Help talk:Contents

External link guidelines

Editors who add a certain site into each and every article in the site

Every once in a while, a new user comes by and starts adding a certain site into practically every article. You might want to have some sort of a page where users would have to ask permission to do that first. That is, they would describe that site, try getting permission from you to put it in each and every article and - most importantly - learn how to at least link to external sites right (lately we've seen everything from pure HTML codes to just putting pure URLs in random locations). -Biguns 06:00, 18 March 2008 (EDT)

Format of external links

Many editors just add titles, that is: [http://whatever... title]. Some also forget the "*". Please make it either:

* {{Cite web}}

^{(click on the template to get its parameters)}
Or, if you're too lazy, at least respect your fellow users enough to add ", domain.com" after the link so we'll know what we're dealing with:

* [http://subsite.known_viruses.com/modelX ModelX's bio], subsite.known_viruses.com

Thanks! Admins, I hope you'll consider adding this to the actual help page. -Biguns 19:58, 19 March 2008 (EDT)

I think Biguns is referring to my additions at Rachel Aldana and, possibly, Big Breasted Japanese AV Actresses. As I pointed out at Bigunses talk page, I am a big fan of the {{cite}} template, and use it regularly. However, I added some external links in a quick and dirty format at the Aldana article because I thought it was better to have the links, even poorly formatted, than to lose them (they are taken from a doomed Wikipedia article). I trust that regular editors of the article will clean them up, and even if not-- unlike some Wiki-like sites I know-- I trust that we here prefer the addition of information, no matter the format, to discouraging additions if they don't meet such-and-such a technicality. About the Japanese list-- That is a long-running project of mine here (possibly one of the longest at the site?). As anyone who has followed that article's history knows, the links are put in temporarily to point to existing information on each subject listed until that subject has her own article. Once the article is in place, the links are moved there and properly formated. Formatting them with the {{cite}} template at the list would be cumbersome, sloppy, and a waste of time better spent finding sourcing. Anyway, I hope we here focus on content over form, as focusing the other way around leads to all sorts of unconstructive in-fighting. Dekkappai 20:32, 19 March 2008 (EDT)

Trust me, I wouldn't have written such a section just because of one user and a single example (where you may have saved links from their doom). :-) Anyway, no harm done, but you're just one in many who do this. That is, there are way more editors who leave it to others to fix than editors who actually fix. It's just reality. So in the long term it's not possible to fix everything and it affects the way the site looks and feels. If you're in a hurry, just don't forget there's also the quick method #2. A comma and a domain in the end makes a huge difference.

OK, I'll keep it in mind. Personally, not big enough a deal to me to make it into any kind of policy-- like I say, I use the {{cite}} template when I'm doing my real editing. But for quick cut&paste jobs, I'll put the domain name in after the link. (By the way, your user name is a pretty good translation from the Japanese of my own.) Cheers! Dekkappai 20:51, 19 March 2008 (EDT)