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This guideline is a part of the English Misplaced Pages's Manual of Style.
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Misplaced Pages articles can often be improved by providing links to web pages outside Misplaced Pages which contain information that can't or shouldn't be added to the article. These links belong in an External links section near the bottom of the article.

External links should be used sparingly and kept to a minimum. Misplaced Pages is not a web directory; there are criteria a link should meet before it is added to an article's External links section.

Web pages that have been used as references in the creation of an article should be linked from an article's References section. See Misplaced Pages:Verifiability and Misplaced Pages:Citing sources.

What to link

Any page being considered as an external link should be useful, appropriately tasteful, and accessible to users with disabilities. It should also have a substantive longevity; that is, it isn't useful to provide a link to a page whose contents change often, where the relevant picture or article it features today may be gone tomorrow. (Similarly, such a page should usually not be cited as a source.)

An article about any organization, person, web site, or other entity should link to that entity's official site, if there is one. An article about a book, a musical score, or some other media should link to a site hosting a copy if none of the "Links normally to be avoided" criteria apply.

If an article presents multiple points of view, it is useful to provide a link to prominent sites dedicated to each point of view. The number of links dedicated to one point of view should not overwhelm the number dedicated to any other. Each link should be accompanied by a detailed explanation informing the reader which point of view it presents. If one particular point of view dominates informed opinion, that should be represented first. (For more information, see Misplaced Pages:Neutral point of view – in particular, Misplaced Pages's guidelines on undue weight.)

An article can link to pages that contain neutral and accurate material not already in the article. When possible, the information on the linked page should eventually be brought into the Misplaced Pages article, and the link should then be moved into article's References section. Sometimes this isn't possible and the external link should remain, such as when the linked page contains copyrighted material which can not be brought into Misplaced Pages, or has a level of detail which isn't appropriate for Misplaced Pages (such as professional athlete statistics, movie or television credits, interview transcripts, or online textbooks).

An article about an album, movie, book, or another creative work may have one or two links to professional reviews of the work.

If there are many fansites for the topic covered by the article, then providing a link to one major fansite (and marking the link as such) may be appropriate.

A link to a web directory category may be deemed appropriate by those contributing to an article. Preference should be given to open directories.

Links normally to be avoided

Certain kinds of pages should not be linked from Misplaced Pages articles.

Except where noted, this list does not override the list of what should be linked. For example, if the subject of an article has an official website, then it should be linked even if it contains factually inaccurate material.

  1. A page which only provides information already in the article, or which does not provide a unique resource beyond what the article here would have once it becomes a Misplaced Pages:Featured article.
  2. A page that contains factually inaccurate material or unverified original research, as detailed in Misplaced Pages:Reliable sources.
  3. A page that you own or maintain, even if the guidelines above imply that it should be linked. This is because of neutrality and point-of-view concerns; neutrality is an important and difficult objective at Misplaced Pages. If your page is relevant and informative, mention it on the talk page and let unbiased Misplaced Pages editors decide whether to add the link.
  4. A page that violates the copyrights of others per contributors' rights and obligations. Sites which fail to provide licensing information or to respond to requests for licensing information should not be used. There are currently a large number of links to YouTube and similar sites in violation of this principle. If a linked clip has no licensing information it should be removed or reverted. (Knowingly and intentionally directing others to a site that violates copyright has been considered a form of contributory infringement in the United States.)
  5. Links intended to promote a site, especially if that site's primary purpose is to advertise or sell products or services, or if the site requires payment to view the relevant content. This is colloquially known as external link spamming.
  6. Links to bookstore sites. Instead, use the "ISBN" linking format, giving an opportunity to search a wide variety of free and non-free book sources.
  7. Links to blogs, social networking sites (such as MySpace), or discussion forums unless mandated by the article itself.
  8. Links to search engine results.
  9. Fanlistings are generally not informative and should not ordinarily be included.
  10. Usability and accessibility are also important criteria. Refrain from linking to:
    • A page that is inaccessible to a significant proportion of the community (for example, if it only works with a specific browser).
    • A page which will take an exceptionally long time to load over a slow connection. Worldwide, many Misplaced Pages users have a low-speed connection. If you link to a page which may load slowly, please annotate it as such.
    • Rich media requiring an external application or plugin, such as Adobe Flash or Java, to view the relevant content (unless the article is about such rich media). The source of the material and any applicable copyright will not be evident from the link itself; for this reason a link to a web page that adequately describes and links to the media should be used instead. Also, many media formats require proprietary applications which may not be freely available. If copyright and other restrictions permit, the media can be converted into a more suitable format and uploaded to the Wikimedia Commons, from which it may be linked directly. In the rare cases where a link directly to the media is appropriate, an explicit indication of the technology needed to access the content must be given, as in the following examples:
    • A page written in a language other than English. English language links are strongly preferred in the English-language Misplaced Pages. A link to a non-English page may be appropriate if the page contains visual aids such as maps, diagrams, or tables, or if an official site is unavailable in English, or if the link is to the subject's text in its original language. Follow the guidelines on foreign-language sites. When there are external links to sites in various languages, it can be useful to label them with language icons, including labeling the English-language sites in the list with {{en icon}}, which shows as Template:En icon. These are available for most languages and follow the usual two-letter language codes (for example, {{es icon}}, {{fr icon}}, etc.).

Many otherwise valuable sites are of limited use to most readers because the site requires registration or a paid subscription. Many on-line newspapers require registration to access some or all of their content, while some require a subscription. On-line magazines frequently require subscriptions to access their sites or for premium content. If old newspaper and magazines articles are archived, there is usually a fee for accessing them. A site that requires registration or a subscription should not be linked unless it is being used as a source, the web site itself is the topic of the article, or it has relevant content of substantially higher quality than any available from other websites.

Do not use URL redirection sites, such as tinyurl.com or makeashorterlink.com, in external links. Because they are frequently abused by linkspammers, most of these sites are listed in the m:Spam blacklist, which means that it is not possible to save an edit that contains such a link. Since URL redirection sites are added to the blacklist whenever abuse occurs, you may create problems for future editors by using them. (Sometimes a web site's owner publicizes a link through a Permanent URL site, such as purl.org, and considers this URL to be more "official" than the direct link to his site. In this case, the PURL should be used.)

What can be done with a dead external link

Dead URLs in a list of external links are of no use to Misplaced Pages articles. Such dead links should either be removed or updated with archived versions, which may be found at the Internet Archive Wayback Machine. (Note however that the matter can be quite different when these links are references. See Misplaced Pages:Citing sources#What to do when a reference link "goes dead".)

Some dead links are caused by vandalism (for example, a vandal disabling links to products competing with the vandal's favored product). It may therefore be worth checking to see if there is a working link in earlier versions of article. Some vandalism of this type is quite subtle, such as replacing ASCII letters in the URL with identical-looking Cyrillic letters.

How to link

External links are usually added to an External links section (a level 2 header, like ==External links==) at or near the bottom of an article. This section presents links as a bullet list. Each link should be preceded by an asterisk, and surrounded by a single pair of square brackets with the linked page's title inside the brackets following the link. Optionally, follow all this with a brief explanation of the linked page's significance. For example:

* A Hungarian language site providing historical photos and documents, books and reviews, and links to English language sites.

If an article has a large number of external links, it may be helpful to use subheaders to classify them. This can be done using the next level of section heading (usually a level 3 header; use three equals-signs on each side of the section name) which will then appear in the table of contents. An external links subheader can also be denoted by preceding it with a semicolon, as in:

;External links subsection

which will prevent the subsection from appearing in the table of contents and from having its own link.

It is also possible to add an external link immediately after text that references it, though using an external link for this is discouraged; use a reference instead. (See Misplaced Pages:Citing sources.) To add this kind of external link, put square brackets around it, and it will appear in the article with an automatically-generated number. For example:

'''Frankton''' was one of the names considered for the state of Franklin.

will appear as:

Frankton was one of the names considered for the state of Franklin.

"External links" vs "External link"

Current consensus is that if an article has a section for external links, it should be called "External links" (plural), whether the section has one link or multiple links. Reasons for this include:

  1. Experience shows that future editors often add links without changing the section heading.
  2. Some contributors may be dissuaded from adding links to a section titled External link, since it seems to suggest that there should only be one link.
  3. Using External links gives greater stylistic consistency to Misplaced Pages.
  4. Changing a heading breaks any links directly to the External links section.
  5. The purpose of the section is to provide External links rather than a single External link, so it does not matter how many actual links are listed.

Arguments, which have been considered and rejected, for using "External link" (singular) for sections that only contain one link are:

  1. Misplaced Pages's community-editing usually leads to prompt correction of grammatical agreement oversights.
  2. There is no evidence to show that a significant number of contributors may be dissuaded from adding links to a section titled External link.
  3. In one sense, the use of External links to head a section containing a single link is grammatically incorrect.

See also

For more detailed information regarding Misplaced Pages policy toward and appropriate syntax for external links, see:

Maintenance coordination