Wikipedia talk:WikiProject External links

The archives of the discussion of WikiProject External links may be found here:
Archive 1

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The CW Television Network

...has 56 external links in the "External news links" section alone. HELP! Morgan Wick 03:32, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

I have added it to Wikipedia:WikiProject Spam's to-do list. Some of the links might be references for the article, but not sure which. --Aude (talk | contribs) 03:42, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Project directory

Hello. The WikiProject Council has recently updated the Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Directory. This new directory includes a variety of categories and subcategories which will, with luck, potentially draw new members to the projects who are interested in those specific subjects. Please review the directory and make any changes to the entries for your project that you see fit. There is also a directory of portals, at User:B2T2/Portal, listing all the existing portals. Feel free to add any of them to the portals or comments section of your entries in the directory. The three columns regarding assessment, peer review, and collaboration are included in the directory for both the use of the projects themselves and for that of others. Having such departments will allow a project to more quickly and easily identify its most important articles and its articles in greatest need of improvement. If you have not already done so, please consider whether your project would benefit from having departments which deal in these matters. It is my hope that all the changes to the directory can be finished by the first of next month. Please feel free to make any changes you see fit to the entries for your project before then. If you should have any questions regarding this matter, please do not hesitate to contact me. Thank you. B2T2 13:38, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

freehostia.com

What to editors think about freehostia.com links? They seem to fall into the category of forums, blogs, WP:OR sites or are the official website listed in articles on WP:NN topics. I think most could be cleaned out of articles. Typically I would discuss this at WP:WPSPAM, but I think most of those links have not been added as part of a spam campaign. JonHarder 23:02, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia Day Awards

Hello, all. It was initially my hope to try to have this done as part of Esperanza's proposal for an appreciation week to end on Wikipedia Day, January 15. However, several people have once again proposed the entirety of Esperanza for deletion, so that might not work. It was the intention of the Appreciation Week proposal to set aside a given time when the various individuals who have made significant, valuable contributions to the encyclopedia would be recognized and honored. I believe that, with some effort, this could still be done. My proposal is to, with luck, try to organize the various WikiProjects and other entities of wikipedia to take part in a larger celebrartion of its contributors to take place in January, probably beginning January 15, 2007. I have created yet another new subpage for myself (a weakness of mine, I'm afraid) at User talk:Badbilltucker/Appreciation Week where I would greatly appreciate any indications from the members of this project as to whether and how they might be willing and/or able to assist in recognizing the contributions of our editors. Thank you for your attention. Badbilltucker 18:44, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Hello

Anyone here or is this project inactive? --Spartaz 12:03, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

• Same question? Deizio talk 13:59, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

Seems very inactive, but I'm going to start using it at least. Havok (T/C/e/c) 19:47, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

So in order to help more here, Are you interested in preparing the guideline now? Check the talk page archive linked on the top of this page, for the previous efforts made. My plan is to read through them, resolve contraveries, then invite an admin to check it out, and then publish it on the project page and use it. Agreed? huji—TALK 14:31, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

This project was set-up the same time as Wikipedia:WikiProject Spam, which has become very active and has much the same goals. If nobody minds, I suggest redirecting these project pages to WikiProject Spam. --Aude (talk) 14:46, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

I agree. But just don't forget to pass the list of articles gathered in this project for cleanup, to the fellows in the new project. huji—TALK 16:01, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

If we go ahead with this, remember to transfer all templates and such. I just fear the integration process will be to much, as they stand now they are the same but not. As WPEL isn't just spam, but general cleanup of external links as well. Havok (T/C/e/c) 14:32, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

This project

Is there a future for this project? I hope so. I have read the discussion above about merging this with WP:WPSPAM — I don't think this should be done. There are issues that are very special for external links, e.g. dead external links. Dead external links is a topic that isn't covered in the scope on this projects project page yet, but it belongs here very well. I came here after having programmed a bot that tracks dead links, but there's also another site handling this problem. See

• Wikipedia:Dead external links
• User:Ocobot

I also noticed that there are bot requests from time to time regarding external links, for example: example request. All this could be coordinated or assisted from here.

I would be happy if this project could be revived, as it seems to be quite inactive. These are some first thoughts on what we could do to make this more lively:

• Link to this project from all relevant pages
• Make a userbox for members of this project — this might sound rather irrelevant but it improves the visibility of this project a lot
• Improve the project page
• Improve the project template
• Invite editors that work on similar stuff to join the project, see Recruiting

I'd be happy to put my energy into this if there's a chance to make this more lively! What do you think? Will you take part? — Ocolon 18:16, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Bot approvals

Re: Wikipedia:Bot_owners'_noticeboard#Bots_and_external_links_.E2.86.92_WP:WPEL. It would be best to keep an eye on the page yourself, but I'll try to remember to inform you of any requests I see related to your area of activity.

For now, your comments are invited on Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/VixDaemon 4. Thanks! --kingboyk 23:03, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

I agree about keeping an eye on this ourselves. But sometimes bots get speedily approved — it would be a pity if we miss one. Thank you. — Ocolon 08:26, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Added to Community Portal

I added this project to the list of fix-up projects on the Community Portal. Hopefully this will attract more editors to help out. --Gimme danger 23:56, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

Cool :) Thanks, ( arky ) 00:30, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

I want to add this rule...

I want to add this rule...

1. Links to content providers on pages that elaborate the content should be avoided. For example, COM port redirector, Emoticon and such articles should link to sites that may clarify the reader on what a serial port is. But it should not link to companies that provide serial port redirectors or companies that offer "free" emoticons.

I added it, but User:2005 removed it without reason... I started a discussion on the talk page to decide whether to have this rule or not... Please support... http://en.wiki.x.io/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:External_links#Add_this_rule_too... Mugunth 17:07, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

Actually you added it without reason. Please start a discussion before adding totally new concepts to a guideline that states it is a consensus of editors. 2005 22:48, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

I think this is already covered in WP:EL#Links normally to be avoided, in criterion 5. Happy editing! ( arky ) 02:05, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

Bibliographic record keeping discussion.

On the Village pump (technical) there is a discussion to simplify the citing of commonly used sources, and more generally to improve our bibliographic record keeping. There are a number of options presented, some of which are ready for prime-time, and an organised effort is required to consider their suitability and prepare a well rounded proposal if any option appears to be workable. John Vandenberg (talk) 04:09, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

Morgellons (Disregard issue resolved)

External links issues resolved among editors. Not sure how to remove from project page, would someone please remove Morgellons from list? Thank you. Ward20 (talk) 06:11, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Disregard, I figured it out. Ward20 (talk) 20:13, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

External Links

I have only recently started to try and add things on Wiki. I tried to place a link from my website about panic attacks and anxiety, onto several wiki pages (panic, panic attacks, anxiety) and they kept disapearing and so I persisted because I thought I had done something incorrectly to apply it, later I found to my horror it had not only 'not' been approved but I was temporarily grounded :( May I explain, I am a qualified RMN (Registered Mental Health Nurse) residing in the UK and the website (http://www.cragface.co.uk/index.asp) I designed has no pop-ups, no advertising and no commercial backing. It is purely a source of information in plain English for anyone suffering this debilitating problem and there is no other agenda. (Also for your information, the "membership log-in is there purely to ensure that people behave themselves on the message board and nothing else.) All the information is available to anyone and for free. If external links are not allowed...there appear to be at least two up there that need attention. One link doesn't work (second one) and another appears to be similar to mine but less informative. If it is not allowed that's not a problem to me. I just wanted to clarify what was incorrect in my actions or what content in PanicStop was disaproved of? Thanks. CragFaceCragFace (talk) —Preceding comment was added at 22:24, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

Guidance requested on link relevance and placement

I'm having a bit of a problem with an external link recently added, and then re-added after my removal, on Bethlehem Steel. My first reversion was because it seemed like someone trying to advertise their own website, which still seems like it might be the case, and that the website is nothing more than a blog and doesn't represent a website linked to an academic institution or reliable source. User:Haeber and User:67.169.137.214‎ (who very well may be the same person, I'm not sure) are attempting to argue that it has valuable information. Upon reading through the blog post I partially agree that the information is interesting, however it didn't seem to actually include very much new or otherwise relevant information about Bethlehem Steel, but rather seemed more focused on Charles M. Schwab, who is related to Bethlehem Steel. I was wondering if I might have some additional guidance, both on the inclusion of the link in this encyclopedia and on the appropriate article in which it would be inserted. NcSchu_(Talk) 15:51, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

External links on Flag football

I was wondering if someone could help with an edit war I seem to be in on the Flag football page with User:LouPepe. He insists on adding an external link to a web site which I've repeatedly asked him to justify with regard to notability. What information he's provided in return has either directly shown it's lack of verifiability or it's origin as original research. He doesn't seem to be taking the hint. Have I lost my perspective? Could you provide some? Thanks. -- Bdoserror (talk) 05:26, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

.yu

.yu TLD is going to be completely replaced with .rs and a number of links will become dead. I suggest that this project deals with this, in the following way: I will make statistics of .yu links, and find what are .rs equivalents for for the most used links. Then perhaps a project member who owns a bot could search/replace all the links so identified, and we'll see what to do with the rest. This is of course relevant for all Wikipedias... Nikola (talk) 20:45, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

I have now done this. The statistics of .yu domain use on Wikimedia projects are available here. At the time of making the statistics, English Wikipedia alone had 7620 links to .yu domains.

Note that some (perhaps most) domains will stop working as soon as March, while all will stop in October. The domains could be fixed easily with the standard pywikipediabot. Here is a sample command I used on Serbian Wikipedia:

python replace.py -weblink:webrzs.statserb.sr.gov.yu "webrzs.statserb.sr.gov.yu" "webrzs.stat.gov.rs"

The domains

This is a list of domains that are already search/replaced on Serbian Wikipedia or elsewhere. Domains on this list will likely cover more than 1/4 of all .yu domains.

From!To
webrzs.statserb.sr.gov.yu	webrzs.stat.gov.rs
www.rastko.org.yu	www.rastko.org.rs
www.reprezentacija.co.yu	www.reprezentacija.rs
www.blic.co.yu	www.blic.co.rs
www.beograd.org.yu	www.beograd.org.rs
arhiva.glas-javnosti.co.yu	arhiva.glas-javnosti.rs
www.srpsko-nasledje.co.yu	www.srpsko-nasledje.co.rs
www.dnevnik.co.yu	www.dnevnik.rs
www.srbija.sr.gov.yu	www.srbija.gov.rs
www.kurir-info.co.yu/Arhiva	arhiva.kurir-info.rs/Arhiva
www.kurir-info.co.yu/arhiva	arhiva.kurir-info.rs/arhiva
www.kurir-info.co.yu	www.kurir-info.rs
arhiva.kurir-info.co.yu	arhiva.kurir-info.rs
www.prvaliga.co.yu	www.prvaliga.rs
www.mitropolija.cg.yu	www.mitropolija.me
www.spc.yu/sr	www.spc.rs/sr
www.sk.co.yu	www.sk.co.rs
www.ekoforum.org.yu	www.ekoforum.org
www.svevlad.org.yu	www.svevlad.org.rs
www.posta.co.yu	www.posta.rs
www.glas-javnosti.co.yu	www.glas-javnosti.rs
www.fscg.cg.yu	www.fscg.co.me
ww1.rts.co.yu/euro	ww1.rts.co.rs/euro
www.belex.co.yu	www.belex.rs
www.beograd.org.yu	www.beograd.rs

Nikola (talk) 22:05, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

Austrian School

Could users familiar with WP:EL assess the worthiness of this restoration of links? Thanks, the skomorokh 05:36, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

NZ on Screen

Discussion moved to Wikipedia talk:External links#NZ on Screen.-gadfium 07:50, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

"Top ten" lists

I've been dealing with an editor who has added a series of links to the Guardian newspaper's "top ten" lists to numerous articles. (One example is "Gemma Malley's Top 10 Dystopian Novels for Teenagers The Guardian, August 29 2007" in the Dystopia article.) His/her intentions seem good, but as best I can tell this is not an appropriate use of the external links section. The editor has repeatedly restored the links, so I'd like some input here regarding this matter. Thanks in advance. --Ckatz^chat_spy 04:35, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

Hello everyone, as the editor in question, I also welcome your input. I believe that many of these links could potentially be beneficial to potential readers. For example a teacher for instance may be reading the dystopian article, and at the end they are provided with a list of 10 recommended dystopian novels for teenagers (for example). Ckatz, seems to believe that these violate WP:EL although he/she has failed (despite repeated requests) to point out specifically how. We have had an ongoing discussion about the matter at my talk page ---> User talk:Redthoreau#External links for those interested. Of note as well, I have reverted Ckatz's reverts once or possibly in a few article twice, however Ckatz may have violated 3 RR against me in the last 24 hours at least 3 separate times .... Instance # 1 = on List of poetry collections - 1rr, 2rr, 3rr. Instance # 2 = on Dystopia - 1rr, 2rr, 3rr. Instance # 3 = on Short story - 1rr, 2rr, 3rr. Any suggestions of possible recourse? Solutions? etc Thanks.   Redthoreau (talk)RT 05:36, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

Red, The burden is on the person that wants to include external links. This means that you have to demonstrate that the link complies with this guideline, not demand that Ckatz prove that it doesn't. See WP:ELYES and WP:ELMAYBE for typical reasons in favor of a link. See WP:ELNEVER and WP:ELNO for common reasons for excluding a link.

In particular, I think you're going to have to make a case for why links targeted to specific populations are desirable for all of our readers. Wikipedia is not just for teenagers and their schoolteachers. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:00, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

WhatamI, I appreciate your input. I read all of those particular policies, specifically when Ckatz stated that my inclusion of these links was in violation of WP:EL. I was open to Ckatz's claim that they were, but Ckatz never displayed exactly how they were in violation (despite me repeatedly requesting clarification – as can be seen in my above TP link). My contention obviously was that these links were beneficial to the reader. They were not glaringly link spam, were not a personal web page, a blog, a site selling merchandise etc. Moreover, in reference to the dystopian article, I added both a top 10 list of dystopian novels for teenagers and for adults (2 different lists). Being that some dystopian novels have adult themes, I felt both were warranted, and would encompass all potential age groups. I didn't interpret it as an issue of proving their "worth", because each time I included one, Ckatz removed them claiming a violation of WP:EL. How they were, I am still unaware.   Redthoreau (talk)RT 06:11, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

I understand your frustration, but it's what Ckatz said is pretty much irrelevant: The fact is that you must have consensus to add links. (Since their addition was reverted, you clearly do not have consensus for their addition.) You get that by explaining the links' value on the article's talk page and why you think the addition is justified. If there's no agreement to add them, then they don't get added. Good luck, WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:03, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

[addendum]] I just wanted to state that I no longer wish to dispute this matter, and am happy to cede to Ckatz's rationale. Thanks   Redthoreau (talk)RT 04:30, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

External link added to Sustainability

I wonder if I could get an opinion on a link recently added to Sustainability. The link was first added as a citation to a self-published article.[1]. I excluded it as not in keeping with WP:VER. However, another editor suggested that the link could go into the External links section. The individual then re-inserted the link (this time to what appears to be a self-published newsletter).[2] I'm not so sure including it is a good idea, since if we add this link, we will have trouble excluding dozens of others (the article has been a link farm in the past). I've read WP:EL for guidance, but this one seems to be a borderline case. It is related to the article, but... Any advice on groundrules would be much appreciated. Sunray (talk) 07:56, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

By all means no! This guy is clearly a POV spammer as I had a big fight with him over at Simple living where multiple editors have agreed with me that the link doesn't belong. In fact, this link was this guy's very own essay as he had admitted on several occasions. After the initial discussion, I took the link to COIN When I pointed him at WP:EL he accused me and the other editors of "vandalism". ELNO # 1, 4, and 11 applies here. ThemFromSpace 16:53, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

Having read this (and the related Wikipedia:Conflict of interest/Noticeboard#Simple living external link) I've found quite a few links to this site (and the apparently related nariphaltan.virtualave.net) that seem to exist only for the purpose of linking. They have now been cleaned up, but we may need to keep an eye on this. (Se also Special:Contributions/Ruralface, a new account.) --Ckatz^chat_spy 17:50, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

Thanks much. This is most helpful. Sunray (talk) 18:15, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

More to this, regarding possible alternate accounts and URLs... Akraj (who has added "nariphaltan" links in the past) asked about adding an EL from "pune.sancharnet.in/nariphaltan" to an article on dreams (at Dreams); the linked document is identical to one from the other "nariphaltan" URLs. --Ckatz^chat_spy 17:22, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

Also, the IP User:218.248.79.4 and the URL "etagriculture.com", which appears to solicit articles for publication. --Ckatz^chat_spy 05:28, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

I submitted the first two to WT:WPSPAM where User:A.B. deferred it to the local blacklist. ThemFromSpace 06:50, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

Need help with "search links" violations

I'm out of time, but would love to have someone follow up on these obvious violations of WP:ELNO #9 for me. I started with inappropriate links to search results at Media Matters's website, after questions at WT:EL involving Jake Tapper, and I would love to have someone click the link in a few hours (or tomorrow) to make sure that there hasn't been a mass-reversion (I begin to suspect the involvement of an "agenda account" here). Note that these links in Debbie Schlussel and L. Brent Bozell III have been incorporated into the text in a perhaps acceptable fashion, but as of this time, those two should be the only mainspace uses for that link string.

But in the course of cleaning out that mess, I found a list of about three dozen links to search results from Salon.com (click here) that needs to be reviewed and (most likely) removed (or, perhaps, replaced by one particularly good article from the list).

As background, search results are unacceptable primarily because they change: a page that had six interesting links today might be buried by a hundred trivial ones next month. (Also, I like to think that our readers are smart enough to run their own searches.)

My thanks to anyone that looks over a few of these, WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:55, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

Diff

I've tried doing link cleanup for the Diff article. Let me know how I did, or perhaps help me respond to any backlash? This is my first attempt at this, so we'll see how this goes, I guess. --Ashawley (talk) 05:28, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

What you've left looks good to me. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:01, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

disputes over external links?

Resolved

 – Link moved from "external links" into references. Gabbe (talk) 13:04, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

If there's a dispute on an article talk page over whether a specific link in an article is "directly relevant" or not, what is the proper forum to ask for fresh eyes to look upon the issue? Is there a noticeboard or something remotely similar?

Specifically, there's currently a discussion on whether the article Zeno's paradoxes should contain a link in its "External links" to a BBC article on the shortest time measured, and I'm looking for more people to say what they think. Gabbe (talk) 21:22, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

I realize this specific dispute is already resolved, but the new External Links Noticeboard just went live, and such questions can be taken there. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:36, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

Flashy sites

A remarkable percentage of "official" sites seem to use Flash and so forth. Some sites use it intelligently to show things in motion, many just use it to have graphics move around rather than stand still. The most laughable sites (in my perhaps minority view) have material in conventional web pages that might be browsed by just about anyone (e.g. with an aural browser) if they only knew it were there, material that's only accessible via Flash navigation (and is thus unknown to search engines). In Category:External link templates (which oddly calls IMDB "Highly reliable"), I see no mention of a template to label such EL ("official" or other) as requiring plug-ins or similar. This does say For example, all links to YouTube videos should, if applicable, indicate that Flash video software or a web browser supporting H.264 is necessary to see the content -- but no template. I wish such a template existed. Unfortunately I'm not a template programmer. (If such a template does already exist and I've overlooked it, do please set me right.) -- Hoary (talk) 04:59, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

I think that most editors simply type the text by hand, but there are templates, e.g., Template:YouTube, that include it. See here for a couple of examples (and a bunch of navboxes that aren't relevant to this discussion). WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:58, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

A {{requires flash}} tag or whatever would be simple to knock up, I suppose. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 13:41, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

Though then again there'd be quite a risk of well-intentioned misinformation, as I imagine many editors either don't know what's running the spectacle in front of them or don't know precisely what's missing when there's no spectacle in front of them. (I'm not putting myself above these people: Often I don't know myself.) So perhaps this needs a bit more thinking through before a template is launched. -- Hoary (talk) 14:21, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

I've been thinking about this since your notice on Template talk:Official and I think this may fit in well with some of the other external link template stuff. Ultimately I'm thinking some form of "meta template" may be the best way to handle some of these issues. If we go with a separate template for now though, we might want to consider naming it {{Flash required}} to at least begin to standardise this stuff with other templates such as {{Subscription}} and {{Registration required}}. Perhaps we should also be talking to Wikipedia:WikiProject Accessibility to find out what sort of metadata would be helpful to those who use screen readers? Some sites have a separate HTML-only link that might be helpful to provide with such a template too. --Tothwolf (talk) 00:14, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

I'm not sure how popular/used (as opposed to "potentially useful) such a template would be, although I have no objection to its creation. Template:Official, which has been around for more than three years now, is only used in about 12,000 articles (~0.4% of Wikipedia's articles). I suspect that most editors will simply type the information by hand. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:50, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

2001 Cincinnati riots

This article could use some help in cleaning up the external links. It has been tagged for over 3 years, and at present has almost 40 external links. I will be looking at it over the next few weeks, but any help would be appreciated. DigitalC (talk) 20:30, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Done. I removed all the links to news articles. -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 23:45, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

Template_talk:Taxobox#Implementation

Discussion related to this project: Template_talk:Taxobox#Implementation. --Snek01 (talk) 03:21, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

Task force/subproject thingie on Geocities

Hi. :) To make a (very) long story short (permanent link to long story), a bunch of us are hoping to get a good movement together to take a hard look at Geocities links, either removing the ones that are unreliable/unsuitable under W:EL or finding archives to which they may point. Slightly out of scope for this project, this includes links used as references, but the vast majority of geocities links seem to be in the form of ELs.

Is there any objection to our organizing this under your umbrella as a subpage of your project? --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 11:32, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

Opened at WP:GeoCities. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 13:08, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

The Great Backlog Drive

Panyd^{The muffin is not subtle} 22:56, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

Task force for WebCiteBOT replacement

WebCiteBOT was a bot that searched articles for external links in citation templates. It would submit those links to WebCitation.org and update the citation templates. It was great at fighting link rot until it died. I would like to set up a task force to work on a replacement. I'd like to get input from others and find out if there are any objections. Thanks for your time. - Hydroxonium (H₃O⁺) 17:35, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

Seeing no objections, I have gone ahead and created the new task force at Wikipedia:WikiProject External links/Webcitebot2. - Hydroxonium (H₃O⁺) 14:22, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

WikiProject Dead Link Repair?

I have proposed a WikiProject dedicated to cleaning up dead external links; see Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Proposals/Dead Link Repair. My perception is that WikiProject External links has been relatively inactive lately (though I'm getting this from the low edit rates of project-related pages, so I could be wrong), while there are over 93,000 entries in Category:All articles with dead external links. I think that it's time to create a separate project for dealing with link rot, given the immense size of the backlog. --Dylan620 ^{(t • c)} 18:52, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

I apologize for the very late reply:

WikiProjects are groups of people, not tasks lists. You start a (successful) WikiProject when you have an immense number of volunteer editors interested in working together, not because you have an immense task that needs to be done. If you're still working on this, you should feel free to "take over" this quiet little group's page for any coordination that you want to do. You might also look at WP:WikiProject Citation cleanup, since linkrot should be even more clearly within their expressed interest area. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:39, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

Possible task force

DMOZ intergration Would anyone else be interested in making a systematic effort to add {{Dmoz}} to articles' external links sections? I think that Wikipedia and ODP could gain from mutual reinforcement. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 00:20, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

New reporting tool/bot

Still under development, but this is likely something of interest to this project: WP:STiki/Dead_links. I'm not a regular at this page, so please post any relevant suggestions or comments to my talk page or that of the link above. Thanks, West.andrew.g (talk) 19:56, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

New ArchiveLinks extension almost ready for deploy

Hi folks. For the Google Summer of Code 2011, Kevin Brown created the ArchiveLinks extension. An excerpt from the announcement email to wikitech:

ArchiveLinks was created as a GSoC project to address the problem of linkrot on Wikipedia. In articles we often cite or link to external URLs, but anything could happen to content on other sites -- if they move, change, or simply vanish, the value of the citation is lost. ArchiveLinks rewrites external links in Wikipedia articles, so there is a '[cached]' link immediately afterwards which points to the web archiving service of your choice. This can even preserve the exact time that the link was added, so for sites which archive multiple versions of content (such as the Internet Archive) it will even link to a copy of the page that was made around the time the article was written.

Next, ArchiveLinks also publishes a feed via the API of recently added external links, so your favorite remote service can crawl those in a timely fashion. We have been talking with the Internet Archive about this; they are eager to get a list of the recent external links from Wikipedia since they believe our community will probably be linking to some of the most important and useful content on the web.

So, while work will always be needed to keep the links in Wikipedia articles up to date, we may be able to greatly reduce the problem of cited web pages that go missing.

At this point, we need just a little bit of help to get this onto Wikipedia.

• some final help with the visual look of cached links.
• if you can write PHP or JavaScript, it would not hurt to do some final cleanup on the code from a very promising student project to production quality. I (NeilK) mentored Kevin and there's not a lot of work to do.
• And we'd like to have some community members who are familiar with the deep issues to help us advocate for this on the various Wikipedias.

Please respond if you are interested, if you can help, or if you just want to utter words of encouragement! Or, tell us we're doing it all wrong!

Thanks. NeilK (talk) 00:56, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

You might want to post this over at the external links noticeboard. This project is mostly inactive. ThemFromSpace 15:39, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

@NeilK, I'll be working on moving this forward in the upcomming days and soliciting help from other interested parties. - Hydroxonium (T•C•V) 06:50, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

Gabriel

I recently ran across an article that has several external links in the body of the article. I tagged the article with {{external links}} but it's been removed twice by another user. I've started a discussion on the talk page here. The other user has been on WP for over 8 years and as the discussion only involves two people, I'm not 100% sure that I'm correct. I assume that members of this project probably have the most expertise with WP:EL so I thought I'd invite users here to participate. Your participation will help to improve the article, WP, and the knowledge of at least two editors. Thanks for your time. OlYeller21^Talktome 13:31, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

It looks like you're concerned about the {{bibleref}} templates. I don't know what the "right" answer is offhand, but I believe that the use given there is common. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:46, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

btinternet

The ISP btinternet has announced that it is closing its webspace for customers on 31 October 2012.[3] There are over 1500 links to btinternet.com and over 2000 links to btinternet.co.uk and I would guess than many of these will be references rather than external links. Presumably these will all become dead links when the webspace is closed, unless there is some sort of automated archive with the links being replaced. --Rumping (talk) 09:40, 7 October 2012 (UTC)

Try WP:BOTREQ. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 10:34, 7 October 2012 (UTC)

Thank you. I have repeated this at Wikipedia:Bot_requests#btinternet--Rumping (talk) 06:22, 9 October 2012 (UTC)

Inconsistencies between "cite" and "language icon" templates

FYI, just posted here: Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style/Linking#Non-English-language_sites. 219.78.115.45 (talk) 13:11, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

Categorization and inconsistencies between "cite" and "language icon" templates

Hello,

I have reported an issue between {{cite}} templates and {{language icon}} templates at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Linking#Categorization and inconsistencies between "cite" and "language icon" templates. Place Clichy (talk) 14:53, 8 February 2014 (UTC)

Leaflet for Wikiproject External Links at Wikimania 2014

Hi all,

My name is Adi Khajuria and I am helping out with Wikimania 2014 in London.

One of our initiatives is to create leaflets to increase the discoverability of various wikimedia projects, and showcase the breadth of activity within wikimedia. Any kind of project can have a physical paper leaflet designed - for free - as a tool to help recruit new contributors. These leaflets will be printed at Wikimania 2014, and the designs can be re-used in the future at other events and locations.

This is particularly aimed at highlighting less discoverable but successful projects, e.g:

• Active Wikiprojects: Wikiproject Medicine, WikiProject Video Games, Wikiproject Film

• Tech projects/Tools, which may be looking for either users or developers.

• Less known major projects: Wikinews, Wikidata, Wikivoyage, etc.

• Wiki Loves Parliaments, Wiki Loves Monuments, Wiki Loves ____

• Wikimedia thematic organisations, Wikiwomen’s Collaborative, The Signpost

The deadline for submissions is 1st July 2014

For more information or to sign up for one for your project, go to:

Project leaflets
Adikhajuria (talk) 17:43, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

Comment on the WikiProject X proposal

Hello there! As you may already know, most WikiProjects here on Wikipedia struggle to stay active after they've been founded. I believe there is a lot of potential for WikiProjects to facilitate collaboration across subject areas, so I have submitted a grant proposal with the Wikimedia Foundation for the "WikiProject X" project. WikiProject X will study what makes WikiProjects succeed in retaining editors and then design a prototype WikiProject system that will recruit contributors to WikiProjects and help them run effectively. Please review the proposal here and leave feedback. If you have any questions, you can ask on the proposal page or leave a message on my talk page. Thank you for your time! (Also, sorry about the posting mistake earlier. If someone already moved my message to the talk page, feel free to remove this posting.) Harej (talk) 22:47, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

WikiProject X is live!

Hello everyone!

You may have received a message from me earlier asking you to comment on my WikiProject X proposal. The good news is that WikiProject X is now live! In our first phase, we are focusing on research. At this time, we are looking for people to share their experiences with WikiProjects: good, bad, or neutral. We are also looking for WikiProjects that may be interested in trying out new tools and layouts that will make participating easier and projects easier to maintain. If you or your WikiProject are interested, check us out! Note that this is an opt-in program; no WikiProject will be required to change anything against its wishes. Please let me know if you have any questions. Thank you!

Note: To receive additional notifications about WikiProject X on this talk page, please add this page to Wikipedia:WikiProject X/Newsletter. Otherwise, this will be the last notification sent about WikiProject X.

Harej (talk) 16:57, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

www.panarchy.org linkspam

User 84.75.241.243 has added a lot of linkspam today, more than I am willing to remove manually. Is this the right place to request someone with suitable powers to look at it? Maproom (talk) 08:52, 24 January 2015 (UTC)

What panarchy.org has to do with this. Could you please clarify. Thank you. 46.127.234.53 (talk) 16:29, 21 August 2022 (UTC)

Number of links

Please see inquiry at Wikipedia_talk:External_links#Number_of_links. Lapadite (talk) 20:47, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

Hello, Lapadite77. I'm not sure this page or Wikipedia_talk:External_links#Number_of_links are the appropriate place for your question. But, I'm willing to answer it here anyway. I'd say that the Cate Blanchett article should have fewer External Links than what Lady Lotus left there, personally. You should thank Lady Lotus for the very generous edit on their part. I would have removed all but the IMDB article. The other links do not provide any further encyclopedic understanding of the subject and one of those links is a dead link - which should be removed immediately. The other articles should also have their EL sections pruned as well and I'd have no problem with you reviewing WP:EL first and then you doing so. Stesmo (talk) 21:28, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

Stesmo, what do you suppose is the appropriate place for the question? I'm familiar with WP:EL, and it's the reason I question that edit. None of the links violate WP:ELYES, and there isn't a particular limit stated on WP:ELMINOFFICIAL. Plus, the other links provided contain significant, relevant information on the subject and are not sourced in the article; they are also present in many WP articles on actors. I see the People.com template added by Lady Lotus does not work. I would delete it and reinstate the former People.com link in place. Lapadite (talk) 22:11, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

Lapadite77, do they add provide any further encyclopedic understanding of the subject that isn't already included in that very B-Class, detailed article and its 146 cites? I would be very surprised if WomenAustralia, TVGuide or People magazine's links could come close to what is already included in the present article or in the references. So, they don't further encyclopedic understanding. And, I'm guessing that the IMDB/AllMovies/TCM aren't going to add much, either, though including one of them to provide a list of most of her appearances in film/etc. could be useful. This article seems so informative, I'm not even sure it would be needed to point to IMDB. The usual compromise between including unnecessary external links and meeting WP:EL is linking to a DMOZ or other directory-type subject and posting the links to that directory site. Stesmo (talk) 22:56, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

Question for the WP: External links team

I need some advice regarding an edit that a user made to warn that an external link to an official page is "Not safe for work". I know Wikipedia is uncensored, but I can see why someone might want to know the link they are about to click on contains pornographic material. I tried finding info regarding this on the WP:External links page, but couldn't find anything. Here is the link to the diff of the edit I am referring to. My question is, do we have any policies regarding this, as it is almost bordering on "talk in article"? Is there a preferred method to warn readers of this type of content, or should in not be included at all given that Wikipedia is uncensored? @Maple leaf eh: Pinging you so you are aware, since you made the original change. -War wizard90 (talk) 00:38, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

The warning, in my opinion, isn't needed, because A.) users should expect to see adult material on the homepage of a pornographic film director, and B.) warnings are expressly discouraged in Wikipedia:No disclaimers in articles. In fact, there was a NSFW warning template, but it was deleted. - Eureka Lott 00:54, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

Ok, thank you that's exactly what I needed to know. I am going to revert the edit, we can open up a discussion somewhere if it is contested. -War wizard90 (talk) 01:01, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

App download links in external links

Should connected products have the download links to their official companion app in the external links section? Daylen (talk) 18:41, 2 July 2015 (UTC)

Hey, Daylen. You may find Wikipedia:External_links/Noticeboard a good place to ask the appropriateness of particular links in the EL section. Additionally, you can search for "app store", "ITunes" or other related terms in the previous discussions Search box to see if folks have already had a discussion on that topic before. Stesmo (talk) 22:42, 2 July 2015 (UTC)

Archive question

Please see related question at the Bot owner's noticeboard. I want to know if it's OK to use the date of when the url was first added to an article as the accessdate. --Tim1357 ^talk|poke 14:32, 23 September 2016 (UTC)

External links in list articles

There is a thread about external links in lists of companies at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Beer#Brewery links in state list articles that may be of interest to the members of this project.—Anne Delong (talk) 08:38, 5 March 2017 (UTC)

MyiLibrary permalinks

MyiLibrary has two different landing pages for each document:

• http://lib.myilibrary.com/Open.aspx?id=1010150 (http://lib.myilibrary.com/?ID=1010150 also redirects to this page.)
• http://lib.myilibrary.com/ProductDetail.aspx?id=1010150

If you're not logged in, they both show a login screen. However, they vary if you are logged in, but the document is not included in your subscription. The first shows an error message without any information on the document being accessed, whereas the second shows a description, metadata, table of contents, full citation, and even lets you search within the document and see text snippets. Thus, the second it more useful and should be used exclusively in Wikipedia. I'm writing this here as a guide for other editors. Daask (talk) 20:43, 26 February 2018 (UTC) (Special:LinkSearch/*.myilibrary.com)

Active participants

Hello, Just checking about active members. Otr500 (talk) 14:34, 25 July 2018 (UTC)

DMOZ

subst:NoMoreLinks links DMOZ which I believe no longer exists. That now links to Curlie[4] which is just a redirect to DMOZ. In other words, we don't even have an article on Curlie, but we are redirecting traffic to it. Why? Doug Weller talk 11:14, 4 November 2018 (UTC)

Wikidata external IDs

Dear Project Members,

I proposed a new template which integrates Wikidata external IDs in Wikipedia to channel in reliable sources as further readings - please weigh in on the idea if you have the time: http://en.wiki.x.io/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)?fbclid=IwAR1jjICvpWSSSqYwzT9IsSjMJxfZ7-vLoGjE2U4BB_zPVTg8EJSQ0qylqHQ#A_new_use_for_Wikidata_external_IDs_in_Wikipedia_(template)

Best, Adam Harangozó (talk) 17:12, 9 June 2019 (UTC)

Copyright implications of links to CiteSeerX

Please join the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Copyrights#CiteSeerX copyrights and linking. Nemo 16:11, 2 October 2019 (UTC)

External links to library resources: RfC

A Request for Comment on external links to library resources, which relates to this project, has started: Wikipedia talk:External links#RfC: External links to library resources. Opinions, knowledge, and suggestions are sought. Please join in. SilkTork (talk) 10:42, 3 July 2021 (UTC)

Online dating service listed at Requested moves

A requested move discussion has been initiated for Online dating service to be moved to Online dating. This page is of interest to this WikiProject and interested members may want to participate in the discussion here. —RMCD bot 08:15, 14 March 2023 (UTC)

To opt out of RM notifications on this page, transclude {{bots|deny=RMCD bot}}, or set up Article alerts for this WikiProject.

Mass links

There are a number of links concerning articles from the List of minor planets: 2001–3000. The mass produced links in the "External links" sections are:

• Asteroid Lightcurve Database (LCDB), query form (info Archived 16 December 2017 at the Wayback Machine)
• Dictionary of Minor Planet Names, Google books
• Asteroids and comets rotation curves, CdR – Observatoire de Genève, Raoul Behrend
• Discovery Circumstances: Numbered Minor Planets (1)-(5000) – Minor Planet Center
• WikiProject External links at AstDyS-2, Asteroids—Dynamic Site
  • Ephemeris · Observation prediction · Orbital info · Proper elements · Observational info
• WikiProject External links at the JPL Small-Body Database -- Otr500 (talk)

External links

• External links:

This page in a nutshell: External links in an article can be helpful to the reader, but they should be kept minimal, meritable, and directly relevant to the article. With rare exceptions, external links should not be used in the body of an article.

Second paragraph: Some acceptable external links include those that contain further research 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 that is not suitable for inclusion in an article for reasons unrelated to its accuracy.

• This is indicative that there should be an actual reason for link inclusion and not just to add sites, particularly mass adding, that could be promotional, but is certainly not needed or specifically helpful. This includes fill-in-the-blank databases that land square in the middle of What Wikipedia is not -- Otr500 (talk)

Rationale for trimming

The "External links" section is one of the optional appendices. Three seems to be an acceptable number and of course, everyone has their favorite to try to add for a forth.

The problem is that none is needed for article promotion.

• ELpoints #3) states: Links in the "External links" section should be kept to a minimum. A lack of external links or a small number of external links is not a reason to add external links.
• LINKFARM states: There is nothing wrong with adding one or more useful content-relevant links to the external links section of an article; however, excessive lists can dwarf articles and detract from the purpose of Wikipedia. On articles about topics with many fansites, for example, including a link to one major fansite may be appropriate.
• ELMIN: Minimize the number of links. --
• ELCITE: Do not use {{cite web}} or other citation templates in the External links section. Citation templates are permitted in the Further reading section.
• WP:ELBURDEN: Disputed links should be excluded by default unless and until there is a consensus to include them. -- Otr500 (talk) 21:01, 5 September 2024 (UTC)