User:Requestion/urod EL dispute pump

Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)/Archive

Deletions of external links

A wikipedian User:Requestion seems to be obsessed with external links. In software listings, he deletes them, because "wikipedia is not a link farm". He started an edit war, and when I suggested to go to ArbCom, he told that if he looses the case in ArbCom, he will try to delete the whole article. If this does not work, he will again go to ArbCom (and again and again and again...) What to do? Or maybe I make a mistake, and external links for software are prohibited in Wikipedia? What do you think about List of screen capture software and List of screen recording software? --Urod 00:35, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:External links is the guideline for how to use external links. GRBerry 00:47, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

• It would seem that both articles mentioned suffer from lack of sourcing, excessive self promotion, and lack of encyclopedicness. In general articles have a tendency to attract too many external links. >Radiant< 12:04, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

Agreed with Radiant, most articles benefit from a periodic pruning of external links. They tend to get a bit crufty over time, and quite often most of them don't support a bit of content in the article or if they do are redundant. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me Please review me!} 12:08, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

The focus of this dispute revolves around Wikipedia is not a mere directory of links. I also would like to take this opportunity to clear up a misstatement that User:Urod is claiming I said which is factually not true. I never said that I was going to take this issue to ArbCom "again and again and again..." What I said when describing how this dispute was going to be resolved was if ArbCom failed then the article would go up for deletion and if that failed then someone else would repeat this same process over again. I then offered Urod a generous compromise to this dispute to which Urod defiantly responded "No deals with you." (Requestion 17:51, 26 February 2007 (UTC))

To both Urod and Requestion: we are not here to settle any disputes between feuding editors. There are other locations more appropriate for that, and note that you should BOTH provide evidence of your disagreements. The great thing about Wikipedia is that the "paper trail" is easy to trace (but emails are not). Back on-topic: Radiant and Seraphimblade are right-on about WP:EL and redundancy or irrelevance of links; and yes, Requestion has a point about WP:NOT#DIR. As far as I see it, this policy issue is resolved; the feud is to be taken elsewhere. --Thisisbossi 04:46, 27 February 2007 (UTC)