1

The exlinks template includes the phrase “Since you’re a relatively new editor here.” I think that this may come off as condescending. Additionally, some editors may have been on wikiHow for a while without really paying attention to the external link policy or not really understanding it. For these reasons, I think it might be better to remove the said phrase altogether. Thoughts?

1 Like
2

I think that phrase was put in because many exlinks violations tend to come from spammers or good-faith new editors who aren’t aware of the policy. Personally I’ve never really been a fan of that phrase either, since you’re right that anyone can make an exlinks violation regardless of account age (such as experienced editors coming back from a lengthy period of inactivity and aren’t fully up-to-date on our evolving anti-spam guidelines).

Maybe this could be a better alternative?

“I noticed you’ve been adding links to wikiHow, and thought I’d use this opportunity to explain a bit about our External Links policy.”

7 Likes
3

Yep, that seems good to me.

1 Like
4

I agree with @Zygomatt ! Usually, these violations are from new contributors, but I do notice some users whose account is more than a few years old, but they’re making the first edit now. “I noticed you’ve been adding links to wikiHow, and thought I’d use this opportunity to explain a bit about our External Links policy.” looks great!:+1:

1 Like
5

+1 to @Zygomatt .

I think the thing is it is usually new editors that tend to contribute a lot to spam, and we can quickly identify and flag spambots/spam-only accounts on wikiHow.

The Exlink policy also makes it clear that self-promotion in article space (links to Discord servers, own YouTube channels, etc.) are not allowed. But another thing is that if it is an experienced user who has made numerous other neutral edits contributes a not-so-well-known link, then it is likely not spam. Even if articles are not deleted as spam/advert, they may stay unpublished until they meet all of our content policies.

To particularly quote:

When an editor makes a significant, neutral change to an article, they are encouraged to source the information they used. On the other hand, “Source Links”, added by people who have not significantly edited the article in an impartial manner, or which do not lead to authoritative sources for the information added to the page, will be viewed as spam and removed.