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