Wikipedia:External links/Noticeboard

Welcome to the external links noticeboard
This page is for reporting possible breaches of the external links guideline. Post questions here regarding whether particular external links are appropriate or compliant with Wikipedia's guidelines for external links. Provide links to the relevant article(s), talk page(s), and external links(s) that are being discussed. Questions about prominent websites like YouTube, IMDb, Twitter, or Find a Grave might be addressed with information from this guide. Sections older than 10 days archived by MiszaBot. (For help, see Wikipedia:Purge) If you mention specific editors, you must notify them. You may use {{subst:ELN-notice}} to do so.
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Denomination-specific link on general Bible history page

Regarding Development of the Christian biblical canon External Links section:

Is it really necessary or appropriate to include a link to one extremely small (less than 500,000 members) sect of one particular Christian denomination for its "perspective" on the article's subject? The criteria for normally permissible links reads in part "Sites that contain neutral and accurate material that is relevant to an encyclopedic understanding of the subject[...]" -- linked article is definitely not neutral or encyclopedic in nature.

External link in question: WELS Topical Q&A: Canon - 66 Books in the Bible, by Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod (Confessional Lutheran perspective)

rothko (talk) 16:22, 28 December 2019 (UTC)Rothko999

External links are never necessary in any article. Is this link appropriate in this case? Probably.

What exactly in that link do you disagree with? (I'm assuming that "definitely not neutral" means that you don't agree with something in it). WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:48, 30 December 2019 (UTC)

User:WhatamIdoing, it's sorta like if a page on the US Constitution included an external link to a site detailing a fringe political party's perspective on how the Constitution was written, who wrote it, etc. Not necessary to a basic understanding of the concept. rothko (talk) 03:39, 10 February 2020 (UTC)rothko999

rothko, can you quote for me a specific example from that page that you think is representative of a fringe position? This website belongs to a Lutheran organization, and I don't think I've ever heard someone say that the Lutherans are a fringe group. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:14, 10 February 2020 (UTC)

Personal religious websites and blogs for external links

I was removing: Accesstoinsight.org, suttacentral.net and palikanon.com from some Wikipedia articles where they have been spammed unncessarily. But I got reverted by Farang Rak Tham who appears to have went as far as misrepresenting one of these spam links to be scholarly.[1]

Accesstoinsight.org is not a reliable source per the admission of the website creator himself, who says that "Some biases, however, inevitably intrude, owing to the editorial choices I've made and to the summaries and short introductory essays that I've written here and there to give some context to the material being presented."[2]

Palikanon.com and Suttacentral.net are obviously unreliable sources and have been spammed. Instead of naming unreliable sources as "scholarly" one would need to read the definition of WP:SCHOLARSHIP, which first requires a scholarly publication since scholarly publishers are better at fact-checking than the WP:SELFPUB websites that have admitted to having hosted errors. Per WP:EL, we can't use an unreliable source for the articles that cannot be used as sources for the texts. Neither these websites contained what would be helpful for the readers. If preserving 'translations' is the aim then nonetheless, Wikipedia is not WP:NOTDIRECTORY.

Generally a source which is not WP:RS should not be spammed across other articles. Shashank5988 (talk) 20:52, 9 January 2020 (UTC)

I have taken the liberty of numbering the points you mention:

1. I did not misrepresent the sources. See point 3 below.
2. That link does not appear not be part of the original website accesstoinsight.org. Please post a correct, direct page with the content quoted. Even if that quote does originally come from accesstoinsight.org, Access to Insight is a collection of books and articles about Buddhism from different authors and publishers, which need to be considered for reliability on a case-per-case basis. Per comparison, just because a library is not in a university campus, doesn't mean the books in it aren't scholarly.
3. Palikanon.com and Suttacentral.net are obviously unreliable sources Please provide an explanation why you think that is the case. Palikanon.com, for example, hosts translations by Karl Eugen Neumann and a full version of the Dictionary of Pāli Proper Names by G P Malalasekera, both of which are examples of notable and widely recognized scholars.--Farang Rak Tham (Talk) 21:57, 9 January 2020 (UTC)

FYI, I did not add the external links in question, but I am a concerned fellow editor who believes deletion of these non-commercial translations is unwarranted.--Farang Rak Tham (Talk) 22:29, 9 January 2020 (UTC)

What matters is the statement of the accesstoinsight.org's owner. He agrees that the source is faulty. How it can be deemed WP:RS, let alone scholarly? I have explained other sources BTW, I would note that you notified Buddhist noticeboard about this discussion. Shashank5988 (talk) 20:49, 12 February 2020 (UTC)

No, the owner does not say that his website is faulty. The owner engages in a ritual expression of humility and gentle self-deprecation. The world's best scholars have done the same, since at least the time of René Descartes, who was perfectly willing to admit that he was capable of making unintentional errors. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:51, 14 February 2020 (UTC)

I disagree with Shashank5988's characterization of these links. The translations and resources hosted by these websites are the product of leading scholars in the translation of Pali, as well as hosting publications by notable groups in terms of the history of English-language Theravada studies (Access to Insight publishes material from the archives of the Buddhist Publication Society, for instance). These aren't personal websites or blogs, but rather are non-profit groups- ATI is hosted by the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies, Sutta Central is operated by an Australian non-profit trust. Palikanon is individually operated, but publishes work from the Vipassana Research Institute and Pali Text Society. Links to these sites are common on Wikipedia because they are the largest and best organized archives of these primary source materials and translations available on the web. The statement from ATI is simply an indication of editorial self-awareness, and may refer to a decision made relatively early in the sites life to focus on carrying content related to the Sutta portion of the canon rather than Vinaya and other texts (which are hosted on Sutta Central), not to the quality of the content within individual pages, which is sourced from notable scholars and organizations. Providing links to a primary source when it is available is a good practice in external links, since it allows the reader to verify what they have read, and Sutta Central particularly has the advantage of also frequently providing the source text in the original language. I see no reason to remove these links or regard them as spam unless they can be replaced by links to comparable sources for the original text and translations of the material in question. --Spasemunki (talk) 23:46, 9 January 2020 (UTC)

I agree with Spasemunki on this. These websites are suitable for external links on certain pages. These are not random people providing these translations, a lot of the names on these sites have big name Pali scholar's credited in their translations, I've seen published print works use these same translations of the primary sources. Plus, as Spasemunki stated, the websites mentioned are run by or publish work from reputable orgs, not random people. I don't think these can justifibly be called personal blogs. Wikiman5676 (talk) 04:27, 10 January 2020 (UTC)

External links are external links, not sources. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 05:13, 10 January 2020 (UTC)

Translations or articles from these websites may sometimes be useful in an EL section. I agree with Farang Rak Tham, the addition should be considered on a case-per-case basis. We should follow WP:EL (complex); [3] may be relevant. JimRenge (talk) 13:00, 11 January 2020 (UTC)

Shashank5988, I'm going to guess here that your personal experience with scholarly publishing is minimal. Stating that all errors are mine is a commonplace courtesy in some academic fields. First you thank the people who helped you with your research, and then you remind the reader to blame you, and not them, if the reader disagrees with your article. This appears in thousands of articles in scholarly journals.

More relevantly, the author does not admit to errors. The author admits to being slightly biased, (i.e., human). Thinking that Paper #1 is more important and worth linking that Paper #2, or emphasizing the third point in Paper #3 rather than others is what makes biases intrude. You do not need "errors" to have "biases". If you won a Nobel prize for work in your specific sub-field, and you post a list of articles that you think do a particularly good job of explaining something in the terms of your specialty, then you are "biased" (against all the other sub-fields) but you are not wrong, and there need be no errors involved.

A source can be biased and still 100% reliable (see the WP:BIASED section of WP:RS). Which would be very interesting, of course, if ==External links== needed to be reliable sources, except that they don't. It doesn't actually matter whether those websites are reliable, so long as they're external links and not Wikipedia:General references that are supposed to be supporting article content. Your belief that "Per WP:EL, we can't use an unreliable source for the articles that cannot be used as sources for the texts" is entirely mistaken. See, in particular, WP:ELMAYBE #4, which explicitly accepts "Sites that fail to meet criteria for reliable sources". WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:27, 13 January 2020 (UTC)

These are not scholarly sites. They are personal blogs and admit they are not accurate. Above suggestions came after a notification was dropped on Buddhist noticeboard[4] with mainly those editors telling things who have never edited this page before. This definition would allow the inclusion of just every single website in external links section. Non-profit organizations with no scholarly fact-checking are indeed unreliable sources and thus not qualified enough for WP:EL. I am sure there are tons of Buddhist organizations and their websites but do you really think that we need to include links of each of them on Wikipedia? Shashank5988 (talk) 20:49, 12 February 2020 (UTC)

You've simply repeated what you said before without addressing any of the points raised by other editors. This and your remark regarding sites that 'admit they are not accurate' suggests WP:NOTGETTINGIT. There is no problem with removing marginally related or commercial links to Buddhist organizations (as I did here earlier today), but WP:ELYES #2 specifically states that an article on a text ought to link to a free, legally distributed copy of the work in question. --Spasemunki (talk) 22:45, 12 February 2020 (UTC)

If #2 is your only point, then only 2/3 sites may happen to pass the guideline, but not suttacentral since it is being used for information. Shashank5988 (talk) 12:42, 16 February 2020 (UTC)

Suttacentral hosts translations and material in the original language. I'm not sure what distinction you're trying to make. --Spasemunki (talk) 01:24, 17 February 2020 (UTC)

Shashank5988, your insistence that "some biases" means "not accurate" makes me doubt everything you say. But if, when you say that the website "is being used for information" you mean "it is placed at the end of a sentence between ref tags, in an effort to prove that the sentence is verifiable", then please take your complaint to the proper noticeboard. One thing that has indubitably been spammed, by me, is notices all over Wikipedia:External links to tell people that it does not apply to any website that is used to support article content. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:16, 19 February 2020 (UTC)

I support the inclusion of Suttacentral and its translations. These are proper translations by a learned scholar, even if they are not published in a scholarly journal. In support of this, I submit that one of the publications of Sujato (and his colleague Brahmali) has been published by the Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies. Sujato's work is also cited by other scholars in the field and they engage with his work seriously. For example, Eviatar Shulman in his "Rethinking the Buddha: Early Buddhist Philosophy as Meditative Perception" (2014, Cambridge University Press) discusses Sujato's work in page 133-34. So, I think that suttacentral and Bhikkhu Sujato's work is scholarly. I think these two examples, and the quality of his work, are enough to prove this. The fact that something is not published in an academic source is not enough to prove something is not a scholarly work. One must look at further context. Javierfv1212 14:35, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

I'd also like to point out that pretty much all of suttacentral's translations credit a notable scholar in translating the text and many of the translations can be found in scholarly journals. I agree that marginally relavent sites should be removed, but the three sites in question are relavent to some articles on a case by case basis, including the example ShaShank cited at the beginning of the thread. I don't see a justification for a blanket ban on using these three sites on any pages as External links. Wikiman5676 (talk) 18:58, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

Links to in-copyright books hosted on archive.org

Please see Talk:Internet Archive#Links to in-copyright books hosted on archive.org for details. --Marc Kupper|talk 22:02, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

I fixed the link. Johnuniq (talk) 22:13, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

Percy Grainger

I left comments at Talk:Percy Grainger#External links (a featured article) concerning a review because eight "External links" could be considered link farming. Local consensus is that not only was eight acceptable but one was missed so added making nine. If some would be so kind as to take a look at this from a more broad Wikipedia perspective and policy, especially since it is a featured article that could end up demoted on a review, I would appreciate it. Thanks, Otr500 (talk) 01:43, 19 January 2020 (UTC)

@Otr500: Linkfarming is not a specific number, and a local consensus would not necessarily trump the local policies and guidelines about what is acceptable. Some articles are not linkfarming with 25 links, others are linkfarming with 3.

Looking at the article:

• I believe that the two societies are both not directly linked to the subject of the article: they are the websites of the societies not of the subject. Moreover, only one has a fleeting mention in the article itself. If those societies are of importance, then they should at least have a significant mention in the article itself.
• Then there is "Country Gardens": Performance by Grainger on pianola, 1919 which is completely cherry-picked, why this one work.
• The museum is indirect as well, that is covered by Grainger Museum.

This is plain old linkfarming. I suggest to re-start the discussion. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 08:26, 19 January 2020 (UTC)

Eight is more than average, but not necessarily unreasonable. I notice that the last one is a link to search results, which is not generally considered an appropriate type of link (as documented at WP:ELNO#EL9) ...except that we do want to link to lists of works by an author, which I suppose could sometimes be done via a search tool. If the results are useful/usable, I'd probably keep it; if it's hit-or-miss, I'd kill it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:12, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

Opinions linking Europeana and en:Wikipedia

please comment see Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)#Editor_consensus_regarding_Europeana_and_Wikidata_Property_7704 - Salgo60 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 18:53, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

Fraternity website; Fraternity FB; Fraternity Instagram

For a Greek Letter Organization (social/professional/honorary), I often see National Website, National Facebook page and National Instagram as the External Links:

1. ) Should the FB and Instagram links be there?
2. ) What other EL are reasonable? the only ones that jumps to mind is a location for an archive of the fraternity magazine/journal and if the alumni have a separate nationwide website.Naraht (talk) 23:14, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

This sounds related to WP:ELMINOFFICIAL in which generally only one "official link" is given for an organization, particularly if links to an organization's other "official websites" can be easily found on its primary website. There may be exceptions to this, but generally one is considered to be sufficient. -- Marchjuly (talk) 00:50, 21 January 2020 (UTC)

@Naraht: I would drastically clear those out. There should, indeed per WP:ELMINOFFICIAL, be only one official website with very very few exceptions. That should then probably be their main outlet, which could be their facebook or twitter (but not both, and certainly not all of them). Some do have an official website themselves ('<subject>.com', as practically every reasonable organisation has). --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 05:13, 21 January 2020 (UTC)

open.spotify.com

There are about 260 articles with links to open.spotify.com, possibly maybe inspired by MUSICSTREAM. The issue popped up in a teahouse question recently, and I tested the concept today as planned three weeks ago. All power to the artist (as her fan), but I dislike DRM.^[5] At least I want the issue noted in the EL/N archives, one 2018 discussion did not directly address WP:MUSICSTREAM + Spotify. –84.46.53.84 (talk) 07:36, 28 January 2020 (UTC)

Regardless of DRM, it seems that any content on open.spotify.com can only be listened to by Spotify account holders, which means that these links violate WP:ELREG and do not have a place in the External links section. (They might sometimes be appropriate in citations though.) Regards, HaeB (talk) 07:58, 28 January 2020 (UTC)

My teahouse intuition was sound, if there is no template such as {{openhub}} it cannot be okay. –84.46.53.84 (talk) 08:53, 28 January 2020 (UTC)

I would indeed say that these links have no place in external links sections (but I think that a link to an official video on YouTube is already borderline). Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 11:00, 28 January 2020 (UTC)

The MUSICSTREAM info was updated by Koavf. If Villains had an "official YT playlist" I'd use it in a reference, EL2REF is one of my standard edit summaries. –84.46.53.165 (talk) 03:54, 29 January 2020 (UTC)

United Nations Meeting

As a meeting of one of the senior international parliamentary bodies, the relevance of this Security Council meeting to the article on the Douma chemical attack is self-evident. It is thus far the only Security Council meeting from the UN with specific bearing on the subject, rather than the more general subject of Syrian government chemical disarmament. Furthermore, the meeting is mentioned in the article itself.

The meeting includes representations made from multiple member states, including all permanent members of the Security Council (despite there being no obligation on member states to attend), and is the only meeting with specific reference to the subject thus far available. In my view it passes WP:ELYES to "contain neutral and accurate material that is relevant to an encyclopedic understanding of the subject" but that cannot be integrated due to the amount of detail and format of the content.

The suggestion has been made, per WP:ELNO, that a link to the United Nations' own video record of this meeting "misleads the reader by use of factually inaccurate material" and that it "does not provide a unique resource beyond what the article would contain" if it were featured.

The relevance of these guideline points is tenuous at best. On the second point, the meeting extends over three hours, and includes representations by all permanent members of the security council. The notion that the content of those representations could or should be included in the text of the article, and therefore the video should not be, does not seem sensible. On the first point, the inclusion of the video is as a record of the views of member states, and the idea that it does not accurately portray those views is far-fetched to say the least, and is suggestive of a rather crass attempt at censorship. Views please. Cambial Yellowing❧ 12:36, 30 January 2020 (UTC)

Bellingcat is imperialist propaganda. More seriously, if a source is covered in references don't put it in an EL. –84.46.52.25 (talk) 03:12, 31 January 2020 (UTC)

Let's centralize the question of whether a video of a UN meeting about this event should be linked in the article at Talk:Douma chemical attack#External Links - page blocked. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:54, 4 February 2020 (UTC)

RfC on adding generally reliable sources to the CAPTCHA whitelist

There is a request for comment on adding generally reliable sources from the perennial sources list to the CAPTCHA whitelist, which allows new and anonymous users to cite them in articles without needing to solve a CAPTCHA. If you are interested, please participate at WP:RSN § Adding generally reliable sources to the CAPTCHA whitelist. — Newslinger talk 12:39, 8 March 2020 (UTC)

Linking to an En Vogue music video

In the article section Something_He_Can_Feel#En_Vogue_version, specifically in the infobox for the song, would it be acceptable on copyright grounds to include a link to this music video (possibly via the template {{External music video}})?

On YouTube, there is the concept of an "Official Artist Channel". In particular, YouTube mentions the use of a musical note icon to identify Official Artist Channels in such places as the YouTube page for a channel. The linked music video is included in a YouTube channel that may well be an Official Artist Channel. A possible complicating factor is that I remember the site http://www.envoguemusic.com/ as having had at least two links that lead to a different YouTube presence (EnVogueVEVO). The Vevo article mentions that Vevo is associated with certain large record companies. --Elegie (talk) 07:45, 15 March 2020 (UTC)

Elegie, if you are sure that it is an official music video, then you can link to it. But be aware that the bar for linking to youtube is rather high, our external links guidelines discourages it in mutliple ways. If it is 'needed' to understand the subject further (which also means that there needs to be substantive coverage in our article, not a fleeting mention) then it can be warranted to have a link. Note that some artists/organisations have an actual page on a subject, where the YouTube video is embedded - that is often a better target than a direct link to the YouTube video. Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 08:27, 15 March 2020 (UTC)

Equifax

• equifax.com: Linksearch en (https) (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • MER-C X-wiki • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced • COIBot-Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Yahoo: backlinks • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com • DomainsDB.net • Alexa • WhosOnMyServer.com
• equifax.cf: Linksearch en (https) (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • MER-C X-wiki • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced • COIBot-Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Yahoo: backlinks • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com • DomainsDB.net • Alexa • WhosOnMyServer.com

In this edit, User:Glopread changed the link for Equifax from equifax.com to a hidden link to equifax.cf that appears to be to equifax.com. Looking at their userpage, it has a lot of seemingly false information, since the account was created on 14 March 2020 but the information refers to awards received a while ago and a lot of pages that were presumably not created by this account.

I reverted that original edit in this edit, but then it was restored in this edit, which I reverted again in this final edit. Before it gets into real edit war territory, I wanted to report it here. (Is there somewhere better I should have reported it?)

I added a couple warnings to their user talk page, but I doubt that anything will come of those, seeing as this account is fairly clearly malicious. Gbear605 (talk) 16:36, 15 March 2020 (UTC)

.cf is the South African (country) domain. It may take the user to the same place in the end, but it's not the best link.

It's very odd that the user has copied User:Onel5969's userpage. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:33, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

This type of behaviour is often a concern for spamming. It seems genuine, but sometimes the 'new' domain is a redirect service on a pay-per-click service or to get customer/visitor data, where in the end you directly to the original domain anyway. I asked COIBot to generate reports, lets see what it says. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 09:33, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

Here are some other articles that I've seen this on:

• Credit Karma [6]
• NordVPN [7]
• Credit Sesame [8]
• HideMyAss! [9]
• FreeCreditScore.com [10]
• Experian [11]
• Hostinger [12]
• TransUnion [13]

I believe a lot of this to be a single person or firm as there is a lot of consistent behavior, such as quickly creating user page and user talk page (sometimes impersonating another editor), sometimes making gnome-like edits to a few other articles before spamming, making a gnome edit right after spamming, etc. I made an alternative watchlist that shows a lot of the activity. Apparition^{11 Complaints}/Mistakes 18:04, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

Citation link question

I would like some input on Ezra Taft Benson#cite_note-39 with respect to WP:COPYLINK and WP:ELNEVER. The citation appears to be a link to an archived version of the complete text of the book The Black Hammer and there's a copyright notice for the book prominently displayed mid-way down the first page of the online version, but there's no indication of any license or any other statement granting permission for reproducing the book online. The citation description states "Quinn, D. M. (2017). The Mormon hierarchy: extensions of power. Salt Lake City, UT: Signature Books in association with Smith Research Associates. e-book location 4001 of 29417", but that appears to be a different book that the one being linked to. -- Marchjuly (talk) 14:25, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

electronics-notes & radio-electronics

There are tons of links to elctronics-notes.com and radio-electronics.com

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?target=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.electronics-notes.com&title=Special%3ALinkSearch

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?target=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.radio-electronics.com%2F&title=Special%3ALinkSearch

A few of the IPs that have posted these links:

86.128.146.98 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · edit filter log · block user · block log)

81.157.247.175 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · edit filter log · block user · block log)

86.128.144.69 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · edit filter log · block user · block log)

Links to these sites seem to have been added to practically every electronics-related article. I don't think these links meet WP:EL, but I wanted to get some feedback before I go through and purge them all. -drt1245 (talk) 02:22, 18 March 2020 (UTC)