Wikipedia talk:WikiProject External links/Archive

External link guidelines
Below are my ideas on external links guidelines, and I welcome suggestions and changes to this text before moving to the project page.

These need to conform to the official guideslines. If there is something below that doesn't currently conform to the official guidelines, then:
 * 1) Either the below text needs to be changed accordingly, or
 * 2) Discussion needs to take place at Wikipedia_talk:External_links to make changes to the official guidelines.

---Aude 03:58, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia should adhere to the highest standards in selecting external links for articles.

These links should:
 * Be to reputable sites.
 * In some instances they might be commercial sites like www.washingtonpost.com.
 * Should have a significant number of backward links in Google, or on bookmarking sites like del.icio.us.
 * Significant in Google PageRank.
 * Significant traffic rank at Alexa.
 * Be substantive and informative.
 * Be preferably ad-free (or at least use advertisements sparingly and tastefully).
 * Not link to (paid) subscription-only sites.
 * Avoid linking to sites with pop-ups, Java applets or ActiveX controls, frames, heavy graphics, or otherwise amateurish sites.
 * Not link directly to large .pdf files, videos, and other such files (or at least qualify the link with a warning).

External links lists should also give preference to NPOV websites, though this is a case-by-case judgment and not a hard-and-fast rule.
 * In some instances, such as on Heritage Foundation or Center for American Progress articles, it's okay to link to the official websites of those organizations.
 * Also, multiple sites with POV that counter-balance each other and present a variety viewpoints would be okay.

Vanity
According to Jimmy Wales, "It is a social faux pas to write about yourself." (See: Autobiography)

Similarly, it is inappropriate and tacky to add external links ("nominate") to your own website &mdash; doing so contradicts Wikipedia Vanity guidelines.

Number of external links
The number of external links should be limited to a handful of scrupulously selected websites. There is no hard and fast rule on the maximum number of links, but they should generally be limited to 5-10 links for articles of featured-article quality (e.g. Geology of the Grand Canyon area). For shorter, stub articles, there should be not more than 5 links.

When the list of links becomes lengthy, it is difficult for readers to discern which ones are really useful and pertinent to them. Take for instance, the list of 50+ links that I found at Hybrid vehicle. Of the 50 links, I found only 6 that were informative and worth keeping. Who has the time and patience to click through 50 links to find these 6 good links? It was painfully annoying for me to clean up these external links, yet alone any use for readers.

Sometimes more than 10 links are okay; If there are more than 10 links, the links should be sorted into subsections, to help guide readers through the list of links.

How to 'weed' external links
If the topic is not controversial, or the number of external links is relatively small, one could just go ahead and deal with the external links exercising his/her own good judgment.

Otherwise, it is advisable to copy the external links to the talk page. As is done with Articles_for_deletion, we could list delete, keep, ... with each link on the talk page. We should then give some time for comments from the article's editors. With the example Hybrid vehicle mentioned above, no one objected or provided comments. If the topic is more controversial, like Israeli-Palestinian conflict, providing opportunity for comments is essential. Same goes, if not knowledgeable about the article's topic.

Reviewing official guidelines
I think the first priority for this WikiProject is to review the official External links guidelines versus the above suggested ideas, and consider any other ways to improve the guidelines to be more clear and useful.

Perhaps it's easier to say what should not be linked to than what should be linked to. Below, I list the above suggestions broken down by should and should not be linked to, and have mapped these to the official guidelines. Please add any ideas or comments, regarding these suggestions I had. ---Aude 03:50, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

Official guidelines (in bold)

 * 1) Articles about any organization, person, or other entity should link to their official site, if they have one.
 * 2) Sites that have been cited or used as references in the creation of an article. Intellectual honesty requires that any site actually used as a reference be cited. See Cite your sources.
 * 3) It is important to have references and general-purpose external links in separate sections. Otherwise, when cleaning up external link sections, references will be removed.--DDerby- (talk)  21:15, 13 December 2005 (UTC)
 * 4) An article about a book, a musical score, a webcomic, a web site, or some other media, should link to the actual book, musical score, etc. if possible.
 * 5) On articles with multiple Points of View, a link to sites dedicated to each, with a detailed explanation of each link.  The number of links dedicated to one POV should not overwhelm the number dedicated to any other.  One should attempt to add comments to these links informing the reader of their point of view.
 * 6) Multiple sites with POV that counter-balance each other and present a variety viewpoints would be okay. ---Aude 04:35, 13 December 2005 (UTC)
 * 7) I think this bullet-point should be moved to "Maybe okay" ---Aude 04:34, 13 December 2005 (UTC)
 * 8) Sites that contain neutral and accurate material not already in the article. Ideally this content should be integrated into the Wikipedia article, then the link would remain as a reference.
 * 9) External links lists should also give preference to NPOV websites, though this is a case-by-case judgment and not a hard-and-fast rule. ---Aude 03:50, 13 December 2005 (UTC)
 * 10) Be to reputable sites/information. ---Aude 03:50, 13 December 2005 (UTC)
 * 11) In some (many) instances they might be commercial sites like www.washingtonpost.com. ---Aude 03:50, 13 December 2005 (UTC)
 * 12) Should have a significant number of backward links in Google, or on bookmarking sites like del.icio.us. ---Aude 03:50, 13 December 2005 (UTC)
 * 13) Significant in Google PageRank. ---Aude 03:50, 13 December 2005 (UTC)
 * 14) Significant traffic rank at Alexa. ---Aude 03:50, 13 December 2005 (UTC)
 * 15) Sites with other meaningful, relevant content that is not suitable for inclusion in an article, such as textbooks or reviews.
 * 16) Be substantive and informative. ---Aude 03:50, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

Other suggestions
Add suggestions here.

Maybe okay

 * 1) For albums, movies, books: one or two links to professional reviews which express some sort of general sentiment. For films, Movie Review Query Engine, Internet Movie DataBase, Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic offer especially large collections of reviews. To access the list of other collections of movie reviews available online, please use this link.
 * 2) Web directories: When deemed appropriate by those contributing to an article on Wikipedia, a link to one web directory listing can be added, with preference to open directories (if two are comparable and only one is open). If deemed unnecessary, or if no good directory listing exists, one should not be included.
 * 3) Fan sites: On articles about topics with many fansites, including a link to one major fansite is appropriate, marking the link as such. In extreme cases, a link to a web directory of fansites can replace this link.
 * 4) Very large pages should be considered on a case-by-case basis.  Worldwide, many users use Wikipedia with a low-speed connection.  Unusually large pages should be annotated as such.
 * 5) Not link directly to large .pdf files, videos, and other such files (or at least qualify the link with a warning). ---Aude 03:50, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

Other suggestions

 * Links to pages that use frames. ---Aude 04:09, 13 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Sites that require payment to view the relevant content
 * Prefer not linking to (paid) subscription-only sites. ---Aude 03:50, 13 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Under References (but not External links), exceptions need to be made for scholarly journals and articles, such as Nature or New England Journal of Medicine.
 * On articles with multiple Points of View, a link to sites dedicated to each, with a detailed explanation of each link. The number of links dedicated to one POV should not overwhelm the number dedicated to any other.  One should attempt to add comments to these links informing the reader of their point of view.
 * Multiple sites with POV that counter-balance each other and present a variety viewpoints would be okay. ---Aude 04:35, 13 December 2005 (UTC)
 * I think this bullet-point should be moved to "Maybe okay" ---Aude 04:35, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

What is not okay

 * 1) In general, any site that does not provide a unique resource beyond what the article here would have once it becomes an example of brilliant prose.
 * 2) Links that are added to promote a site, by the site operator or its affiliates. See External link spamming.
 * 3) It is inappropriate and tacky to add external links ("nominate") to your own website &mdash; doing so contradicts Wikipedia Vanity guidelines and is considered advertising. ---Aude 03:50, 13 December 2005 (UTC)
 * 4) Sites that primarily exist to sell products.
 * 5) Sites with objectionable amounts of advertising
 * 6) Sites with objectional amount of advertising (proportion of informative content needs to overwhelmingly outweight the amount of advertising).
 * 7) Be preferably ad-free (or at least use advertisements sparingly and tastefully).---Aude 03:50, 13 December 2005 (UTC)
 * 8) Sites that require payment to view the relevant content
 * 9) Sites that require external applications (such as Flash or Java) to view the relevant content
 * 10) Bookstores. Use the "ISBN" linking format which gives readers an opportunity to search a wide variety of free and non-free book sources.

Other suggestions

 * Avoid linking to sites with pop-ups, Java applets or ActiveX controls, frames, heavy graphics, or otherwise amateurish sites. ---Aude 03:50, 13 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Websites used as a source for the article; These should go under References. See Cite sources ---Aude 04:12, 13 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Photo galleries shouldn't be linked to (maybe there are rare exceptions?). However, links to photo galleries and personal websites are okay on User pages.  Instead, how about uploading some of those photos to Commons or Wikipedia?  If you're photos that are on Wikipedia are really great, people might see your User page and links there.  But, putting the links to photo galleries in articles isn't appropriate. ---Aude 16:40, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
 * We need some guidance on whether to include discussion forums. I don't think they add sufficient value, but when removed people complain that they are useful. The guidelines don't seem to give guidance. Barrylb 11:11, 3 March 2006 (UTC)
 * For the record, I think some discussion forums are very helpful and thus, only major ones should be listed. A good example may be a discussion board for health disorders. Gflores Talk 14:41, 3 March 2006 (UTC)
 * If the discussion forum meets the Google test, is bookmarked by a number of people at http://del.icio.us/, or otherwise has built a significant community, then the site might be okay. (as long as it's not added by the site owner, or for promotional reasons). --Aude ( talk | contribs ) 15:07, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

The point in external links
External links are outgrowing their usefulness. If they are relevant to the article, they should be in the references section as a footnote. If they offer additional information, there needs to be a good reason why that information is not covered in the article (in which case the URL can serve as a reference). Way too often, external links are sneaky attempts at getting a POV covered that is too unimportant to be described in the article. I could go on. JFW | T@lk  04:52, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

POV link and promoting a site/article
Last night, I did some further cleanup of external links on Hybrid vehicle. This brought response from a user, regarding an "op-ed" article external link that was deleted. A little detective work, revealed significant conflicts-of-interest by the person that added the link. The link was added to (1) promote the article (2) POV-pushing (3) linkspam. This is a different kind of linkspam to consider, as the user isn't selling a product or service. See the talk page for details of my exchange with the user.

If you have suggestions on how to handle these, please comment. If nothing else, this can be an example of how to deal with a type of linkspam and cleaning links. ---Aude 00:22, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

Merge to WikiProject Spam?
WikiProject Spam has caught on very well, with 50+ participants now. It's goals overlap with goals #2 and #3 listed here in WikiProject External links. I think goal #1 can be handled at Wikipedia talk:External links, on a case-by-case basis where the might be a problem or shortcoming of the External links guidelines. --Aude ( talk | contribs ) 17:14, 19 January 2006 (UTC)


 * I've been involved in WikiProject Spam and dealing with spam isn't too bad. The main problem I am having now is endless links to 'forums' that we need an explicit policy on. -- Barrylb 04:17, 12 March 2006 (UTC)