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Recently I've been seeing a lot of edits to the tag wikis, where the body of the tag wiki is just an URL, either to wikipedia, or some documentation. I feel that this kind of wiki is unhelpful, so I usually reject the edit with a custom message, saying something along the Lines of:

A tag wiki should be more than just a link.

But I've been seeing a lot of them, so I want to confirm if my understanding of what a tag wiki is, is correct or not.

I can see that most of these edits are by new users with low reputations. I feel that since a tag edit gives you 2 points, these are just low hanging fruits, and these users might be using it to quickly gain reputation.

So, are we OK with tag wikis being only a single URL?

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  • -1 for the "low reputations ... low hanging fruits" comment. It's not a good attitude to have towards newcomers to the site.
    – Martin F
    Dec 4 '13 at 21:15
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    @martin I didn't mean it in a derogatory sense. There is nothing wrong in trying to gain rep. Dec 5 '13 at 1:09
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I think a tag wiki with just a bare URL should be rejected so you have my full support on the proposal outlined in your Question.

This may sometimes be coming about because new tag wiki writers are trying to write the tag wiki itself where the tag excerpt should go, because it is presented first. Having thus written the Tag Wiki in the excerpt box, all they may have left to write is a URL as reference.

Perhaps we need to try and do more education about the tag wiki excerpt being just the elevator pitch to the tag wiki. Next time I reject a "URL only" tag wiki suggestion, I will try to expand my feedback to its suggestor.

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I agree with you, but there is one exception:

When there is no tag excerpt and no tag wiki (i.e., it is the first edition), the Edit Summary box is not available (see screenshot at the bottom).

So, if an excerpt is suggested for the first time, and it follows at least part of the tag excerpt policy, the only place to write a reference is the tag wiki box.

In such cases, where the reference is important to support the excerpt suggestion or to avoid plagiarism, I believe it would do no harm to approve.

enter image description here

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    In the situation you describe I think the problem may be that new tag wiki writers are trying to write the tag wiki itself where the tag excerpt should go because it is presented first. Perhaps we need to try and do more education about the tag wiki excerpt being just the elevator pitch to the tag wiki.
    – PolyGeo Mod
    Nov 23 '13 at 22:40
  • @PolyGeo, I am not sure if I followed your comment (maybe is my English, sorry). Let's suppose I want to suggest a wiki excerpt to a tag that has no excerpt yet (I do not want to suggest a wiki, but just the excerpt). So I do my research and I think it is valid to show the reviewers, where I got the information (or part of it) to avoid plagiarism or because the suggestion was derived from some meta thread. The only place to put this reference is in the tag wiki box. I agree with your last sentence. Nov 24 '13 at 14:02
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    +1 I have approved some tag wikis for precisely this reason.
    – whuber
    Nov 25 '13 at 13:44
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    In this instance I think a better procedure would be to repeat the excerpt as the wiki itself but include the URL in the latter. That way the excerpt is ready to be made more concise, and the wiki itself has a starting point (with a reference URL) from which to revise with more details.
    – PolyGeo Mod
    Jan 19 '14 at 3:20

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