https://cut-urls.com/ref/ram74376'Bold textItalic text== List and table formatting ==

User:Beetstra, I think it might be a good idea to expand WP:ELLIST. You've got a good way of formatting links, e.g., in tables of software or political candidates. Can you post a hypothetical table here, and we'll figure out how to include this option in the guideline? (I'm hoping that if we write it down, there will be both better articles and fewer requests for you to do it all yourself.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:41, 7 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Guideline needs to be revisited and conform to practice

Okay, so this guideline makes it quite clear that aside from sister projects, external links should not usually be placed in the body of the article. However, this is very counter to what I see happening in practice:

These are from such varied topics and subjects and happen so consistently that it seems this guidance isn't reflecting the reality of the situation. I doubt that all these are violating the guideline or they wouldn't have persisted and spread as far as they have. The guidance should be clarified.

Are there specific cases where it's okay for external links in the body? Are well-known databases okay? Are they fine in infoboxes? Is it okay to mask an external link to a non-sister wiki as internal using interwiki markup? ([[imdbtitle:]]; example) Would you want people to be able to link to their Toolforge projects?

It always felt strange to me that Wikipedia was a part of the Internet of yore, where the whole idea was to "build the web" and link out to everything. The original wikis were even meant to point to other specialized wikis, hence why the above imdbtitle link works. But instead, Wikipedia has turned into a walled garden, where either the topic has its own article, or else it will get zero presence or chance to be linked to. I understand that links have spam and rot issues, but this guideline takes a complete hardline stance against them anywhere but in their owns section.

Opencooper (talk) 00:08, 6 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia is a top-rating website which is open for anyone to edit. The current guideline is essential to protect the encyclopedia against promotions, nonsense and general spam. WP:EL is a guideline where exceptions may arise for particular articles. What external link is needed that this guideline is preventing? Johnuniq (talk) 00:37, 6 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
What I'm asking is for the guideline to be clarified so that it reflects the reality of how external links are currently being used on Wikipedia. Right in the first sentence of the page, it states "but they should not normally be placed in the body of an article". But I've posted examples of numerous types of links that are placed in the body all of the time. Is the widespread practice against the guidelines here, and thus all these links should be removed? Or is the guideline outdated and it needs to be clear in which cases they are permissible (refer to the questions above, where for example is it that only certain databases are permissible, and what about infoboxes)? If our documentation for editors is incorrect, it needs to be fixed. I'm aware of spam and all those issues, but I don't see how this affects that since my question is only about the placement of the links. Opencooper (talk) 03:28, 6 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I would not call the use of the ((external media)) template as "in the body". The sentence in context is meant to avoid ELs in running prose in the body, but side-boxes are fine. --Masem (t) 03:55, 6 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Huh? None of the examples I shared use that template. And many are not in side boxes either. Opencooper (talk) 17:40, 6 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
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