Wikipedia talk:Writing better articles/Describe external links

Recommend also note:

Ad warning: pop-up ads, in-page ads warning
Loading issue: frequently/sometimes down, slow/fast

--Menchi 02:23, Aug 7, 2003 (UTC)

NPOV links

What's the standard for NPOV in external links? If one spies an External link in an article that appears to be a personal political rant, is it ok just to leave it there? In this case, I'm referring to a link at the bottom of the Epilepsy article. It was written by a fellow Wikipedian, and seems to have only a faint relationship with the subject matter, but I'm not sure what the "rules" are for such material. Dachshund

One should seek NPOV balance in links the same as one seeks NPOV balance in quotations, citations, and attributions: try to include links to a variety of viewpoints and note what kind of treatment each site gives the subject. That doesn't mean you should link to every nutter with a geocities page, of course; information should be relevant, informative, and useful. --Brion

Links to large files

I have just edited Biometric word list#External link to reflect the fact that the link is to a 2 megabyte PDF. I think there should be some sort of guideline that external links to slow-loading pages should contain a warning such as this, and PDFs in particular as many people will prefer to download them rather than view them online. This one in particular doesn't give my web client (IE5.0) any idea of the file size.

Any other thoughts? Is there such a guideline already and I've missed it? If not, where should it go?

What should the criteria be? I think 2 megs is at least enough to warrant a warning, in fact my feeling is that about 200k and up should ideally have some sort of warning, as a rough guide. I also think it's going to be a very rough one, it's no particular hassle IMO if people deviate by a factor of two in either direction.

Should we even have this sort of link to a PDF? Many users wouldn't be sophisticated enough to decide to download it rather than view it online. So should we give them some extra help, eg an explicit download link? Andrewa 06:03, 15 Dec 2003 (UTC)

As a matter of courtesy I always insert a little "(pdf)" marker to the end of pdf links. This should suggest the link may be rather large. Dysprosia 07:06, 15 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I do similar notice as Dysprosia above. I hate PDF. Just waiting for Adobe program to load takes like 10 seconds, then another 10 seconds for file to load (in Win98). So I say (PDF) with a wikilink, and those who needs download link of the program and click on PDF to find out (and learn more about it from our article!). --Menchi (Talk)â 07:13, 15 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Has this policy been superseded by practice?

It seems to me that this policy has been superseded by the practice of idenifying the website and/or offering a short explanation of the website (rather than go into all the detail recommended on this page). Am I right, and if so, is it ok to amend the policy in line with what actually happens? jguk 13:21, 31 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Proposal to consolidate advice on writing better articles

At present there are many articles in the Wikipedia namespace that seek to give guidance on how to write better articles. I propose consolidating these into a much smaller number. On User:Jongarrettuk/Better writing guide I propose how these could be consolidated. The proposal is not to change advice, just to consolidate it. If I have inadvertently moved what you consider to be good advice that is currently in the Wikipedia namespace, please re-add it. I'm hope that the proposal to merge all these articles, in principle, will be welcomed. Of course, it may be preferred to have 2, 3 or 4 inter-connected articles than just one and would welcome advice on how this could be done. (In particular, perhaps all the guidance on layout should be spun off into one consolidated article on layout.) I'm also aware that putting lots of different bits of advice together may throw up anomalies or bits that people now disagree with (including bits that I myself disagree with:) ). I ask for support for the consolidation. Once the consolidation has happened, the advice can be changed in the normal way. Please feel free to improve on the current draft consolidation, but don't remove or add advice that is not currently on the Wikipedia namespace. If all goes well, I'll add a new Wikipedia:Guide to writing better articles page on the 19th, though maybe some bits of the new article will need to be phased in over a longer period. I'll also take care to preserve all the archived discussion in one place. jguk 20:00, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)