See more in Wikipedia cleanup

Continuing from this ATT, it was decided by the Mod that articles with the description ending with redirects to Wikipedia or IMDB are unnecessary and should be removed. We're not obliged to provide "further reading" links for biographies, users can look up the person on #1 wiki site themselves by spending 3 seconds and the pages could be improved by having the necessary info themselves.

What to remove:

• "As usual, you can find the basics on The Other Wiki"
• "The Other Wiki has a more extensive article"
• "You can read more on Wikipedia"
• "For more detailed information on his life and careernote see The Other Wiki's article"
• etc

Where to look:

• KJTropes's edit history (who mass-inserted these in the first place with some later users copying the format)
• Wikipedia Wicks
• OtherWiki Wicks
• Wrestling/, Creator/ and Music/ namescape.
• Quoting variation of the phrases in Google after "site:tvtropes.org ".

Edited by Amonimus on Oct 26th 2021 at 7:54:48 PM

Reiterating here that, on the Professional Wrestling page, I went through and cleared wrestlers up to Glacier.

Finished to the K names.

Matt Hardy had over a thousand words of description and that Wikipedia blurb tacked on at the end.

Edited by Tabs on Oct 26th 2021 at 4:44:54 AM

Would it be appropriate to remove the links in Useful Notes pages also?

I hope I don't sound rude, but why is it prohibited just for being "unnecessary"? Just because you don't need something doesn't mean there's anything wrong with it?

Quoting the mod,

What about the fact that we've got a whole index of tropes that also have Wikipedia pages? What do we do about that?

That's just a fun index, not a redirection.

Professional Wrestling is done up to Jerry Lynn

Ohhhh finally we're cleaning these up! Far too many music pages have these worthless links to The Other Wiki; I always delete them...

Should referral links to other websites like IMDb and Anime News Network be removed too?

Edited by N1KF on Nov 1st 2021 at 1:12:53 PM

Glad you are ahead of us!

Yes.

Professional Wrestling done down to CM Punk.

Edited by Tabs on Nov 1st 2021 at 11:16:16 AM

Thanks, Professional Wrestling is done for most folders, although the Tag Teams and PPV folders still need to be checked.

Also removed an instance from Toblerone

Edited by Hello83433 on Nov 4th 2021 at 9:10:20 AM

Removing the instance at Zero-G Spot. Will refer to this thread.

I don't quite get why we'd need to remove every single Wikipedia link and not just the pointless "Read more here!" things. Sometimes it's just helpful to provide a longer list when it'd get overly long to do so in our own entry, like here, or direct users to a historical event or figure or something when we don't have a page on them here.

I guess we could just Google things ourselves though...

Edited by mightymewtron on Nov 4th 2021 at 12:15:34 PM

The Drowsy Chaperone has this one, which I've gone ahead and cut already. It's not only lazy, but also Linking to an Article Within the Article.

For a more detailed plot, see The Drowsy Chaperone's page on The Other Wiki.

Edited by FernandoLemon on Nov 17th 2021 at 11:30:46 AM

Yes, that is the point. Also, we should always remove "referral" links; this is long-standing policy. We aren't getting paid for them, after all.

Does that mean payment would be enough motive to advertise in the wiki itself? That idea makes me uncomfortable, and I hope the staff are not open to that.

That would be a bridge to cross if and when we come to it. I have no reason to believe that we are planning anything like that, but if we should someday decide to add referral links, having existing commercial links could create issues. I'd rather keep the slate clean.

And besides, why shouldn't we get paid if people are using our site to advertise works? The door swings both ways.

Since looking at the Image Pickin thread, I found this on the Tarot Cards page:

NOTE: Unless specified otherwise, all card imagery come from the Rider-Waite-Smith version, perhaps the best-known tarot deck. Spare a few extra minutes for the actual artist, Pamela "Pixie" Colman Smith.

The first part can stay, but should the second sentence be reworded and The Other Wiki link removed, or just remove the second sentence entirely (because it feels snippy)?

Bumping this.

Most likely. They can Google the name themselves.

I think that link is fine, and I agree with mewtron that we don't need to remove all links to Wikipedia; I think the one to the list of Google hoaxes was fine, since it's too many for us to list them all (at least without making a subpage for Google April Fools' Day hoaxes).

To be clear, I don't mean we should automatically delete all links to Wikipedia. If we do not cover a particular topic at all, especially in the context of something like a Useful Notes article, giving people external references is fine.

What I object to is linking to a work's or creator's Wikipedia article (or IMDB page, Amazon store page, etc.) on our own article for the same topic. That's an absolute no-no.

As for the specific case cited above, it does seem excessive. Rather than link to Wikipedia, state the artist's name. If someone is that curious they can Google her.

Edited by Fighteer on Mar 12th 2022 at 11:58:08 AM

The point of this is not to delete all links, the point is to either replace links with an elaborate paragraph for TVT page or to be used as a citation. For example, articles that describe a real person and then encourage users to "read the rest elsewhere" feel half-assed and linking rarely serves a purpose that we seek.