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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by ToBeFree (talk | contribs) at 22:00, 3 August 2018 (→Mass addition of lepidoptera.eu links by website owner: fix quotation grammar to create a real sentence). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

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    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.
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    Indicators
    Defer discussion:
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    Playbill and Netflix as external links?

    Are links to sites like www.playbill.com (/person) or dvd.netflix.com with a clear focus on selling stuff and advertising acceptable as external links? See Alec Baldwin as a usage example (in the edit history). Such links seem to be a clear violation of WP:ELNO #1 and #4, but I'd appreciate additional opinions before going on a mass-deletion spree (only for links in EL sections to be clear). GermanJoe (talk) 17:31, 8 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

    @GermanJoe: For me, you can start your nuke process. Tell me what those links add on a case-by-case basis, and I might change my mind (because they don't ..). --Dirk Beetstra T C 10:49, 9 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    I have removed most of the EL occurences (may have missed a few), thanks for the feedback. GermanJoe (talk) 13:27, 15 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    Netflix links are suitable as el's for their original programming. This would not be the case for their DVD subdomain. --Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 16:30, 15 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    @Emir of Wikipedia: You mean, the netflix page of a program made by netflix would function as the official website of the subject .. that one makes sense .. all other netflix links are likely inappropriate external links. --Dirk Beetstra T C 17:30, 15 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    Yep. I mean exactly that. Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 17:34, 15 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    Agree, I only focussed on the dvd subdomain for this cleanup. GermanJoe (talk) 17:41, 15 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

    Linking to GitHub

    Under what circumstances is it appropriate for a user to insert a link to their own GitHub? I keep encountering users doing this while I'm on patrol. Aspening (talk) 18:04, 9 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

    @Aspening: to me, most fail under WP:ELMINOFFICIAL, often they are just another official link of the subject, the main website is sufficient. —Dirk Beetstra T C 21:00, 9 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

    The article Body modification keeps having links to social media websites, namely "malebodymods.com" and "malemods.com", added to the "Seel also" and "External links" section. Attempts to remove them or mark them as inappropriate are excessively reverted by User:Mc4bbs, and attempts to discuss the issue have been ignored. --Equivamp - talk 15:41, 13 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

    @Equivamp:  Defer to Local blacklist, if the user has been warned and persists it is generally the way forward (we could try a block through AIV, but experience learns that that is often not helping). —Dirk Beetstra T C 18:08, 13 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

    Women in STEM fields - two links

    An IP has added a link from a conservative political group to Women in STEM fields ("The narrative falls apart"), referencing a brand-new primary source. I maintain that 1) the first link is a textbook case of an unreliable source; 2) the second link is a WP:PRIMARY source -- and a new one at that -- so not useable by itself. Thoughts? --Calton | Talk 00:30, 30 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

    I agree with your assessment of the refs and removal of the link. I'll respond on the article talk as well. --Ronz (talk) 02:26, 30 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

    Musical artists and albums pages being excessively linked to Amazon or iTunes

    What's the rule about linking to places that sell mainly sell products like Amazon or iTunes, but provide no real useful encyclopedic information? There is currently a lot of album and artist articles associated with Bethel Music group and the Bethel Music singer Brian Johnson that contain many links to both sites. The links are not used properly as citations either and seem to only be there for the purpose of sending readers to a place where they can buy the artists work. Or to make it look like the subjects of the articles are more notable then they are. Further, Any attempts made by me or others to change the links have have been reverted and led to arguments. So I would like to know if they are actually usable or not in this context. There is also many links to a place selling lyrics and sheet music, but provides no encyclopedic usefulness, that Id like to know the appropriateness of. --Adamant1 (talk) 23:40, 1 August 2018 (UTC) [reply]

    @Adamant1: WP:ELNO #5 says those links should not be included. Feel free to remove them again, linking to that point and leave a uw-spam warning on the usertalk of restores it. If I'm on and active, feel free to ping me when you warn them. Ian.thomson (talk) 23:52, 1 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    @Adamant1: can you link to a couple of pages with this problem? --Dirk Beetstra T C 04:03, 2 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    @Beetstra: Sure. Unfortunately I already went through the worst offenders, but here's a few We Will Not Be Shaken (Live), Without Words (Bethel Music album), This Is Jesus Culture, Starlight (Bethel Music album) (has like six references to both Amazon and iTunes), No Longer Slaves, Amanda Cook (singer) (has 8 references to iTunes), You Make Me Brave: Live at the Civic, Have It All (Bethel Music album) (Has a link to a tweet about how to pre order the album on Spotify. Along with four references to iTunes), Have It All (Bethel Music song) (eleven links to iTunes and Spotify).— Preceding unsigned comment added by Adamant1 (talk • contribs)
    @Adamant1: that all are references. This guideline is concerned with external links. Most of these are indeed hardly ever suitable as external links, but used in the right context they can serve as primary references for certain information. It does seem a bit overdone, though. --Dirk Beetstra T C 08:50, 2 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    Many of the commercial citations don't verify the information they're cited for. For example, We Will Not Be Shaken (Live), iTunes is cited for the date "January 26, 2015," though the iTunes entry seems to only support "2015." It also is cited for writers and worship leaders, though the iTunes entry just lists artists. This leaves me inclined to view that citation as WP:REFSPAM. In Without Words (Bethel Music album), Amazon, iTunes, and Spotify are cited. Once again, the iTunes page generally fails to completely support everything its cited for. Spotify contains even less information. Amazon supports probably the most information that it's cited for out of all the commercial references, but I can't say its perfect. I probably would defend its use were it not accompanied by the other instances of refspam.
    All of these links (and many of the articles) seem to have been added by Kuda188, who, after a couple of years of productively and laudably making or expanding a variety of articles concerning mostly Zimbabwean academics and athletics, suddenly rather switched on 27 Nov 2016 to making and expanding only articles about a branch of the American music industry that targets churchgoers -- specifically topics immediately connected to Elevation Worship and Bethel Music, who have performed together. (Furthermore, Leeland (band) has releases through both Elevation's Essential Records and Bethel Music's own label). This one edit is the only exception to that pattern.
    So we have a number of articles, many of which limp by on WP:NM while otherwise failing WP:GNG, all created by a single purpose account that drastically switched topics, that all contain weak references to sites that sell products for two connected organizations. Now, I can imagine that there's a perfectly innocent explanation, especially if the user in question promises to do better with referencing in the future (maybe stop citing sources that sell the music entirely). I would have a harder time buying such an explanation if the explanation were accompanied by an attempt to defend citing iTunes and Spotify when those citations contain almost no useful information. Ian.thomson (talk) 21:48, 2 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

    Per Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#Lepidoptera~plwiki, I should probably ask here for consensus:

    I would like to undo all these external link additions, at least those to lepidoptera.eu, with an appropriate edit summary, linking to this discussion and the ANI discussion, also taking the time to fix edits that are not the "current" version of the pages anymore.

    The website contains non-free images that should instead be uploaded to Commons by the photographer. The massive promotional addition of external links has already partly been undone, and I would like to finish the process. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 18:38, 2 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

    Two Itried were dead links. Suggest to remove, wp:not and wp:el issues. --Dirk Beetstra T C 18:45, 2 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    Just an addendum. All links were added by:
    I would suggest to remove all links added with currently no prejudice for re-addition by uninvolved editors (though I think that they make bad external links per our guidelines, and unless the creator of the website is a known, recognised specialist in the field, I would also say that they are not suitable as references as more authorative works do exist for this data). --Dirk Beetstra T C 19:30, 2 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    Oh! Wow. Now that I see that COIbot has revealed a long-time issue, I'll now go ahead. I'll take some time, I don't want to make a hasty bad edit. No need to rollback, I'll deal with it. Thank you for the confirmation. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 19:34, 2 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    I have mass rollback feature, all top edits are reverted (as far as I could see, only external links). That should clear out a lot of them already. --Dirk Beetstra T C 19:39, 2 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    Ah -- the list of their contributions will not be nicely sorted between "done" and "needs extra care" then, however. Would it be useful to do the rollback after the special cases have been dealt with? ~ ToBeFree (talk) 19:42, 2 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    Edit: Rollback already done, I have a new idea: Could we poke the bot a second time to get only current links? Thanks for the rollback already ~ ToBeFree (talk) 19:44, 2 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    (edit conflict) I have yet to see a link that actually is needed. As above, I think that this fails our inclusion standards (all this information could be incorporated easily into Wikipedia, WP:ELNO #1).
    Literally ALL these links were added by these two accounts. Over 8 years not a singular independent editor has deemed the site to be useful for inclusion. As ALL the edits are COI-edits, I would remove ALL of them. No special cases, wipe. --Dirk Beetstra T C 19:49, 2 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    For the leftover links, please use the linksearch function (first links in summary template, 'en' and 'https'). The bot report is about additions, not about actual links. --Dirk Beetstra T C 19:49, 2 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    Wow .. still 900 links left. --Dirk Beetstra T C 19:50, 2 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    Thanks for the search link, that's awesome. HTTPS done, continuing with HTTP. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 23:03, 2 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    Note that a few of the edits made by plwiki were not linkspam, but the correction of misspelled genus names, or the inclusion of valid species with WP articles that needed links; be careful with these mass reversions, please (e.g., see Antheraea, Agrius (moth) and Theretra nessus). Dyanega (talk) 02:55, 3 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    Thank you for pointing these out and fixing them. I think that the edits should have contained a notice about it being a mass reversion. I also agree that care is needed. It should maybe be noted, however, that false positives can be unavoidable if someone makes a huge number of bad edits, and very few good ones among them. In this case, the number of good edits appears to be below 1 percent. Depending on the number of edits, a mass reversion may unaviodably create false-positive reverts, which does not always, in every case, have to be a huge problem. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 03:59, 3 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]


    I’m just observing the discussion arranged by my “mass edit” and still can’t understand what you are talking about… I’ve started to edit articles on Wikipedia in April 2015 – so during this time I was created something like 500 additions. But the real number should be less because many times I’ve edited the same page few times. Huge number for almost 4 years? I don’t think so. I’m a well-known and respected entomologist, not whipster who is trying to promote a fake website. I don’t need any kind of promotion here because my website is well known for all enthusiasts of butterflies. When you would try to make some Google queries then you’ll see that the website is always in top 5 results – so your suggestion that it’s a “promotion” links is in my opinion unjustified and unjust.
    Also I would like to take your attention for yet another aspect of this issue: if I would like add a link to website X – your answer is OK but if I would like to add a link to website Y – it’s not OK. If anybody else would add a link to website Y – it’s also OK but if I would do exactly the same – it’s not OK. I’m sorry but for me it does not make any sense. The normal user just reading Wikipedia content doesn’t care who has added/entered data – but it seems that you don’t treat me as a “normal user” but rather as a bandit/cheater.
    I’m working – but maybe it’s better to say WAS working - for the community. Always. For thousands of people focused on butterflies and moths to give them much more information as possible. Always for public bono, I don’t have ANY profits for that. I gave the people my knowledge and my time – always for free. You’ve made here a hood court, but in my opinion you’re wrong and completely don’t understand the fundaments of community sharing knowledge. In my opinion you’ve made the worst thing you could do – DELETE ALL without any rules or verification. In results you have destroyed a lot of valuable data, not for me – for the community. I don’t think I would like to share my very limited time adding small pieces to the large project called Wikipedia when some proud administrators could demolish it in a second…
    And one more thing – in one of the previous posts user ToBeFree had an argument, that I can’t add links to the pages where used pictures are copyrighted. I have never heard such a stupid justification… Try to imagine that some other projects – like for example my website – works on different rules. I do respect someone else's property, it seems – you not. 99% of external Wikipedia links has different kind of warnings – usually in a page footer that the contents cannot be used without an owner permission and that it’s not free to use. I can give you tones of examples. Based on motivation like yours – you should complete close external links section here because almost all used links also have a content that is a property of someone. I think you have not thought about what you said.
    I think the topic is CLOSED. I’m not going to edit anything more here but I would like to plant your thoughts in your heads that not everything you do here is correct. Please think twice before you’ll make another action like that. (Lepidoptera~plwiki (talk) 10:28, 3 August 2018 (UTC))[reply]
    @Lepidoptera~plwiki: I find it very hard to believe that you, self identifying as Christopher Jonko on your Wikipedia userpage are any other user than user:Chris lepidoptera (and even if it is not a new account of yours, it is someone who is very closely related to your website). Thát 'Chris', like you, got numerous remarks regarding their link additions, and that since 2010.
    Your link additions on >500 (more likely >1000) pages on en.wikipedia suggests that you are interested in SEO practices, and therefore of course that your website is a top result in Google. It strikes me as utterly unbelievable that no other entomologist on Wikipedia has EVER added a link to your site. Not a single one.
    Plainly stated: your link fails our inclusion standards. On some pages it does not add anything, on others it is in conflict with what is already on the page it is linked from, and where it does tell something that is not on Wikipedia, it can be incorporated. Moreover, you have a plain conflict of interest with linking to the site, you are not the person to decide whether that link is a service or not to the reader. Of course you think that it is a service to the reader, but fact remains that no other editor has found it necessary to add a link (or better, a reference) to this site. --Dirk Beetstra T C 11:48, 3 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    wrong ping: @Lepidoptera~plwiki: --Dirk Beetstra T C 11:51, 3 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    Hi @Lepidoptera~plwiki:. I am surprised about the reasons you're naming:
    • "started to edit articles on Wikipedia in April 2015": Unlikely, see above. There seem to be skeletons in the closet.
    • "I don't need any kind of promotion": Why are you promoting then, and complaining about the removal of this promotion?
    • "website is always in top 5 results": I guess this might be because of actions exactly like the one you made on the English Wikipedia, and is unlikely to be a good reason for continuing to do so. Also, it might be because of the fitting domain name, which increases your Google page rank without necessarily having to provide an encyclopedically relevant website. By the way, the "top 5 results" when I google for free software have often been adware-infested in the past.
    • "I'm working [...] for the community.": The community appears to be unhappy about the external links, though. There has not been a single complaint about the removal of the links; all I got so far was multiple "thank you"s from active, respected community members who had not found the time to do something they would have done themselves otherwise. Also, you appear to have been ignoring well-established community guidelines and warnings about conflicts of interest and spamming since 2010. If you actually want to help the community, please listen to their advice. By uploading your photos to Wikimedia Commons, for example, you could actually help the community.
    • "I gave the people my knowledge and my time": You mostly gave them external links to your personal website. How selfless. Instead, you could license your photos under a free license, and actually give something very nice and useful to the community that way. It is not too late to start with this, and I think that I can promise that nobody will complain or laugh if you decide to edit again even after your previous statement, but this time not for promotion, but actually making Wikimedia Commons and the English Wikipedia articles a more beautiful place.
    • "For thousands of people [...] to give them much more information as possible": The best way to do so would be adding reliably sourced content to Wikipedia articles, not keeping it behind an external link on your personal website. You are, and have always been, very welcome to do so.
    • "[...] it seems that you don’t treat me as a 'normal user' [...]": Really? If you have been receiving warnings about the same issue since 2010 and still continue to do the same thing, we might even have been too lax in this regard.
    • "In results you have destroyed a lot of valuable data": Sorry, no. It makes me sad to summarize it like that, but the mass rollback has not destroyed valuable data. After all, this is why the mass rollback has been done. It would not have been done if you had added "a lot of valuable data" to Wikipedia. Now would be a wonderful point to actually have a clean start and to start adding valuable data to Wikipedia. This could, for example, be: Reliably sourced information, and freely licensed images.
    • "[...] in one of the previous posts user ToBeFree had an argument, that I can’t add links to the pages where used pictures are copyrighted.": I have not said nor meant that, ever. I was only replying to your statement that your website is "based on the same rules as Wikipedia: it's open and free.". I tried to explain to you why this is not really true.
    • "I think the topic is CLOSED.": Sadly no; I'm still busy cleaning up the links. The amount of links I'm encountering makes it hard for me to believe that there was no time to make some actually useful contributions to Wikipedia instead. This could, for example, have been: Adding reliably sourced information, uploading freely licensed images.
    I would be more than happy to help with uploading photos to Wikimedia Commons. Should you ever decide to upload more photos, I'll always be there to answer any questions that might arise. The "commonist" tool, which I have already left you a message on your talk page about, might be very useful for this task. I've had great fun using it, and I will happily help with fixing potential problems. Please give it a try one day; don't let this external link thing ruin your whole Wikipedia experience. Let's move on. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 21:53, 3 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
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