Wikipedia talk:External links

Official / inofficial facebook of company

My concern is that Wikipedia has made for our company, without our permission, a Facebook page that duplicates precisely our company's entry in Wikipedia. However, we have a Facebook page we made ourselves and which we can monitor. Therefore I would like to add to our Wikipedia entry a link to our own Facebook page ONLY so that when Facebook users see the one made by Wikipedia, they can easily get to our real one. Any comment? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 27.252.195.186 (talk) 09:40, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

Two things here:

• What do you mean with 'Wikipedia has made for our company, without our permission, a Facebook page that duplicates precisely our company's entry in Wikipedia'? I don't think that Wikipedia makes facebook pages, it must be made then by an individual.
• If any, only the official one should be listed (if it complies with all of WP:EL). If there is abuse of an inofficial facebook link, then I would suggest to add that one to the blacklist.

Could you give us the two links concerned? By the way, this discussion should be moved to the external links noticeboard. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 10:00, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

I think Facebook routinely copies pages from Wikipedia. Example: GNS Science and Facebook copy. I have no idea why Facebook does that, and while there may be some reason, it seems dubious to me. However, it is very unlikely to have anything to do with Wikipedia (text on Wikipedia can be copied by anyone under certain conditions; see WP:REUSE and the "Source" at the bottom of the Facebook page for an example of the conditions being implemented). Johnuniq (talk) 11:25, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

Facebook links of any sort are generally not appropriate as external links, unless your Facebook presence is key to your company's notability. An exception to this would be if your company has no better (for our purposes of providing encyclopedic information) official websites on the internet. ThemFromSpace 14:29, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

Five points: (1) I'm very sorry - I read the footer on the Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/pages/GNS-Science/115928885084402 too quickly - I actually don't know how to find out who made it but, following the advice above, I have to assume it was made by Facebook. (2) The page my staff member made is http://www.facebook.com/pages/GNS-Science/10150115509595004. (3) My frustration is that Facebook is not replying to my request about this issue. My attempt to put on Wikipedia a link to this latter page, so that Facebook visitors to the former could get to our proper page was certainly a naive quick-fix that doesn't work, and again I apologize for being too much of a newbie to cope with all the links to rules I see here, this being my first visit ever to this location. (4) I'm sorry this may be the wrong place for this discussion. I got to this very location from the warning I got not to use external links. So I knew no better! (5) Finally, if anybody knows what I should do I'd appreciate the help very much indeed. I don't now how to delete a Facebook page, nor how to discover who created it, nor how to get Facebook to reply to my messages, nor how to blacklist Facebook on Wikipedia (or did you mean Wikipedia on Facebook?) !!! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.90.159.248 (talk) 08:47, 3 September 2011 (UTC)

Sorry, but it is unlikely any help is available. Facebook made the copy of the article, and our opinion on that will have zero impact on them. What we can comment on is the proposal to link to the other Facebook page you mention from the article, and the news there is not good: per WP:EL (the guideline for which this is the talk page), that external link is not helpful for the article as it does not aid the reader with an understanding of the topic. As you will appreciate, people attempt to add external links all the time, and they are only accepted if they comply with WP:EL. Johnuniq (talk) 09:45, 3 September 2011 (UTC)

Thank you. While it may appear I can make no progress, I have actually learnt a lot from this exchange, and I very much appreciate the help you ahve given me. So let us close this discussion. 'Bye. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 49.226.179.180 (talk) 06:09, 4 September 2011 (UTC)

www.lotussmb.com== Theatricalia ==

I'm surprised to find that {{Theatricalia name}}, for linking to actor profiles on http://theatricalia.com/ , was deleted, with just the nominator and one other in favour of doing so; and one voice (mine; the creator) in favour of keeping it; particularly as I pointed out that the nom. seemed to think it was a reference, rather than an EL, template. It was suggested by the "delete" !voter that it be brought here to discuss recreating it (which seems contrary to "be bold", but still...). Would anyone object to its recreation? Should I just got to deletion review? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 19:11, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

I for one would object. I don't think we should have templates that create external links when they generally aren't appropriate in articles (yes, this includes the Facebook and Twitter templates). Looking over the site, many of the pages I found wouldn't meet these guidelines if they were placed in their respective Wikipedia articles (many consist of material that could be incorporated into our articles with little effort). Links that do meet the guidelines could easily be placed without the template's existance. ThemFromSpace 19:23, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

This should be at WP:ELN, but yes, I am another who would object because using a template, whether intended or not, has the effect of elevating an external link to some "official" status, encouraging the addition of as many external links as possible without regard for WP:EL. Johnuniq (talk) 00:46, 3 September 2011 (UTC)

Large graphical templates

Kozuch has removed this line on the grounds that written permission for the change was not documented in advance.

The newly added paragraph says:

"Some templates exist for linking to Wikimedia Foundation projects such as Wikimedia Commons. {{Commons}} is an example of a graphical template that is commonly used to link to Wikimedia Commons. All such templates have inline versions (e.g., {{Commons-inline}}), or you may choose to link to them exactly like you would link to any other website. See Wikipedia:Wikimedia sister projects#When_to_link for further information. Do not create graphical templates for non-WMF websites, even if these websites are also wikis."

Template:Caption

These templates include graphics that call special (some might say "undue") attention to the WMF projects.

Kozuch, who created {{Osmrelation}} to look misleadingly like the WMF sister templates such as {{Commons}}, has removed the last sentence. I think it only natural for Kozuch to oppose any statement that requires Kozuch to link to the non-WMF-related OpenStreetMap website in ways that do not look like Open Street Map is an official WMF project, or that require this website to be linked like any other website, i.e., either manually or with an undecorated, normal inline template like {{Facebook}}.

Does anyone except Kozuch support the use of such large, graphical templates for non-WMF websites? WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:04, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

Update: You can see that the normal practice is single-line, undecorated templates at Category:Wikia templates and Category:Templates containing links to non-Wikimedia wikis. Out of all of those templates, the only ones that use large, graphical templates, are {{Familypedia}} and {{FamilypediaPlace}}. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:30, 9 September 2011 (UTC)

Question why are we proposing to save this at all. As mentioned in the other talk everyone believe the link does not meet our external link polociy so why are we going to allow a smaller version? This should be deleted outright "no"?.Moxy (talk)

If you think it completely inappropriate, then I've no strong objection to you sending it to TFD. But what I'd like to accomplish here is to see whether the sentence Kozuch removed should be restored. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:51, 9 September 2011 (UTC)

I guess unless you restore the sentence here you have no power to delete the template. Even if you do all this, I will redirect the {{Osmrelation}} to {{Osmrelation-inline}} which is perfectly fine with all current rules. I will request a comment about the use of such graphical templates, because deprecating such templates to free content project is simply nonsence.--Kozuch (talk) 21:42, 9 September 2011 (UTC)

Your assumption about "the power to delete" is wrong: The community has the power to delete whatever it wants. In the area of templates, more than a few template creators have the impression that decisions are sometimes based on little more than a few editor's whims. WP:TFD is normally orderly, but it is not a highly regulated process and it relies heavily on the participants' best judgment.

My goal in re-adding the sentence is purely preventive medicine: It's not acceptable, but it's unfair to expect template creators to magically know this. The primary goal of this guideline is to tell users what the community does and expects, rather than leaving them to make mistakes and get smacked afterwards by a handful of initiates into the mysteries. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:18, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

Is christianmusiccentral.wikispot.org a link that should be permitted as an external link?

From what I see, it's got a small, closed group of editors and mostly one editor is working on the wiki. It doesn't appear that the information presented is inaccurate, but there isn't any fact checking either. User:RichLindvall, the primary editor of the wiki in question is suggesting that his information is a valuable addition to wikipedia articles. Could we get some opinions on whether they should stay or go? --Walter Görlitz (talk) 06:09, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

Please post issues like this at WP:ELN. Here are the LinkSearch results. Johnuniq (talk) 07:04, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

The answer is no its not as per Links to open wikis.Moxy (talk) 07:18, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

EL formatting and placement for OEIS

You are invited to take part in a discussion. The EL-related issues are two:

• whether links to the OEIS should look like this  A190939, and
• whether links to external websites (non-WMF-related) should be placed in the middle of article text (e.g., last sentence of Alkane#Isomerism). WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:43, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

Icons for EL templates

Related to the discussions above, do we need to just add a line that says "no favicons in external link templates to non-WMF-related websites" to this guideline? We've gotten a couple of questions about this issue this year, and so far (without wanting to prejudice the outcome of the above discussion), the answer has always been 'no'.

Having secret, unwritten rules is not an act of kindness to our good-faith template creators. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:46, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

I agree that it would be much more helpful for WP:EL to just say no to favicons. That has been consensus, and as a guideline, it can always be overruled if some extraordinary exception is required. Johnuniq (talk) 02:00, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

Hard to find coverage specific to linking to complete online copies of works in a bibliography that are not used for reference in the text

I just scanned this article as well as several other wikipedia help articles on citations and bibliographies. As online magazines and sites that host whole books (not to buy, but to read online) become more and more common, the question of how to provide links to those works becomes more elaborate. This article implies that such links should be included in the External links section, but also has the guideline that the external links section should not get overly long. I just saw someone set up links to a set of short fiction to be inline references after the bibliography entries, so the link in the bibliography is to a line in the references section, which then links externally. But then the references section starts to seem overly long. Some specific guidance in this question in view of the changing, more reliable web publishing industry would be appreciated. Netmouse (talk) 05:11, 26 September 2011 (UTC)