LittleDan wrote:
Well, then that's just because of its POV. We link to POV sites. LDan
There may be some instances, where it is justified to link to a propaganda source. For example, if you have an article about Serbian history, I would not protest against having a link to freesrpska, provided that a comment explains the nature of that site. But we don't need to have this link on every page about a detail of Serbian history. Take for example the article "Skull Tower"; it is a quite short article, but it is followed by three (!) links to the freesrpska page, among them a subpage pretending to explain the "Islamic conflict on the Balkan" (see http://www.freesrpska.org/en/prevare/islam.html for that blatant propaganda). Our readers will click on these links and read all this garbage.
Nikola (the author of the articles) offered to provide a comment next to all these links, reading "be warned that some of other articles on this site might be propagandistic and biased" - but I consider it dangerous to have these links at all.
Mirko
On Thu, 25 Sep 2003, Mirko Thiessen wrote:
LittleDan wrote:
Well, then that's just because of its POV. We link to POV sites. LDan
There may be some instances, where it is justified to link to a propaganda source. For example, if you have an article about Serbian history, I would not protest against having a link to freesrpska, provided that a comment explains the nature of that site. But we don't need to have this link on every page about a detail of Serbian history. Take for example the article "Skull Tower"; it is a quite short article, but it is followed by three (!) links to the freesrpska page, among them a subpage pretending to explain the "Islamic conflict on the Balkan" (see http://www.freesrpska.org/en/prevare/islam.html for that blatant propaganda). Our readers will click on these links and read all this garbage.
Both of you define different sides to an issue I've been wondering about myself: just how should we judge the quality of the material pointed to in the external links part of our articles?
For example, if I were aggressive in my criticism towards these links, I would remove many of the several URLs in the [[King Arthur]] article because I feel, frankly, that they link to material that read like a mediocre high school essay. But I haven't touched them because (1) I wonder if my insistence on a scholarly approach to the material isn't promoting a POV that I'm not aware of; and (2) they do include material on the later Romance of King Arthur that isn't sufficiently developed in the article as it stands.
Or, to put it another way, is deleting external links that one doesn't like similar to deleting material in the Talk: pages one doesn't like?
Geoff
Both of you define different sides to an issue I've been wondering about myself: just how should we judge the quality of the material pointed to in the external links part of our articles?
For example, if I were aggressive in my criticism towards these links, I would remove many of the several URLs in the [[King Arthur]] article because I feel, frankly, that they link to material that read like a mediocre high school essay. But I haven't touched them because (1) I wonder if my insistence on a scholarly approach to the material isn't promoting a POV that I'm not aware of; and (2) they do include material on the later Romance of King Arthur that isn't sufficiently developed in the article as it stands.
Or, to put it another way, is deleting external links that one doesn't like similar to deleting material in the Talk: pages one doesn't like?
Geoff
One can go too far; but one should edit external links for a mix of points of view and degrees of difficulty. The King Arthur article is an excellent example. A few high school level links are fine as are those to literary sites that consider the later literature as well as links to sites that examine the slight historical evidence.
Fred
Geoff Burling wrote:
Or, to put it another way, is deleting external links that one doesn't like similar to deleting material in the Talk: pages one doesn't like?
I have no firm position on what external link requirements we should have, nor can I say exactly what deleting external links _is_ like, but I think it's safe to say that external links at the bottom of an article are part of the article, and deleting them is not like deleting material from a Talk: page.
I suspect that we could flesh it out a lot better than I'm about to say it, but isn't a link just a proposition like any other? It can be disclaimed like any other, it can be irrelevant like any other, it can be removed or added like any other.
Some links we should have, but disclaim. Some links we should not have, if for no other reason than sheer irrelevancy to the topic at hand. Some links we should have, and no special disclaiming other than 'link to external site' is necessary.
I'd say that in the example you gave, it's perfectly legitimate to remove the link, and a perfectly legitimate reason is "the site sucks" or "the link is irrelevant to this page".
--Jimbo