moving facts to Wikidata is useful because it will help all communities contribute for the same purpose and make the various incoming data comparable. -- Magioladitis (talk) 11:20, 1 October 2017 (UTC)
 * There are many cases where we locally chose to override the official website, and we have just at length discussed the need for linking to social networking .. That data is in scope for WikiData, but neither needs to be aligned with en.wikipedia, nor needs to be used on en.wikipedia, nor does en.wikipedia's have to cooperate to make sure that it is in line with that. I can see that we link official links/twitters/etc. (where appropriate) through their templates, but it is not mandatory, and I will not even support to have it marked as being encouraged.  Then the use of the maintenance templates is totally out of line with what en.wikipedia is, and there are easy other solutions to search for discrepancies.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 12:44, 1 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Dirk, your response just doesn't seem responsive. Looking back on this, the conversation sounds like this:
 * Me: We could use their data to flag spammers and vandals here, which helps improve Wikipedia articles.
 * You: Yeah, but they could use our data to identify problems there, which doesn't help us – so we shouldn't do this.
 * If you really don't care about "them" (even though most of them are actually English Wikipedia editors anyway, so "they" are really "us"), then the logical thing to do is to ignore any possible effect on Wikidata, and take the small-but-real benefit here. If we want another way to find spam here, then we should get a few people to watchlist Category:Official website different in Wikidata and Wikipedia, to turn on the category additions feature in their watchlists, and then to double-check all the changes that cause an English Wikipedia article to appear in that category.  If it's a good change here, then great!  But if it's a spammer – if it's someone replacing a company's official website with his own, unrelated page – then it would be nice if it actually got flagged somehow.  Comparing that kind of change against Wikidata might help us find a few more of these problems here.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:14, 3 October 2017 (UTC)


 * No, they can use our data to verify theirs, but that we do not need to tag here - a db-dump is doing the same, here it is maintenance-category clutter. Here we should have categories only to improve our side, the 'we have it but they don't' category is not improving en.wikipedia - I can see that the others do serve a function.  I am sure that a simple database dump will very quickly give you all contents of official website that are filled here and empty on WikiData, and that can then be transported to WikiData directly from said dump by one of those bots that clutter my watchlist here - you don't need a category here to do that.
 * The second problem is that there are sometimes reasons why the pages are different here and there, and the number of those occasions are of the same order of magnitude then when we have vandalism there. Moreover, transclusion from there means that we have double vandalism to check - is the vandalism here or there, is here or there wrong, or is here a reason to be different from there (and if the two are different, then a change here from the not similar one to another not similar one is not flagged, like in the Ceragenix diff you provide).  I can agree that this will increase the number of times a change is observed, and hence will increase the number of times vandalism could be caught, but since it is so often that the data is not the same here and there (for a reason), that I fail to follow that (and the official website is actually one of the better ones, twitter and the like are a total nightmare ...).  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 07:43, 3 October 2017 (UTC)
 * I went through the first 10 of the >26.000 articles (!!) in Category:Official website different in Wikidata and Wikipedia - most are trivially different (trailing www. or not, ending / or not, etc.), some are chosen different (e.g. a /en/ path to an other language website), and only one was here changed (without explanation). If that trend continues there are about 23.000 articles which can be 'vandalised' (or maybe they are) without anyone noticing, and all articles in outside of this category can be changed to fall into the category without being wrong.  I still don't think that this category has sufficient utility in keeping track of vandalism here.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 08:07, 3 October 2017 (UTC)

It certainly doesn't make sense for editors to on the one hand claim that this template is encouraged "as it allows data comparison with Wikidata", and on the other hand remove the local website and get it from Wikidata instead (which means that no more comparison is being made, it just is copied). See e.g. this edit, where the link to the English-language landing page of the official website was replaced with the Wikidata-driven Swedish version of that page, or this example (provided by User:SlimVirgin) of the same user replacing a working link here (actually already using this template) with a wrong link taken from Wikidata.

I wouldn't mind using a template that didn't have the misused functionality of getting the website from Wikidata instead of inserting it locally. I also wouldn't mind if that template then had the underlying hidden functionality of checking the website and the one provided at Wikidata, to populate hidden categories (I think it would be better if such comparisons were made on Wikidata, not on every individual language wiki, but for the sake of compromise...). But I object to a template which takes the website from Wikidata, and I strongly object to editors removing perfectly valid values from enwiki because the same functionality may at best be added by Wikidata.

We should get a bot run to fill in all instances of the template without an actual website provided here, and then drop the "no value = get the Wikidata one" from the template. We should not instruct users to use the template, and certainly not for Wikidata reasons. Fram (talk) 12:35, 2 October 2017 (UTC)

Fram This is not the thing discussed here. Here we discuss edits like this one. Whether to use the direct url system vs the template one. The other edits should be discussed in two diffrent discussions entitled "Should we obtains and use WikiData official website data on Wikipedia articles?" and "Should the official website given to English Wikipedia viewers should directly link to its English section?". So there are three discussions. -- Magioladitis (talk) 14:52, 2 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Oh but it is. If we have the user pushing to get this template as the preferred template in the guideline, also pushing to have it changed to Wikidata only instead of having a local value, then that is clearly relevant and should be taken into consideration. You can't have on the one hand the argument "we use it to compare with Wikidata" and on the other hand remove the local version, which eliminates the possibility for comparison with Wikidata. Fram (talk) 15:02, 2 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Fram One of the reasons to compare data is that once the data is verified to be correct on Wikidata to remove it from the local Wikipedia to reduce the chance of vandalism, simplify wikicode and enable changes from a larger audience. Still, this is only a suggestion. We can always stick to the first part. has been doing great job in converting urls to template for a long time.  also had some idead of how to make the urls used even more sufficient for English Wikipedia. -- Magioladitis (talk) 16:04, 2 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Oh no, please not still those canards? Wikidata has a much smaller set of editors (you are always confusing potential number of editors with actual number), and a much slower vandalism reversion in general. "Simplify wikicode" = "baffling most editors and making it harder to correct issues". But it's nice to see you ping some people who just happen to support your position. By the way, since you don't check whether the Wikidata version is actually correct or better, your arguments are without any real merit. Fram (talk) 16:09, 2 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Add to this mix that in my current spree of cleanup I encounter pages with 4 official links templates. I get reverts on pages where I remove twitters next to the official website template because the official website is actually wrong or does not work.  And not to mention the massive abuse of its brothers and sisters (empty twitter templates are added, just because ‘it is on WikiData so it must be fine’.  Then the pages where these templates are used for different means (to link to the official website of B on subject A, obviously miscategorising it as the homepage of B is not on WikiData the homepage of A ..).  And then pages that become uneditable because the link is locally blacklisted and someone has in the meantime added the link to WikiData (so much for local attributable edits ...).  Oh, it is just a matter of waiting until someone replaces the WikiData version with a phishing/malware site and no-one notices and vandalises pages on a good 100 wikis in one go ...  —Dirk Beetstra T  C 16:47, 2 October 2017 (UTC)
 * changes to Wikidata can be shown in the watchlists of people in 100 wikis. -- Magioladitis (talk) 17:55, 2 October 2017 (UTC)
 * I know, the problem is the word ‘can’, and because I do I also know how that makes my watchlist utter useless because the bots (that I cannot hide because I loose watchlist functionality) on WikiData spam my watchlist (thanks ArbCom for your understanding). If there are 20 people who watch obscure .onion websites with an own article, I wonder how,any of them would notice the change on WikiData (if it still appears after one of the bots there, or a messagebot here, filled their watchlist ...).  —Dirk Beetstra T  C 18:04, 2 October 2017 (UTC)

Listing of ab/misuse

 * revid - 2 'official websites', WikiData has something else, which is wrong under en.wikipedia standards
 * revid - right is there, other is wrong. Official profiles are not official websites per sé

tbc. --Dirk Beetstra T C 06:19, 3 October 2017 (UTC)

Magioladitis above said "One of the reasons to compare data is that once the data is verified to be correct on Wikidata to remove it from the local Wikipedia to reduce the chance of vandalism, simplify wikicode and enable changes from a larger audience." Luckily we don't do this (in general), as usually enwiki is much quicker to correct issues than Wikidata. Goign through the first ten examples at the category, starting from F, I came across F4 Spanish Championship. The official website was changed early in 2016, as reflected in this enwiki change from January 2016. However, Wikidata still has the link from February 2015 to this site, which is now a completely unrelated webshop. So much for using Wikidata to avoid spamming and to get quicker changes thanks to the larger audience etc. Urijah Faber as well has the right website now on enwiki, but an outdated (domain for sale) one on Wikidata "imported from enwiki". While opposite cases probably can be found as well, it would make much more sense to keep the website local, on enwiki, and regularly update Wikidata with changed "imported from enwiki" data, instead of promoting the reverse as is now the case. Fram (talk) 08:40, 3 October 2017 (UTC)
 * It is comforting to see that none of the 4 Wikis that have the article F4 Spanish Championship (Spanische Formel-4-Meisterschaft, es:Campeonato de España de F4, and nl:Spaans Formule 4-kampioenschap) do not use the wrong WikiData item, and it shows probably as well how quick and efficient the data gets changed on WikiData (and that for 4 of the bigger/the 4 biggest wikis around). --Dirk Beetstra T  C 09:29, 3 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Is the double negation (none do not use) intended or a typo?--Kmhkmh (talk) 09:34, 3 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Fixed, thanks User:Kmhkmh. --Dirk Beetstra T  C 10:51, 3 October 2017 (UTC)
 * this adds the page to Category:Official_website_different_in_Wikidata_and_Wikipedia. Now one could catch that with some coding, but I think it is a nice example of how things just don't work yet.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 13:33, 3 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Not to mention that e.g. the official website listed on 2015 24 Hours of Le Mans is the official website of 24 Hours of Le Mans, not of the 2015 24 Hours of Le Mans .. I guess that WikiData blindly copies that type of data. --Dirk Beetstra T  C 11:45, 4 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Dirk Beetstra In a similar way many Wikipedia articles could contain similar errors. Standardisation will help us in this direction too. Right now we have no control on which pages contain official websites. -- Magioladitis (talk) 20:02, 10 October 2017 (UTC)
 * So we have an option to solve it here, or to first propagate the error and then solve it there, so it gets solved here, or it gets first propagated and then solved here and then solved there ... User:Magioladitis, I see your point, but as it is now it is causing more work than that it solves a problem.  If you follow the changes what is included in Category:Official_website_different_in_Wikidata_and_Wikipedia, you see there more cases where they get included there because it is wrong on WD, or correct at both sides but different, than vandalism on either side.  That category is at the moment utterly useless.  The data it contains is too much dependent on editor preference, and is not necessarily standardized XWiki.  Having WikiData is good, but it does not mean that all that they have must be used on local wikis, or is suitable to be used on local wikis.  The material contained in these templates is not suitable.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 22:20, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

External links in a "Notes" section
I ran across Jenna Jameson, that has three external links listed under a "Notes" section, and posted it in the External links/Noticeboard. I haven't noticed this practice before so thought I would mention it. Otr500 (talk) 13:07, 7 October 2017 (UTC)


 * That kind of thing usually means that the links started out as WP:General references for article content. If they're no longer needed to support article content, then they can be removed or moved to the ==External links== section.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:06, 10 October 2017 (UTC)


 * Thanks, I figured as much but sometimes things change so I thought I would inquire. Otr500 (talk) 12:49, 14 October 2017 (UTC)

Also in the case of (still needed) "general references", the name of the source section they are listed in should be references rather than notes, as the letter is really only used for footnotes/individual citations. If you move them depending on their content they could also be moved to a Further reading section instead of External links in particular if they are digital copy of a book or article.--Kmhkmh (talk) 12:57, 14 October 2017 (UTC)

Tweak to ELNEVER and WP:COPYLINK
Please see Wikipedia_talk:Copyrights. Jytdog (talk) 22:47, 28 October 2017 (UTC)

Official website
I sometimes run into the following situations: We have a notable subject 'A' who is primary known because of operating/running/developing/owning/singing in/establishing subject 'B', and the opening sentence of the article 'A' generally is something along the line of 'A is known for B' (with B being wikilinked to the article). B has an official website, linked from the article, B.com. People now sometimes tend to argue that B.com is also the official website of A, but going to B.com, it is mainly talking about the properties of B. My argument generally tends to be that B.com in this example is indirect with regards to A, and hence does not have place on A (generally hence resulting in the official web presence of A becoming a personal social website). Is this a correct interpretation of the guideline? --Dirk Beetstra T C 05:25, 13 November 2017 (UTC)
 * I agree. An official website for the topic B is not the official website for topic A, obviously. The normal WP:EL rules should apply and any external link at A's article should provide suitable information (spelled out in WP:EL) for A. Johnuniq (talk) 07:01, 13 November 2017 (UTC)

Abandonware
Is it acceptable to link to a page that provides "useful" info about the matter in hand but also provides downloads of abandonware? I'm specifically asking about pages with downloads of 8-bit videogames. If the answer is "no", does that also apply to Wikipedia in other languages? Thanks. --Tactica (talk) 20:18, 22 December 2017 (UTC)
 * You would need to keep in mind WP:LINKVIO. In the case of 8-bit videogames I presume they were not downloadable in the format, unlike say a download for an abandoned computer program, and therefore questionable methods were probably used to get it. If my understanding is correct then I would say it is best to avoid it. Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 20:20, 22 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Useful info would be fine. A link to a "free download" of the abandoned software would not be. It's a copyright violation as the software is likely still under copyright. Walter Görlitz (talk) 20:56, 22 December 2017 (UTC)
 * , Question is what to do when the free download is offered in the same page, even when you aren't linking to the questionable content directly. If the idea in this case is to avoid linking to that page at all, this would mean a lot of Worldofspectrum.org, etc. links would have to be removed from WP.
 * Again, does this apply to any Wikipedia site, or only to enwiki?--Tactica (talk) 12:48, 23 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Again we both answered that question. If it allows a link to anything that is copyrighted and not freeware, or more directly, if the copyright owner has not given consent for its free download, then we cannot link to the site. Walter Görlitz (talk) 18:22, 23 December 2017 (UTC)
 * The English Wikipedia's rules only apply to the English Wikipedia. However, as it happens, no Wikipedia has a policy that permits links to copyright violations.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:14, 4 January 2018 (UTC)
 * It should be clear that we don't allow links to a site that purposely and frequently puts up links to copyvio issues (eg Pirate bay). Sometimes a site that rarely posts copyright violation links may post something questionable (for example a recent example in video games was a site that we consider reliable posting an article that point to where to get an abandonware game, even with the article noting the questionable nature of that (something they have not done in the past) - we'd disallow that page link, but would not change how we handle the site on a regular basis) --M asem  (t) 03:24, 4 January 2018 (UTC)

Basically, per WP:LINKVIO, we do not link to copyright violating material in any occassion (with probably as only exception sites that violate ‘our own’ Wikipedia’s copyrights). That is often also true for pages which offer links to copright violating material (similar to piratebay). Note that is the material, not necessarily the whole site. As LINKVIO is a policy that is directed by legal issues, and likely directed by WMF it is probably true on any wiki, even if en.wikipedia’s guidelines and policies do have novalidity elsewhere. —Dirk Beetstra T C 13:49, 4 January 2018 (UTC)

Twitter
I have been challenged that twitters on twitter removals that twitter should be excluded from our WP:ELMINOFFICIAL, and hence always be listed when it is official and active. As that is a change in what policy/guideline state, I think that it should be clarified. There is some distinction whether the official twitter is listed on other official websitesor not. —Dirk Beetstra T C 03:28, 21 September 2017 (UTC)
 * If there is an official website and the subject doesn't have the wherewithal to link to their official Twitter feed, we shouldn't help them fix that by linking it here. Walter Görlitz (talk) 04:22, 22 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Agreed. And Twitter is a very poor fit for WP:ELOFFICIAL criteria in general, while being too much a platform for whatever the subject might want to throw out. --Ronz (talk) 18:40, 22 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Most active, verified Twitter accounts meet both prongs of ELOFFICIAL: they are maintained by subject, and they publish information in the area that they subject is notable for. To use the diffs below, the soccer team's Twitter account posts about how its team does, the journalist Simon Gilbert's Twitter is mainly about journalism, and Chrystia Freeland publishes official statements as Minister of Foreign Affairs on Twitter that are not published on her constituency website. Assuming readers are interested in the person, why wouldn't they be interested in what they have to say about themselves? ELOFFICIAL says "Official links (if any) are provided to give the reader the opportunity to see what the subject says about itself" which seems to accurately represent the purpose of Twitter accounts. Patar knight - chat/contributions 06:57, 24 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Why should we make it harder for readers to get to content with encyclopedic value that they're interested in if it exists? Patar knight - chat/contributions 06:57, 24 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Except that we list only one .. 'why should we make it harder for readers to get to content ..' .. because that is not our task. We are not a replacement for Google, we are not the Yellow Pages - and that is a pillar of Wikipedia.  We link to one official page of a subject and that is it (and in your specific case, it is already listed from the linked official page, it is not thát hard).  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 07:02, 24 September 2017 (UTC)
 * No, the guideline does not have a blanket prohibition, it says we usually list one Fn 8 at ELMINOFFICIAL links to cases where more than one is justified. If there's content of encyclopedic interest elsewhere unsuitable for direct inclusion on Wikipedia, we should aim to link to it instead of creating arbitrary walled gardens. Linking a Twitter account, which means linking a lot of relevant, encyclopedic content, is hardly the same as as listing someone's phone number or email address, which is what WP:NOTYELLOW is about. I don't see how linking a Twitter account amounts to violating WP:5P or WP:NOTDIRECTORY, except in a few edge cases.
 * In Chrystia Freeland's case, her Twitter is the most complete website documenting her role and activities as Canada's Minister of Foreign Affairs. Her official website is a constituency website and does not mention her ministerial work in any depth. This is analogous to the exceptions at fn 8, where multiple official websites for different purposes are allowed. Her website features one link to her Twitter account, which some ad-blocking software hides, with no indication that it's where she posts about her ministerial work (possibly because of rules on parliamentary ethics). Removing the link objectively makes it harder for readers to get to the most complete website about her work as Canada's Minister of Foreign Affairs. Given that you made seven edits in the minute you removed the link and the minute before, it seems like you're just blindly removing these Twitter links without any consideration of their encyclopedic value or how their content interplays with the official website.  Patar knight - chat/contributions 16:36, 24 September 2017 (UTC)
 * They do not have encyclopedic info, they are unstable. There is no prohibition, there is just very little reason to include them except very few circumstances.  There are here two people sayin tht the link must be included since otherwise people have to click twice to get the info, that is a NOTYELLOW violation, the linkhas to have encyclopedic value, and you do nothave consensus for its inclusion.  —Dirk Beetstra T  C 18:06, 24 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Like I said below to Ronz, it seems incredulous that someone is actually arguing that what an article subject posts about in the field that is their primary claim to notability is not relevant and of encyclopedic interest to our readers, and if you truly believe that, you should AFD the article. If stability is a concern, then we should have no external links, since websites are inherently unstable and frequently changed. WP:NOTYELLOW is about listing phone numbers, and other contact information is unencyclopedic, so I don't see how this is relevant in this case, since a Twitter does post content of interest to our readers. I've repeatedly posted about how the different nature of Ms. Freeland's website vs. her Twitter can meet the exception for only having one website without response, so I'll wait for that before replying further. Patar knight - chat/contributions 15:06, 25 September 2017 (UTC)
 * ’Contact information such as phone numbers, fax numbers and e-mail addresses is not encyclopedic.’, NOTYELLOW is relevant because social networking sites are also ways to contact people (I communicate with an gas/electricity supplier through facebook). Moreover, her Twitter is on her homepage, a clause that is in WP:EL as an exclusion reason.  Now, this person is notable by her function, ánd she uses twitter.  But the twitter does not contribute to her notability.  She uses twitter in the function that makes her notable.  She is also working in her office and probably has a secretary that manages appointments in her agenda and picks up her phone.  Those three are all ways of communicating for her (I suspect that she does not spend every day on the couch, ignoring knocks on the door and phonecalls, only using Twitter to communicate).  Do we need to give her telephone number, office times and ways to make appointments as well.  Oh, she also lists her facebook, I presume that we should put that one as well, she communicates through that as well.  No, there is a reason we limit this to only one, because it is not Wikipedia’s task to list all of that.  That is the consensus we have.  You can make your case below if you think that that consensus should change, but seen all the previous discussions, I think this consensus is still pretty firm: only one except under very few limited circumstances.  This does not qualify.  —Dirk Beetstra T  C 03:57, 26 September 2017 (UTC)
 * they publish information in the area that they subject is notable for Howso? --Ronz (talk) 15:37, 24 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Given the personal nature of Twitter, you'll always find the occasional cat picture of slice of life post, but it's very rare to find a verified Twitter account where the plurality of their posts is not about what their do (unless you count accounts that simply don't post, but still exist). Sports team posts about that team's activities and live blog their games; academics post about relevant papers and articles in their field and debate with others in their field; journalists post news articles, live tweet events they are covering, and engage with other journalists; politicians publish official statements about their work. Patar knight - chat/contributions 16:36, 24 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Re: Linking a Twitter account, which means linking a lot of relevant, encyclopedic content. We're not agreeing on "relevant" nor "encyclopedic", and continued generalizations and assertions seems unlikely to change this. I suggest you treat each article individually and give specific examples. --Ronz (talk) 16:52, 24 September 2017 (UTC)
 * I literally referred to the three Twitter accounts mentioned in Beetstra's diffs below as specific examples. If you can honestly say that a sports team posting about what that sports team is doing (Abbey Rangers FC), a journalist posting about their journalism and the paper they edit (Simon Gilbert), or that Canada's Minister of Foreign Affairs posting about work as Canada's Minister of Foreign Affairs (Chrystia Freeland) is not relevant or of encyclopedic interest to our readers, then I don't what to say. Maybe you should take those articles to AFD if you feel so strongly that their primary claim to notability is unencyclopedic.  Patar knight - chat/contributions 14:57, 25 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Maybe you should take those articles to AFD That's WP:DTS at best. --Ronz (talk) 17:34, 25 September 2017 (UTC)
 * The debate is hardly over. If anything, it hasn't begun because everything here has repeatedly refused to engage any of my points (e.g. this reply above). Patar knight - chat/contributions 18:39, 25 September 2017 (UTC)
 * what, you really argue that the twitter accounts of these three subjects is ‘their primary claim to notability’? That is not even true for the few subjects that I do leave the Twitter feed on .. and none of those is notable solely because of their twitter feed.  —Dirk Beetstra T  C 03:24, 26 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Now I know why you want Twitter linked. —Dirk Beetstra T  C 03:31, 26 September 2017 (UTC)

Rebooting the discussion .. what we are discussing here is why the guideline should be changed to reflect the opinion that twitter feeds should be linked next to other official sites / twitter should be the main official site of a subject. —Dirk Beetstra T C 03:31, 26 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Chrystia Freeland's official website has a link to the Twitter feed. There's no need to change to reflect Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pintrest, Myspace (does anyone still use their account there?) or any other social media site. Again. If they are incapable or unwilling to include the feed or have it streamed on the official site, we don't need to help them. It's not about notability, it's about competence. Walter Görlitz (talk) 05:17, 26 September 2017 (UTC)
 * I'm not seeing anything here that makes me think that WP:ELPEREN is wrong.
 * I believe that each link ought to be evaluated individually. I believe that some Twitter accounts should be included in addition to another account.  (Offhand, Donald Trump's Twitter account falls into that category.)
 * But I reject the assertion that a Twitter feed contains "relevant, encyclopedic content" (to quote the ambitious claim made above) about the subject. "Informative and interesting" might be true, but "encyclopedic" is a stretch beyond what I can agree to.
 * I also don't think that it should be prioritized. Twitter's daily active users represent about 2% of the people in the world; about 4% of the world uses it in any given month.  I don't think it's a significant disservice to that minority to make them first visit the subject's regular website (or ask their favorite web search engine) if they want to find the subject on the social networking site that they happen to prefer.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:41, 29 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Are you seeing anything here that makes you think that Twitter is right? Can you explain why we would want a Twitter feed if there's an official website? Walter Görlitz (talk) 02:24, 29 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Assuming that this question was directed to me, my answer is "For the same reason that we have an article specifically about Donald Trump on social media, even though we already had an article on Donald Trump". WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:52, 1 October 2017 (UTC)


 * Donald Trump is indeed one of the 'about 5 out of a 1000' that I was thinking about. Donald is one of the subjects which has gained notability because of his twitter use - his twitter use is discussed at length in the article.    And I still believe that that second official website is superfluous, but I can understand the 'every other tweet of him hits world headlines' type of reasoning, it start to get to the 'primary claim to notability' of the subject level that User:Patar Knight is mentioning above (though I think that it is still number 5 or 10 claim on the list, not primary, but a subject like Chrystia Freeland is not notable because of her Twitter use - many politicians use Twitter (and have it prominently linked from their official site)).  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 07:57, 1 October 2017 (UTC)

Dirk Beetstra is correct: Wikipedia should not provide a handy list of links for organizations so they don't have to bother providing them in an accessible way on their official website. As discussed above, Donald Trump is an obvious exception where his Twitter account should be listed. There would need to be a strong reason beyond ILIKEIT to include such links for other articles which already list an official website. Johnuniq (talk) 09:41, 24 October 2017 (UTC)

List of contested social networking removals
(tbc) ... --Dirk Beetstra T  C  08:48, 28 November 2017 (UTC)
 * diff - External_links/Noticeboard
 * diff
 * diff - Talk:Chrystia_Freeland
 * diff (afterwards somewhat cleaned; facebook and youtube multiple times linked from official site)
 * diff (forgot about this one)
 * diff (site is linked from official site)
 * diff + that user:Patar knight found it necessary to mark my removal as a serious BLP violation.
 * diff - (linked from the official site)
 * diff - (linked from the listed official site)
 * diff - rather extensive official page/history.

Twitter (again)
This situation is slightly different (though I encounter it more, and tend to be conservative there): Otome Shinto is a Japanese band that stopped in 2016. Their official website is now taken over by a fan, our Wikipedia-page (now) links to an archived version of the last version when the band still controlled it. The problem now is (again) the Twitter. The twitter account of Otome Shinto is still active (I will assume that it is actually still controlled by the non-existing subject ..). I argue there, that since the band does not exist anymore, it is not an official outlet of the band itself anymore. I also do not believe that the Twitter feed (or practically any Twitter feed for that matter barring some exceptions) is 'significant, unique content' - if there is significant content there, it is covered by mainstream media (I am yet to find it, the last few are birthday wishes and . As this is kept in place by user:Moscow Connection while challenged, I'd like independent opinions on the matter.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 13:40, 6 November 2017 (UTC)
 * Note: The Twitter has now been removed. --Dirk Beetstra T  C 05:57, 7 November 2017 (UTC)
 * Yes, I decided to remove it because I noticed that the account didn't look connected to the group anymore. It looks like something belonging to a random fan of the group and of Japanese idols in general. Maybe the account was overtaken by someone. It may look very confusing to someone who expects to see the band's official Twitter. That's the only reason. I still think that as the only working official link it should have stayed. --Moscow Connection (talk) 06:16, 7 November 2017 (UTC)

'Making up rules'

 * It looks to me that you're making up rules and then using them to justify your preferences. Tom Ruen (talk) 19:09, 11 January 2018 (UTC)
 * What, have you even read the above discussion. Have you even read WP:ELMINOFFICIAL?  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 19:18, 11 January 2018 (UTC)
 * I'd like to know which rule you think I made up? The rule that we only list one official website of the subject, the rule that we strongly discourage social networking sites?  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 19:27, 11 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Consider "you" plural, and my argument stands. Tom Ruen (talk) 20:00, 11 January 2018 (UTC)
 * So, you think that this guideline does not have community consensus, and that these rules were made up by a few? Want to start an RfC or a discussion at a village pump?  IMHO the rules were there first.  —Dirk Beetstra T  C 20:13, 11 January 2018 (UTC)
 * That's my opinion. Consensus usually means people paying attention which is always a vast minority. Tom Ruen (talk) 20:17, 11 January 2018 (UTC)
 * and you are entitled to your opinion, but we discourage social networking sites for at least 10 years, we minimize number of official links for at least 8, and stress ‘’’only one’’’ for a least 4 .. seems to me that that is not the opinion of the community, and not a rule that was made up by me or the other editors here to enforce. If you think that consensus has changed, then I suggest you start an RfC or a VP discussion. until then, that twitter should go (or, alternatively, the history page which may not be under her control, seen how it is written).  —Dirk Beetstra T  C 20:39, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

Linking non-notable subjects to their WikiData entries
Please see Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ &gt;ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ&lt;  13:54, 15 January 2018 (UTC)

Google Maps question
I suspect this is a perennial question, but I couldn't find a clear answer in the talk archives. Are external links to Google Maps, such as at South Ferry/Whitehall Street (New York City Subway), OK? I suspect not, but can't find anything to cite in support. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 22:35, 18 February 2018 (UTC)
 * I can see only one link that belongs, the first official one. The other links seem only tangentially related, linking to pages about every line through the station. The links to Google maps certainly don’t belong: readers can use the link at the top of the page to view the location on the map of their choice. External links should be kept to a minimum: as WP:ELMAYBE says: Long lists of links are not acceptable which definitely covers this.-- JohnBlackburne wordsdeeds 23:26, 18 February 2018 (UTC)
 * I think that the Google Maps links should stay on the page, but the other links may not be suitable. The WikiMiniAtlas is not helpful in navigating to the exit locations, especially those that are far away from the station itself. However, the Google links do this perfectly.I do think the Google links can be compacted, in a way similar to AirTrain JFK, where panoramic views of the stations are given to accompany the descriptions of these stations. Pinging, , and WT:NYCS. epicgenius (talk) 00:04, 19 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Thank you for calling me. I think, the key question is whether the reader can find this link without our help. For example, we usually don't provide links to Youtube, because Youtube has an advanced search system and the reader can find any video alone. Google Maps have no search capabilities, finding every link requires time and labor, so it is a good idea to publish links that we have already found. Vcohen (talk) 09:10, 19 February 2018 (UTC)
 * By the way, the first three links are all official links. epicgenius (talk) 00:07, 19 February 2018 (UTC)
 * The second and third are about pieces of art – at the station I assume as it’s not even clear from the descriptions, presumably you need local knowledge to recognise where they are – and seem only tangentially related. The link to geohack at the top of the page lets the user choose from multiple map services, then navigate to a particular point of interest. A WP article is not a travel guide, it is not meant to be "helpful in navigating to the exit locations". I’m not even sure if such links belong on Wikivoyage but they certainly don’t belong here.-- JohnBlackburne wordsdeeds 00:29, 19 February 2018 (UTC)
 * The geohack is somewhat inaccurate as it doesn't show the entrances. The platform views can definitely be removed, but I don't see how links to, or even coordinates of, exits can be construed as violating WP:NOTTRAVEL (the "not a travel guide" policy). Wikivoyage would have a list of things to do and which exits are most convenient, while Wikipedia has a description of the exits as part of the description of the entire station. The two artworks are already mentioned in the article, and the vast majority of readers would remember that. epicgenius (talk) 00:34, 19 February 2018 (UTC)
 * You wrote they are included as they are "helpful in navigating to the exit locations", but that is a function of a travel guide. They are further excessive per the guideline WP:ELMAYBE I quoted, and fall foul of WP:RICHMEDIA which says "is always preferred to link to a page rendered in normal HTML". The coordinate link at the top of the page is there to avoid favouring a particular map service, to allow readers to choose the best one for them.-- JohnBlackburne wordsdeeds 00:53, 19 February 2018 (UTC)
 * I didn't mean physical navigation. I meant that the coords of the exits are different than those of the station itself. As far as I know, Geohack doesn't provide options for street-view-only, and only Google and Bing provide adequate street views as of now. Changing this would represent a change to thousands of articles, where links need to be modified/removed. epicgenius (talk) 01:03, 19 February 2018 (UTC)
 * On second thought, a Geohack for street views would be a great idea. epicgenius (talk) 02:24, 19 February 2018 (UTC)
 * I doubt, or at least hope not, that there are thousands of articles with similar long lists of irrelevant links, going against various policies. As that’s what we have here; I have given you a number of policy based reasons they do not belong (here’s another: WP:LINKFARM), your only argument seems to be you find them useful. But WP is not a repository of things people find useful, it has clear polices and guidelines what to include.-- JohnBlackburne wordsdeeds 16:07, 19 February 2018 (UTC)
 * And they are all trumped by WP:IAR. "If a rule prevents you from improving or maintaining Wikipedia, ignore it." There are, indeed, thousands of articles with similar long lists of irrelevant links, going against various policies but protected by IAR. If you want to remove them, it would be best to host an RFC or something. epicgenius (talk) 16:41, 19 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Repeating 's response above, "Google Maps have no search capabilities, finding every link requires time and labor, so it is a good idea to publish links that we have already found." The street view is not something that can be easily found via GeoHack. In fact, there is no good way to search street view (not to mention there are only 2 providers for NYC locations right now: Google and Bing). epicgenius (talk) 20:07, 19 February 2018 (UTC)
 * That’s not how IAR works. If you are losing a discussion on a policy, on its talk page, you don’t then invoke IAR and say it should be ignored. Should we then delete this page if editors can just disregard it if they disagree with it? As for Google Maps, you can search down to the street level, then zoom in to Street View at any location in seconds, though it and Bing aren’t the only mapping services. Users can choose the one they want from the geohack link at the top of the article.-- JohnBlackburne wordsdeeds 15:00, 20 February 2018 (UTC)
 * In order to zoom in at any location, you have to know where the location is. Even if you know the coordinates of the station, you need to manually look for each entrance. Also, some of the links are to user-created panoramas, which are not always located at their correct places. Vcohen (talk) 17:06, 20 February 2018 (UTC)
 * It is not the purpose of WP to provide the geographic location of every entry to a subway, no more than it is the purpose of WP to provide the location of every entry and exit to a building that has an article. There are thousands of things that could go into the external links section of an article, which would be of interest to someone. Precisely because of this we are very conservative about what we include, usually limiting it to a small number of links, each to a distinct site or resource.-- JohnBlackburne wordsdeeds 17:22, 20 February 2018 (UTC)
 * These links provide pictures of station parts, not their geographic locations. Vcohen (talk) 17:52, 20 February 2018 (UTC)
 * And Wikipedia is not an picture hosting site, nor an image search site. I would say add them to the article as images if they are relevant and exist, but the article already has more than enough images for the article size and nature.-- JohnBlackburne wordsdeeds 00:36, 21 February 2018 (UTC)
 * you go on about locations, but that is not what the article says it links to. It links to images.  If the locations are so important, all entrances are listed, with coordinates.  But we are not a travel guide, helping people find the entrances is not a goal of an encyclopedia.  —Dirk Beetstra T  C 03:23, 21 February 2018 (UTC)
 * One picture is worth thousand words. So I don't agree that we should stop using pictures, even if they are implemented as external links. Vcohen (talk) 05:43, 21 February 2018 (UTC)
 * So, you agree that this has nothing to do with the location, this is just about the pictures? --Dirk Beetstra T  C 06:24, 21 February 2018 (UTC)
 * I talked about locations only as an answer to the proposal "to zoom in at any location". Vcohen (talk) 07:34, 21 February 2018 (UTC)
 * OK, that is clear. --Dirk Beetstra T  C 11:16, 21 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Well, lets go on on that. You say it is fine to include a linkfarm of external links, because pictures say more than words.  However, with that you just violate a pillar.  What (encyclopedic) benefit is these pictures bring to Wikipedia?  Is it just so that people know how the entrances look like?  What is so encyclopedic about the view of the entrances that we need to link to pictures of them?  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 06:29, 21 February 2018 (UTC)
 * No, this is not the way that I'd like to discuss it. When you say "linkfarm", "violate a pillar", and "what is so encyclopedic", you appeal to emotions, not to logic. I'm afraid I will not be able to respond in the same way. Vcohen (talk) 07:34, 21 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Yes, a vandal is violating a policy, and hence that is emotional. The logic behind is that the vandal is implementing an edit that violates a policy.  Now, the logic is not that anyone who is violating a policy is a vandal, and hence that you don't need to be a vandal to violate a policy.  We have collectively decided that we do not include twitters and facebooks, except if they are the only official site available (in end, we only link one).  We remove them, because we have decided they fail our inclusion standards.  Not emotional - logic.
 * We do not include long lists of links to all topics related to the article, or information that we could include, our primary aim is to include. Here we have a long list of external links to a view of an entrance.  The article is not about the entrance, the article is about the station.  Descriptions and pictures of the entrances can be included (and if they are encyclopedic, they should be included).  If that is not the case, they should not be included, there is no reason to be included (and they have been included, there is a list, there are two pictures).  We don't include them because of the location (we are not WikiTravel), we don't include them because we can provide pictures of them (there are many other features that we could include (links to) pictures of, all not encyclopedic).  And the same goes for the lines running through the station (already included in the article), the art in the station (already mentioned/included in the article).  Do we include links to the ticket vendors, tell where the ticket machines/boots are and how they look like, or nearby places where you can buy coffee?  This is overly complete, and hence linkfarming.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 11:16, 21 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Calling me a vandal is an emotion, not logic. I will not continue discussing in this way. Vcohen (talk) 11:25, 21 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Edits made in good faith are not vandalism. That is a lousy line of argument and should be dropped as uncivil immediately. oknazevad (talk) 11:35, 21 February 2018 (UTC)
 * and that is exactly what I argue .. these are not vandalism. But it is better to avoid the core of the argument I think.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 11:54, 21 February 2018 (UTC)

As it stands now, I would say that the list is indeed far, far too excessive. The lines are not direct, the article is about the station, not about which lines run through it (though also that could be prose, but often the lines have an own article), the art is not appropriate (it does not have a mention in the article, and even if it had, it should not be in the external links, again indirect). Abandoned stations is also indirect (it has an own article ...?).

We are not writing a linkfarm, this dwarfs the article and detracts from the article. Much can be repurposed, or is superfluous or inappropriate. --Dirk Beetstra T C 09:29, 19 February 2018 (UTC)
 * These articles about the lines include sections about the stations. These external links used to link to their own articles about the stations. The "Abandoned Stations" is a link to the South Ferry loop with a mention of the Bowling Green-South Ferry shuttle. Removing all of these links would be unhelpful to the reader because the Metropolitan Transportation Authority doesn't have separate pages on each station. epicgenius (talk) 16:41, 19 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Removing all of these links would be unhelpful to the reader because the Metropolitan Transportation Authority doesn't have separate pages on each station .. yes, we need internal links to these, or no links at all. Having the locations/images linked externally is inappropriate etc.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 07:37, 20 February 2018 (UTC)

I tend to agree with Beetstra and JohnBlackburne here, but I am uncomfortable with using a GAN nomination to overturn a widespread practice. I'm going to let them stand in the article, but afterwards, unless some consensus has been reached here, I think an RfC might be useful -- if there really are "thousands" of articles like this, it should be a broad discussion to change them. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 02:19, 20 February 2018 (UTC)
 * We have thousands of articles where we link Twitters and Facebooks and what not. Those links are inappropriate because of our consensus here (barring some exceptions), and I have removed thousands of those because of the consensus here.  We do not need an RfC to uphold this consensus, those links can just be removed as failing our inclusion standards.  What could use an RfC is to change the wording of WP:EL to show that the links are appropriate.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 07:37, 20 February 2018 (UTC)
 * So unless there has been other editors that have added links to midwest/west coast transit systems, this is the list of stations that have GSV links. I'll admit this was my first 'big' project on wikipedia as a much younger person and I just kinda started added them to New York City Subway stations and I can't really recall any discussion about it, although there might have been some in WT:NYCPT. — G FOLEY   F OUR!  — 12:20, 20 February 2018 (UTC)


 * Personalky, I've never been a big fan of these links as it's always struck me as too detaialed for the external links section. If we had images at commons that we could include in a gallery showing the entrances l, then we could include those, but to try to make up for not having those by including GSV links just seems off, for lack of a better word. I mean, are the articles really going to be poorer for not having visiual identification if every single entrance to the station? Not really. It's trying too hard to have everything. oknazevad (talk) 11:35, 21 February 2018 (UTC)
 * now that is the core of my reasoning above - these links fail our inclusion standards, excluding the links does not make the article poorer, or having them there does not make the article better. But apparently that is an emotion, not logic.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 12:12, 21 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Personally, I think it would be better to have coordinates for exits if they differ from the main location of the station. This both removes the external link farm and allows a GeoHack to be added, which I think alleviates 's concern about providing links to multiple mapping providers. Also, the coordinates can be extrapolated from the existing Google Maps links. Maybe there is a bot for that. epicgenius (talk) 15:35, 21 February 2018 (UTC)
 * There’s GeoGroup. It collects together the coords in the article and presents them in a variety of ways, so you can explore them using different tools and services. Then add the coords inline where the article describes the thing at that location. This avoids the problem of putting them all in external links and presents them in a much more useful way than individual links to a particular service.-- JohnBlackburne wordsdeeds 15:58, 21 February 2018 (UTC)
 * That would be better, but we really just don't need to mark every single entrance or exit with its own coordinates. They really are at that point a pretty trivial level of detail. As was said above, we don't put separate coordinates for every entrance to a large building with multiple entries. We don't, for example, have separate coordinates listed for all four street-level entrances of 30 Rockefeller Plaza, nor should we. Subway station articles have no more need of that level of detail. oknazevad (talk) 16:08, 21 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Yeah, but you're comparing oranges and apples. Most buildings have a single main entrance, and the address for that entrance is listed on the page if it's a decent enough article. On the other hand, most stations do not have addresses at all, and the only way to describe the location of a subway station is via its entrances and exits, of which there are multiple. What I'm proposing is that only the intersections be listed.30 Rockefeller Plaza, incidentally, connects to the subway, which in turn has probably 20 entrances. epicgenius (talk) 16:35, 21 February 2018 (UTC)
 * There’s also Attached KML, which does not require the links in the article. It does all seem overkill though including them. Looking at other uses of these templates they are used for e.g. geographically dispersed objects – a list of historic sites for example, or railway stations on a line. But this station is at one place on the map. Click on the link at the top of the article and you are taken to a view which includes the whole station, with all the entrances if your mapping service supports it.-- JohnBlackburne wordsdeeds 16:40, 21 February 2018 (UTC)
 * The entrances/exits are all listed in the article, 2 have images in the article. Entrance ‘One staircase at the northeast corner of Whitehall and Stone Streets’ sounds quite precise and unambiguous to me, and it is referenced to a map.  Adding coordinates seems overkill (handy for the Wikipedia-savvy Traveller to get to said entrance, but we are not a manual nor wikitravel).  But the point is that the external links are not for the coordinates but for the images of the entrances (two of which are incorporated already).  I don’t know what that is supposed to tell me about the station.  And the same goes for the artwork and the lines, if that is important to this level, it should be, and is incorporated.  —Dirk Beetstra T  C 17:15, 21 February 2018 (UTC)
 * You could use an attached KML for each specific station, but I'm not sure any editor would want to do that, given that the NYC Subway alone has 425 stations right now. Also, the KML has the same problem as the Google Street View links, since in both cases, Google is the only external mapping provider. The usage of specific coordinates bypasses this, allowing GeoGroup to be used on the page without going through the days or weeks of effort that are needed to create a KML for each station.
 * I agree that the neighborhood map is a useful reference. However, coordinates would be even more helpful if a reader wanted to use their own mapping provider. The neighborhood-map references only show the neighborhood in which the station is located, and so is limited in that context. epicgenius (talk) 17:54, 21 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Creating a KML should be easy, for the coords in an article. Add a GeoGroup to the article. To avoid adding it then removing it you could do it in a preview. Or even on another page. E.g. fill a page with, one for each article, to do a series of articles at once.-- JohnBlackburne wordsdeeds 18:32, 21 February 2018 (UTC)
 * I know that, but wouldn't it be easier to just leave the GeoGroup on the article? It seems much easier than adding the GeoGroup, downloading the KML data, removing the GeoGroup, opening Google Earth, copying the KML data, closing Google Earth, creating the KML subpage, and adding the KML to the article.This is one example where I had GeoGroup data for each coordinate, which represents a ferry station in the NYC Ferry system. (The actual KML file was created from the GeoGroup, and was kind of an unnecessary step.) epicgenius (talk) 18:38, 21 February 2018 (UTC)
 * I don’t feel strong about having a geohack-linked coordinates for sub-subjects of the main subject (entrances of a station, sculptures on museum grounds, toilet buildings in a park), but I think that a) it detracts from our purpose, we are not a travel guide or WikiTravel, and b) scaling issues (individual houses in a museum village). Anyway, that is not the subject that is discussed here, and likely this is not the right place to discuss whether coordinates are suitable links in a subject (after all, we could just provide plain coordinates that anyone could copy-paste or type into their device and not having external links).  —Dirk Beetstra T  C 03:56, 22 February 2018 (UTC)
 * If there's a reasonable substitute I'm okay with reducing the number of links. I don't think they should be eliminated, but when they're wrong, we shouldn't be afraid to correct them. One recent example is a geotag for Google Street View for Staten Island Ferry Whitehall Terminal that was tagged a block northeast of the actual terminal (not a train station, but that's besides the point). I've actually posted pictures that would be reasonable duplicates of some of these Google Map links, but if they're not suitable for the articles, we can always move them to the images. -User:DanTD (talk) 16:36, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

I'm coming to the party a bit late, but I've seen most of the discussion evolve. My take is related to WP:INDISCRIMINATE. We don't really need to list the geohack of the line. I don't think a fully encyclopedic treatment of the subject needs to include the actual location of the line down to 5 cm resolution. To know the approximate location is enough. The geohack is more a curiosity than encyclopedic. The no search capability on Google maps argument sounds like it's addressed by WP:NOTHOST. Wikipedia does not need to host the geohack anymore than we need to host someone's resume, etc. That finding links like this requires time and labour is a problem looking for a different solution. And then there's WP:NOTTRAVEL, which would be another argument for knowing its location which hasn't really been presented. Walter Görlitz (talk) 21:51, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

Protocol relative links outdated
The Links to Wikimedia vs. to elsewhere section discusses using protocol-relative URLs, but the Wikimedia link it provides points to a section that no longer exists, and protocol-relative URLs aren't discussed anywhere else on the page. I did manage to find Protocol-relative URL, which says that protocol-relative URLs should no longer be used. So the references here should be removed, right? (Forgive me for not feeling so BOLD at the moment.) Languorrises (talk) 18:30, 25 February 2018 (UTC)
 * I was the last one to make an edit to that section, which was more conservative than now. I wouldn't mind removing PURLs entirely from the guideline; if someone is interested in the use of PURLs, they can refer to the technical documentation at Help:Link. --Izno (talk) 19:18, 25 February 2018 (UTC)
 * ✅ This is deprecated per Help:Link. I removed it from this document and replaced it with text from that page. Daask (talk) 21:06, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

Internal link templates
In passing, this page used to mention Interwiki links and full-URL links to Wikipedia when wikilinks are not possible. I removed that section for other reasons, but I wonder if something should be added to this article stating that interwiki links and internal link templates are preferred for over full URLs. Where should this guideline be placed? Daask (talk) 21:24, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

Internet Archive and archive.is as links
It's not mentioned in the project page and I'm sure this must have come up before, but can't find a specific discussion about it. Example: a film that earned many awards had an official webpage by its production company. The webpage is now no longer accessible. Can the link be substituted with its archive so that the production company may still appear in the section -- or is this information link deleted forever from the article? Thanks. Pyxis Solitary talk 11:03, 24 February 2018 (UTC)
 * I'm going to assume from the non-response that since (1) it's not mentioned in the Project Page and (2) it's not mentioned in WP:MOS: it's okay to use archive links. Pyxis Solitary  talk 20:00, 1 March 2018 (UTC)

Linking to YouTube from talk pages

 * This thread is more widely discussed at Village_pump_(policy).

It recently came to my attention that linking to YouTube videos from talk pages, where the copyright status of the video isn't 100% clear, is disallowed by WP:COPYVIOEL. I think this policy deserves to be reevaluated, by WMF if necessary. It's extreme and reflects an outdated analysis of copyright law, in which it's settled that linking to infringing content does not create liability (except potentially in very narrow circumstances that don't apply to Wikipedia). The sentence, "Knowingly directing others to material that violates copyright might be considered contributory copyright infringement," is incorrect. The ALA article the sentence relies on (which was dead before I revived it through the Wayback Machine) is undated and doesn't take into account any court decisions after 2000, when Internet law was still in its infancy. The law in this area has come a long way since then and our policies should reflect it. I posit that the ALA article is unreliable beyond its description of the state of the law in the very early 2000's.

Beyond the legal issue, restricting links on talk pages in this way is simply extreme and unnecessarily inhibits discussion and the development of the encyclopedia. --Dr. Fleischman (talk) 17:40, 8 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I have a hard time trying to bring your argument in line with the situation of Piratebay (e.g.). Moreover, we are sometimes more restricted than ‘the law’ (see NFCC).  Thirdly, if we are not to use content in mainspace, then there is, barring some exceptions, no reason to discuss it.  Then, if something is likely a copyright violation, then that means that there is an original that you are aware of, which we then can link to.  Lastly, you don’t need a link to web-accessible material to discuss it (and I can see the convenience consideration, but I can reduce that ‘’ad absurdum’’/consider that a red herring).
 * In any case, this is something you have to discuss with WMF’s legal department, after which WP:EL could follow suit. —Dirk Beetstra T  C 17:55, 8 March 2018 (UTC) (fix ping —Dirk Beetstra T  C 17:57, 8 March 2018 (UTC))
 * I would also think that this would first need a change in policy before this guideline: Copyrights%23Linking_to_copyrighted_works. —Dirk Beetstra T  C 18:02, 8 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks for pointing me to WP:COPYLINK. The policy is stated in at least 3 places so I'm going to take it to WP:VPP. I wouldn't be surprised if a change would require WMF's approval, but gathering community consensus would at least be a good place to start, and it would probably get WMF's attention. --Dr. Fleischman (talk) 18:58, 8 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I doubt that the WMF would care, and I personally don’t see much benefit (per the reasons stated here). It is not much different to using redirect sites: alternatives (obviously) exist.  Matter of respect and proper credit.  —Dirk Beetstra T  C 19:06, 8 March 2018 (UTC)


 * Regarding this edit and 's revert: isn't this guideline specifically about article space? The lead section certainly suggests it is: Wikipedia articles may include links to web pages outside Wikipedia (external links), but they should not normally be placed in the body of an article. I don't seen anything in the guideline suggesting it also applies to talk pages. --Dr. Fleischman (talk) 18:42, 9 March 2018 (UTC)

proposed with that ELNO specifically apply to only article space citing a VPP discussion with two other editors as a basis for the change. I disagree and reverted. Comments? Jbh Talk  18:43, 9 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I appreciate the caution, but would you mind explaining why you disagree? --Dr. Fleischman (talk) 18:46, 9 March 2018 (UTC)
 * My primary objection is that ELNO is used as a guide to what is acceptable to link to throughout Wikipedia. By specifically restricting it removes this guidance and leaves nothing in its place. Jbh  Talk  18:47, 9 March 2018 (UTC)
 * My change was to COPYVIOEL, not ELNO. And we do have WP:TPG, which spells out what is acceptable on talk pages, as well as the closely related but separate WP:COPYLINK. --Dr. Fleischman (talk) 18:48, 9 March 2018 (UTC)
 * You're not seriously suggesting that ELNO applies to talk pages, are you? Think about the implications of that. --Dr. Fleischman (talk) 18:49, 9 March 2018 (UTC)
 * @DrF. The problem is that you added an exception to test text that says "For policy or technical reasons ... without exception. "(Emp. orig.) That is a pretty strong statement no matter what section it is in and I am inclined to read without exception as meaning exactly what it says until a strong concensus arises that it really means "without exception (except everywhere other than article space)".  Jbh  Talk  19:16, 9 March 2018 (UTC) Cleaned up text. Moved to proper thread. Last edited: 21:01, 9 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Re ELNO applying elsewhere - as I said, it seems to be used as a guide ie it sets down, at minimum, a soft boundary where editors need to consider carefully what they link. As you say though, that is not really germane to the edit in question. The change is in WP:COPYVIOEL aka WP:ELNEVER. I really do not see the point in the change you propose. Wikipedia has a copyright policy, it does not matter that it is more restrictive than required by US law. Jbh  Talk  21:19, 9 March 2018 (UTC)

though maybe the guideline is focussing on content namespaces, the underlying policy is valid for literally ALL of wikipedia. Restricting the guideline specifically is then misleading. —Dirk Beetstra T C 19:13, 9 March 2018 (UTC)
 * You are both missing my point, but I'm clearly not getting any traction, so unless someone else chimes in I'm going to let this one go. --Dr. Fleischman (talk) 00:59, 10 March 2018 (UTC)
 * WP:EL is one of our ways of enforcing aspects of WP:NOT (WP:SOAP especially comes to mind), and has much wider application than to just articles. --Ronz (talk) 01:13, 10 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Then it ought to spelled out which sections apply to article space, and which sections apply to all of Wikipedia, including in the lead. Because I seriously doubt that some aspects were ever intended to apply to non-article space. Such as links to search engine results. Personally, I think the whole guideline reads much more harmoniously and sensically if read to apply only to article space. --Dr. Fleischman (talk) 01:22, 10 March 2018 (UTC)
 * If the blacklist blocks everything regardless of namespace (with years old phab requests to have it altered), and that section has an intentionally bolded ‘without exception’, then I have a hard time believing that this is not intentionally meaning ‘without exception’. And there still is no need to link to copyvio material.  You’d better read up on framing and copyright violations.  —-Dirk Beetstra T  C 05:44, 10 March 2018 (UTC)
 * OK, I can however agree with a sentence in the lede saying 'This guideline applies to content namespaces (including draft namespaces) only, except where explicitly noted (specifically WP:ELNEVER, which applies everywhere on Wikipedia)'. --Dirk Beetstra T  C 06:55, 10 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Though I don't see the necessity. This is just a guideline, it is the policies we should more strictly abide by - The nutshell at the top already takes care of this.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 06:59, 10 March 2018 (UTC)
 * My comment was directed to Ronz. --Dr. Fleischman (talk) 01:02, 11 March 2018 (UTC)
 * And my comment answered to you, User:DrFleischman. If we make this guideline only apply to article space, we just complicate things, because while this guideline does not apply to talkpages, it is still not allowed to link to copyvio material and you still can’t link to blacklisted links.  WP:ELNEVER then only applies to mainspace, and we need a second guideline ELNEVER for the rest of wikipedia.  So no, I disagree with that change: one is NEVER allowed to link to material that likely violates copyright (and there is sufficient recent legal material to support that - eventhough that actually does not matter).  I do note that you are now aware of that policy.  —Dirk Beetstra T  C 17:59, 11 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I do not believe your interpretation accurately reflects either Wikipedia policies and guidelines or common editing practices. I understand we have different interpretations and I am no disparaging your interpretation in any way, shape, or form. I came here in good faith to have a constructive discussion about our policies and guidelines. You haven't taken it that way so I'm done with you. I do not wish to continue our dispute any further. If you're really intent on continuing this I suppose you can post something on my user talk. --Dr. Fleischman (talk) 20:29, 11 March 2018 (UTC)
 * the copyright policy is around for a long time, and our policies and the guidelines that are derived from that are reflecting that. People here tell you over and over, pointing to multiple places, that we are not to link to copyright violating material.  That is the practice, that is how it is written and that is how it is meant to be.  I have been ‘enforcing’ WP:EL for years, and many editors do so for years and this is part ofwhat we enforce.  user:Fram is removing such links, on talkpages, in multiple cases.
 * I am very aware that WMF is slow in changing their material, but it is not subject to our consensus, they have to change it. Seen the recent cases relating to framing and hyperlinking to copyvio material I doubt that what WMF prescribes is incorrect.
 * I am sorry that you feel personally attacked, but I believe strongly that what we have here in this policy and derived guideline is written exactly as it is meant to be, and that that has the consensus of the community, and what we generally enforce - without exception. —Dirk Beetstra T  C 02:48, 12 March 2018 (UTC)
 * This is a long standing policy as seen on our main and first policy page WP:NOTPART. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Moxy (talk • contribs)
 * What does WP:NOTPART have to do with this? --Dr. Fleischman (talk) 20:29, 11 March 2018 (UTC)
 * No exception for copyright anywhere...let me quote with some bold
 * --Moxy (talk) 23:46, 11 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Ok I see what you're getting at. I guess I wasn't clear here. I'm not for a moment suggesting that we're free or should be free to violate our copyright policies on talk pages or anywhere else. All I mean is that it should be clarified that this particular guideline (which is slightly different from the others) only applies to article space. Other copyright policies such as WP:COPYLINK undoubtedly apply outside of article space. If you think that my proposed edit would confuse editors into thinking that WP:COPYLINK didn't apply to non-article space, then I think that could be addressed explicitly. --Dr. Fleischman (talk) 16:47, 12 March 2018 (UTC)
 * It says ‘without exception’, it does not say ‘except on talkpages’, and it does that (although not bolded) for over 7 years. —17:55, 12 March 2018 (UTC) (broke sig: —Dirk Beetstra T  C 19:56, 12 March 2018 (UTC))

Bible references
Are bible references such as bibleverse and bibleref2 to be avoided in article prose? If so, is there any approved way I can duplicate that function? Editor2020 (talk) 19:57, 9 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Hey Editor2020. We generally shouldn't put external links in article prose at all. You would also not need these sites as a reference, since if your only need is to cite the Bible, you can just reference the text itself without needing a website. You can also pretty much cite as much text as you like, since, barring maybe some theological debates about Elijah, Enoch, and for some Mary, it's probably safe to say most of the writers have been deceased long enough for their contributions to have fallen into the public domain. (And I'm pretty sure resurrection doesn't affect copyright status. :P)  G M G  talk   16:57, 12 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Oh. I see you mean Template:Bibleverse. Yes, the same as our general policies, you would want to put the template in ref tags, so that it would appear in the reference section of the article, and not in the body as we would wikilinks to other articles.  G M G  talk   17:01, 12 March 2018 (UTC)
 * The problem is I've found a number of cases of alteration or misrepresentation of bible quotes and like to make reader verification easy, but I guess I can make 'em references. Thanks for your help! Editor2020 (talk) 18:25, 12 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Not that I like them in-text, but I am sure that we have the bible on WikiSource. --Dirk Beetstra T  C 18:39, 12 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Great. Thank you. Editor2020 (talk) 01:26, 13 March 2018 (UTC)

Links to iTunes
I am seeing lots of links to iTunes artist and song pages which I remove per ELNO (#5 exists to sell songs, #6 requires iTunes registration and #8 requires and launches iTunes app) and on the general principle that Wikipedia does not exist as a marketing and sales platform for these artists. I often get push back, usually from SPA/PROMO accounts but sometimes from good faith editors. I just want to make sure I am not wrong in this. On a related note. Is there a common practice for how we handle links to 'Official' music videos on YouTube? Generally I see statements like So and So released Some Video [ref w/link to YouTube] My thought is that this is inappropriate per WP:NOTPROMO and, in general, they should be removed but I would like to get some feedback. Jbh Talk  15:00, 16 March 2018 (UTC)
 * If the links to the iTunes Store is in the EL section, remove it. If it's used as a reference, it's possibly valid, but a better source should be found.
 * YouTube for artists is questionable. It's usually just promotional and offers nothing encyclopedic, however, we do allow for a YouTube link. Walter Görlitz (talk) 15:29, 16 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Agree that linking to iTunes (which is a storefront here for all purposes) is not appropriate. A YT/Vevo link to an official channel with the video is fine. Mentioning that the video was released to YT is usually not necessary, but if third-party sources note the popularity of the video (eg the viral nature hitting millions of views within hours), that's part of a single's/video's reception that can be mentioned. --M asem (t) 15:39, 16 March 2018 (UTC)
 * The YT/Vevo link is only fine if it is either the only online presence of a subject, or the artist has gained a significant part of their notability through said YT/Vevo. Most of these links plainly fail WP:ELOFFICIAL.
 * As a reference it is often primary, and that does not necessarily make it worth mentioning. Any secondary reference makes the primary reference obsolete and there is no loss in losing it.  —Dirk Beetstra T  C 15:48, 16 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Thank you all. Jbh  Talk  15:17, 18 March 2018 (UTC)

Shortcut to rule about external link in body
Citing "External links Number 2" is awkward. I'd like to see a shortcut implemented. --Kiyoweap (talk) 17:08, 4 May 2018 (UTC)
 * WP:ELPOINTS already links to that section. CrowCaw</i> 00:37, 5 May 2018 (UTC)

Mass removal of sister links
It looks like User:Plantdrew has had a go of removing sister links from about a hundred articles, most or all high profile species articles. Before I hit the revert button about a hundred times, I figured I'd drop a note and make sure I'm not the only one sees that as fairly disruptive. G M G <sup style="color:#000;font-family:Impact">talk  21:15, 23 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Edits like this. Walter Görlitz (talk) 21:20, 23 April 2018 (UTC)
 * And in that particular one, none of the sister project links were specified. Instead, they're treated as searches, which happen to resolve if there is a page titled "Animalia" at the sister project (and just go to search results if no page titled "Animalia" exists). That is a very sloppy way to link to sister projects (and the design of Sister project links makes it all to easy to just link search terms rather than properly specifying actual sister project links). Plantdrew (talk) 21:35, 23 April 2018 (UTC)
 * It's equally sloppy to remove all sister links because you can't be bothered to actually fix the problem. The way I judge which of those sloppy decisions is worse for the project is by which one gives our readers access to more or less free knowledge.  G M G  <sup style="color:#000;font-family:Impact">talk  19:49, 24 April 2018 (UTC)
 * I don't think that this is really addressed by this guideline. GMG, have you considered talking to a relevant WikiProject about this?
 * IMO the best practice wouldn't be blanking all sister links just because the default set doesn't suit you. WhatamIdoing (talk) 07:05, 6 May 2018 (UTC)

https in examples
I changed the examples to use https for the protocol in this article according to best practice. I've changed a few external links over to https in external link section of various articles. Https is preferred as there is less chance of domain hijacking. Browsers are beginning to mark non-https sites as not secure so we will need to start updated links if the site supports both http and https. --Notgain (talk) 04:25, 29 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Secure http is not a best practice. While it there less of a chance of domain hijacking, it uses a greater amount of CPU and other resources for the vast majority of interactions and since browser are beginning mark insecure sites, users can decide which to follow based on common sense. Walter Görlitz (talk) 23:29, 29 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Since October 2017‎, Help:Link has said that HTTPS should be preferred where available. In February 2018, I copied this to External links per a discussion about deprecating protocol-relative URLs which did not discuss HTTPS. I agree with that examples should follow guidelines, but perhaps you would like to change the guideline. Daask (talk) 13:54, 16 May 2018 (UTC)

Please comment about external links to Fringe theories
Hello, your feedback is requested at Draft talk:Fringe theories about the Shroud of Turin, about whether links to fringe theories are appropriate in the External links section of an article about such theories. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 04:25, 6 May 2018 (UTC)
 * ✅ - declared this question settled on the discussion page. Daask (talk) 14:06, 16 May 2018 (UTC)

ETCSL links inline
I met a user that would like to use ETCSL links in his article, that refer to primary sources of ancient Mesopotamian texts (See Gilgamesh, from second paragraph onward). In a GA review, the user defends this usage as a standard among scholars of Mesopotamia. I would like to know if anyone can second this usage of external links, and whether it agrees with WP:MOS.-- Farang Rak Tham   (Talk) 07:40, 26 May 2018 (UTC)

What are "sourcing tools"?
Links normally to be avoided includes, "Sites already linked through Wikipedia sourcing tools" with a note stating, "This guideline does not restrict linking to websites that are being used as sources to provide content in articles". So what are "sourcing tools"? And what sites then are referred to in this guidance? Thinker78 (talk) 19:46, 28 May 2018 (UTC)

Policy to deeplink whenever possible?
It seems pretty obvious that if you use https://www.example.com/allaboutfoo to support some claims about foo, the reference should link to https://www.example.com/allaboutfoo and not just https://www.example.com. (For a real example: any link to a BBC news article vs. BBC frontpage.) However, I could not find it explicitly in our current guidelines, though one might argue that it is already implicit in a few places (e.g. in WP:INCITE Inline citations allow (...) to associate a given bit of material (...) with the specific reliable source(s) that support it. (emphasis added)).

Did I miss it? If not, should we add it? Tigraan <span title="Send me a silicium letter!" style="color:">Click here to contact me 15:49, 7 June 2018 (UTC)
 * From WP:V "The cited source must clearly support the material as presented in the article. Cite the source clearly and precisely (specifying page, section, or such divisions as may be appropriate)". --M asem (t) 15:55, 7 June 2018 (UTC)


 * ELNO 13, and probably ... that is accurate and on-topic, information that could not be added to the article for reasons such as copyright or amount of detail, or other meaningful, relevant content .... Obvious, documents about another subject are not suitable external links.  —Dirk Beetstra T  C 16:22, 7 June 2018 (UTC)

ETCSL links inline
I met a user that would like to use ETCSL links in his article, that refer to primary sources of ancient Mesopotamian texts (See Gilgamesh, from second paragraph onward). In a GA review, the user defends this usage as a standard among scholars of Mesopotamia. I would like to know if anyone can second this usage of external links, and whether it agrees with WP:MOS.-- Farang Rak Tham   (Talk) 07:40, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
 * I can affirm that it is common practice in classical studies and ancient history to cite primary source collections inline, even when other references are in footnotes or endnotes. This is partially to clarify what you're talking about, eg. many texts are sometimes called the Book of Adam.
 * I can furthermore say that external links in in-text bible references are fairly common on Wikipedia in plain contradiction to WP:EL. I don't think you're missing any formal exceptions in the guidelines, but editor practices have diverged from the guidelines on this, for better or for worse. Daask (talk) 22:35, 28 June 2018 (UTC)
 * I, for one, don’t think that those in-text bible references should be there, and that we should adhere to our MOS standards (slippery slope). That a group of publishers about Mesopotamia decide to have it allowed per their MOS, or that we do it for bible references, does not mean that Wikipedia has to allow for the same for this.  —Dirk Beetstra T  C 05:48, 29 June 2018 (UTC)
 * (failed ping -  —Dirk Beetstra T  C 05:50, 29 June 2018 (UTC))
 * How are these links being used? Are they links to the source and then support from a scholar, or simply a link to the source requiring OR to interpret? Walter Görlitz (talk) 06:03, 29 June 2018 (UTC)
 * , in 's article that I reviewed at the time, he always combined the ETCSL citations with secondary sources of scholars.-- Farang Rak Tham   (Talk) 07:14, 29 June 2018 (UTC)
 * Brilliant! That's exactly what you want as a reader of this stuff: the source material with analysis by an expert. Walter Görlitz (talk) 14:28, 29 June 2018 (UTC)
 * Responding to 's argument, I would like to add that primary Bible citations tend to be linked to Wikisource pages. I believe this is allowed per MOS, isn't it? But does the same hold for ETCSL, which is not on Wikisource? That is the question here.-- Farang Rak Tham   (Talk) 07:35, 30 June 2018 (UTC)
 * bibleverse does while bibleref2, which I see used more often, mostly because it allows a greater selection of destination translations and selection of languages, links to biblegateway.com. Is there a way to see the total counts of links to templates? Walter Görlitz (talk) 18:00, 30 June 2018 (UTC)
 * If that's what transclusion count is, the former is currently 4833 while the latter is about 1411. Clearly, I'm looking at a niche. Walter Görlitz (talk) 18:47, 30 June 2018 (UTC)
 * per WP:EL, I would favour the wikisource varieties (as I would for ALL free texts on the internet. I don’t think that linking inline to an external text is ‘fair’ to any other site that has the material available.  It either needs a very strong consensus, or must be a sole source (which for free material is never the case).  —Dirk Beetstra T  C 10:45, 2 July 2018 (UTC)
 * That's your preference. Not all English language translations or collections of original material are available in Wikisource. Some are copyrighted. I won't go into the issues around the wikisourced translations of the bible, but let's just say that there are better translations based on better documentation. I would never use it. Walter Görlitz (talk) 17:44, 2 July 2018 (UTC)

Links to sister projects with original research, some fringe
Wikibooks and Wikiversity are in part arenas where fringe editors go when they are unhappy here or banned/blocked. They are the Wiki equivalent of Amazon's CreateSpace or Lulu.com. It just seems wrong to let people promote their original research in our articles. What am I missing? Doug Weller talk 16:52, 4 July 2018 (UTC)
 * They can contain good content, but without external verification that they are good we shouldn't link to individual books. Otherwise we get way too much fringe stuff. --mfb (talk) 23:59, 4 July 2018 (UTC)

WP:ELOFFICIAL
I regurarly run into situations where technically both criteria in WP:ELOFFICIAL - it is a website Controlled by the subject, and a main claim to the subject’s notability, but I argue that it is not a website ABOUT the subject. My latest example is Meghan Murphy, who is controlling http://feministcurrent.com/ (she is editor), ánd it is a main claim to her notability. I argue there that that is not a website about her, it is the official website of Feminist Current. I find these cases of WP:ELNO #13.

Do we need to be more clear/explicit that this use is indirect in WP:ELLOFFICIAL. Do we need to add that the website needs to be ABOUTthe subject? —Dirk Beetstra T C 06:07, 16 June 2018 (UTC)

Another one: Massimo Bottura - it is the website of the restaurant where he is chef (restaurant linked in text). —Dirk Beetstra T C 12:44, 20 June 2018 (UTC) (now cleaned in coll. with user:Walter Görlitz.   Dirk Beetstra T  C 16:22, 20 June 2018 (UTC))


 * Hmm. In the case of Murphy, I'd keep the link, although I might repoint it to an "About Murphy" page, if any exists.  We would provide a link to a (free online) book created by an writer; we should equally provide a link to a (free only) website created by an writer.  We shouldn't have different rules for different kinds of writing.  Books aren't more worthy than an online magazine.  Also, the article about the magazine has been merged to the BLP now, so that's another argument for inclusion.
 * In the case of the restaurant, maybe it depends on whether the restaurant is separately notable. I probably wouldn't include it in the chef's bio if it was already included in the restaurant's article.  OTOH, if the chef wrote, e.g., a regular blog on the restaurant's website, that might argue for inclusion (with a link to the blog).  But just the main page of the website?  Hmm.  I might skip that (but I probably wouldn't fight hard to exclude it).  WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:24, 20 July 2018 (UTC)

Links to Wikinews
Please see Village pump (proposals), which proposes changing this guideline. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:26, 20 July 2018 (UTC)

Simple stupid EL check
Over at Free Bird, a user provided a YouTube link to a live performance posted by the band's official account at YouTube (which does acknowledge the various other copyrights involved), so I do not it fails ELNO. This seems like a straight up acceptable EL to include, so I wrapped it up in an external media template in the body. I feel this is all appropriate under this, but the only reason I ask is that seems to provide a way to for editors on song/album/artist articles to use officially-posted performances or music videos within the body of the article. eg: for a song that has an associated music video that is discussed, and the video was posted appropriately by the artist or the label to their YouTube or Vevo channel, there seems no reason not to include that as an external media block within the music video section.

We still have to be 100% clear that the video posted is not a copyright violation, the account owner is whom they claim to be, and so forth, obviously. --M asem (t) 18:27, 22 August 2018 (UTC)


 * You can also post simple questions about individual articles at External links/Noticeboard.
 * There is no absolute prohibition on this. If there were, the template presumably wouldn't have survived its two trips to WP:TFD.
 * That said, the template makes the link more prominent than a regular entry. This might be reasonable if, e.g., you thought you could make a reasonable case for fair use of that media in a particular section, but you didn't want to actually upload a copy (e.g., due to excessive file size or file format problems).  If the case for inclusion was less compelling, then putting that kind of link in the ==External links== section might be more appropriate.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:39, 29 August 2018 (UTC)
 * It might make sense to have some inclusion-in-body guidelines similar to NFC allowances, but as this aren't copyvio concerns, this would more guidance than policy that NFC is. For example, I have wrote up many of OK Go's videos which gain attention for secondary coverage (how they did it), so a video link next to this section makes 100% sense. But many popular songs get videos that simply are typical music video fare, so linking these next to the body wouldn't help much. I might draft up some guidelines for this to consider. --M asem (t) 23:14, 29 August 2018 (UTC)
 * I would recommend that you write that up on the template's /doc page, rather than trying to make a formal guideline for it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:04, 4 September 2018 (UTC)

This generally is quite OK, though often these official videos are already available from the official page of the song/album on the artist's official website. --Dirk Beetstra T C 14:03, 2 September 2018 (UTC)

Google scholar / researchgate / etc.
On biographies, are these links suitable external links. Google scholar is just a search result, researchgate merely a form of social networking. —Dirk Beetstra T C 14:19, 25 June 2018 (UTC)


 * For clarity, do you mean the GScholar profiles (eg)? Nikkimaria (talk) 01:37, 26 June 2018 (UTC)
 * Yes. What does that tell me about that person except for what Google defined as what they published.  —Dirk Beetstra T  C 06:12, 26 June 2018 (UTC)
 * Self published, nothing authorative. I guess you could even leave out lesser publications.  —Dirk Beetstra T  C 06:18, 26 June 2018 (UTC)
 * Pictogram voting wait.svg


 * I think the GScholar profile would tell you the citation metrics (in the panel on the side), which I understand are of importance to select audiences (e.g., tenure committees and other people who believe in magic numbers).
 * I don't think it would ever occur to me to add such a thing, but perhaps others feel differently. DGG likely knows far, far more about these things than I do.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:47, 29 August 2018 (UTC)


 * The influence of scientific work can be roughly measured by the amount of amount of attention other scientists in the field pay to the articles published on it in peer-reviewed journals, and this is shown by the extent to which the other scientists cite them in their own published work. (this is analogous in many ways to our basic rule on notability).  There are many special cases and caveats, and the data needs to be interpreted by those who understand the subject and its publication patterns. (Again, analogous in many ways to the way we discuss references at AfD) . In academic fields other than the sciences, those that depend upon published books, rather than articles, citations occur in a much more irregular and delayed fashion, and the numbers are usually uninterpretable).
 * There are 3 databases that record such citations: Google Scholar, Web of Science, and Scopus. It is generally accepted that Google Scholar is not the most accurate, but it is the only one accessible to the general public. The numbers from it are usually about 1 1/2 to 2 times those from WoS or Scopus, because it includes a good deal of less formal material, casting a very wide net, as is typical for Google.This, as well as the open access, makes it in my opinion preferable for WP.
 * The extent of citations need for notability under WP:PROF depends on the field of science--there is no single value. Interpreting the data requires looking at the pattern--a few heavily cited articles count for much more than any number of low-cited ones. (for example, in experimental biomedicine, there usually needs to be at least one paper with more than 100 citations, but in mathematics the citation density is much lower. ) There are figures that purport to summarize this, of which the best known is h factor, but they are not universally accepted (they tend to over-emphasise the medium-cited papers)
 * I'm not myself a researcher in the field of developing and validating these metrics, but I have closely followed it since its beginning in the mid 1960s. As you may have gathered, I do have a personal view--I am very strongly convinced in the validity of citation analysis,and I am almost as strongly convinced about the dubious validity of any current single measure--I think the effort to find one is driven by academic bureaucrats.
 * Therefore, I think it is important to have this information in articles. I usually add it by including a list of the 3 or 4 most cited articles, using figures from Google Scholar.
 * On the other hand, I think it extremely inappropriate to include it in an infobox. It requires interpretation, and used as a raw number gives an often misleading impression. My advice is that the field should be removed.  DGG ( talk ) 00:18, 30 August 2018 (UTC)

Let me be clear, I am talking about: in external links sections, not about references in prose.
 * '' (Google Scholar id)
 * '' (ResearchGate)
 * '' (Scopus)

The former is 'a freely accessible web search engine that indexes the full text or metadata of scholarly literature across an array of publishing formats and disciplines', the second is 'a social networking site for scientists and researchers', the third is a subscription service from Elsevier. (probably we should also include Web of Science search links in this discussion, we don't seem to have a template for that?? and that one is 'an online subscription-based scientific citation indexing service')

The indices these provide do have a place on Wikipedia, though taken with a care (I would talk about a range, not the number which is too prone to change). These links have their function in building articles (finding most cited material for a researcher), or reference their indices (where I would go for Scopus and WoS, not Google Scholar), or reference numbers of publications, etc. (again, WoS or Scopus).

My argument is that these, in external links sections, are almost always inappropriate. Google, WoS and Scopus search results, ResearchGate a plain social networking site. Scopus and WoS are not accessible to a whole lot of people (and to those who have, generally only accessible while 'at work'). Much of the information is a duplicate from what is in their official website or on their official profile (barring cases where ResearchGate could be the main web-presence of a researcher per WP:ELOFFICIAL). Often these links are on official profiles or official websites already (duplication of links). Lists of publications are typical on official profiles/websites, and often higher profile articles published by the researcher are even already mentioned in the article. And a complete list of all publications by a researcher is generally only of interest on the very very high profile ones (Nobel prize nominees and similar ground-breaking researchers), generally only a couple of high-profile are for most enough (and those are then mentioned/discussed in the article already). --Dirk Beetstra T C 08:10, 30 August 2018 (UTC)
 * for use as an EL, I agree that ResearchGate is an inappropriate EL unless its the pprincipal social media site for an individual. If it is, it's permissible. . Scopus and WoS do not meet the EL criteria, because they require payment. GS, however, I consider acceptable there when the research has a GS ID, which provides validation that these papers are by this author, not by someone with a confusable name, because it meets the definition of providing additional information. It's not a nonprofit site, but I think it is still usable for an EL it is completely objective cumulation of data. But for use as an EL the site should just be listed without any attempt to summarize the data, as there is no unambiguous way of doing that.
 * but GS (and Scopus and WoS) are the only acceptable references for citation data  for individual papers in the text of an article, and I consider such information essential content when it is available. As I said, summary figures from any of them are in my opinion unacceptable in the text of an article, unless properly qualified.
 * I will note that deWP permits the use of a general reference to a database as a reference for giving a list of books, journal articles, etc.(in fact, they use such a reference as if it were a list without giving the specifics, on the basis that the information can be found there. However logical it may be to do this, my understanding is that enWP does not allow this.  DGG ( talk ) 20:48, 3 September 2018 (UTC)

OK, I think we all reasonably agree on WoS, researchgate and scopus.

For Google, lets go through some:
 * Stuart J. Russell
 * Reference, inappropriate, amounts to o.r.
 * John Lott
 * Google contains way more(>100?) than a list linked on his official website (49). Google includesthis, where I do not immediately see the link to the subject.
 * Gary Becker
 * same with second result, not a paper BY subject

To me still, Google scholar is still a search result, not a human vetted list. And seen examples above, it seems to show incorrect results, which makes me wonder what the number from that actually mean. (I may add examples to this list) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Beetstra (talk • contribs) 04:05, 4 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Re-ping User:DGG. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:11, 4 September 2018 (UTC)


 * Nothing from GS Scopus or ISI is a human vetted list. Any human vetted list involves research, as I will explain a little further below.  In the sciences, there are no responsible reliable lists available except in the rare instances where there is a critical scholarly biography or a history of science study. Most of the secondary sources available are uncritical. The most reliable extensive source besides the rare monographs is the Dictionary of Scientific Biography and its supplements.  In the humanities there are more likely to be such monographs.  In the social sciences I have little knowledge. But there is much less truly reliable biography available for scholars in any field than for literary or artistic figures, or political or military people.
 * We use what there is, using a reasonable not a perfect standard of RSourcing. We are after all, not producing a scholarly work here, and there is no intetion to claim WP to be a reliable source. There is no point in aiming for truly high academic standards here--even where there is material, the length of time and amount of effort for one always makes a WP biography is a very brief summary. We're just a popular encyclopedia, a convenient ready reference.
 * GS and Scopus and ISI are prepared by algorithms, with minor human intervention for ISI. But that does not make-them substantially less reliable than manually prepared sources. We've usually assumed that human intervention is needed for accuracy, but this is not the case here--unless the human intervention is exceptionally skilled,(see below for everythingt hat needs to be checked) The errors that you point out are inevitable.  In fact, there are others.  Your search for  Lott on GS  used his GS "profile" profile, in addition to the oddity  you mention. you will notice that a number of the publications  are listed multiple times. I do not know how to account for this, but errors in the profile pages are common. The proper search is for "JR Lott "  (including the quotation marks in the search--this is in fact the GS-recommended technique for complete recovery.)  and then rely on manually sorting out the ones in different fields. The practicality of this depends on how common the name is.  In cases of multiple people with similar names working in the same field, it  often requires checking to verify the institutional affiliation. It will inevitably miss some with alternate forms of the name or names transcribed wrong--this is an especially significant problem for the early years of ISI.


 * ISI uses a relatively restrictive definition of what is indexable. It has broadened over the years. but in earlier years it eliminated many items that academics usually do count as formal publications. In the other direction, GS uses a very broad definition, including many that academics do not count as formal publications. Scopus has usually tried to be broader than ISI, as a selling point. There is no absolute standard that is field-independent. For example, in some fields, ARXIV does count as a formal publication regardless of not being peer-reviewed. When I do a list, I limit it to peer-reviewed formal papers, but selecting which they are is a matter of judgment, and I try to take field into account. For example, in some areas of humanities, almost everything is published in chapters of a collected volume.  I usually evade it by listing the 3 or 4 most cited papers and their citations from GS because its most accessible to our readers. , but that's inaccurate by de-emphasising current work.  One wrong way to proceed is no tto list the total number of papers-- another the  the total no. of citations;; I remove both when I see them
 * In considering how to count papers,  there is also the problem of primary responsibility and first authorship, which is different in different fields, and different periods. You can not go by first or last position, or corresponding author. Many advisors put their name on everything from their group;  at the other extreme, Watson was noteworthy for deliberately omitting his name from almost everything and just listing his students' names. Most advisors make sure that each student has one paper as primary author, regardless of who did what.  My advisor was particularly generous, and made sure every student had one sole-authored paper. A true distinction of how many papers and which ones a person is responsible for is history of science research, and is unavailable except for famous people, and when it is, is often contested.


 * In terms of a source for describing a person's field, there is no RS at all. Their web page may be written in a uniform style by the dept of university PR office, or by the person himself, or a mixture. No matter who wrote them, they tend to  emphasize current interests---these websites are designed to attract prospective students.  A full CV, which sometimes can be hard to find, typically includes everything--the current  practice is to make it as long as possible., A citation for an award will emphasize whatever work the award is for, usually npot his current interests. Afull 3rd party biography, even if available, will discuss everything, and may or may not try for a concise summary phrase.


 * in summary, there's no pooint to try for precision.  DGG ( talk ) 18:32, 5 September 2018 (UTC)
 * That is still no reason to have them in an external links section. Itis exactly the reason why we are not supposed to link to search results.  Moreover, we avoid links to material that isobviously wrong.
 * I stand with the point that all of these, including GS, should NOT be used in external links sections. --Dirk Beetstra T  C 18:45, 5 September 2018 (UTC)

Template:ASIN
I recently used Template:ASIN in a citation for a book that had no ISBN. I was surprised to find that the template expands to an EL that goes to the Amazon web page where I can buy the book. I would have thought this is prohibited by WP:ELNO. Should I be using this template? This was at List of IBA official cocktails, and it's a Further reading, not a ref. Kendall-K1 (talk) 23:17, 2 August 2018 (UTC)
 * How so? Would you rather have it like ISBN? Walter Görlitz (talk) 06:08, 11 August 2018 (UTC)
 * Kendall-K1, the key words in your question are "in a citation". This guideline doesn't apply to citations.  See Citing sources for instructions on how to write a citation.
 * Or, if you don't want to wade through another l-o-n-g guideline, the short answer is: We don't care.  If you find that it's useful to use the Amazon Standard Identification Number, then you should expect it to lead you to Amazon's website, but that's actually okay.  The ISBN page does the same thing, only requiring one extra click to get there.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:32, 29 August 2018 (UTC)
 * When I say "citation" I meant Template:Citation, not Citing sources. As I said, this is in a "Further reading" section and is not used as a source citation. It sounds to me like I should not be using either ASIN or ISBN this way. But apparently I'm not making myself clear, or am asking the wrong question. Kendall-K1 (talk) 00:14, 31 August 2018 (UTC)
 * Why shouldn't you use ISBNs and ASINs, as legitimate parts of a citation? The point of a bibliographic citation is to identify the thing you're talking about.  Widely used, unique identifiers are an excellent way to do that.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:06, 4 September 2018 (UTC)
 * It seems to me they violate ELNO point 5. But as I said, I'm obviously not communicating, so let's drop it. Kendall-K1 (talk) 00:23, 5 September 2018 (UTC)
 * You are correct that they wouldn't be appropriate for the ==External links== section. But they're not, so those rules don't apply.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:41, 5 September 2018 (UTC)
 * The guideline has a statement in the lead about linking to webpages otherwise failing our criteria at ELNO: Besides those kinds of links listed in § Restrictions on linking [ELNEVER], these external-link guidelines do not apply to citations to reliable sources within the body of the article'. (ELNEVER note mine; emphasis original). If you are using something like ASIN in the context of a reference, you continue to use ASIN in that reference. There  a preference to use a more universal identifier such as a DOI or an ISBN, but if a particular work does not have one of those, then an ASIN is Good Enough.
 * If your concern is for a "further reading" section, as you say above, I think you can defend that use in the spirit of that statement there in ELNO (+IAR if necessary). The intent of providing identifiers for works in the further reading section is the same as in a specific citation--to assist in finding the work in question. (Same caveat as above about preferring other identifiers if available.) --Izno (talk) 18:07, 5 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Finally, someone who actually read and answered my question. Thank you. Kendall-K1 (talk) 01:46, 6 September 2018 (UTC)