Wikipedia talk:External links

External links on Christopher Pike (author)

The article for Christopher Pike, an author of young adult fiction, contains a list of all his works. Most of the works had an external link to the internet archive for each work. However, none of his works are in the public domain, and the links basically lead you to a paywall on the Internet Archive site. (You can see the links in this version of the page A link to a version of the article with the external links

I removed all these links because I feel like they aren't encyclopedic. I don't see this on other pages, and I don't see any value in having a bunch of links that take you nowhere. But I felt like I should get advice of other uninvolved editors to see if I am understanding Wikipedia's rules on external links incorrectly. Angryapathy (talk) 21:12, 27 October 2025 (UTC)

@Angryapathy, WP:ELNO#EL6 is the standard advice about paywalls in the ==External links== section, but what you're editing is a Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Lists of works, which has different recommendations.

I'd suggest that instead of either:

• Slumber Party (1985)

or

• Slumber Party (1985)

that editors of that article may wish to consider a proper bibliographic citation such as:

• Slumber Party (1985) Scholastic. ISBN 978-0590430142

Proper citations can include a Wikipedia:Convenience link if editors choose to do so. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:56, 27 October 2025 (UTC)

ELMAYBE#2

This guidance about large pages is over 20 years old now and should be reconsidered. Size is in today's day and age simply not important enough of a factor that it should decide if a link gets in or not. The plugins part is about Java and Flash which I believe should be covered by inaccessible by a substantial number of users point in ELNO. All in all I think the whole bullet point is outdated and can be removed. Trialpears (talk) 16:06, 29 March 2026 (UTC)

WP:ELMAYBE #3 is not about large pages. The statement about "long lists of links" there means "Do not put a million links in the ==External links== section of the Wikipedia article". The external web directory page can be as long as you want.

Or did you mean WP:ELMAYBE #2? ("Very large pages, such as pages containing rich media files, should be considered case by case. Worldwide, many use Wikipedia with a low-speed connection. Unusually large pages or ones that include file formats that will require plug-ins should be annotated as such.") WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:31, 29 March 2026 (UTC)

Yeah, I meant 2... Trialpears (talk) 16:32, 29 March 2026 (UTC)

Rather than no longer being relevant, I think what has changed over the years is our idea of "very large". Nobody wants to click a link and discover that they are now downloading a multi-GB software package or folder of high-resolution photos. People prefer being taken to a plain old HTML page with some information and a button to download it/start the video/whatever, if they want to. If you are on a pay-per-use internet connection, this could be of budget-breaking importance.

Some of this is covered in Wikipedia:External links#Rich media, which I think needs an update. A PDF is not a very good example, for one thing. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:42, 29 March 2026 (UTC)

A multi-GB software package isn't a website though. I can't think of any scenario when an otherwise good website should be excluded based on size alone. Even large websites willbe smaller than a few seconds of video which most peole are more than capable of playing in real time and if you're on a particularly bad connection I guess you have to wait a bit for the website to load. Trialpears (talk) 16:54, 29 March 2026 (UTC)

This guideline doesn't deal in "websites". It deals in "pages", meaning whatever the link takes you to.

For example: Do link to https://dumps.wikimedia.org/enwiki/ (tiny page). Do not link directly to https://dumps.wikimedia.org/enwiki/latest/enwiki-latest-pages-meta-history10.xml-p5137513p5149114.bz2 (9.8 GB; 5–10 minutes for most home internet), or at least warn people first. The size of https://dumps.wikimedia.org/ (the whole website) is unimportant because nobody's going to download the whole website in one go. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:28, 29 March 2026 (UTC)

Sites requiring paid subscription

I think the section §Sites requiring registration (that also includes paid subscription) should in some way link to WP:PAYWALL. Horcrux (talk) 06:50, 9 June 2026 (UTC)

This subsection begins with the words "Outside citations" (emphasis in the original), and has a footnote saying "This guideline does not restrict linking to websites that are being used as sources to provide content in articles."

Are you seeing evidence that this is not clear enough to convince someone that this doesn't apply to cited sources, or are you just hoping to cross-link the pages, so that if someone is trying to find PAYWALL, but they end up here instead, they'll have a handy link to the PAYWALL policy? WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:30, 9 June 2026 (UTC)

The second one :-) --Horcrux (talk) 17:36, 9 June 2026 (UTC)

I'm glad it's the second one. Does this change work for you? (If not, please be WP:PGBOLD. ;-) ) WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:04, 9 June 2026 (UTC)

Yep, thanks! I'm a bit reluctant to "be bold" when making changes to guidelines. --Horcrux (talk) 18:08, 9 June 2026 (UTC)

You're welcome. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:48, 9 June 2026 (UTC)