Stuartmcfaul

External Linking

Hello. I received your questions on my talk page and wanted to address them here for you to reference later if you need the links to the related wikipedia policies. The primary source for external link guidelines, defining what is appropriate or not, is found at WP:EL. I read the whitepaper that you linked to and found it to be very selling and praising of XBRL including the final line that suggests people call or e-mail Hitachi directly for more information on incorporating XBRL in their company plan. This is an example of an inappropriate link because of its desire to sell XBRL to the reader (not necessarily even actually selling a product, but selling the concept of XBRL shows that it's not approaching the issue from a very neutral standpoint). If you don't agree with my assessment of the link, feel free to put the link on the XBRL article's discussion page and open the question to those editing the XBRL page as to whether it passes muster for inclusion in the article.

Secondly, the Hitachi blog fails one of the major "links not to include" which defines blogs as an inappropriate link unless they are being used to establish something notable about a subject (for example, an article about a notable blog itself or if the DSS decryption schema had originally been posted to a blog page). This is because blog content is highly variable and often unverifiable and highly opinionated. This is not the point of external linking on wikipedia. The WP:EL can help guide you as to why we use ELs and how to judge whether a link is appropriate in the future. As always, if someone (like myself) removes content you feel is central to an article, you are always welcome to comment about it at the article's discussion page and see if a general consensus can be reached with other editors that may include your information (or modify it for inclusion). Hope that helps. ju66l3r 01:33, 29 November 2006 (UTC)