# Talk:Paleotempestology

Some source references in this Wikipedia article have wiki links for academic networking websites ResearchGate and Academia. Copyright of academic journal articles is almost always held by the publisher not the author. Many authors using these networking websites appear to violate publisher's copyright by uploading articles from journals. The Introduction section of Wikipedia's article on ResearchGate states "A study found that over half of the uploaded papers appear to infringe copyright, because the authors uploaded the publisher's version.". Wikipedia should avoid promoting possible copyright violations. I think that Wikipedia editors and Wikipedia could be held legally liable for copyright infringement punishment by the copyright holders for directing people to examples of copyright violation. Therefore, I suggest such wiki links should be removed from this Wikipedia article. GeoWriter (talk) 21:19, 3 April 2020 (UTC)

GeoWriter I distinctly remember seeing discussions elsewhere about such links but I don't remember where. Either Nemo bis or JzG were participants in one such discussion ... I'll ping them. Also, this isn't an issue linked to this article, so perhaps a more general discussion would be warranted. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 09:23, 4 April 2020 (UTC)
Jo-Jo Eumerus, I do not think we should ever use ResearchGate, but that's a controversial view. There are two kinds of papers there: copyright violations and preprints (i.e. pre-reviewed versions) which may or may not be copyright depending on the contracts the authors have with the journals and in any case are not the published version. Guy (help!) 13:40, 4 April 2020 (UTC)
Now that I see, it doesn't seem like the article currently has any links to Academia.edu or ResearchGate. Did someone remove them? Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 15:40, 4 April 2020 (UTC)
I agree that this a copyright issue that could affect any Wikipedia article, not only this article. Although this article does not have direct external links to specific articles on ResearchGate and Academia.edu, some source references in this article (for example: Fan et al (2008) and Chen et al. (2012)) do include wiki links to the Wikipedia articles about those networking websites, which risks being interpreted by publishers as encouraging readers to consider accessing those websites. If such wiki links are not intended to facilitate access to the source articles, then why are such links included? The source references already include legitimate copyright-compliant doi links anyway, so any mention of ResearchGate or Academia.edu is only going to help readers who may want to bypass publisher's copyright controls. GeoWriter (talk) 20:37, 4 April 2020 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Citing sources#Say where you read it. I don't think there will be a consensus that "via Academia.edu/ResearchGate" notices in references should be banned, partly because of that and partly because they are a few too many steps removed from the actual website. But that's just my hunch. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 20:41, 4 April 2020 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Citing sources#Say where you read it is a content guideline. Wikipedia's copyright policy at WP:COPYLINKS states "if you know or reasonably suspect that an external Web site is carrying a work in violation of the creator's copyright, do not link to that copy of the work", which suggests that a consensus has been reached about explicit direct web links (because it is a policy, and policy trumps guidelines and article talk page discussion). Although "via ResearchGate" and "via Academia.edu" are not actually web links, why risk having to argue with a copyright lawyer in a law court about exactly how directly or indirectly they lead readers to find copyright violations? GeoWriter (talk) 19:03, 16 April 2020 (UTC)
That's all fine and dandy, but it's not a discussion for this talk page. Using a specific talk page for a more general problem is seldom a good approach. I believe WP:VPP or WP:ELN would be the correct ones. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 19:21, 16 April 2020 (UTC)

GeoWriter is observing that the list of examples of palaeotempestology sites is becoming overlong. I think the proposal in their edit summary to split it off to List of paleotempestology records might make sense. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 18:32, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

And done. Now need to clean a lot of unused citations up... Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 17:18, 1 November 2022 (UTC)