Wikipedia talk:WikiProject External links/Archive

message: 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:
# Either the below text needs to be changed accordingly, or 
# Discussion needs to take place at Wikipedia_talk:External_links to make changes to the official guidelines. 
---Aude 03:58, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: External link guidelines

message: 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)
thread_title: Reviewing official guidelines

message: ====Official guidelines (in bold)====
# Articles about any organization, person, or other entity should link to their official site, if they have one.
# 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 Wikipedia:Cite your sources.
## 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)
thread_title: What's okay to link to

message: # Articles about any organization, person, or other entity should link to their official site, if they have one.
# 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 Wikipedia:Cite your sources.
## 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)
thread_title: Official guidelines (in bold)

message: #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.
#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.
#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.
# 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.
## 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)
thread_title: Maybe okay

message: *Links to pages that use frames. ---Aude 04:09, 13 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Other suggestions

message: #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.
#Links that are added to promote a site, by the site operator or its affiliates.  See External link spamming.
## It is inappropriate and tacky to add external links ("nominate") to your own website — doing so contradicts Wikipedia Vanity guidelines and is considered advertising. ---Aude 03:50, 13 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: What is not okay

message: * 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)
thread_title: Other suggestions

message: 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)
thread_title:  The point in external links 

message: 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)
thread_title:  POV link and promoting a site/article 

message: 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)
replies: text: 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)
thread_title:  Merge to WikiProject Spam?