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Wikipedia commentary/When should I link externally|
Not very often. If the site you are linking to is an article, history or timeline, then wikipedia should have its own article on that subject, not just an external link. The web is already full past capacity of sites that comprise of links to other sites. If the content is free (in the GNU/FDL sense), consider copying and wikifying it for us. If its not, you can cannibalise it. Extract the facts and rewrite it (in your own words since their words are copyright) or alternatively place a link to it in /Talk so someone else can do so... There are exceptions, of course. It is quite reasonable to link to Donald Knuth's own web page in our Donald Knuth article, for example. In short one shouldn't link externally to anything that we would like internally. -- GWO Agreed, but I like to create shallow articles with links to more information from the article page itself, not /Talk with the intent that I or someone else will eventually follow that link and use it as a source to create a deeper Wikipedia article. Then the link can be relegated to a /Sources? subpage. (Actually, on that subject, I prefer to cite my sources in the main article page.) <>< tbc Where one has written some wikipedia content by lifting facts from an external webpage then it is polite to reference that webpage. Perhaps just in a subpage called /Sources?? --drj Yes, that seems reasonable. But steal the facts first... :) GWO Somebody recently linked a movie (very unimportant, but that's not the point) to the site of IMDb. Nobody has seemed to mind. Simply nobody noticed? I think that, either the link should be eliminated, or all the movies, acting professionals, directors, etc. should be linked in that way. Probably the first is true. The entry in question is Miss Congeniality Actually, I'd prefer the latter. IMDb is a good, reliable source of accurate information, and unlikely to go away anytime soon. In fact, I think IMDb is the very archetype of the kind of site Wiki pages should be linking to. There's no reason not to link to it from every movie-related page (or, perhaps even better, link to a local Wiki page that redirects to it--this will require software support). External links are a good thing, so long as they are not to unreliable sites (like fan sites or time-dependent sites). --LDC That "somebody" would be me. Obviously I agree with LDC or I wouldn't have done it :-). I think it's redundant to have a Wikipedia article for any movie that doesn't include a link to the IMDb. If someone wants to write an original article, then let them do it. But don't try to reconstruct the IMDb facts. See Crash, for example. (Eeww, not that I'd want to see that movie.) <>< tbc Actually, I disagree with the above a bit. External links are icing; let's not leave out the cake. Yes, that means duplicating facts from IMDb. Duplication is good. Wikipedia should have complete and relevant articles. If it also links to external info, that's good too, but that doesn't mean the local article shouldn't have whatever data the author thinks is most important (for example, the local article should have the main actors and plotline; it's OK to leave thing like small bit-parts and cameos to IMDb). --LDC I noticed the entry and chose not to comment on it. I think it should have at least a plot description (but, unlike the entry for Fearless, not a spoiler, or at least not one without a very clear warning). I prefer links as a supplement, not as the main content. This, in spite of my frequent contributions to various film pages and, more recently various historical anniversaries.... --KQ Another couple points.... * particularly now that the Wikipedia content is easily downloadable for offline or other use, it's convenient to have the material available "locally" and licensed for any use * distributed and duplicated content is good (if sometimes annoyingly inconsistent); for an extreme example, say *all* websites just linked to IMDb ... which was then permanently taken out by a major disaster, and backups were unavailable or faulty (yeah, I'm ignoring that Google and other sites have caches) ... |
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