Wowpedia talk:External links policy

See Wowpedia talk:External links/Archivevote for prior discussion.

Wikipedia links
With the new template, wplink, I've added it to the policy positioned between the official sites and the other elinks so it can be given a consistent position. Why there? It's a wiki, it's one of the biggest sites in the world, having it mixed in with general community links feels "wrong", and having it last also feels "wrong". Given the prominence of, it also seems to make sense. 12:17, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

Pay websites
I've added a clause in about linking to websites that make you pay to access the extra content. This essentially falls under attempting to make money off us, which we don't appreciate. Wikis are all about free content, and that same standard should apply to pretty much everything linked off it. 18:51, 15 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Freetards of the world UNITE! 02:38, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

Linking to sites which blatantly carry gold or hack adverts
While reviewing the external links on Leatherworking and Leatherworking patterns, I noticed that Crafter's Tome carries ads from gold sellers, and an ad for "WoW HackPack". I came to this policy to see if those links should be removed, and I'm not 100% sure after reading it. The ads on the site clearly violate WP:DNP as they are against EULA/TOS, but I'm not sure if that's justification or cause for removing the link. The site clearly has some useful content, and does not appear to have been created for the sole purpose of advertising banned things, so it's hard to say if they know that they are carrying dodgy ads or not (the ads appear to be provided by Google, so it's probably not a deliberate choice by the site, I guess). What do folks think, and should this policy have some additional text to clarify this situation? -- 11:16, 6 December 2008 (UTC)

Generic site links on specific-topic pages
I discovered someone posting links on class ability pages to a generic site about the class. While it's fine for them to put such a link on the class page, I can only interpret spreading this across the abilities as an attempt to gain more traffic. In addition, the sections he added don't conform to WP:EL in the slightest, so I am removing them under the policies that were in place when he created the sections.  T e ж u b   Ԏ Ҩ Ѡ  22:08, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

Suggested clarifications
A while ago, I suggested the following clarifications to this policy on the village pump. They would fit in the allowed/forbidden section:
 * Site created solely or primarily for advertising or affiliate click-through - forbidden.
 * Site actively encouraging EULA/TOS violations (e.g. voicing support for gold sales, hacks/exploits, or any other bannable activity) - forbidden.
 * Site without the above issues, with real content, but carrying incidental adverts against EULA/TOS from a mainstream ad supplier - allowed (but we'd prefer not to have the problematic ads).

I think we should also add the following to the "How many links do I get" section:
 * Before adding a link to a large number of pages, please take the time to discuss it with an administrator, or with the community on the village pump. It is possible that we can add the link in a more efficient manner than manually editing each page individually.  Additionally, the links are less likely to be regarded as spam if an effort has been made to discuss them prior to their addition to articles.

Since these do not change the way we have been using the policy, just clarify it, I don't think they require formal approval, as long as there are no direct objections. Any objections to adding them? -- 22:25, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

Addition: Video links
See Wowpedia:Policy/Video links. Discuss, vote, please. --Eirik Ratcatcher (talk) 23:47, December 2, 2009 (UTC)
 * There does not seem to be a poll that I can vote on at the link you provided. Did I miss that boat? Having done some major clean-up on the video sections of a number of ICC bosses, I'd also like to propose that we firm up our policy on what Youtube videos we allow in the elink section. I've moved quite a few "standard boss kill" videos down to the link section... but really. Does everyone have to put up a link to their guild's boss kill video, especially when a number of them just crank up the techno music soundtrack? That is, without in-game audio or Vent communication, there's absolutely nothing instructional at all; at least the ones with Vent comm, lets you hear how a guild is communicating with each other during the encounter for various events. What I'd like to do is just move those elinks to the Discussion page for the relevant boss page, to be honest. Any thoughts? Teni (talk) 20:06, April 19, 2010 (UTC)


 * Old page, it was moved. The vote was on the original page's talk page. See WoWWiki talk:Policy/Video links. 20:34, April 19, 2010 (UTC)

Popularity
In the "How do I add my website to popular Elinks templates?" section: "Your website also has to be popular enough to have accurate data." I realize that with the current standard e-links, the accuracy of the user comments are directly proportional to the site's popularity, but from a data perspective, accuracy does not require popularity. I have changed it to "Your website must have accurate data." for the moment: do we mean to and/or want to include popularity as a requirement? If so, how will that popularity be evaluated? Keyesc (talk) 18:17, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Actual contributions requirement before just spamming external links
I would like to propose the addition of a minimum edit count requirement before a user is allowed to add external links/videos (enforceable by Special:AbuseFilter/8 - for now it's just tagging these edits). This would ensure we're not just getting hit with drive-by spammers adding external links - I know these can be useful but it can be hard to police. I was thinking of something low, like 10-15 edits. -- 23:11, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

Votes

 * Yes :


 * No :

Comments
Comment - Preventing external links and videos will discourage new users who would also be interested in writing content into the same article as well. For example, a new user "Bob" might be an author of a website containing information related to a particular subject which we only have a stub on. If Bob were to just spam Wowpedia with a link to his website, that could be potentially problematic. If on the other hand he develops the article, and places a few citations pointing to his website to provide the source of the info, then that ought to be encouraged. Is there any way this filter could be implemented so that it is based on the quantity of material written, instead of the number of edits? (ie, adding a whole paragraph in just one edit is equivalent to fixing five typos in five minor edits?). Alternatively, could we at least create a "white list" of external sites that are not filtered by this rule? Such constraints to the filter will make it more complex, but would help to alleviate this concern. D.D. Corkum (T / C) 23:46, 22 November 2010 (UTC)


 * The filter can be implemented to toss a warning rather than completely block the edit, which might be preferable to having a "hard" filter blocking the actual edit. --Sky (talk) 23:55, 22 November 2010 (UTC)
 * The main thing is people just adding external links. We can check if there is any other content added besides the external link itself and ignore that edit. -- 00:13, 23 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Added an exception for Patch mirrors since all that is is external links. New articles will also be excepted. -- 23:24, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

Old Links in New Pages (possibly old pages too)
While editing the new Power of the Aspects page LemonBaby made to take that evergrowing section out of the main Dragon Soul page, I noticed that the old url http://www.wowwiki.com/WoWWiki:External_links is still being used in the header note of the External links section. This could possibly be the same problem in every external links section. 18:34, 14 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Nice find. I copied the Strength of Wrynn page as a template for the Power of the Aspects page.--LemonBaby (talk) 19:16, 14 July 2012 (UTC)

What happened to two videos per page?
The "two videos per page" maximum rule in WP:VID seems to be flouted quite frequently, even with high-profile pages like Thrall and Jaina Proudmoore (I don't see any votes being taken to add the extra videos to the pages as indicated). Should we do away with that part of the policy, word it better, or find a better way to enforce it? -- (•) 19:54, 19 February 2015 (UTC)


 * It can probably be removed; the wording was from before replaced (edit here). -- 20:18, 19 February 2015 (UTC)
 * That was kind of what I was thinking. I will remove it as it seems to be already grandfathered as actual practice anyway. -- (•) 20:26, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

Links to the Heroes of the Storm wiki
Every Warcraft Hero on the Heroes of the Storm wiki has an external link to Wowpedia (example: Alexstrasza. I would like to add external links from every Warcraft Character on Wowpedia to the Heroes of the Storm wiki. Would that be okay?--LemonBaby (talk) 06:33, 30 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Current trend seems to be like this instead, with a "In Heroes of the Storm" section and a link to the playable character's page on the wiki. Not all the Hearthstone-available heroes are formatted like that thought, that could use work ... Xporc (talk) 08:27, 30 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Brightwing and Lunara don't have any interwiki-links... --LemonBaby (talk) 07:15, 31 October 2019 (UTC)
 * They should now have, it's the "playable character" link in their "Heroes of the Storm" sections Xporc (talk) 08:14, 31 October 2019 (UTC)