[WikiEN-l] A war on external links? Was: Inside Higher Ed: Does Wikipedia Suck?

[Matt Jacobs]

>
> Date: Tue, 30 Mar 2010 20:16:48 +0100
> From: Carcharoth <carcharothwp at googlemail.com>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] A war on external links? Was: Inside Higher
>        Ed: Does        Wikipedia Suck?
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
>
> On Tue, Mar 30, 2010 at 8:02 PM, Matt Jacobs <sxeptomaniac at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> <snip>
>
> > ?I see nothing unwiki-like in suggesting that a person should defend
> their
> > additions to an article when disputes arise. ?That's a pretty standard
> > expectation in any collaborative environment. ?There's no lack of
> assumption
> > of good faith involved in an editor removing an addition if they have
> reason
> > to believe it is not beneficial to the article.
>
> But what if the editors can't agree on whether the link benefits the
> article?
>
> To get specific, I found a resource and was getting ready to add links
> to lots of articles, but pulled back after others didn't seem as
> excited as me about the resource:
>
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28miscellaneous%29/Archive_24#British-Path.C3.A9_news_clips_archive
>
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:External_links/Noticeboard/Archive_2#British-Path.C3.A9_news_clips_archive
>
> It now has 359 links:
>
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:LinkSearch&limit=250&offset=250&target=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.britishpathe.com
>
> Back in January, there were 130 links (you will have to take my word
> for that, as posted in that discussion, as I didn't take a
> screenshot). So it seems the use of such links (to archived news reel
> clips) can spread without too much pushback or people worrying about
> spamming.
>
> But if someone had added 200 links in just a few days, that would have
> worried some people.
>
> Should they have been worried?
>
> Carcharoth
>

When a high volume of links to one place are inserted, I can understand why
some people would tend to take a close look: spammers are a major
annoyance.  However, a spammer is usually not going to be able to make a
solid argument for why those links belong, and it will quickly become
apparent if the link offers little in the way of benefit to the articles.

The slightly panicky anti-spam response seems to be more of a problem with
poor judgment, and not easily addressed through rule changes.
Sxeptomaniac






> Date: Tue, 30 Mar 2010 21:57:25 +0100
> From: Charles Matthews <charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] A war on external links? Was: Inside Higher
>        Ed: Does Wikipedia Suck?
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
>
>
> Matt Jacobs wrote:
> >  I see nothing unwiki-like in suggesting that a person should defend
> their
> > additions to an article when disputes arise.  That's a pretty standard
> > expectation in any collaborative environment.  There's no lack of
> assumption
> > of good faith involved in an editor removing an addition if they have
> reason
> > to believe it is not beneficial to the article.
> >
> But if they remove it from a generally anti-spam ideological point of
> view, or on the grounds of "conflict of interest", then there is such a
> problem of good faith being disregarded. Quiddity has now gone into this
> in greater detail, and WP:EL is _very clearly_ drafted from an anti-spam
> perspective.
>
> Charles


WP:COI is the most-abused of all the guideline/policy pages on WP, in my
opinion.  It should never, ever be used to win a content disagreement, yet
it frequently is.  Spam is a problem when the links are misleading, not
directly relevant, duplicate more well-known or less commercialized sites,
direct to very unreliable sources, etc.  However, if an editor can't argue
why the link is not useful, then they shouldn't be labeling it spam/COI.
Perhaps WP:EL could stand to be edited, but I consider it more a matter of
poor judgment than anything else.

Sxeptomaniac