What’s up with Wikipedia?
I love the idea of Wikipedia, but the reality is less interesting. For some reason, the editors of the French language page have a vendetta against external links. I honestly believe that Learn French at About is one of the best French sites on the internet, but every time I add it to Wikipedia, someone takes it out. I understand that they don’t want spam, or a hundred sites that all say basically the same thing, but my site is nothing like that. Plus, other language pages at Wikipedia have dozens of external links, so what’s the deal?
3 comments
Permalink1
If you go to
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:External_links and look under “Links to normally avoid,”
you will find that your linking to the About.com site violates 3 policies: (1) “Links that are
added to promote a site” — Whether you intend to or not, you have to admit that the link does
promote your site. (2) “Pages with advertising unless the page is the official home page of the
organization, person, or other entity that is the subject of the Wikipedia article on which the
external link exists” — french.about.com is not the subject of the article, and there are ads
on your site. (3) “A website that you own or maintain (unless it is the official site of the
subject of the article). If it is relevant and informative, mention it as a possible link on
the talk page and wait for someone else to include it, or include the information directly in
the article.” — You maintain it, you added it, and french.about.com is not the subject of the
site.
So in the end, your site cannot be an external link under the current guidelines.
This is unfortunate because your site is, in my opinion and in the opinions of many others, one
of the very best French language learning sites on the internet (I use it a lot and subscribe
to your newsletter). I’m really sorry that you can’t add it as an external link, mais c’est
la vie:)
Permalink2
Hi -
By that interpretation, the first policy would mean you couldn’t link
to *any* external sites, because including any site is basically promoting it. My
interpretation is that you can’t add sites that are selling something, so by linking to the
site you are basically advertising that product.
As for the third policy, my site was
listed on Wikipedia for ages and someone took it off – all I’m trying to do is put it
back.
In addition, the Spanish language page has dozens of external links, whereas
French only has a few, so these policies are not being applied consistently.
Permalink3
Good points. At least it’s on
the site now. I have added the page to my watchlist and will keep my eye on it to see what
happens.