Wikipedia talk:Linking to external harassment

Consensus version

Does this current version have consensus behind it? I'm at least ok with it given David Gerard's recent edits. I don't consider it ideal, but it seems like a reasonable compromise at this point in time. JoshuaZ (talk) 18:24, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

I like it. WAS 4.250 (talk) 10:11, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

I still have principled objections to two points. 1) the nutshell not explicitly stating that links that serve the encyclopedia are allowed. and 2) I don't see how nowikiing some links can be consistent with NPOV. But, everyone already knew I'd say all that. :) --Alecmconroy (talk) 10:27, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

I think it looks good. Thanks to everyone who brought it along to this stage. ·:· Will Beback ·:· 10:44, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

For what it's worth, I agree that this page reflects consensus, and I support it as a guideline. --Elonka 18:24, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

My main concern

Looking at this, it still seems to dance around one piece of problem behavior. It seems to me that the most straightforward case is that where the website at the other end adds something "offensive" and someone erases a general link or one to some other content on the same site as a response to the added material. I don't see this really being addressed, except by some generalities that appear to me to endorse such an erasure. Comments? Mangoe 15:07, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

• Yes, it's addressed. We assume good faith, discuss it on Talk, reach consensus, and (presumably) put it back in. This has happened less than half a dozen times in two million articles. What's disruptive is hysteria and edit warring, after all. Guy (Help!) 16:41, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

Well, haven't we already reached consensus (by rejecting BADSITES in several guises)? It seems to me that we can say, "look, we already have consensus on this; don't remove links for this reason" and skip the fightdiscussion. Mangoe 16:55, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

The problem with that is that BADSITES was a statement of priniciple, whereas we are dealing with tiny numbers of highly specific instances. It's quite possible that, say, a notable individual might pursue a campaign on is blog which we consider is of no real importance biographically, and we might thus decide to link to their website but not their blog. The arbitration ruling was, IIRC, "links in articles are a matter for sound editorial judgement" - that works for me in a way that "no link may be removed, because there was no consensus in principle for removing links" does not. Guy (Help!) 13:38, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

Err, links should always be evaluated in their current state. So yeah, if you link to your blog all over the place, then change it's theme from how you love kittens to photoshopped images of me a la Bert is evil, then yeah, I could insist the link is removed. Likewise, if the New York Times runs a story after I rob six banks in New Jersey (Dear CIA: which I'd never do), we don't start puring all out New York Times links ... Evaluate the purpose of the links, not the historic development. WilyD 17:00, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

Quite true. However in the cases of which I'm aware (I'm not counting them) the links in question were either cites or ELs to the subject's webpage or to a site mentioned in the article. I guess my discomfort arises because the phrase "value to the encyclopedia" has generally been interpreted hypothetically rather than actually, so that (for instance) the reality of numerous citations of TNH's blog was overshadowed by the hypothetical claim that blogs weren't worth linking to. It seems to me that we should bias this a bit in the direction of giving citations and references to subject websites the benefit of the doubt, since consensus has already endorsed those uses. Mangoe 17:41, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

Wait until this is made a guideline, then if in practice your concerns become reality then we can adjust the guideline accordingly. WAS 4.250 15:30, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

I agree. Guy (Help!) 18:04, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

Case study

An editor recently posted on his user page a link to an external page solely concerned with hosting disparaging material on a person who is a WP editor. [1] It is not used as a source for anything, and it appears that the editor who added it is aware that it would be perceived as problematic and is doing so to irritate the other editor. How should we proceed in this matter? The proposal calls for posting a notice on ANI, presumably to get a consensus to remove the link. ·:· Will Beback ·:· 04:34, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

• It looks to me like a clear case of WP:HARASS and WP:NPA. There is no credible reason for linking that site other than to do the thing that Sfacets claims he is not doing, which is to harass or intimidate. I have left a note for the editor. Guy (Help!) 13:35, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

I'm a firm believer in creatively finding middle ground. In this case I would recommend that the user create a subpage of links, add whatever he wants, then blank the page so the links are available in history but not indexed or easily stumbled across. That way he has whatever he feels he needs at hand, but no one is left with a reasonable reason to feel harassed. WAS 4.250 15:23, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

That would work. Guy (Help!) 18:03, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

That's a departure from the remedies recommended in this guideline. I'm not sure how it's substantially different from just deleting the link from his page. Since it'd still be in the page history it'd be just as available as in a blanked sub page. I see JzG has discussed this with the user and has deleted the link from the user's page. ·:· Will Beback ·:· 21:18, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

Guidelines are only guidelines. They are not meant to preclude more clueful behaviors. It differs from just deleting the link on his page because the ability to find that revision on a subpage where it will always be the last revision differs from the ability to find that revision on a page where the revision is continually receding into the past. WAS 4.250 14:37, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

I also believe in finding middle ground, but if somebody wants a page of links, I recommend they try del.icio.us or something similar. WP:NOT#LINK, etc. JavaTenor 23:37, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

I presume he find the link useful in helping him improve the encyclopedia. Maybe reading it on occasion helps him in dealing with another editor. It is wrong to demand others to explain activity that can can be explained by having good faith. Privacy matters. AGF matters. Avoiding unneeded drama matters. Avoiding turning Wikipedia into a constant inquisition matters. This is a tiny thing. Find something that works and move on. WAS 4.250 14:45, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

This is being discussed on the user's talk page without success and so I've started a thread on it at WP:ANI#Linking to external harassment. ·:· Will Beback ·:· 12:44, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

Honestly, if the user truly needs to remember the link, I think it would be better to just bookmark it in his browser rather than maintain the link on his page. --Kyoko 15:10, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

It's worth noting that he not only links to the ugly attacks on me (and others) by his co-religionists, but he adds links to words from the attack and adds a link to my place of work.--Simon D M 18:49, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

Tagged as rejected

Tihs was tagged as rejected, but I removed the tag. It is clear that there is a need for a policy, per multiple ArbCom findings, and we should not allow the refusal of a few to countenance the removal of any attack to derail that process. This needs fixing, not sweeping under the carpet. Guy (Help!) 19:42, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

No problem, just doing some routine cleanup of old proposals. I'll put the proposal tag back. We should probably advertise. --Kevin Murray (talk) 19:44, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

I agree that the "rejected" tag was unnecessary - what's with the mania for tagging every page? It's not as if it has to be a "proposal" or a "guideline" or an "essay" or else "rejected". It can just exist.

What's not clear to me (replying to Guy) is whether we need a new policy, in order to refuse to allow people to derail the maintenance of the encyclopedia. We've always had the power to do that. It's just that we need to start enforcing the policies we've always had. I would note that our enforcement so far has been somewhat inconsistent, and tainted with the appearance that we've based some of our actions on personal offense, and not on sound editorial judgment. If we can get our culture to the point where we know not to bring up personal reasons, then pages such as this one will become unnecessary, and we'll be able to not care what kind of tag it's got on it. -GTBacchus^(talk) 19:50, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

I don't see the need for a policy of this sort at this time; recent scandals and the press coverage related to them shows that it's a bad idea to show any appearance of cliquishness, wagon-circling, trying to suppress critics, or sticking your fingers in your ear and yelling "La La La I Can't Hear You" in response to criticism. One positive effect of the scandals is that people are more willing than they've been in a while to stand up to the bullying of the formerly-dominant clique of insiders; it is unlikely that any link-suppression policy will ever get consensus now. *Dan T.* (talk) 01:54, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

WP:NPA covers this adequately. This proposed policy has been rejected by the community and never will be accepted because we know that we don't need redundant policies. We don't censor links because we don't like them. We censor links that clearly vioate NPA or another policy already in existence. Cla68 (talk) 02:01, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

Dan, you never did see the need to address harassment, but that doesn't mean there is no need. We do "censor" harassment, and so we should. Guy (Help!) 11:32, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

When was this proposal rejected by the community? Did we have a strawpoll? ·:· Will Beback ·:· 22:39, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

So far as I can see, this is reasonable for a guideline. "Rejected" is not the case so far as I can see. WilyD 23:59, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

Read the discussion above folks. It was rejected as being inactive (de facto rejection of inactive proposals). It has been reinstated and nobody is fussing with your project. Good luck, it looks like a good project. --Kevin Murray (talk) 00:43, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

The last discussion, at the end of November, was that everyone agreed to the proposal. [[[#Consensus version]]. Unless there's opposition I think it can be regarded as approved. ·:· Will Beback ·:· 01:51, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

What is different from what we do this week from what is in this proposal?

What is different from what we do this week from what is in this proposal? How is this proposal not what we are already doing right now? I would like those who do not support this proposal to identify the exact language (and diffs of recent editing if you have them) that they feel deviates from existing practice. Let's fix it if it isn't an accurate statement of existing practice. Whether to make that existing practice an official guideline can be decided later. WAS 4.250 (talk) 16:47, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

The section above, #Case study, followed this guideline and had an expected result, indicating that this proposal is consistent with community opinion. ·:· Will Beback ·:· 19:28, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

As near as I can tell, people are objecting to ideas that are not included in this proposal or are claiming that something that has divided the community for months does not need to be clarified with this proposal. BADSITES is dead. This is not BADSITES. BADSITES = "mindless immediate and repeated deletion of certain links regardless of any other consideration". WAS 4.250 (talk) 19:50, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

Terminology

I repointed the shortcut, because it is indeed dead and people citing it should go here instead. J T Price (talk) 05:33, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

For people to communicate effectively it is important that terms have meanings. BADSITES and BAD* mean the proposal that was rejected. LINKLOVE refers to a different proposal that was accepted. They are different. Not the same. Don't create drama by confusing things. WAS 4.250 (talk) 08:53, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

Just curious, what was the reasoning for the LINKLOVE shortcut? I'm not understanding the connection. --Elonka 18:28, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

Encyclopedic value

I have a hard time seeing why the list of guideline points doesn't end with "No encyclopedic value". In my opinion, if a link has encyclopedic value, it should be in the encyclopedia. This holds true even if the link (or associated site) happens to criticize/harrass/attack Wikipedians. Superm401 - Talk 03:33, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

• Sure, and I am absolutely certain that every member of StormFront is completely convinced that their links are of encyclopaedic value and should be linked. But the judgement is necessarily subjective. Guy (Help!) 14:16, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

And Stormfront's site is linked to, on Stormfront (website). So your point is...? *Dan T.* (talk) 14:50, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

I personally removed around a hundred links where it was used - supposedly as a source in most cases - in other articles. Guy (Help!) 15:05, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

It's a matter of editorial judgment in each case, which isn't helped by getting into a state of hysteria about the supreme evilness of any particular site. *Dan T.* (talk) 16:31, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Or by going into extreme free speech hysteria about "suppressing", "censoring" or anything else. Guy (Help!) 18:20, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

We've been over this before, while I agree more or less with Super this was the compromise that was reached earlier. The amount of effort spent getting here was massive. Please let's not revisit this now. JoshuaZ (talk) 22:18, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Articles

Sure, linking to harrasment of wikipedia editors in discussions is the height of incivility, but do we really need to mention articles? I mean, links are covered elsewhere, so if the link truly is of value then why not just link to it? This page says we can anyway, in all honesty this page is completely redundant.--Patton123 16:29, 6 December 2008 (UTC)

Guideline status

I've looked through the archives of this talk page, and I can't find an RfC to promote it to guideline status. I don't know if the process was different in 2007, but I'm reverting this to a proposed guideline, as it never seems to have gone through the WP:PROPOSAL procedure. Trout me if I've missed something, but this is a controversial topic, so unilaterally labeling it a guideline goes far beyond WP:BOLD. --BDD (talk) 17:58, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

It's been a guideline for the last 4 years without comment. It appears also that most of the discussion occurred at WP:NPA: Wikipedia_talk:No_personal_attacks/Archive_8#Linking_to_the_external_attack_sites, and archive 9 etc. IRWolfie- (talk) 15:49, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

That sets a dangerous precedent, don't you think? That someone can just tag an essay as a policy or guideline and it becomes one if no one notices for a while? Perhaps I'm a bit bitter—I followed all the proper procedures in nominating a great essay for promotion just to see a bunch of people oppose it essentially because they don't want any more guidelines, not because of its content, and here someone just tagged this one and it's so. At the link you gave me, I see people talking about this page becoming policy, but I don't see a specific discussion in those archives. --BDD (talk) 16:05, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

If you look through the archives for "Linking to external" you will see numerous discussions about it where they are heading towards consensus, If you go to the Wikipedia_talk:No_personal_attacks/Archive_9 it appears to reach consensus for being included in NPA (no external links to harassment that is), the guideline is a linked to from Wikipedia:NPA#External links as the associated guideline for it. IRWolfie- (talk) 16:10, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

Very well. Perhaps the process was less defined back then. --BDD (talk) 16:18, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

Consensus can emerge in many different ways. There's no need for an RFC. That's just a tool used sometimes to help generate consensus. Jehochman ^Talk 10:43, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

Linklove versus the spam blacklist

I'm going back and forth with a couple of other editors that a link to the current home of the website Encyclopedia Dramatica can't appear on the article's sidebar, or, I suppose, anywhere within the article, because it happens to be on the spam blacklist. I feel the spirit of this policy should allow a redirect since the purpose of linking to a site that is the subject of an article serves an encyclopedic purpose, regardless of the rather WP:BURO matter of its existence on the blacklist (the article has survived [a record?] 24 WP:AFDs). Is this something we should explain more explicitly in this policy, or is it already covered in WP:SPAM as the link obviously isn't being used for the purposes of spam? -- Kendrick7^talk 02:45, 29 June 2013 (UTC)

I don't know where this is coming from, but we have the main page of encyclopediadramatica whitelisted for a long, long time (and so have many other wikis). You can simply link to http://encyclopediadramatica.se/Encyclopedia_Dramatica:About, while the rest is blacklisted. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 14:20, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

That is what I tried to do in the first place before ending up in the weeds. Works for me. -- Kendrick7^talk 05:32, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

'what I tried to do in the first place'?? Can you show me what you tried .. ?? --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 05:59, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

This is the edit in question, and there are multiple problems with it. First of all, http://encyclopediadramatica.se/Encyclopedia_Dramatica:About is not the link to the main page. Second, the edit removes important information (the original URL, the fact the the new site started as a mirror), third, the URL breaks the infobox by making it way too wide. I have explained all that on the article's talk page already, and so far my arguments have been ignored. Kendrick7, if you want a link to ED's homepage to be whitelisted, get it whitelisted. Then you can use that link for the infobox. --Conti|✉ 11:47, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

Expand

I believe this guideline should be expanded to state that there are consequences for engaging in external harassment. Not only is linking to external harassment bad, engaging in external harassment in the first place is wrong. Any editor who does that could be sanctioned here, much the same way a company could sanction any employee who harassed a co-worker off the premises. Jehochman ^Talk 10:42, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

I believe that the old arbcom cases may be ambiguous as far as what the penalties are for linking to harassment now. It once was lax until the Rfar/MONGO case when it was made very strict, then reduced after BADSITES failed but was still more strict than it originally was. Perhaps a update is needed.--MONGO 03:42, 20 July 2013 (UTC)