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What's the policy on linking to other wikis? Obviously lots of articles have links to Wikipedia, and we have the {{w| }} template for that. And the MediaWiki software allows for links to any other wiki, like this: TARDIS. But is there a Memory Alpha policy or guideline about this?

I'm wondering because I'm starting to make a table at Doctor Who of the actors who have appeared in both Who and Trek, and I'm wondering about linking to Wikipedia or to the Doctor Who wiki. On the one hand, Wikipedia has articles on every Doctor Who story, but they don't have articles on every character. On the other hand, the Doctor Who wiki isn't as well developed as Memory Alpha.

My leaning is to stick with Wikipedia links, but I wondered whether the issue had been discussed before. —Josiah Rowe 06:05, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

I have a feeling that this has been discussed before. However, I think this was years ago, and might not have made "official policy" somewhere. In any case, my opinion about this is that the typical visitor should not be surprised when surfing on our site. If I see a blue inline link, I expect to be taken to another article on this site - not an article on a completely different site. Any "external" link should at least be marked as being something else than just another MA article or, preferably, not be located in the text (but in the "External link(s)" section at the bottom) in the first place. -- Cid Highwind 06:37, 21 April 2009 (UTC)
So you don't support the use of the {{w| }} template in article text at all? I'd have thought it was pretty handy for articles written from the real-world POV. Are you saying, then, that a link like Cyberman is better than one like Cyberman? Never mind — I thought that there was a difference in display between those two. I guess I'm asking whether there's a place for external links in-text in an article like Doctor Who. —Josiah Rowe 07:42, 21 April 2009 (UTC)
I think external links should be in a seperate area, as they are now. First, this maintains a POV within the in-universe articles. Second, I think marking external links within an article would be visually clumsy, in terms of the article.--31dot 10:04, 21 April 2009 (UTC)
Re:Josiah - this is not really about the use of {{w}}, but about inline links to external pages in general. As long as external links look the same as internal links, they shouldn't be used in the same space, to avoid reader confusion. One option would of course be to change the link color of external links - but even then, we should make sure that a link is really necessary in the first place (as, for example, a link to Wikipedia:police box from the Doctor Who article might not), and whether we might want to write an own article about the same topic in the future.
I agree that if we need to have an external link in an article at all, it should preferably be one to Wikipedia, and use the{{w}} template, but it should still be located in an "external links" section if possible. -- Cid Highwind 06:51, 23 April 2009 (UTC)
Fair enough. So should I remove the links to Doctor Who stories in the table at Doctor Who#Crossover actors? —Josiah Rowe 07:05, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

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