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Official blog

In looking through the system of ((official website)) I ran across ((official blog)). Template instructions are rather clear (do not link if WP:EL discourages it, and do not link if the official blog is already linked from the official website, nonetheless, it is a mess with >500 inclusions. I guess the 'good example' of ((official site)) found its follow up (I checked for official <your favourite social network here>, but they did not follow .. yet). --Dirk Beetstra T C 16:59, 20 December 2016 (UTC)

I have TfD'd it. --Dirk Beetstra T C 17:13, 20 December 2016 (UTC)

Template:Twitter seems to do the same. Fram (talk) 09:34, 21 December 2016 (UTC)

And is of a similar nature. Largely discouraged as an external link (in over 99% of the cases superfluous per WP:ELMINOFFICIAL, and as thé official site of a subject of no value (and twitter as official site ranks low behind even something like having an official facebook or myspace as main web presence .. which notable person would use Twitter as their main and only web presence (you'll need about 800 examples before I get remotely impressed)). 1000s of transclusions. Sigh, Damien_Dante_Wayans even got a little thingy attached to his twitter so people can edit it on WikiData. Soon we will have pages full of little scribbles because every conceivable piece of data is language dependent transcluded from a WikiData property. --Dirk Beetstra T C 10:07, 21 December 2016 (UTC)
and ((facebook)) ... and ((instagram)) .. FFS. --Dirk Beetstra T C 15:36, 21 December 2016 (UTC)
And Template:Pinterest, Template:Tumblr, ... Less relevant here, but equally problematic, are things like Template:Flickr tag inline link, which links from e.g. Eaton Canyon to all Flickr pages tagged with Eaton[1], so basically an unrelated user-contributed page where we hope that some images will be about the subject. Why do we have templates encouraging people to link to unreliable or unsuitable websites? Fram (talk) 15:46, 21 December 2016 (UTC)
User:Fram, all how negative I sound above about ((Official website)) .. it has one massive advantage. You teach AWB that everything that has ((Official website)) can have all these templates removed, and voilá .. Wikipedia is suddenly much, much better (I have turned off genfix .. ). --Dirk Beetstra T C 16:01, 21 December 2016 (UTC)
I've never been a fan of these templates. IMHO they invite editors to add the network ('if we have a template, it must be endorsed to link to it, right?'). And now it is even automated - you don't have to find a subject's twitter or instagram, you just type '((instagram))' and there you have it. About 1/3 is superfluous since there is the official site obviously linked .. I don't know how many that I now skip actually should go as well. --Dirk Beetstra T C 16:35, 21 December 2016 (UTC)

@Beetstra and Fram: before mass removing all these templates, shouldn't they before go to TfD? Or a discussion here implies consensus? I have no strong feelings about it. In fact, I support the removal but I wonder what is the right procedure. @Xaosflux: too. -- Magioladitis (talk) 17:53, 21 December 2016 (UTC)

@Magioladitis: No. WP:NOT is one of our pillars, WP:EL is the guideline based on that. Even template ((Twitter)) mentions (before my even further upgrade): Only include links to social media if it is not easily linked from another link included in the article (i.e. if the individual's homepage is linked and that has a prominent link to a Twitter feed, delete the Twitter link here) and when the Twitter link provides the reader with significant unique content. WP:ELMINOFFICIAL states that we only link one official instance of a subject. On all the pages where I remove the twitter/facebook/instagram/etc. the official website is linked. These links are all violating our inclusion standards (and that is exactly one of the points that I am afraid of with indiscriminate inclusion of any possible point of data from WikiData - it in some cases just violates our inclusion standards, and checking that is now being made significantly more difficult). This has nothing to do with the existence of the template, it is just not supposed to be linked in most of the cases here (and I only remove it from 1/3 of it as it is too much work to check whether there is maybe an official site on a page but that it is not marked as such. --Dirk Beetstra T C 18:02, 21 December 2016 (UTC)
You may by the way actually have a case - in fact per our policies and guidelines these social networking sites should only be mentioned in very limited cases. That precludes the need for a wrapper template to display them. If a subject is demonstrably very known for their Twitter, then that twitter could be considered to be linked next to their official website .. if a personality has her own official website solely through facebook, then that could be listed, but neither need to be templated, a plain link will suffice. That indeed would mean that the templates could be deleted through a TfD (but not doing that does not necessarily mean that we should not remove all the cases where the link is obviously superfluous). --Dirk Beetstra T C 18:08, 21 December 2016 (UTC)
For those who are less familiar with EL than Beetstra (a number that I'd put at >99% of editors), ELMINOFFICIAL technically says "Normally, only one official link is included". Therefore occasionally, or (I would personally prefer) exceptionally, more than one official link is acceptable.
I could imagine, for example, that editors might agree to list an official Twitter link to the President-elect's Twitter feed, since it seems to be the source of every fourth political headline this week. And if a rational reason for an exception, or if a BLP has a Twitter feed but nothing else, "only" affects one in five thousand articles, then that's more than 1,000 articles that would benefit from such a link. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:58, 5 January 2017 (UTC)
Because blogs tend to cover what the subjects write about other topics rather than what the subjects says about themselves, an exception for blogs almost never works when there's an official website to use instead. If the official website says little or nothing about the subject (eg the official website primarily markets the subject's latest book), then I look for profile to link such as [2]. --Ronz (talk) 18:56, 5 January 2017 (UTC)
I think that's a good approach, especially for BLPs.
Organizational blogs almost always talk about the organization's activities, so they're a little more directly informative. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:24, 12 January 2017 (UTC)
1 in 5000 articles, our 5.3 million articles do not all have twitters, or even official pages, in the first place. They are mere exceptions (probably a bit higher rate than 1 in 5000, on the thousands of clearings I did see a couple of proper reversions, like on Donald Trump). 50-100 may be about what is left over. --Dirk Beetstra T C 19:05, 12 January 2017 (UTC)

Glossary link

((Wikipedia glossary)) at the top of See also looks spammy, because it doesn't float like, e.g., ((commonscat)), or whatever causes the dubious <p><br></p> construct. My attempt to fix this failed miserably. –2A03:2267:0:0:DCE8:DC45:325C:CC4A (talk) 17:58, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

Use of CV for WP:BLP

Hi, I am having a discussion with someone with a close connection about the David M. Cote article here.

Does WP:ELNO or WP:External links allow for the use of a CV for a biography of a living person? For instance, would it be allowed under WP:ELOFFICIAL or WP:ELYES?

Thanks so much!—CaroleHenson (talk) 19:43, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

FacultiesIntact asked Would adding the external link to his offical bio at honeywell.com be appropriate? I'm aware that it could, and most likely would be perceived as promotional coming from me, but for example, Tim Cook has a link back to his bio at apple.com.
And CaroleHenson responded I wouldn't add the external link, it looks like it's one of the items that shouldn't be in external links, per WP:ELNO (#19) and the spirit of the section in general. I am going to remove the Apple bio and the twitter external link from Tim Cook's page.
Honeywell's Profile of Cote would be fine to add as an external link if it meets ELYES#3 criteria (Sites that contain neutral and accurate material that is relevant to an encyclopedic understanding of the subject) vs what is currently included in the the article content of David M. Cote. If it simply duplicates what's in the article, or just provides promotional viewpoints, then it probably shouldn't be included.
ELNO#19 reminds us not to provide links to honeywell.com, ge.com, trw.com, etc. It doesn't mean we can't link to appropriate pages in those domains. --Ronz (talk) 21:22, 20 January 2017 (UTC)
Excellent, I have seen external links cleaned-up for some time, eliminating bios and social media - so I am glad I checked in here to get informed feedback. Thanks for your input and changes to the Tim Cook article!—CaroleHenson (talk) 23:38, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

Should we have interwiki links in nav-templates?

Pls see Wikipedia talk:Categories, lists, and navigation templates#Request for comment: Use of interlanguage links in Wikipedia templates.--Moxy (talk) 17:12, 21 January 2017 (UTC)

Linking to a fan-created assembly of fair-use sources that is referenced by several RSes

For the show Stranger Things, which is purposely shot as a homage to several works from 1980s, several secondary, reliable sources have linked to a video created by a fan of the show that has side-by-side shots of short segments (well within US fair use allowances, particularly considering it is for commentary/criticism purposes) of the show against the 1980s works the shots resemble. The referring sources use this to demonstrate the vastness of works that the show purposely or in some cases subconsciously drew from - in other words, these reliable sources agree that this fan video represents a reasonable analysis of the show. It would seem to make sense, barring any article from any RS, to include a link to this fan video in the EL section, possibly alluding to the video via the sources or at least using those references to augment the EL to justify its inclusion.

I definitely would not ask this if it was a random fan video that got no attention from anyone; its only the fact that several outlets (including the producers) have acknowledged this video that makes me wonder if it would be reasonable. Does this seem like a fair argument for inclusion as an EL? --MASEM (t) 17:49, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

Could you provide some of those sources and the link in question? --Ronz (talk) 20:50, 10 February 2017 (UTC)
The comparison video is here at Vimeo.
The key article from Rolling Stone that the Duffers specifically talk about the video.
An example of articles highlighting it Salon, Daily Beast, Esquire and about a zillion more (search "stranger things comparison video" and it comes up.
Please note that I wouldn't want to use the video to justify original research (all 1980s works already mentioned in the show article are directly from interview sources). --MASEM (t) 21:00, 10 February 2017 (UTC)
I think that would be fine. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:13, 28 February 2017 (UTC)

@Masem and WhatamIdoing: This sounds like reasonable, but I think that this could just as well be incorporated in the prose, if the fan made video is being discussed by the producers (and you have references for that), then saying something along the lines of 'A group of fans created a video,<ref>primary source reference, to video, posts regarding that</ref> which was recognised by the producers.<ref>references where the recognition is shown</ref>' would fit. --Dirk Beetstra T C 03:36, 28 February 2017 (UTC) just a by-the-way: this discussion should be on EL/N

Links to Internet Archive

Discussion about a bot process changing some links to Internet Archive: Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)#Links_to_Internet_Archive -- GreenC 14:10, 28 February 2017 (UTC)

DMOZ is dead

DMOZ was taken down today. The template ((dmoz)) (~7300 uses) has been boldly redirected to a mirror as a temporary measure. IMO it would be appropriate to remove most DMOZ links from ==External links== sections, since we don't link to dead sites, and the links on the mirror will eventually be out of date. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:41, 15 March 2017 (UTC)

Are there any viable alternatives, or is the whole principle outdated (as search engines give the same info, and likely more than even a professionally maintained (let alone a volunteer maintained) internet directory. This may need to be reflected into WP:NOT and WP:EL (and maybe need a wider consultation). --Dirk Beetstra T C 05:47, 15 March 2017 (UTC)
I'm afraid the DMOZ links will have to go eventually. No need to rush it. The links were sometimes useful for readers, and at other times useful for us as a way to tell those promoting websites to try elsewhere, but the concept has been made obsolete by Google. There was a somewhat interesting discussion at slashdot. Johnuniq (talk) 09:19, 15 March 2017 (UTC)

I am confused

I thought the whole point of external links is to list WP:SELFPUBLISHED sources that would be unacceptable in citations limited by WP:V and WP:RS. Why is a verified LinkedIn allowed as a citation but totally banned as an external link?--Mr. Guye (talk) 23:33, 23 April 2017 (UTC)

You are confused. It is generally used to link to encyclopedic information about the subject that cannot be easily incorporated into a reference. This is how the lede puts it: "Some acceptable links include those that contain further research that is accurate and on-topic, information that could not be added to the article for reasons such as copyright or amount of detail, or other meaningful, relevant content that is not suitable for inclusion in an article for reasons unrelated to its accuracy." LinkedIn is not usually permitted as a reference either. ELNO states that only an official website should be listed. Social media, such as LinkedIn should not be used. However, if no official website exists, it would be acceptable to include. Walter Görlitz (talk) 23:43, 23 April 2017 (UTC)

Open Music Library as an external link

Are links to the Open Music Library acceptable in external links? (Example here.) Although the works are in the public domain, there appears to be a charge for them.

Pinging Avorio; Ronz

Kablammo (talk) 16:02, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

Sites which charge for access to PD material without any real improvement, and then spam Wikipedia external link sections, should be removed IMO. -- GreenC 16:43, 26 April 2017 (UTC)
I'd started a discussion here in response to a message from Avorio, who has a COI with the content and has been spamming the link. I quickly skimmed Avorio's contributions and glanced at the link added to James Joyce. --Ronz (talk) 15:28, 27 April 2017 (UTC)

ELT

An RfC is being conducted that will seek consensus for an exception to WP:ELT for Template:Medical resources. The discussion is at Template talk:Medical resources #RfC on placement of Medical condition classification and resources template. Opinions and constructive suggestions are welcome. --RexxS (talk) 10:29, 4 May 2017 (UTC)

DMOZ is gone—what now?

Um, WP:NOTDIRECTORY—but DMOZ is dead. Where should I add links? Specifically, I'd like to link to a number of anime and manga glossaries (full disclosure: including one I edit), but where should I put them, other than the Glossary of anime and manga article? I've already added a number of them in the last two sections, but I'd like to avoid excess, and any conflict of interest.—DocWatson42 (talk) 00:53, 8 June 2017 (UTC)

@DocWatson42: ((dmoz)) is currently linking to a mirror. I am sure there will be other web directories that can be used (dmoz will need to be replaced at some point), see List of web directories. --Dirk Beetstra T C 06:44, 8 June 2017 (UTC)
@Beetstra: I noticed the linking. I was just hoping that there was a live, updateable alternative. :-/ —DocWatson42 (talk) 06:47, 8 June 2017 (UTC)
@DocWatson42: dmoz is not the only one that is user-updateable, I am sure. I don't know which. --Dirk Beetstra T C 07:02, 8 June 2017 (UTC)
DocWatson42, DMOZ was never the only acceptable, or even the only preferred, directory site. If you are familiar with any good directory, then use that. If you're worried about appearing to promote "your own", then you might try to find two or three good options, and ask someone else to pick whichever seems best (either at the relevant talk page or at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Anime and manga). If you do find several good ones, and if there are several relevant articles, then you could even consider placing a different link at each article. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:30, 11 June 2017 (UTC)
@WhatamIdoing: DMOZ was the one that tended to get mentioned, and used on Wikipedia in External links sections. And I don't have preferred directory, only a Web site I'd like to include in one.
@WhatamIdoing: Specifically, the DMOZ template is used on 7328 pages. —DocWatson42 (talk) 19:56, 11 June 2017 (UTC)

External links to finding aids

Should finding aids be permitted as external links? Finding aids practically invite libraries and booksellers to spam articles with links to their online sales. At American Fork, Utah, a link to this finding aid was added which provides information about a book which members of the general public can read (but not sign out) after traveling to Brigham Young University Library in Utah. Conveniently, the finding aid also offers reluctant travelers the option of purchasing a digital copy online. Finding aids seem to embody WP:ELNO and WP:EL#ADV. Look at this finding aid spam.

Finding aids also resemble "summary-only" descriptions, which a consensus of editors at Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information agreed should be discouraged.

The input of others about the usefulness of adding finding aids as external links would be appreciated. Magnolia677 (talk) 23:49, 1 June 2017 (UTC)

Finding aids are typically links to manuscript collections, not to online sales. The commercial use of finding aids is minimal. You've managed to find one example where the finding aid provides a link to a means to obtain a digital copy of a manuscript. Here are a dozen used in Wikipedia where that is not the case: [3], [4], [5], [6], [7], [8], [9], [10], [11], [12], [13], [14]. Many, such as this one, even provide free access to online digital versions of some of the archived documents. Just as the Further reading section of an article provides information for the reader to pursue further research in published sources, finding aids provide information for the serious reader to pursue further research in unpublished sources related to the article. Finding aids are incredibly useful to the serious Wikipedia user. I see no merit in trying to eliminate them from articles. 32.218.34.198 (talk) 00:34, 2 June 2017 (UTC)
The Interior might have some useful information about this, or might know someone (e.g., involved in WP:TWL) who could share some advice on the subject.
If you have a problem with a specific article, then WP:ELN might be a better place to post a request for opinions. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:25, 11 June 2017 (UTC)
Some other users are also concerned about finding aids in external links, Magnolia677. I posted in Wikipedia talk:The Wikipedia Library/Cultural Professionals about it if you want to discuss further there, but admittedly I'm not sure if there will be more of a response there than here.Rachel Helps (BYU) (talk) 16:44, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

ELNEVER: where does it apply?

I made a change to ELNEVER, which was reverted by Herostratus: [15]. I am currentlly dealing with an editor who has posted hundreds of links to copyvio youtube pages in user talk pages, article talk pages, ... across many years, without being aware that this is not allowed. I thought the "with no exceptions" rule of ELNEVER, and the text at WP:LINKVIO, would be sufficient, but considering the trouble I have in convincing people that, no, knowingly linking to copyright violations is not allowed anywhere on Wikipedia, I thuoght it better to make it more explicit here.

Should this be readded here, and/or be made more explicit at WP:LINKVIO, or be added somewhere else? Fram (talk) 12:22, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

I'll start a discussion at Wp:VPP#ELNEVER, LINKVIO; where do they apply? as that is probably a better location for this. Fram (talk) 12:23, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

support the addition. It is across the whole of Wikipedia. --Dirk Beetstra T C 12:52, 28 April 2017 (UTC)
In reply to user:Herostratus' revert: Yes, that question would indeed be prohibited (The answer is likely 'no' anyway, and if you suspect it to be a copyvio of something, you can just as well use the original). --Dirk Beetstra T C 13:11, 28 April 2017 (UTC)
Well User:Fram hard cases make bad law. It sounds like this one user you describe could possibly be dealt with on a bad-behavior basis? If someone is posting "hundreds of links to copyvio youtube pages in user talk pages, article talk pages, ... across many years", I can't imagine a good encyclopedic reason for that, and if there isn't, deal with that editor on a WP:NOTHERE or some similar basis? (And if there is somehow a good encyclopedic reason for it, then... well, hmmm then if it is benefiting the project... then it is a complicated case I guess...)
So meanwhile this new rule (or anyway enlargement of emphasis of the rule), enacted in response to one bad editor, would hammer home that I can't post, on a talk page, "Say, is [this URL] a copyvio? I don't think so, but I'm not positive, anybody willing to take a look and advise"? and another editor would be justified in erasing that post. Apparently User:Beetstra is saying "that's right, and a good thing too", but then how the heck would I get advisement in a situation like that? Maybe this is fine, but I'm not a fan of individuals boldly making substantive changes to rule pages, so I would like to hear other voices before and verify that there are no objections before enacting this enlargement of emphasis, is all. Herostratus (talk) 13:33, 28 April 2017 (UTC)
They (It's User:Martinevans123 I'm talking about, seems only fair to ping them) did it mainly to make discussions more light-hearted. They are here to help enwiki, but part of their approach was the use of many, many youtube links in their comments without caring whether they were copyvios or not. And my change was not to make a substantive change to the rule, but to make actual practice more clear for everyone. Fram (talk) 13:44, 28 April 2017 (UTC)
Yes, that is fair. But did you count them? How do I compare with all the other miscreants you're hunting down? And you checked that they were all copyvios, yes? Martinevans123 (talk) 13:58, 28 April 2017 (UTC)
Somehow I doubt that many editors here have this at the top of their user talk page permanently, inviting everyone to add more of the same. I never claimed that they were all copyvios, which is a very weak defense anyway. Enough of them were copyright violations, and you clearly made no effort to avoid or remove these. Fram (talk) 14:08, 28 April 2017 (UTC)
I guess we wouldn't know that unless we looked. But that heading now says "Please don't donate generously any more". How many is "enough", exactly? After your first request to me (last year, I think?) I immediately made an effort to hide those you saw as problematic. Now they're just all "hidden" in my history. Martinevans123 (talk) 14:19, 28 April 2017 (UTC)
Are you really wikilawyering over "how many violations is enough" when it is clear that a cursory check through the youtube links on your user page and user talk page revealed quite a few obvious ones without any trouble? I have asked you to remove the copyvio ones last time, which you then didn't (only the ones I gave as examples). I have now again asked you to remove all problematic ones. If you have trouble deciding which ones are or may be a problem and which ones aren't, you should simply remove all of them. I have given enough examples of probable copyvio youtube links on your pages, it is not up to me to check them one by one. If you are not willing or able to decide, then either you will remove all of them, or I will. Not including copyvio links in your contributions and on your pages is your responsability, not mine. I don't get why you keep on posting these non-arguments about this. Fram (talk) 14:46, 28 April 2017 (UTC)
No, I'm not "wikilawyering over "how many violations is enough"" and I'm not "posting these non-arguments". I'm trying to give my point of view, in good faith. And I'm trying to defend myself against the accusations you make against me at the top of this thread, the numbers for which you seem to have plucked out of the air. You have made your interpretation of policy quite clear (even if there are now several debates running as to how that policy could be made clearer) and I have said several times that I agree with you and will remove the links to videos that are likely to be copyvios. I have indeed only ever posted links to make discussions more light-hearted. I'm really sure this is not the best forum for your continued nagging and threats, so I'd be happy for any non-involved editor to hat this part. I'm sorry to say that you're coming across as rather heavy-handed, intolerant and vindictive. Martinevans123 (talk) 15:05, 28 April 2017 (UTC)
@Martinevans123: WP:COPYRIGHT is indeed heavy-handed and intolerant. Do not post copyvio's, don't post copyvio links. And yes, the onus is on you to make sure that that does not happen in the first place, and if you, in good faith added them, but someone is asking you to clear them out then you should take do an effort to remove them - the best thing is to remove them all first, and then re-add the ones you consider to be fine. It should also serve as a warning that this type of linking does not happen again in the future. --Dirk Beetstra T C 15:13, 28 April 2017 (UTC)
But policy isn't vindictive, is it. I'm not sure how I can agree more with you than I already have with User:Fram. It seems that I'm the only editor who has ever been guilty of this particular wikicrime. Martinevans123 (talk) 15:17, 28 April 2017 (UTC)
No, policy isn't vindictive, but some are a pretty clear red line that should not be crossed. You may notice that WP:COPYRIGHT documents "a Wikipedia policy with legal considerations", and not "an English Wikipedia policy, a widely accepted standard that all editors should normally follow". And no, you're not the first, nor the only one. --Dirk Beetstra T C 15:25, 28 April 2017 (UTC)
Thanks for the clarification. Martinevans123 (talk) 17:58, 28 April 2017 (UTC)
@Herostratus: I don't think that it is a change of rules. It is basically what our policy WP:LINKVIO says: However, if you know or reasonably suspect that an external Web site is carrying a work in violation of the creator's copyright, do not link to that copy of the work. An example would be linking to a site hosting the lyrics of many popular songs without permission from their copyright holders. Knowingly and intentionally directing others to a site that violates copyright has been considered a form of contributory infringement in the United States (Intellectual Reserve v. Utah Lighthouse Ministry [16]). That makes no distinction to where, and having that more clearly stated here is only a good thing.
You say "Say, is [this URL] a copyvio? I don't think so, but I'm not positive, anybody willing to take a look and advise" - the only way you would have a suspicion that something is a copy of something is that you know that there is an original (say, a logo clearly visible during the movie, a header to the document, whatever) that seems to be somewhere else. Moreover, for the sake of argument, you have no way of telling whether for the copy that you are looking at there is a reasonable claim of fair use, or a declaration that the copy is allowed. If you are not aware that it is available on multiple places you have no way of suspecting it is a copyvio. Now there are two scenario's possible: a) you can find the original, and whether the copy is actually a copyvio or not, it is fair(er) to link to the original and ignore the copy, or b) you have the suspicion there is an original but there is no online copy available, in which case you use the document unlinked, you 'describe' the original (no 'live' link needed, credit the original).
Having the rule clear - do not link to (suspected) copyvio material, anywhere on Wikipedia - does by the way not preclude asking that exact question you ask. It gives however the right to any other user to revert it if they do find it a copyvio. If worded like you worded the question, a warning to the editor would have been already excessive. The problem is however if editors are consistently posting copyvio links, especially if they are not in a question format that does not address their possible copyvio nature. --Dirk Beetstra T C 14:17, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

Our copyvio rules were written with article space in mind

Well, if the proposed addition is not a change, then it has no value or meaning and is just extraneous verbiage, and I would reject it on that basis. But it is a change, just as "You shall not travel on the highway at over 55 MPH" and "You shall not travel on the highway at over 55 MPH, at any time or in any circumstance or for any reason whatsoever" are different -- the former allows a judge to entertain an I-was-driving-an-injured-person-to-the-hospital exception, the latter doesn't.
Looking over the rules, I came to the realization that the reason we have copyvio rules is mainly to protect our downstream users -- ff it is on Wikipedia, it is free for re-use, except for fair-use material, which is described and delimited by our rules. Indeed the opening sentence of WP:COPYVIO is "One of the most important aspects of Wikipedia is that its text (not media; but that will be discussed shortly) may be freely redistributed...", which shows what the main concern of that page is.
But that doesn't apply to talk-page material (also user pages etc.). Downstream users are not expected to re-use our talk and user pages. They can, but as a practical matter there's a lot of gossip and nonsense and unreferenced statements and many other things on talk pages that we would never allow in articles, and I don't think we anywhere encourage users to consider talk pages as being the same as articles or as useful. I would think a reasonable de facto approach would be "Well, our talk pages are free to republish under CC-by-SA, but we don't vet our talk pages for factual correctness, copyright, grammar and spelling, and many other things, nor are they really intended or warranted as suitable for any downstream use, so you're kind of on your own".
Wikipedia:Reusing Wikipedia content indicates that it is essentially about articles. "Occasionally, Wikipedia articles may include images..." and so forth (emphasis added). "For example, if we include an image under fair use, you must ensure that your use of the article also qualifies for fair use..." and so on. Wikipedia:Copyrights says "it is our goal to be able to freely redistribute as much of Wikipedia's material as possible" but my buck says they didn't mean "including talk and user pages". If it is a goal of the Wikimedia Foundation that talk and user pages be distributed widely (!), that's news to me and would be quite a shock to many if it's really true. And "It is not necessary to bring talk pages to publishing standards" should possibly be removed from Wikipedia:Talk page guidelines.
Compare and contrast to WP:BLP, which explicitly states "Editors must take particular care adding information about living persons to any Wikipedia page" (emphasis added) and with good reason, since libel can be accessed at and spread from talk and user pages. This is something that was (presumably) discussed and voted in.
To be fair, there is a second (and important) reason for us to not violate copyright, either in articles or anywhere else: it is illegal and subjects us to a valid takedown request and, if it were allowed by policy or regular practice, a valid lawsuit; it may also be a moral wrong, depending on the circumstances and who you talk to. It is something that every internet forum has to consider. If mentioned at all in our copyright rules, it is distinctly a secondary consideration. But it's the only thing to hang a strictly-never-even-on-talk-pages rule.
But it's valid. We don't want and can't have egregious and regular copyvio on our non-article pages for that reason, and User:Martinevans123 should cut it out. On the other hand: come on. It has nothing to do with why our copyvio policies were made, is not covered by our rules, is not going to get us in any trouble as a practical matter, and is probably not causing much material damage to any and so is not a grievous moral fault (not that Wikipedia actually usually concerns itself with moral fault anyway), and so is not a big deal. It shouldn't be allowed, but neither is it a big deal.
And it's not allowed. The rule says "editors are restricted from linking to the following, without exception" (emphasis in the original). It doesn't say "in all namespaces" nor does it say not in all namespaces. But it does say "without exception" in bold. IMO that's good enough, and plenty enough for an admin to address User:Martinevans123 or similar egregious cases with "my interpretation is that what you're doing is not allowed or helpful, or at any rate you're driving it into the ground, so stop it or else".
Going further we run the risk of ruling out the I-was-driving-an-injured-person-to-the-hospital exception. Over at the pump, someone recently proposed "I think that there should be a rule prohibiting editors from labeling a person differently than they describe themselves" to which I responded: "[17]". (It's labeled "I don't know who the artist is" so its presumably copyvio). Is that really so terrible? That is a matter of opinion and not settled fact I think. Somebody did thank me for the edit. If I did this all the time it would become annoying, and eventually annoying enough to get me kicked out. So its a matter of degree.
As for User:Martinevans123, without looking into the case, I would guess we have the usual two options with dealing with a productive editor who is off the reservation on some issue and can't be talked out of it and won't back down:
  1. Put up with it, or
  2. Thank them for their contributions but tell them that, sadly, we have to let them go
and it depends on the circumstances I guess -- how productive the editor is vs. how important the violations are. But usually it eventually ends at Option 2, and User:Martinevans123 should be aware of that. But you don't need to change to rule for that.
All in all, I think that we would need a new rule. Non-article copyvio simply is not covered by our copyvio rules. To the extent that it is covered, it is in passing and in offhand way, I think. I mean, IMO we shouldn't do it much, and while IANAL I guess can't really overtly allow it, for legal reason. Best IMO to leave it somewhat vague as it is, which allows reasonable leeway. There's no need to tie our hands unnecessarily.
But if we don't want to, I would think that we might want a whole separate page covering non-article copyvio (it could be short) or a least a short separate section in WP:COPYVIO or somewhere, with a full discussion over details such as the hey-what-about-this situation I described and what other unintended consequences might result.
Or simply consensus that "yes, all our copyvio rules should be overtly and explicitly extended to cover non-article spaces, something that wasn't much considered when they were written." You probably could get agreement for that, but I'd still like to see it. Herostratus (talk) 17:18, 28 April 2017 (UTC)
Hmm .. I see what you are saying here, but how do you bring this into agreement with WP:NFCC, which does take non-article content very much in consideration. Also the referenced lawsuit, i.e. as the Wikipedia article describes it, does not distinguish in which context the links should be placed, it should simply not be linked.
Now, those are the policies, this is the guideline. The guideline should clarify how the policy is applied. The guideline limits itself to external links in mainspace, but it should then, IMHO, make clear that when the rule is extending beyond, how wide that goes. Even if the policy, like practically all our policies, are written for the article namespace, some things go beyond that. BLP is an example, NFCC is another, and copyright yet another. It is also not OK to verbatim copy a whole book into the talk namespace. A copyright violation is a copyright violation. --Dirk Beetstra T C 17:38, 28 April 2017 (UTC)
Eh? What?? .... "off the reservation on some issue and can't be talked out of it and won't back down". This is what comes of agreeing with User:Fram and actually doing what he's asked, yes? And you want to "let me go". Blimey. You don't want to reconsider how you've phrased that, at all, do you? Thanks. Martinevans123 (talk) 17:55, 28 April 2017 (UTC)
No, copyright violations apply across all of Wikipedia and there was never an intention to limit it to article space. Fair use is a good example. We prohibit the use of "fair use" images in non-article space full stop. And we are highly judgemental on articles that are allowed to use "fair use" images. We should never post out to dubious YouTube videos for exactly the same reason - it exposes the project to unnecessary risk. That the risk hasn't impacted yet is completely irrelevant. That the risk is vey small is completely irrelevant. Don't post links to probable/possible/maybe slightly copyvio content. Simple. To do so, and to contest otherwise, is simply a waste of time. I'm grateful to Fram that he has acted to reduce the exposure of Wikipedia to possible issues by bringing this to the user's attention. I hope the user in question does the right thing and removes every single link to YouTube, post haste. The Rambling Man (talk) 21:11, 28 April 2017 (UTC)
In addition to the fair-use images analogy, we can also look at our practices around copyrighted text - you can't copy directly from a source even to a draft or sandbox, though those are outside articlespace. Given those models, this change makes sense. Nikkimaria (talk) 11:59, 29 April 2017 (UTC)
Wow, "every single link to YouTube", eh? That shouldn't take too long, should it? I do hope you'll be checking I get them all. Martinevans123 (talk) 22:02, 30 April 2017 (UTC)

I have re-applied the clarification, but got reverted again by user:Herostratus, even with the audacity of suggesting that I edit war (he is the one reverting twice, whereas two editors (user:Fram and me) applied the change. The general discussion here leans strongly towards that these links should not be used anywhere, also not outside of mainspace, which is totally in line with the policy, and the addition is clearly an improvement in making that clear. --Dirk Beetstra T C 11:07, 29 April 2017 (UTC)

"clearly an improvement" is not evident to me. While I don't take Hero's stance on the rationale for where copyright may be violated (erm, it can't be on Wikipedia--but we don't violate copyright by linking to copyvios), I do agree that the addition is superfluous. I also agree about the point regarding bad cases and bad law. --Izno (talk) 12:40, 29 April 2017 (UTC)
Responding to User:Beetstra (also User:Fram and User:The Rambling Man generally): Well you are mixing stuff up, and "we are highly judgemental on articles that are allowed to use 'fair use' images" and "We should never post out to dubious YouTube videos for exactly the same reason - it exposes the project to unnecessary risk" is just wrong. We are strict about fair use because that serves our goal of being friendly to downstream users, full stop. You can't upload an image to a talk page or user page and claim fair use, its a non-issue and a distraction from this question.
"That risk is very small is completely irrelevant" isn't true. Of course risk levels are relevant. If we can estimate that the mean time for any of this to cause us any trouble that we can't quickly fix is at least 10,000 years (which it probably is), then we don't have to treat it as an actual risk situation. And spending energy doing so is sillier than building your house underground in case of meteorite strikes.
User:Fram, Wikipedia:NFCC is about content, and it is about content that we host. That's very different from linking. We can, of course, link to copyrighted content, in articles -- we're encourage do to it on this very page ("acceptable links include... information that could not be added to the article for reasons such as copyright") and I've certainly done it. And we can link to (not upload) copyrighted material on talk pages and user pages -- of course we can, everyone agrees with that I assume. The question is only about linking to a website that has material where the person doesn't have permission to host it...
Is that even illegal? Obviously to download and host copyvio content is illegal. Simply to watch it probably isn't, I think. Linking is in some middle ground -- it's a complicated question. "Is Linking Or Embedding Infringing Content Illegal?" talks about it. My take is that it probably is, but judges are not robots. The cases that have come up so far are profitmaking link farms... I think that if someone took the Wikipedia (as opposed to me personally) to court on that basis "one of their users posted this link to a copyvio of my work; I want damages", the judge would say "get this idiot out of my courtroom". So de facto it is legal. (They could try to go after me personally, which isn't even the Wikipedia's concern anyway, but even then they would not be able to get a subpoena forcing the WMF to turn over my IP address. No judge would sign a warrant on such a trivial basis, I believe.)
No idea who posted this. I don't care about what is legal, which is different in every country anyway. Our policies are usually much stricter than what is legal. Why would we allow linking to copyvio material for the sake of fun? When we don't even allow it when it could be useful in an article... Fram (talk) 07:19, 3 May 2017 (UTC)

Arbitrary break

Well let's see. Now we are getting somewhere. The proposition is to make the additions shown in bold:

For policy or technical reasons, editors are restricted from linking to the following, without exception in all namespaces... material that violates the copyrights of others... should not be linked, whether in an external-links section, in a citation, or otherwise.

Counting heads to this point, I get

Strength of argument... well, I mean, OK. The discussion has been wide-ranging and interesting, and I have learned some things. Here's my personal take on the arguments adding the proposed text to the rule:

  1. As general sort of hygiene, in the spirit of people who spend most of their time being aware of copyright issues, and having to constantly explain things to people who are trying to paste whole plagiarized passages into articles etc., in the spirit of who we are and what we believe, let's just not have this.
  2. And the argument "this is illegal" (and thus potentially dangerous, at least in theory) -- it may possible not even be illegal, but technically it might well be, depending on your interpretation of "illegal".
  3. And then there's the question, Well, what if we come up against someone who links to YouTube all the time -- scores of links on his userpage, and is constantly inserting off-topic YouTube links in discussions, and so forth and its annoying. (Spamming wasn't brought up, and I believe its a non-issue because who would spam a copyvio?)
  4. And then, after all, there's no good reason for anyone to ever do this. It just doesn't help build the encyclopedia. So why not ban it it?

I mean, these are reasonable arguments.

Just on #4, I would gently point out that this is not the Army where everything not mandatory is forbidden. User:Beetstra makes a closely-reasoned and cogent argument for #4 -- when I say I want to be able to say "Hey, is [this URL] a copyvio?", User:Beetstra points out "the only way you would have a suspicion that something is a copy of something is that you know that there is an original that seems to be somewhere else" and so on -- clear and well reasoned. The problem is, no one can see all ends. Maybe I would want to be "Hey, someone told me [this URL] is a copyvio" or "Hey, this just looks suspicious" or something. Who knows? I don't -- neither do you. Nobody can pierce the mist of the future and say with certainty "there will never arise a condition where this is useful".

Sure, I know a case like this, where there's an encyclopedic good reason for doing it would probably be handled on the basis "Well, we didn't mean to disallow that; carry on". But one 1) we don't want rules where the operative enforcement on that basis, and 2) some people wouldn't handle it on that basis. User:Beetstra for instance has avowed that for his part he would enforce the rule in all seasons and circumstances. (Including my cat I guess, which IMO deleting it would have been heavy-handed, and contrary to WP:RELAX.)

But these are reasonable arguments. I'll leave to others to decide. I can see the merit of #1 and #2. #1 might be a case of everything-starts-to-look-like-a-nail; maybe not. #3 is best handled by other means on a case-by-case basis IMO. I can see the merit, but I just don't agree that it is worth the rules creep. Yeah I know it's not a big deal, and I could just back down on the basis that's fairly trivial and not worth fighting over. But then so could the proponents. Herostratus (talk) 15:14, 29 April 2017 (UTC)

Our Wikipedia rules are more strict sometimes than what is legally allowed. I believe WP:COPYRIGHT is such an example. I noted that WP:COPYRIGHT is more strict in it's policy banner than most other policies, including our WP:BLP policy.
As I also said, somewhere, I don't have a problem with someone posting the question 'hey, is [this url] a link to a document that violates copyright?' If no, no problem, if yes, it can be reverted, the link can be disabled, whatever. One such question does not make you a violator. Even 'hey, I want to post [this url] to the article, what do you guys think' - if [this url] turns out to be a copyright violation, it is easily removed (and we can do that per our guideline/policies). The change in the guideline would however allow editors to remove everything not being such questions, and removing the links when they do turn out to be linking to copyright violations. We are currently not that strict for that. --Dirk Beetstra T C 16:07, 29 April 2017 (UTC)
@Herostratus: There are also the editors that commented on Wikipedia:Village_pump_(policy)#ELNEVER.2C_LINKVIO.3B_where_do_they_apply.3F. Including that, I still get the feeling that most feel that it should be in all namespaces. --Dirk Beetstra T C 16:43, 29 April 2017 (UTC)
Oh. Well, I wasn't aware of that thread. That being so, those editors have not had the benefit of my analysis. So I don't know what to think about that. I'm not sure there should be two simultaneous discussions going on in two separate places about the same thing. That is something I have not seen before and question whether it's good practice. My usual practice is to localize the discussion in one place and place heads-up links in other places where appropriate. This is a practice I recommend for various reasons. So scratching my head over this new development. Herostratus (talk) 16:52, 29 April 2017 (UTC)
I pinged the people who are in the other discussion, but not this one, to let them know. We should try to centralize it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:24, 29 April 2017 (UTC)
@Herostratus and WhatamIdoing: In all fairness, user:Fram did announce the other thread here in the opening statement, saying that that was probably the better place. (Maybe Ishould have been more strict and notreplied here, mea culpa). --Dirk Beetstra T C 17:51, 29 April 2017 (UTC)
In his second comment, posted just one minute (or perhaps mere seconds) after his first. It's easy to overlook a sentence in a discussion, so I don't blame anyone that missed it, but I agree that it was announced. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:55, 29 April 2017 (UTC)
RIght, OK, I just plain missed it, my fault. Herostratus (talk) 18:46, 29 April 2017 (UTC)

Here's my thoughts:

The most important point IMO is that this is a one-time, one-editor complaint. If we found a pattern of general misunderstanding (e.g., two or three editors who are familiar with this guideline and who were sincerely confused on the point), then I'd likely support clarifications. But we don't have that: we have one highly experienced editor telling another highly experienced editor that he should adopt the same POV about the (unproven, but likely) possibility of some unidentified copyvios existing in a long list of links. This seems like a situation best handled through discussion and dispute resolution, and not through changing the guidelines. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:53, 29 April 2017 (UTC)

I'm not changing a guideline, I'm clarifying it for the sake of people who don't understand it correctly. People who don't believe that the guideline applied to all namespaces may believe it when it is there, black on white (or green on black, whatever). Your insistence that people can't be convinced that they were unwittingly violating policies and guidelines is rather strange. Your claim of "the (unproven, but likely) possibility of some unidentified copyvios existing in a long list of links." is also strange, I have given MartinEvans multiple clear examples of actual copyvios in the links on his pages, so it is not about an "unproven possibility" and not about "unidentified" copyvios. Thank you for trying to express your opinion, but as usual you are wildly off the mark. Thank you as well for on the one hand accusing me of WP:GAMING for changing a guideline, and on the other hand indicating that nothing is really changed anyway. Not really consistent, is it? You could perhaps have said as well that we are in a dispute and that you don't come here with clean hands either, but I suppose that doesn't count because that dispute is with your WMF persona and here you are editing as the non-WMF persona... Anyway, next time try to get the whole picture before commenting, that avoids you posting half-truths and distracting non-issues. Fram (talk) 08:06, 30 April 2017 (UTC)
"Changing the guideline" is an unfortunately vague phrase. I agree that you aren't try to change "the intended meaning" (see point #2), but you are trying to "change the guideline" in the sense that you want different words used on this page to describe the intended meaning (see the last point). So depending upon how you interpret the phrase, you are simultaneously trying to "change the guideline" and also "not changing the guideline".
On the second point, you have identified some links that you believe to be copyright violations. You have not provided Martin with a complete list of every single link that you believe to be a copyright violation. Therefore, you have not identified all of them (or, I hope, even spent your time reviewing every single link in that list), and there are very likely "some unidentified copyvios existing in a long list of links".
As for your rather rude insinuation that I don't know anything about this, I invite you to look at the list of the top 50 contributors to this page over the years before you assume that I'm not familiar with the issues here. And the guideline, and still (sadly) ELN, for that matter. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:14, 1 May 2017 (UTC)
Yes, WhatamIdoing, in the sense that I am editing the guideline, I am changing it. It would be rather pointless to have a discussion about someone not changing anything, would it? But "changing" in the sense of clarifying the meaning without changing the meaning is not "gaming the system" at all, which you should know (which you probably did know but choose to ignore as it was a nice chance to poison the well to the best of your abilities). "you have identified some links that you believe to be copyright violations. You have not provided Martin with a complete list of every single link that you believe to be a copyright violation. Therefore, you have not identified all of them (or, I hope, even spent your time reviewing every single link in that list), and there are very likely "some unidentified copyvios existing in a long list of links"." Then what was the bloody point of that sentence? At the time I clarified the guideline, there were still copyvio links on his pages which I had already identified. Not some potential, possibly, unidentified ones, but some certain ones. Again, all that sentence of yours did was muddy the waters or poison the well , but it didn't help this discussion forward one bit. I don't care how much you have edited this page, I have not insinuated that you don't know anything about this guideline, I have made it clear that you didn't know enough about the concrete situation with MartinEvans123. And all you have said strongly gives the suggestion that you used your non-WMF persona to get back at me for the multiple times I have discussed the very poor job you did as community liaison between enwiki and the WMF.
Rereading these two responses here, it seems that basically, you agree that all I did was correctly clarify the guideline after I had identified some copyvio links to MartinEvans123 and some discussion about where this rule was written down followed. But for some reason you just had to cloak this in all kinds of bizarre statements making the whole issue much more confusing than it ever was, even to you. Fram (talk) 21:01, 1 May 2017 (UTC)
I have not said that your change "is" GAMING; I said that any changes to any guideline by any editor who is currently engaged in a significant dispute over the wording of said guideline "smells like" GAMING. Even if it's a perfectly innocent and wholly accurate clarification, if you do it during a dispute, people are likely to question your motives.
If you want the least drama around such a change, then either (a) resolve the dispute first and make your change later or (b) explain about the dispute and ask someone else to consider making the change. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:35, 2 May 2017 (UTC)
You are the only one making drama about this change on these hypothetical grounds. What a coincidence. Fram (talk) 07:19, 3 May 2017 (UTC)
I wasn't going to comment, but I'll pile on: "It's generally a bad idea to change a guideline over a one-off case." .. The addition of links to (likely) copyright violating YouTube video's happens in mainspace. Seen the examples of User:Fram, there is no doubt in my mind that such link additions happen to the other namespaces as well. And it happens with other links as well (from a grey past, I've had an argument about a blogspot post which copied a newspaper article). Some of those cases are blatantly obvious violating copyright. These are not one-off cases.
User:Herostratus is, strongly, arguing above that even for WP:COPYRIGHT it is unclear that that is for the whole of Wikipedia, not only talkpages. He argues that that policy was written for content only, and that it is meant for content only. And you are now arguing that because it is clear from WP:COPYRIGHT that it should nowhere be linked, we don't need to repeat it here on a guideline that starts with (my bolding): "Wikipedia articles may include links to web pages outside Wikipedia". So it is a) not even clear that WP:LINKVIO (or WP:COPYRIGHT) is for all namespaces on Wikipedia, and it is not clear the WP:EL (which per it's intro is only for articles) has certain parts in it that extend beyond that. It is, for me, therefore a clear clarification. --Dirk Beetstra T C 09:18, 30 April 2017 (UTC)
We agree, of course, that LINKVIO's an ongoing problem. I wonder, though, whether you can remember any issues with editors persisting in a claim that LINKVIO doesn't apply to talk pages, and being unable to resolve that fairly quickly? I can't remember any such cases myself. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:14, 1 May 2017 (UTC)
If I have editors arguing to re-insert links to copyvio material back into mainspace (as happened to me with that blogspot with an admin .. granted quite some time ago), I would not be surprised that editors are arguing even more, wikilawyering that WP:ELNEVER like WP:EL only applies to mainspace, or even that WP:COPYRIGHT only applies to mainspace. We're talking about nice links in their userspace, right? I must confess, reading through WP:COPYRIGHT it is even unclear to me there that that literally applies to all of Wikipedia. --Dirk Beetstra T C 03:25, 1 May 2017 (UTC)
Further to this, I do recall a situation where we had a lengthy discussion about an external link farm in userspace. Vehement duscussion to protect the links they put in their userspace. --Dirk Beetstra T C 03:46, 1 May 2017 (UTC)
So between your experience and mine, we can identify two cases involving significant disputes outside of mainspace (and therefore two cases affected by this particular proposal). That's not much for the length of time that we're talking about.
I'm currently thinking that the relevant place to address this is over at COPYRIGHT (both inside and outside of the LINKVIO section). Does that sound appropriate to you? WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:24, 1 May 2017 (UTC)
Outside of mainspace, I agree. But knowing that people argue that in mainspace they are fine (I should check a subset of consequtive XLinkBot reverts, see which ones are 'likely' copyvios and see responses to those reverts), I know that people will be arguing similarly in other namespaces. That I am aware of only two shows more how much attention we pay to userspace material (note that XLinkBot does not revert outside the main namespace). I am still in favour of incorporating this, in one form or another (into a ref/note?) into this guideline as well.
I indeed agree that, to me, WP:COPYRIGHT does not make it overly clear that that policy should be applied to the whole of Wikipedia, not just content namespace. User:Fram, what do you think? --Dirk Beetstra T C 05:35, 1 May 2017 (UTC)
Theoretically, ELNEVER is merely a non-binding summary of those two policies anyway, so if it's unclear in the policy, then it needs to be fixed there first anyway. (I need to think about how to make your ref/note idea work. "As mentioned at least eight times on this page, this guideline still doesn't apply to cited sources! But the LINKVIO and SPAM policies, which this guideline is really just mentioning in ELNEVER for your convenience, apply to everything, including cited sources and talk pages and everything else" is accurate but bad.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:50, 1 May 2017 (UTC)
WP:EL does only apply to external links, that are not references, and which are in mainspace (whether they are inline, in infoboxes or in the external links section does not matter). The reference, which I would suggest straight after the bolded 'without exception', could read something along as opposed to the rest of the guideline, the rules mentioned in WP:ELNEVER apply to the external links as defined in this guideline, and to references and any other external links in any namespace on Wikipedia. I am tempted here to add something about the discussion concern expressed on this page - where a genuine question regarding the status of a link can be done, but that that discussion should be blanked as soon as the suspicion is confirmed. --Dirk Beetstra T C 08:27, 1 May 2017 (UTC)
I think that ELBURDEN covers that already, but we could consider explicitly mentioning compliance with LINKVIO as a reason. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:41, 2 May 2017 (UTC)

Breaking

I think one of the arguments in favour of disallowing this kind of YouTube linking is that it serves no purpose whatsoever in this context to further the encyclopedia. We have a user who attempts humour by linking out to all manner of YouTube videos which have no bearing or relevance to Wikipedia whatsoever; in fact that behaviour is more suitable for Facebook, Twitter or some other social media platform. Regardless of the namespace, users should not add or direct others to content that is or even could be copyright infringements. If anyone could argue that these links to probable copyright violations is both legal and beneficial to our readers, we'd have a different discussion, but it seems to me that we're dealing with a situation where individual users are simply copy-and-pasting URLs into Wikipedia for their own satisfaction. The Rambling Man (talk) 22:46, 30 April 2017 (UTC)

You're saying that a link to a video, even if it is fully in the public domain, makes an encyclopaedic description of that video redundant? Martinevans123 (talk) 23:02, 30 April 2017 (UTC)
I don't think that's a fair description of TRM's comment. I think a fairer description is that making editors happy (e.g., by showing a funny video that is not in the public domain) does not further the encyclopedia. Reasonable people may disagree on that point, but he's not the only editor to hold that POV. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:17, 1 May 2017 (UTC)
You are probably right, although he does say "all manner of videos" not just "funny ones"? And does he think we only have one editor who does this? Exactly how prevalent is this problem? How would one find out? Part of the problem with YouTube videos seems to be that there is no easy way to determine if a video is a copyright violation or not. A certain degree of personal judgment has to be employed. I don't really have experience with other video sites, so I can't comment on them. Music videos can be useful as a means of confirming content, prompting a search for reliable sources and stimulating discussion. But perhaps this is all considered "too risky". Martinevans123 (talk) 07:55, 1 May 2017 (UTC)
What I think is meant is that linking to videos in userspace is generally not too much of a true addition to the encyclopedic value of the articles in mainspace. It could tell other readers more about the person who contributed to the subjects in mainspace, though, and there is nothing really wrong with that.
Well, it is easy to spot which ones are not a copyright violation - the ones uploaded by official channels of respected organisations (BBC, CNN, the performing artists official account, etc.). Those are suitable as encyclopedic material in mainspace. Then you have 'the man in the street' who is uploading his home videos. Although interesting and, maybe, humorous in nature, not really of use in mainspace, but could be of interest for some people to have linked in their userspace. Then there is the rest, where YouTube users are posting screen capture movies, convert DVD material, etc. and upload them. Those can be interesting, but 'suspect' at best. Some of that material is reliable, on topic, good material (one could rip a DVD from a National Geographic documentary about lions in their natural habitat, upload it to YouTube, and use it on Lion to display .. lions in their natural habitat. That video could be perfectly applicable to the subject, no 'violation' in terms of WP:EL, or it could be a nice illustration on your userpage, except for being a link to material that is violating copyright. However funny, nice, applicable, or useful to show who you are and what you stand for - they should not be linked - not in mainspace, and not in userspace, or anywhere. Just regard everything that is not uploaded by an official channel of a recognised entity as either not very suitable for Wikipedia (content namespaces), or as a copyright violation. That will err extremely on the safe side.
Other sites, not just video sites, do sometimes contain material in violation of the creator's copyright - I alluded to a case where someone found a newspaper article on blogspot and used it (in mainspace) as a reference. However, reading that blogspot post should have gave clear clues that 'there was an original'. It turned out to be a plain copy of the original newspaper article (which was behind a registration portal and not crawled by bots and hence not in the search engines).
What you mention in your last comment is not 'too risky' - yes, a music video can be a good source for discussion, but it can still be discussed even when you cannot upload it or link to it. There is nothing wrong with discussing the last music video of Justin Bieber, you don't need to rip it from a music channel, upload it to YouTube and link to it. Sometimes people who want to discuss with you will need to figure out their own way of seeing it. If it is uploaded by the official channel of Justin Bieber, you can be rather sure it is not a copyright violation. --Dirk Beetstra T C 10:08, 1 May 2017 (UTC)
Many thanks, Dirk. Yes, I suppose you'd have to say something like "that video of Justin Johnson playing Ace of Spades on a shovel, uploaded by User X on such and such a date." Just to clarify, if someone were to be foolish enough to post a link to a video that is in breach of copyright to someone else's Talk Page (unwittingly or not) would that second user immediately also be in breach of copyright and legally responsible for removing the link, or is it the original poster responsible for removing it? Couldn't the second editor simply argue that he or she had never opened the link and had no idea what it contained? Wikipedia can't possibly track exactly what editors have looked at or not looked at, can it. Martinevans123 (talk) 14:40, 1 May 2017 (UTC)
Normally, one isn't responsible for what someone else posts to your user pages. of course, when you actively invite people to post e.g. youtube links, it does again become your responsability to keep an eye on them as well. Fram (talk) 21:04, 1 May 2017 (UTC)
So who has caused this "breach of copyright", if there is one? Or does it depend on whether the link is clicked on or not? Martinevans123 (talk) 21:08, 1 May 2017 (UTC) p.s. so if someone added such an invitation to post e.g. youtube links, would it be wise to remove it?
Sigh, you're now unnecessarily thick here. I am starting to question the reason you are here in the first place. The prime responsibility that those links are not getting there is for the person that puts the links there. And it is everyone's responsibility to make sure the links get removed if they figure out it is linking to a breach in copyright. And if there are multiple links outside ofcontent namespaces, they might just be wiped altogether, without checking. --Dirk Beetstra T C 00:19, 2 May 2017 (UTC)
If you are talking about this, I have asked Drmies to remove this and why he thought it a good idea to post this, but it would be best in cases like this if you removed the link yourself. Fram (talk) 09:31, 2 May 2017 (UTC)
Fram, if you had pinged me here I wouldn't have had to hunt this down, this discussion that you somehow supposed I was aware of, POINTedly posting a YouTube link on Martinevans's talk page. [erasing snark; sorry Fram] The Rambling Man, I agree with your comment (the first in this thread) on the whole, sort of, though I'll say that I linked that video in order to try and make a somewhat unfriendly point more friendly. I suppose I could argue that that may have served, or was intended to serve, an encyclopedic purpose, but that's not an argument that I think y'all would accept easily and I won't press the point: I could have found another way, no doubt. I think that also answers the "why" I posted it--that, plus the fact that, you know, maybe I just forgot or didn't realize or followed Martinevans's terrible, terrible example. I've read over most of this conversation, and from a legal(istic) point of view I think it would be helpful if someone could clarify "Standard YouTube License". Finally, if you type in "Keith Jarrett # Sun Bear Concerts (1976) Kyoto" in YouTube, you get some really, really good music. I'd buy it, but the 10 LP box is $300. Thank you, Drmies (talk) 15:04, 2 May 2017 (UTC)
The addition to ELNEVER is about copyright violations, not very short bits which may be fair use. A full song, a 5-minute standup routine, looong excerpts from movies, are not fair use (certainly not on youtube, where they are presented without context, just as a piece of entertainment). So your arguments in this discussion have very little to do with the actual guideline and the presented change. The change is not to disallow fair use links, but to make it clear that we disallow links to copyright violations anywhere. Fram (talk) 07:19, 3 May 2017 (UTC)
Since this is a view held by experts (i.e., not held by me personally), I don't think that it's a good idea to characterize it as someone "fall[ing] for that kind of reasoning". Certainly in each individual case, all of the facts and circumstances (e.g., the length of the sample) will matter. But there appear to be experts who believe that the theoretical basis to treat "12 copyrighted words typed as text" as fair use, but "the same 12 words as an audio clip from a musical recording" as a copyright violation, is dubious at best. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:28, 4 May 2017 (UTC)
Ooh, "experts", then we really have to shut up of course. Whatamidoing, quoting a line is not the same as "playing a copy of that song" from a website where you uploaded it. And if you mean "play a copy of a very short part of that song", then that is not what is being discussed here. The links under discussion are too long or complete to be considered fair use (even ignoring the other aspects of fair use, like "not just for entertainment"), and the textual change to the guideline is only about such links, not about your hypothetical scenario. Can you perhaps stick to what is relevant and in the actual proposed text, and not imagine farfetched possibilities which complicate matters for no good reason at all? Fram (talk) 06:51, 4 May 2017 (UTC)
@WhatamIdoing: So you keep carrying on with the red herring. We are discussing whether our policies allow for linking to copyright violations outside of the content namespace, and you still keep arguing 'oh, but maybe it is fair use on YouTube?'. I know there is a grey area between fair use and outright copyright violations, but we are not arguing the cases which are likely fair use, we are arguing the cases which likely are not fair use, and hence a copyright violation. So can you please comment on whether we should link to works that are copyright violations which are not very likely allowed under a fair use rationale. Because that is what we are discussing here. --Dirk Beetstra T C 07:41, 4 May 2017 (UTC)

I'd agree with Softlavender's point above and "artificially" removing such links from discussion threads on talk or project pages is often an obstacle to the discussion itself. Say there is a debate over cameo appearance, over a quote/line or scene, then it really helps if everybody has a chance to at the thing for himself. So as long as it is reasonable to consider it fair use, we shouldn't proactively ban something just to be "super safe" if that comes at the price of impairing discussions.--Kmhkmh (talk) 21:18, 2 May 2017 (UTC)

@Softlavender, WhatamIdoing, and Kmhkmh: The point is that we if we are talking about short clips of a whole length movie that is hosted on YouTube, then yes, we are not talking about a copyright violation on YouTube, we are talking about Fair use on YouTube. That is hence, again, not a copyright violation, and hence there is no problem to link to that.
What is however a copyright violation on YouTube is the full length movie uploaded by someone who ripped the DVD they bought, or taped the movie in the cinema. Those are regularly taken down on YouTube (DMCA is a thing). However, there is still material on YouTube that is not taken down (yet). It is NOT fair use. That is the material that we should not link to. And that is the material that is the subject of this thread. Not the material that is Fair use on YouTube (or wherever). (and it is friggin' annoying, I'd like to buy the $300 DVD box that Drmies is talking about, or the latest movies for my daughter, but I don't even have a DVD player that works and I don't think I can find it here - I'd prefer to see them on YouTube (until they take them down). But what I do on my home computer with my home network is my problem, it doesn't mean that I also have to break the rules of the policies on Wikipedia with it).
Kmhkmh Yes, I understand that not having a working link to material is hampering discussion, but lets take that to a logical absurd: 'one cannot discuss child pornography without having a working link to some material.' Or 'we need some pictures on that article because without pictures it is unclear what we talk about.' Sometimes one cannot do some things, and that is inconvenient, but 'convenience links' are just that, convenience. One can very well live without them. We do not need to link (we should not link, per WP:LINKVIO) to material carried under a copyright violations that may not be available online elsewhere, just because it is inconvenient to discuss it. --Dirk Beetstra T C 03:33, 3 May 2017 (UTC)
Beetstra, a five-minute excerpt from a movie, presented withBeetstraortantout any context, just for entertainment (i.e. 99% of the youtbe links) is not "fair use" at all but still a copyright violation, just like posting a whole chapter of a Harry Potter book would be a copyright violation. A very, very short excerpt explicitly to show some cameo or some such can indeed be fair use, but these will be the exceptions. And the clarification to ELNEVER still allows links to fair use, it only disallows links to copyvios. Making the distinction between the two is no different than what we already do for images or sound files we host here. In most cases, it will be obvious to anyone when something is really "fair use" and when it isn't, and the amount of fair use clips you'll find on youtube is minimal. Fram (talk) 07:19, 3 May 2017 (UTC)
@Fram: Yes, I know. I did not mean to suggest that cutting a full movie in 2 halves, and uploading the two halves results in the pieces being fair use.
What I did mean, and I am replying that above as well, that 'it may be a copyright violation, but it may be fair use' should, within Wikipedia just be read as 'it may be a copyright violation (full stop)', and therefore, per WP:LINKVIO not be linked to. It is not up to us to 'guess' whether the work that was uploaded to YouTube actually constitutes 'fair use'. --Dirk Beetstra T C 08:00, 3 May 2017 (UTC)
@Beetstra: Yes having a link for a discussion can be seen as "just" a convenience, but as it is an important one nevertheless. In any case it doesn't doesn't change my argument above. We should not not forego important conveniences as long as it is reasonable to assume they are fair use cases. However that does not mean every type link is covered by fair use nor even that every single fair use case needs to be used. It just means we shouldn't forego the bulk of the cases. The child porn scenario is certainly a good case not to provide a link, but here the real legal issues isn't a copyright violation anyhow. In the case of whole movies rather than fair use snippets, i'd suggest a "slow" removal strategy, that is keeping them temporarily for the time of the discussion and removing them afterwords when the discussion is closed.--Kmhkmh (talk) 08:37, 3 May 2017 (UTC)
@Kmhkmh: Yes, we should. Our policies are set up in such a way that we should not link to material that violates copyright (amongst other things), and those points are not negotiable. If you want to change the policy in such a way that you are allowed to link to material that violates copyright, then please try - I predict that you will not get sufficient support for that change. I know, and fully understand that it is inconvenient, but in the end the situation is the same as the child porn scenario. There are some inconveniences that we have to live with (I'd love to drive a Ferrari around the closest city at speeds of 200 km/hour; it is an inconvenience I will however need to live with).
And again, our policies are stricter than what may be legally allowed. You may be very right, but that is not what our policies say. --Dirk Beetstra T C 08:46, 3 May 2017 (UTC)
Well the whole point of this discussion thread (Softlavender's posting) that we have no policy really handling this case or rather blocking it. Hence we're not discussing a clearcut non negotionable policy scenario, but rather your idea to proactively extend a policy to other scenarios (such as arguable fair use cases) and that is from my perspective something we shouldn't do (unless there is large community consensus demanding that explicitly).--Kmhkmh (talk) 09:04, 3 May 2017 (UTC)
No, that is not the case. WP:LINKVIO states that we should not link to material on external websites that is hosted in violation of copyright. The only part of contention is whether that is only in content namespace, or throughout Wikipedia (all namespaces). I am also NOT extending the policy to fair use scenarios, I am saying, and have consistently said, that we should not link to material on external websites that is in violation of copyright. If something is clear-cut fair use, we can link to it, if something may be fair use, but may just as well not be fair use (and in the latter case, is a copyright violation), then .. we should not link to it because it may be a copyright violation. The whole fair use argument in all its forms is a red herring, we are talking about material on external websites that is hosted in violation of copyright, not about material on external websites that is hosted under a fair use rationale. --Dirk Beetstra T C 09:09, 3 May 2017 (UTC)
Maybe we're talking about different things, I was only talking about the use on talk pages, so outside the ANR, and what should or shouldn't do there and how policy applies there. So that is exactly the point of content and exactly where we should not proactively extend policy interpretation to (without an explicit community wish).--Kmhkmh (talk) 09:48, 3 May 2017 (UTC)
@Kmhkmh: But are we extending policy? The policy states "However, if you know or reasonably suspect that an external Web site is carrying a work in violation of the creator's copyright, do not link to that copy of the work." To me it is clear that that counts everywhere, not just in content namespaces. I just think that it should be made more explicit. --Dirk Beetstra T C 10:47, 3 May 2017 (UTC)
And additionally WP:NOTPART "These pages do, however, need to comply with Wikipedia's legal and behavioral policies, as well as policies applicable to non-content pages. For example, editors may not violate copyrights anywhere on Wikipedia, and edit warring is prohibited everywhere, not merely in encyclopedia articles." - from that it is clear that WP:COPYRIGHT (or at least parts thereof) applies outside of mainspace. --Dirk Beetstra T C 10:50, 3 May 2017 (UTC) (no, re-reading the sentence makes clear that the whole legal policy that WP:COPYRIGHT is applies on all namespaces, not just parts thereof). --Dirk Beetstra T C 10:52, 3 May 2017 (UTC)
Well I agree that WP:NOTPART is clear cut as far as non fair use cases are concerned.--Kmhkmh (talk) 11:36, 3 May 2017 (UTC)
And the proposed clarification of ELNEVER also only applies to non fair use cases: "material that violates the copyrights of other". Nothing gets changed in that regard. An external link which can reasonably be defended as fair use will not be a problem, just like it isn't a problem now. Fram (talk) 11:59, 3 May 2017 (UTC)

Basically, the clarification was meant to make it clear that something like User:Doctorfreedom or User:Aaabbb11 is not allowed. There is no way that these links can be said to be fair use, and it is much easier if there is a simple link to a policy or guideline available to explain to them why they should remove these from their user page or talk pages. Fram (talk) 09:20, 4 May 2017 (UTC)

@Fram: Some of those video's seem to be on the official channel and hence not a copyright violation on YouTube. Some however seem to be uploaded by others, and likely copyright violations. --Dirk Beetstra T C 10:23, 4 May 2017 (UTC)
One of the channels states "I don't own any of the demos. I get them from torrents." That seems quite clear it is not an official upload by the artist .. hence. --Dirk Beetstra T C 10:27, 4 May 2017 (UTC)
"Legal" and "illegal" aren't binary. There are shades. "A law is a prediction about what a judge will do".
One definition of "it is legal" is "I can freely do it". "Freely do it" may be defined as "if I do it, no policeman will tell me to stop. And if (speaking hypothetically) they did tell me to stop, they won't actually arrest me if I don't. And if (speaking hypothetically) they did, the prosecutor will decline to file charges. And if (speaking hypothetically) she did file charges, the judge will throw it out of court. And if (speaking hypothetically) he doesn't, the jury will acquit".
You know, those silly-law things you see -- "In Illinois, it is illegal to walk down the street while eating a pickle". It's not really illegal. There's an old law on the books. No one will bother you. It's just nothing.
In all the cases where linkvio has been prosecuted, two factors have been in play: the defendant was 1) running a linkfarm with lots of links, 2) for profit.
Nobody is going to get in trouble for an occasional individual linkvio with no measurable material harm (you can get in trouble for an occasional individual download, but that's very different in the eyes of the law). So an occasional individual linkvio with no measurable material harm is like walking down the street eating a pickle in Illinois. Don't worry about it. It's just nothing.
Now, in the instant case, you could make the case "user was running a link farm". He's not doing for profit, while this would matter, it might not matter enough. Just having a mass of such links is half of what the courts said you need to get in trouble. "Halfway to trouble" might be halfway more than we want to go.
So all we really need is a line at Wikipedia:User pages: "Also don't run a linkfarm" (word it how you like -- "don't have an excessive number of external links where copyright could be in doubt" or whatever. (We don't want to prohibit a user linking to a mass of non-copyvio stuff, as a user may want to do that to keep references handy or whatever.) That's all we're really concerned about, and that should do the trick. Herostratus (talk) 08:54, 5 May 2017 (UTC)
No. It is not about what is legal or illegal, it is about what is allowed by the WMF. Having a copyrighted image on your user page is probably also not illegal (and almost certainly not something anyone would ever sue over), but we still don't allow it, ever, even if it is used as fair use elsewhere in an article, even if you haev uploaded it and simply want to show your contributions. The issue is being compliant with WMF imposed policies, not with what we can get away with. Fram (talk) 09:04, 5 May 2017 (UTC)
This starts to be yet another red herring, I think. It is not illegal anyway, so we can just ignore what our policies prescribe. It is for sure not illegal to revert other editors 10 times on Wikipedia. Yet we block over it, per WP:3RR. We might not even warn. And that is not a policy with legal considerations. The combination of WP:NOTPART and WP:COPYRIGHT disallows linking to copyvio material in userspace, or anywhere. Yet we get the argument that it is not illegal anyway? Yes, it is a red herring as well.
Regarding not allowing linkfarms, I couldn't care less. I'd frown over it maybe if the editor's focus is on maintaining the list over regular edit/gnome work, but there is zero policy reason to clear it out, warn the editor or even block them (and would oppose any change in policy to that effect). They can have one single link on their userspace, but if that one link is a clear link to copyvio material, I will, per policy, remove the link and warn. And persistence, despite warning, could result in blocks, however unclear it, apparently, is worded at the moment. --Dirk Beetstra T C 10:25, 5 May 2017 (UTC)

From VPPOL

I made a change to WP:ELNEVER, which was reverted by Herostratus: [18]. I am currentlly dealing with an editor who has posted hundreds of links to copyvio youtube pages in user talk pages, article talk pages, ... across many years, without being aware that this is not allowed. I thought the "with no exceptions" rule of ELNEVER, and the text at WP:LINKVIO, would be sufficient, but considering the trouble I have in convincing people that, no, knowingly linking to copyright violations is not allowed anywhere on Wikipedia, I thuoght it better to make it more explicit there.

Should this be readded there, and/or be made more explicit at WP:LINKVIO, or be added somewhere else? Fram (talk) 12:24, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

Its at WP:PRJC--Moxy (talk) 12:29, 28 April 2017 (UTC)
Not really, that's specifically about the Wikipedia namespace, but not about e.g. user (talk) pages. Fram (talk) 12:37, 28 April 2017 (UTC)
"Editors may not violate copyrights or harass anywhere on Wikipedia."......linking to Wikipedia:List of policies#Legal "Wikipedia has no tolerance for copyright violations in our encyclopedia, and we actively strive to find and remove any violations."--Moxy (talk) 12:41, 28 April 2017 (UTC)
But that starts with "Relates to material copied from sources ", and people are wikilawyering that linking to copyvio's is not the same as copying copyrighted material, and that such linking is only prohibited in article space. This seems to me a willful piece of wikilawyering, but to prevent this type of thing it is sometimes better to make the obvious explicit anyway. I agree with you that any reasonable reading of our policies like the one you link to make it obvious that deliberately linking to copyvios is not acceptable anywhere on enwiki, but some long-term editors seem to need to have this spelled out literally. Fram (talk) 12:51, 28 April 2017 (UTC)
This should apply throughout all namespaces. Whether it is in mainspace or outside, you basically still say "here, read this material that is violating copyright", and WP:LINKVIO does not make any distinction as to the location where the link is placed. Though, to get a proper answer, we'd probably want WMF legal to assert this --Dirk Beetstra T C 13:01, 28 April 2017 (UTC)
They already have RE copyright issues in general. The problem is that the written wording of ENWP specific policies does not cross the t's and dot the i's for the .1% of editors who are willfully trying to circumvent it. As far as I am concerned LINKVIO applies everywhere like BLP - with the exceptions being for the purposes of discussion of 'is this a violation?' which likewise with BLP, you have to actually provide some detail to have the discussion. Obviously linking to youtube videos for no purpose other than humour or social networking falls way outside this. Only in death does duty end (talk) 13:11, 28 April 2017 (UTC)
Oh, of course editors may still post a link with "is this acceptable" without problems, although (as happens now with BLP) if it is found to be a blatant violation, the link may then be removed (though not revdeled in this case, unlike some blatant BLP violations). The purpose is not to open a witchhunt, but to have some easy-to-point to page or link to give to those few editors who would argue against this. Fram (talk) 13:22, 28 April 2017 (UTC)
Lede of WP:CV "Copyright infringing material should also not be linked to.". --MASEM (t) 13:30, 28 April 2017 (UTC)
This is basically what I considered on WT:EL as well. The good faith question 'is [this link] a copyvio' can still be asked, and should in the worst case result in a revert with 'yes, this is a copyvio'. Also a good faith question 'is [this] a suitable link for the page' would in the worst case be reverted with 'no, because it is a copyvio, please take care'. Those situations are not dissimilar from mainspace, where people may unknowingly post links that are copyvio, which will then be reverted by someone who has a second look at it (and none of them should be reverted back in, obviously). --Dirk Beetstra T C 14:25, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

Unfortunately, there's another discussion about exactly this bold change at Wikipedia_talk:External_links#ELNEVER:_where_does_it_apply?, and the discussions may be trending in slightly different directions. Would you all like to go there, or should we invite everyone over there to come here? WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:23, 29 April 2017 (UTC)

While WP:EL applies to article space, WP:COPYLINK applies everywhere. —Farix (t | c) 01:17, 30 April 2017 (UTC)
And that is exactly what I expect to become more clear with this change. Clarify that for this part WP:EL applies everywhere on Wikipedia. --Dirk Beetstra T C 03:17, 30 April 2017 (UTC)
Editor's may not violate our copyright policies anywhere as per WP:NOTPART. --Moxy (talk) 18:08, 30 April 2017 (UTC)
This comment makes no sense whatsoever, User:Softlavender. There is a clear restriction to link to material that is hosted in violation of copyright, see WP:LINKVIO. Using 'Fair use' material on talkpages (or anywhere outside of content namespace for that matter) is also not allowed, per WP:NFCC #9. Thirdly, there is a clear difference between material that is hosted under fair use, and material that is a plain copyright violation. Do you really want to argue that linking to material that is hosted in violation of the creator's copyright can be linked outside of content namespaces under a fair use rationale? --Dirk Beetstra T C 13:20, 2 May 2017 (UTC)
I believe they already have ;) Only in death does duty end (talk) 14:22, 2 May 2017 (UTC)
Twice. --~~

Looking at some first principles

Well, it seems like the main action is over at Wikipedia talk:External links#ELNEVER: where does it apply?, and that's probably the going to be the source of the decision if decision there is. So, let me use this discussion to bring up a philosophical point. It's useful sometimes to examine first principles, as you may find that, over time, your rule has become encrusted with barnacles such that it no longer serves the intended core principle. Or else maybe your core principle is not good.

So anyway, in the philosophical mode of thinking of "why do we have such-and-such rule"... it seems that for article space I can think of four good reasons to have a rule "never link to copyvio":

  1. Practical reasons -- this project is, for good or ill, dedicated to the proposition that our work should be available for downstream users. Copyvio links pollute the material for such use, mainly because of...
  2. Legal reasons. Copyvio links are possibly -- maybe even probably -- illegal. (And if we had a policy "Copyvio links are fine" and we had very many of them, I would upgrade that to quite likely illegal.) Illegal is bad, mainly because it pollutes the downstream use. (It could also get us in trouble, theoretically.)
  3. Moral reasons -- we're very high-traffic, and if we have a link to a popular media in a high-traffic article, and it's to a copyvio, and the copyright holder also hosts the media on his site, where he has ads that produce revenue, so he's able to feed his family and afford new crutches for Little Timmy... some percentage of his revue stream is going to be lost. This would be a moral fault on our part. Sure most copyvio links won't rise to this level, but it's reasonable to ban them rather than having to try to adjudicate the morality of each case.
  4. Organizational or maybe call it "hygiene" reasons. We are constantly (and properly) patrolling for copyrighted material (different issue from copyvio links) -- people pasting in swaths of text from somewhere, etc. It's a constant patrol and a constant headache, and constantly explaining "no, you can't paste in stuff from your website, even though you wrote it and hold the copyright (without an OTRS ticket)" and so on.
So we are copyright hard guys, and bringing in an exception... it'd be contrary to our normal mode, our sense of stuff as an organization... It'd be like having a law for firemen: "Well, put out fires, but if the homeowner is behind on his taxes you don't have to, and if she has multiple felonies you mustn't". It's just much simpler and keeping with the I-am-a-firefighter ethos to be: "Put out all fires".

OK. Any of the first three taken alone is sufficient reason to forbid copyvio in articles (the fourth by itself, though a valid consideration, isn't). All three (or four) put together -- well of course we're gonna ban copyvio in articles. It's clear cut and incontrovertible.

But then two things about this. All of these apply to non-article pages much, much more weakly:

  1. Practical -- it is not a WMF goal that talk pages and so forth be widely distributed downstream (you can, but its not our goal for anyone to do so).
  2. Legal -- all judgements against copyvio links have been against commercial linkfarms. A person cannot and will not be prosecuted for an occasional copyvio link on their low-traffic, not-for-profit website (which non-article pages are low-traffic and not for profit). Trust me on this, prosecutors and judges are not morons or robots. Our legal exposure is this statistically zero. And we're not concerned about polluting for downstream use.
  3. Moral -- non-article pages are low traffic. There's never remotely been a case where this has been a problem in 15 years that I know of. If a case comes up every 30 years or so we can handle that. It's just much more of a potential issue for our high-traffic articles which are explicitly offered to the public.
  4. Organizational is the one that remains in play. And I believe that's why we are here. I understand this, it is human nature and a positive aspect of human nature. "A main interest for me here is quashing copyright vio, that's a chosen volunteer role. I seek out copyright violations, and when I see one I am the Hammer of Hell, and in this way protect and defend the Wikipedia". And this is great and necessary and thank God for editors like that. And if course it is hard to ask someone to turn that off just for links when they flip over to a non-article page (where patrol for cut-and-paste copyright violations is still on, of course).
At the same time, whoa. Anything can be taken too far. Firemen don't put out campfires. Cops don't shoot innoce... well, firemen don't put out campfires. So you do have to know when to quit and consider nuances, in this case the difference between cut-and-paste copyright violations (bad everywhere) and copyvio link violations (different on article and non-article pages).
And there's another thing in play here which hasn't been mentioned: copyright is changing and is itself becoming evil. Did you know that? It's true! Now completely unmoored from the concept of encouraging the creation of works for the public good, it is now considered to exist for the protection of "intellectual property", which is very different. From being a "property right" issue, it is then easily used to put public discourse more under state and corporate control, constrain the intellectual life of the people, cast all intellectual activity as from a market perspective, and allow the camel's nose of state interest intrude into all creative activity.

A recent post here asserts "in the European Union, the Parliament is debating copyright rules that would create new ancillary copyrights for press publishers and would create a mandatory censorship machine, affecting Wikipedia, which MEP Julia Reda says that Wikipedia could be required to employ robots to filter copyrighted content, and it won't even recognise fair use... The new EU copyright reform could remove safe harbours" and so forth. Not really up on all this, but it's something that you do hear.

I'm confident that within 50 years copyrights will be infinite, and moreover the concept of "public domain" will be gone and all works now in the public domain will again be under someone's copyright (privatized in some manner, probably similar to how Soviet property was privatized). If you insist on electing a mix of extreme rightists and moderate-left corporate toadys to your national legislatures (and apparently you do), eventually enough of them are going to look around and say "Whoa, there's this huge body of popular work, Shakespeare, Mark Twain, etc, and it's not being monetarized, which is crazy -- it goes against everything market theory has taught us, and we're leaving money on the table, money that my publishing-industry donors could be raking in and passing some to me". Mark my words: meet me back at this thread in 50 years and we'll see if I was right.

OK, </rant>. My point "protecting the right of copyright, in all seasons and for all causes" was a noble thing 50 years ago but now it is much less so (at least arguably) and this trend looks to continue. Of course we have to be vigilant against copyright violations (of which copyvio links is a subset) for the 3 (or 4) good reasons given above. That doesn't mean we have to like it, or extend it one inch further than we need to. Herostratus (talk) 16:20, 4 May 2017 (UTC)

Nice rant. See WP:NOTPART - our legal policies (guess what, WP:COPYRIGHT is a legal policy) apply all over Wikipedia, not just in content space. So there you have it. You should not link to copyvio material anywhere on Wikipedia. We are not extending it one inch further than we need to, eh, we are not extending it one inch further because all of Wikipedia is already encompassed (wait, is there a world beyond Wikipedia?). Now just lets make that clear in policy and guideline, shall we? --Dirk Beetstra T C 17:49, 4 May 2017 (UTC)
Your "Moral" part of the non-mainspace links has nothing to do with morality, but again only discusses legality. It is still morally wrong (if you agree with copyright in the first place) to link to copyvios for entertainment purposes. Your rant on changing copyright is hardly relevant (we should allow links to current copyright violations, infringing on the income of artists, because perhaps, in the future, in some countries, everything may be copyrighted and censured? Right...). And it is, as Beetstra says, most importantly simply not allowed by WMF legal policy, which goes much further than what is possibly legally necessary, but which is not for us to overrule. Fram (talk) 06:47, 5 May 2017 (UTC)

re-addition

So, can this be readded? Most opposition seems to be about fair use, which is not what the change is about anyway. Fram (talk) 09:58, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

Where it stands so far

OK, interesting discussion. Mostly some of the same voices being heard here. A lot of good points raised by both sides. I definitely see Fram's point of view more clearly. It's a reasonable point of view. (We should get the WMF to sponsor one if us to go to law school. Most editors here seem to have the chops.) So anyway, looking at this page and the other discussion (at VPPOL), just to take a snapshot:

So counting User:Beetstra twice (once for here and once for VVPPOL, because it's a wiki and I can do whatever I want) its 9-5 "Support" (if you don't count Martinevans123; if you do its 9-6) which is 64% "Support" to the degree that that matters. IMO some of the VPPOL people didn't get the full argument on both sides that was developed here, but oh well.

On strength of argument, who knows. Interesting points raised. IMO strength of argument wins the day for "Support" if it's true that a reasonably strong policy-based argument has been made. Has it? Search me. Still, 64%, reasonable policy-based arguments... I can see both sides of the argument, so suppose I "switched" my "vote" to make it 10-4 support (71%)... would that be enough to settle the matter? Would anybody object to the proposition now being considered accepted? Herostratus (talk) 22:25, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

I've been watching this discussion and I still don't see how this is an improvement. The text becomes less concise, is phrased as-if to allow no exceptions (rather than some obvious, really dumb, good-faith ones), and is surrounding a one-off issue. We don't write policy and guideline to deal with one-offs, we take care of the gaming editor. Given that I've mostly only seen WAID and Fram back and forthing (and a bit from Beestra), this change may need an RFC if the editors who believe this is both a good, and necessary, change really must have this change made to the guideline. --Izno (talk) 14:16, 2 June 2017 (UTC)
As long as it is clear that most editors agree that "not allowing such links anywhere unless you have a very good reason (i.e. certainly not for entertainment)" is the correct reading of the policy, I don't mind. But I fear that not having this clarification in the policy will lead to more wikilawyering. Oh well, we'll see. Fram (talk) 09:53, 23 June 2017 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)/RfC: Wikimedia referrer policy

Just to notify you about the ongoing discussion: Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#RfC: Wikimedia referrer policy. Join in there to comment. --George Ho (talk) 16:48, 13 June 2017 (UTC)

 Relisted The discussion was moved to Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)/RfC: Wikimedia referrer policy. Then I have relisted the discussion, i.e. gave the discussion additional 30 days. Therefore, more participants would be welcome to comment at the newer page there during the extended time. --George Ho (talk) 01:50, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

Does WP:ELPEREN contradict WP:ELNO ?

According to WP:ELNO:

Except for a link to an official page of the article's subject, one should generally avoid providing external links to: [jump to point #10]

The bold seems to be contradicted by the information present on WP:ELPEREN which outright states to avoid Twitter. And although it does not mention Instagram, I'd like to know what the stance on that is as well?

The former seems to indicate it is allowed to post links to an official page (incl. Twitter, IG, Soundcloud) on the external links, however, the latter "explanatory supplement" is being cited by some users to remove them from articles. I'm curious to know what is the official stance, and if it should be made clearer? DA1 (talk) 11:12, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

WP:ELMINOFFICIAL should make it obvious/clear. If users are citing ELPEREN in this instance, they really could/should be citing ELMINOFFICIAL. --Izno (talk) 12:23, 7 July 2017 (UTC)
Yep. In the case there is no better official website, a single social media link may be used as an official link. --Ronz (talk) 14:35, 7 July 2017 (UTC)
@Ronz, Izno: I think the WP:ELPEREN supplement should be edited to be made clear. Another question, related to WP:ELMINOFFICIAL; (1) it states one official website: but does that include social media pages? (2) What about a subject, say a record producer; He has his own website, and there's a website for his record label, and also happens to own a video distribution company? The page should be made clear to deal with situations like this. I would assume the latter also be linked, if its relevant to the article and isn't already redirected in his first/primary website.
It also states "If the subject of the article has more than one official website, then more than one link may be appropriate". The conditions that you name (relevant to the article + not easy to find a link to it in the first/primary website) are the most common conditions for including a second (or, even more rarely, a third) official website. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:19, 11 July 2017 (UTC)
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