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Welcome to the external links noticeboard
This page is for reporting possible breaches of the external links guideline.
  • Post questions here regarding whether particular external links are appropriate or compliant with Wikipedia's guidelines for external links.
  • Provide links to the relevant article(s), talk page(s), and external links(s) that are being discussed.
  • Questions about prominent websites like YouTube, IMDb, Twitter, or Find a Grave might be addressed with information from this guide.
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Playbill and Netflix as external links?

Are links to sites like www.playbill.com (/person) or dvd.netflix.com with a clear focus on selling stuff and advertising acceptable as external links? See Alec Baldwin as a usage example (in the edit history). Such links seem to be a clear violation of WP:ELNO #1 and #4, but I'd appreciate additional opinions before going on a mass-deletion spree (only for links in EL sections to be clear). GermanJoe (talk) 17:31, 8 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@GermanJoe: For me, you can start your nuke process. Tell me what those links add on a case-by-case basis, and I might change my mind (because they don't ..). --Dirk Beetstra T C 10:49, 9 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I have removed most of the EL occurences (may have missed a few), thanks for the feedback. GermanJoe (talk) 13:27, 15 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Netflix links are suitable as el's for their original programming. This would not be the case for their DVD subdomain. --Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 16:30, 15 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@Emir of Wikipedia: You mean, the netflix page of a program made by netflix would function as the official website of the subject .. that one makes sense .. all other netflix links are likely inappropriate external links. --Dirk Beetstra T C 17:30, 15 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Yep. I mean exactly that. Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 17:34, 15 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Agree, I only focussed on the dvd subdomain for this cleanup. GermanJoe (talk) 17:41, 15 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Linking to GitHub

Under what circumstances is it appropriate for a user to insert a link to their own GitHub? I keep encountering users doing this while I'm on patrol. Aspening (talk) 18:04, 9 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Aspening: to me, most fail under WP:ELMINOFFICIAL, often they are just another official link of the subject, the main website is sufficient. —Dirk Beetstra T C 21:00, 9 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The article Body modification keeps having links to social media websites, namely "malebodymods.com" and "malemods.com", added to the "Seel also" and "External links" section. Attempts to remove them or mark them as inappropriate are excessively reverted by User:Mc4bbs, and attempts to discuss the issue have been ignored. --Equivamp - talk 15:41, 13 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Equivamp:  Defer to Local blacklist, if the user has been warned and persists it is generally the way forward (we could try a block through AIV, but experience learns that that is often not helping). —Dirk Beetstra T C 18:08, 13 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Women in STEM fields - two links

An IP has added a link from a conservative political group to Women in STEM fields ("The narrative falls apart"), referencing a brand-new primary source. I maintain that 1) the first link is a textbook case of an unreliable source; 2) the second link is a WP:PRIMARY source -- and a new one at that -- so not useable by itself. Thoughts? --Calton | Talk 00:30, 30 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with your assessment of the refs and removal of the link. I'll respond on the article talk as well. --Ronz (talk) 02:26, 30 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Musical artists and albums pages being excessively linked to Amazon or iTunes

What's the rule about linking to places that sell mainly sell products like Amazon or iTunes, but provide no real useful encyclopedic information? There is currently a lot of album and artist articles associated with Bethel Music group and the Bethel Music singer Brian Johnson that contain many links to both sites. The links are not used properly as citations either and seem to only be there for the purpose of sending readers to a place where they can buy the artists work. Or to make it look like the subjects of the articles are more notable then they are. Further, Any attempts made by me or others to change the links have have been reverted and led to arguments. So I would like to know if they are actually usable or not in this context. There is also many links to a place selling lyrics and sheet music, but provides no encyclopedic usefulness, that Id like to know the appropriateness of. --Adamant1 (talk) 23:40, 1 August 2018 (UTC) [reply]

@Adamant1: WP:ELNO #5 says those links should not be included. Feel free to remove them again, linking to that point and leave a uw-spam warning on the usertalk of restores it. If I'm on and active, feel free to ping me when you warn them. Ian.thomson (talk) 23:52, 1 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@Adamant1: can you link to a couple of pages with this problem? --Dirk Beetstra T C 04:03, 2 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@Beetstra: Sure. Unfortunately I already went through the worst offenders, but here's a few We Will Not Be Shaken (Live), Without Words (Bethel Music album), This Is Jesus Culture, Starlight (Bethel Music album) (has like six references to both Amazon and iTunes), No Longer Slaves, Amanda Cook (singer) (has 8 references to iTunes), You Make Me Brave: Live at the Civic, Have It All (Bethel Music album) (Has a link to a tweet about how to pre order the album on Spotify. Along with four references to iTunes), Have It All (Bethel Music song) (eleven links to iTunes and Spotify).— Preceding unsigned comment added by Adamant1 (talk • contribs)
@Adamant1: that all are references. This guideline is concerned with external links. Most of these are indeed hardly ever suitable as external links, but used in the right context they can serve as primary references for certain information. It does seem a bit overdone, though. --Dirk Beetstra T C 08:50, 2 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Many of the commercial citations don't verify the information they're cited for. For example, We Will Not Be Shaken (Live), iTunes is cited for the date "January 26, 2015," though the iTunes entry seems to only support "2015." It also is cited for writers and worship leaders, though the iTunes entry just lists artists. This leaves me inclined to view that citation as WP:REFSPAM. In Without Words (Bethel Music album), Amazon, iTunes, and Spotify are cited. Once again, the iTunes page generally fails to completely support everything its cited for. Spotify contains even less information. Amazon supports probably the most information that it's cited for out of all the commercial references, but I can't say its perfect. I probably would defend its use were it not accompanied by the other instances of refspam.
All of these links (and many of the articles) seem to have been added by Kuda188, who, after a couple of years of productively and laudably making or expanding a variety of articles concerning mostly Zimbabwean academics and athletics, suddenly rather switched on 27 Nov 2016 to making and expanding only articles about a branch of the American music industry that targets churchgoers -- specifically topics immediately connected to Elevation Worship and Bethel Music, who have performed together. (Furthermore, Leeland (band) has releases through both Elevation's Essential Records and Bethel Music's own label). This one edit is the only exception to that pattern.
So we have a number of articles, many of which limp by on WP:NM while otherwise failing WP:GNG, all created by a single purpose account that drastically switched topics, that all contain weak references to sites that sell products for two connected organizations. Now, I can imagine that there's a perfectly innocent explanation, especially if the user in question promises to do better with referencing in the future (maybe stop citing sources that sell the music entirely). I would have a harder time buying such an explanation if the explanation were accompanied by an attempt to defend citing iTunes and Spotify when those citations contain almost no useful information. Ian.thomson (talk) 21:48, 2 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Per Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#Lepidoptera~plwiki, I should probably ask here for consensus:

I would like to undo all these external link additions, at least those to lepidoptera.eu, with an appropriate edit summary, linking to this discussion and the ANI discussion, also taking the time to fix edits that are not the "current" version of the pages anymore.

The website contains non-free images that should instead be uploaded to Commons by the photographer. The massive promotional addition of external links has already partly been undone, and I would like to finish the process. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 18:38, 2 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Two Itried were dead links. Suggest to remove, wp:not and wp:el issues. --Dirk Beetstra T C 18:45, 2 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Just an addendum. All links were added by:
I would suggest to remove all links added with currently no prejudice for re-addition by uninvolved editors (though I think that they make bad external links per our guidelines, and unless the creator of the website is a known, recognised specialist in the field, I would also say that they are not suitable as references as more authorative works do exist for this data). --Dirk Beetstra T C 19:30, 2 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Oh! Wow. Now that I see that COIbot has revealed a long-time issue, I'll now go ahead. I'll take some time, I don't want to make a hasty bad edit. No need to rollback, I'll deal with it. Thank you for the confirmation. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 19:34, 2 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I have mass rollback feature, all top edits are reverted (as far as I could see, only external links). That should clear out a lot of them already. --Dirk Beetstra T C 19:39, 2 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Ah -- the list of their contributions will not be nicely sorted between "done" and "needs extra care" then, however. Would it be useful to do the rollback after the special cases have been dealt with? ~ ToBeFree (talk) 19:42, 2 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Edit: Rollback already done, I have a new idea: Could we poke the bot a second time to get only current links? Thanks for the rollback already ~ ToBeFree (talk) 19:44, 2 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
(edit conflict) I have yet to see a link that actually is needed. As above, I think that this fails our inclusion standards (all this information could be incorporated easily into Wikipedia, WP:ELNO #1).
Literally ALL these links were added by these two accounts. Over 8 years not a singular independent editor has deemed the site to be useful for inclusion. As ALL the edits are COI-edits, I would remove ALL of them. No special cases, wipe. --Dirk Beetstra T C 19:49, 2 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
For the leftover links, please use the linksearch function (first links in summary template, 'en' and 'https'). The bot report is about additions, not about actual links. --Dirk Beetstra T C 19:49, 2 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Wow .. still 900 links left. --Dirk Beetstra T C 19:50, 2 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the search link, that's awesome. HTTPS done, continuing with HTTP. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 23:03, 2 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
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