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    churchofjesuschristtemples

    The website churchofjesuschristtemples.org is a personal self-published website that aggregates a lot of statistics, information, and images for LDS temples. It is not an official website of the LDS Church and therefore doesn't meet the reliability criteria or allowable usage cases for self-published sources. However, I think that it might still be allowable as an external link on specific temple pages, similar to how Hagiography Circle and CatholicSaints.info is used on articles for Catholic saints. Any reasons or thoughts on why it would not be a valid EL? --FyzixFighter (talk) 23:19, 26 October 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]

    @FyzixFighter, in which article(s) do you think it should be listed in ==External links==? Has anyone objected? WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:54, 31 October 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]
    @WhatamIdoing:: I was thinking of the LDS temple specific articles - it is already used on some, such as Albuquerque New Mexico Temple. Another editor has been removing links, see here and here, in citations (which I agree with as it fails WP:RS) but also in External Links sections, calling it a fansite. I disagree that it is a fansite but is akin to the Catholic Saints links use elsewhere. Before I go back and reinsert as EL, I thought I'd check what others think at this noticeboard. --FyzixFighter (talk) 02:44, 31 October 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]
    Have you at Horse Eye's Back talked about it before? I looked at your first link, and I'm not sure that "fansite" is quite the right word. The photographs, in particular, could be interesting to readers. I also noticed that the link after it, which was kept, is a dead link, which should probably have been removed (see WP:ELDEAD for a short explanation). I assume, since the contents of the second link are unknown, that the two links weren't considered redundant, which would be a valid reason to remove one of them. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:29, 31 October 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]

    templeknowledge.com

    Looks like a spammed blog. I don't have the time right now to look closely or start cleanup. --Hipal (talk) 17:11, 12 November 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]

    Found while doing looking at the situation. --Hipal (talk) 18:37, 12 November 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]

    @Hipal, it's good to see you around. You might like glancing at #churchofjesuschristtemples above, where we have a similar situation (but probably less spammy).
    I looked at Chilkoor Balaji Temple. I am more concerned about the links for car rental services, which are obviously inappropriate. Having removed those, there are three remaining links. They are all basically interchangeable, so there is no reason to have all three. There might be some reason to keep one of them (i.e., containing information that doesn't belong in an article, such as opening hours and entry fee), but I'm not even sure about that. What do you think? WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:21, 12 November 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]
    I don't know why we'd assume these websites are accurate, nor can we tell what biases they may have. --Hipal (talk) 18:34, 29 November 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]
    I don't know why we'd assume these websites aren't accurate, and we don't care whether they're biased. Not being a reliable source is not a problem for ==External links==. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:57, 1 December 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]
    I don't know how that meets our basic purpose here, writing a serious encyclopedia. --Hipal (talk) 18:36, 1 December 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]
    When you put a link in the ==External links== section, you are not "writing" anything. You are "adding a link". Links are expected to provide "meaningful, relevant content that is not suitable for inclusion in an article", such as how much the entrance price for a tourist attraction is. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:59, 3 December 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]
    We disagree, and I believe WP:EL emphasizes accuracy, neutrality, and value:
    • 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.
    • Sites that contain neutral and accurate material that is relevant to an encyclopedic understanding of the subject and cannot be integrated into the Wikipedia article due to... --Hipal (talk) 17:21, 3 December 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]
    And we have no actual reason to believe that those sites are anything other than neutral and accurate. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:49, 4 December 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]
    We disagree on that. I'm glad we now agree that accuracy and bias are important. --Hipal (talk) 21:57, 5 December 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]


    It's definitely been spammed, including dead link spam as a reference and as the official website. --Hipal (talk) 22:26, 1 December 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]

    Another find. --Hipal (talk) 17:31, 15 November 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]

    prayer-bracelet.com

    I noticed the above SPA has been adding such links to 3 articles over as many years, so we may want to inspect the site and see if it is worth including anywhere or just spammed. Elizium23 (talk) 00:38, 29 November 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]

    It's a store, so almost definitely advertising. ThadeusOfNazereth(he/him)Talk to Me! 00:48, 30 November 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]
    I'm not seeing other instances of it. --Hipal (talk) 02:58, 30 November 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]
    https://www.prayer-bracelet.com/blog/orthodox-icons-are-magnificent/ is a blog post. One of the things that surprises editors these days is that ==External links== are evaluated on the basis of the specific page that readers will see when they click the link, not what's on the rest of the website. See Wikipedia:External links#cite note-6. Treat this like any other blog post on any other website. Don't worry about what's on the other pages, because we're not linking to the other pages.
    External links are also allowed to have any amount of advertising that's below the level of "objectionable". (See WP:ELNO#EL5.) Advertising for items sold on other pages of that same website are treated the same for this calculation as advertising for items sold on other websites. This is because Wikipedia:We don't care what happens to your website. We care whether readers (assuming any of them click on the link, and we know that most of them won't) will find some useful/interesting/relevant information about the subject that wouldn't be appropriate for inclusion in a well-written encyclopedia article. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:06, 1 December 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]

    clustrmaps.com

    Just ran across this while cleaning up other spam. --Hipal (talk) 16:45, 30 November 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]

    That was used as a reliable source to support article content. If you want to discuss its suitability for that purpose, please take it to Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard. If you think it was spammed (here's one diff of it being added), please follow the process for reporting it at Wikipedia:Spam blacklist. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:15, 1 December 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]
    I vaguely recalled this or similar external links, and didn't have time to look. Still don't. --Hipal (talk) 18:38, 1 December 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]

    Do we use links to IMDb or Google Scholar ie "publications indexed by Google Scholar"

    I'm not clear about these two. Thanks. Doug Weller talk 15:50, 4 December 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]

    Are you asking for actual practice or best practice?
    The actual practice is to include these links; the only real question is how. For people, Google Scholar links are usually provided via Template:Authority control. I have suggested that the film-related articles, which routinely include half a dozen links (IMDb, Rotten Tomatoes, etc.), move to a template like Authority control or like Template:Medical resources, which would look something like this if everything's filled in:
    WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:11, 6 December 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]
    Thanks. Doug Weller talk 08:47, 7 December 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]

    GenealogyBank

    Looking for someone who might be able to access GenealogyBank in terms of WP:COPYLINK. Pretty much all the citations in Ray Byars and Tommy Byars are links that are apparently to old newspaper articles found on GenealogyBank, which requires registration to access. Of course, the original sources might be OK to cite without the links, but just want to know whether GenealogyBank is sort of similar to something like Newspapers.com, and whether it's OK to link to. -- Marchjuly (talk) 22:43, 29 December 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]

    @Marchjuly, https://www.genealogybank.com/information/terms-of-use says enough about partnerships and agreements with the copyright holders that I'd assume it's all legit. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:51, 30 December 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]
    Thank you for finding that WhatamIdoing. -- Marchjuly (talk) 22:52, 30 December 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]
    You're welcome. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:27, 31 December 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]

    Potential license laundering through ghostarchive.org

    I've noticed several articles where ghostarchive.org is being used as a paywall bypasser, which is against WP:COPYLINK. In addition to bypassing paywalls, it doesn't seem to have a clear process for allowing copyright holders to request takedowns (unlike archive.org). And it doesn't say who runs it, so I don't know that we can trust the archived versions to be unaltered or sustainable even for non-paywall sites. It seems to be used on thousands of pages, and sadly, many are links to The Telegraph or other sources with hard-paywalls.

    For instances of use, see this diff where I removed it, and search insource:"ghostarchive.org"

    Note that ghostarchive.org has been discussed before at Wikipedia:External_links/Noticeboard/Archive_25#Ghostarchive, and does appear to have good technical advantages over other archivers, so I doubt a blanket-ban would be advisable. DFlhb (talk) 10:02, 10 January 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

    @DFlhb: The text in WP:COPYLINK and "license laundering" could apply to all content on all archive sites, not just paywalled content on one site.

    The archive sites are only able to bypass the paywall because they disable Javascript. The unpaywalled text is sent on every request, and then Javascript is used to actually put up the paywall. The same effect can be achieved by disabling Javascript or using a no-javascript browser.

    Archive.today and web.archive.org can also bypass paywalls, like ones for the Economist (https://web.archive.org/web/20230109231106/https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2023/01/09/what-americas-protectionist-turn-means-for-the-world). Each site can bypass paywalls of different sites, so there is no one-archive-fits-all solution. Also there are many sites that were once not paywalled but later put up one, and archives have the copies of the old articles.

    Even with all of the above, WP:COPYLINK says that It is currently acceptable to link to Internet archives such as the Wayback Machine, which host unmodified archived copies of webpages taken at various points in time.

    it doesn't seem to have a clear process for allowing copyright holders to request takedowns. Yes, it does. I believe its on their About page.

    Rlink2 (talk) 22:08, 10 January 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
    I don't believe that passage in COPYLINK addresses paywall bypasses, but thanks for pointing out archive.org bypasses them too; I didn't know. If the paywall bypass is simply a technical side-effect of archival, rather than an intentional feature, then the site suddenly seems a lot more appropriate. DFlhb (talk) 22:13, 10 January 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
    Yeah this is not necessarily an issue. Also, the website does have a clear process to address copyright violations, at https://ghostarchive.org/tos (scroll to the bottom). Elli (talk | contribs) 19:47, 18 January 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

    Do readers need disclaimers warning them that they're about to be linked to unreliable tweets? (Twitter Files)

    See discussion at Talk:Twitter Files#Warning?. The discussion is about whether we should include a disclaimer when linking to the primary source tweets of the Twitter Files in the external links section, warning people that tweets are not reliable. Here's what the warning would look like. Endwise (talk) 02:06, 14 January 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

    • You got more responses when you asked the same question at the WP:NPOV noticeboard. But my answer is the same… no. Blueboar (talk) 14:07, 14 January 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
      That looks like it needs {{linkfarm}} instead. If folks think that a long list of tweets would be interesting to editors, please find a single page at an external website that contains this information, and link to that instead. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:50, 15 January 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
    @WhatamIdoing: The situation here is very complex and stupid – the "Twitter Files" themselves are a series of Twitter threads by various journalists and writers. They're the main subject of the article, which is why they were being given as external links. For some reason known neither to man nor beast, Elon Musk (who gave them access to internal Twitter documents, from which the reports were made) declared that in order to report on these materials, they had to do so via the medium of Twitter threads. This was always a little silly, but when there were five of them it was more of a curiosity; now it is more of a mess. I don't think there exists a canonical website which just has a central list of links to all the tweets (although, if one existed, surely it would be preferable to this). jp×g 12:21, 18 January 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
    A link too such is in the article infobox. Some want it shoved in readers' faces even though they are non-reliable and conspiratorial in nature. O3000, Ret. (talk) 12:28, 18 January 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
    @JPxG, that sounds like it could also be handled under Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Lists of works (with the pre-emptive, and hopefully completely unnecessary, reminder that a list of publications really is allowed to contain URLs that link to the listed works). WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:19, 19 January 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

    Mass addition of links to DoReCo to language articles

    I found a new user who is adding external links to multiple articles to https://doreco.huma-num.fr. The user admits to being affliated with it. This seems like a clear cut case of spamming to me. So, I reverted them all and gave a warning and explanation to the user. They haven't edited since, but I was surprised to get reverted by another user (@Sapphorain:) stating "This site is definitely not a spam; it is hosted by "Laboratoire dynamique du langage, CNRS and Université de Lyon 2'". I'm still confident this is an unnecessary external link, and quite spammy, but I just wanted some additional feedback. Jauerbackdude?/dude. 19:00, 25 January 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

    The link in the article Swiss French directly leads to the Swiss-French dataset compiled by a team of researchers from various university labs, within the much larger langage site DoReCo, which is maintained at the « laboratoire Dynamique du Language » of the CNRS and of the University of Lyon 2. Providing such a precise and relevant link to a narrow subject can definitely not be qualified as « spamming ». And whether or not the user who did it is affiliated to the general project or to some part of it, is completely irrelevant. --Sapphorain (talk) 20:43, 25 January 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
    Sorry, but that convinces me of absolutely nothing. It doesn't explain why it's needed, what it does, or why it's useful to be linked to from an encyclopedia article. And the fact that the user is affiliated is completely relevant. Jauerbackdude?/dude. 13:40, 26 January 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
    Doreco is a collection of text corpora, which includes audio recordings, their transcriptions and grammatical glosses and annotations of the texts. It's the most basic resource for the study of a language. A Wikipedia reader who follows such a link can hear what the language sounds like, they can read texts in the language and they can learn about its grammar. Most of the languages in Doreco are small and endangered, so this collection is one of the few places on the internet where readers can do these things. If Doreco has a collection on such a language, then the Wikipedia article should link to it, the way the article is expected to link to similar collections at the ELAR, Paradisec or AIATSIS archives. If links have been removed, they should please be reinstated. Thanks! – Uanfala (talk) 14:14, 26 January 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
    After a quick look at the Swiss French example mentioned by Sapphorain above I agree with him that that link is definitely not spam, but legitimate encyclopedic content, providing primary data on the language with adequate metadata. Invoking COI is also not called for here, as the article is not about DoReCo, but about the language. If Conflict of Interest were a problem here, then I wouldn't be allowed to provide links to Ethnologue, as I am a member of the organization that publishes it. So far nobody complained when I set a link to Ethnologue on a language page. LandLing 14:13, 26 January 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
    Ok, I stand corrected. Since the two of you have more knowledge than me think that the links are relevant, then I have no problem with them. These explanations are much clearer than I was given before. However, in my opinion, a COI can still apply if you're adding links to an external site where you have an interest in, especially financial, but this isn't the place for that the discussion. I appreciate your responses. Jauerbackdude?/dude. 15:05, 26 January 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

    Murders of Abigail Williams and Liberty German links

    On the article located [|here], the following two links were posted

    [|This is one], [|and this one]

    The diff log is [| here for when added], and [| here for when removed]. The talk page regarding this addition and removal is at [[1]]

    Does adding reliable sources that include an arrested suspects name within the url itself violate the BLP guidelines, or is it allowed as long as they are in fact reliable sources, and are included in the references portion only? With an upcoming court case and what is sure to be more media coverage, I figured it was better to get clarification. Thank you.

    Awshort (talk) 09:08, 26 January 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

    source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:External_links/Noticeboard