Daniel R. Tobias wrote:
On 24 Apr 2007 at 19:34:20 -0700 (PDT), mattman206
wrote:
I've been using Wikipedia for awhile now, and
try to contribute information
when I can. Lately I've edited the "External Links" section for a couple
of
bands that I listen to. I added links to their MySpace pages, which provide
a great place to play their music and see what they sound like.
However, all of these edits get deleted quite soon thereafter. What's the
deal? Does Wikipedia have a policy about removing links to MySpace? If so,
what's the motivation?
It's just yet another case of people getting into a "zero tolerance"
mindset and refusing to allow any finely nuanced judgment regarding
what to link to. Myspace is mostly composed of the effusions of
hormonal teenagers and is not very encyclopedic, so some jump to the
conclusion that it never makes sense to link to it; however, as you
point out, musical artists and groups often have official MySpace
pages, taking advantage of that site's ability to easily embed music
as well as to promote social networking among the artist's fans, so
those cases do make sense for us to link to.
There are really two issues here. I have no basis for saying which
links for bands are valid, so for the sake of discussion only I will
concede that the links mentioned may not be acceptable.
The social issue is more important. Those who police thes kinds of link
need to engage in a dialogue with the person who put up the link based
on the presumption that the link was inserted in good faith. The
editors who persist in adding bad links can only be judged on the basis
of multiple insertions. The admins who continue making perfunctory
removals without dialogue perhaps need to spend time in a desysop
purgatory so that they get the message.
Ec