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(English) This is an essay. It expresses the opinions and ideas of some Wikimedians but may not have wide support. This is not policy on Meta, but it may be a policy or guideline on other Wikimedia projects. Feel free to update this page as needed, or use the discussion page to propose major changes.
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Although external links on content pages provide useful information, Wikimedia projects are not search engines or link repositories. Links should be kept to a useful minimum, and provide relevant and non-trivial information that isn't present in the page. Where possible, consider using content in links to expand the page or create new pages. Supporting references or footnotes need not be kept to a minimum, but they should be separated from other external links.

Many sites are commercial in nature. Although this provides motive to spam them on wiki pages, there is no problem with commercial sites that are useful references. Many major newspaper websites contain heavy advertisement, but they are nonetheless good references. In the end, the best criteria to consider are the content on the site linked to and its relevancy to the Wikimedia page linked from.

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In this section we show a very outdated table with the number of external links (EL) on local Wikipedias together with links to guidelines.

Language # of ELs #ELs/#articles Date Guidelines Wikispam Removal Rules Clearing bots
English 2,6 M 1,86 September 2006 Wikipedia:External links Wikipedia:Spam ?
German 0,765 M 1,30 April 2007 Wikipedia:Weblinks ? ?
French 0,517 M 0,70 June 2007 Aide:Liens externes ? ?
Japanese 0,356 M 0,97 April 2007 Wikipedia:外部リンクの選び方 ? ?
Polish 0,397 M 0,99 June 2007 Wikipedia:Zasady wstawiania linków zewnętrznych Wikipedia:Spam Bugbot
Italian 0,300 M 0,94 June 2007 Wikipedia:Collegamenti esterni ? ?
Spanish 0,342 M 1,37 June 2007 Wikipedia:Enlaces externos Wikipedia:Spam ?
Dutch 0,296 M 0,95 June 2007 Wikipedia:Wanneer extern linken ? ?
Portuguese 0,179 M 0,67 June 2007 Wikipedia:Ligações externas ? ?
Russian 0,251 M 1,35 June 2007 Википедия:Внешние ссылки ? ?
Swedish 0,129 M 0,54 June 2007 Wikipedia:Externa länkar Wikipedia:Spam ?
Chinese 0,199 M 1,50 June 2007 Wikipedia:外部链接 ? ?
Finnish 0,143 M 1,16 June 2007 Wikipedia:Aiheesta muualla ? ?
Norwegian 0,099 M 0,85 June 2007 Wikipedia:Retningslinjer for eksterne lenker ? ?
Hebrew 0,072 M 0,89 June 2007 ויקיפדיה:קישורים חיצוניים ? ?
Czech 0,069 M 0,97 June 2007 Wikipedie:Externí odkazy ? ?
Hungarian 0,094 M 1,47 June 2007 ? ? ?
Turkish 0,128M 1,52 June 2007 Vikipedi:Dış bağlantılar ? ?