Talk:Watermills in the United Kingdom

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This page is essentially a list of mills. It is neither appropriate nor feasible to list every mill that ever existed. There are far too many mills that are listed without there being any article. Some one else (whose work I reverted from) removed links to external sites for two mills. I have restored these but have placed the link after the item in the list, so that the existence of an external link is apparent. I suspect this ought to be done with various others. Ideally every notable mill should have an article, but that is a counsel of perfection. Where a mill is open as a museum, it is presumably notable, and should have an article, but a link to an external website is better than nothing. Peterkingiron 22:05, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

As the 'some one else', could I suggest that you read the Wikipedia policies at WP:EL and WP:NOT. Especially the section Wikipedia is not a mirror or a repository of links, images, or media files in the latter policy, which states:

Wikipedia articles are not mere collections of external links or Internet directories. There is nothing wrong with adding one or more useful content-relevant links to an article; however, excessive lists can dwarf articles and detract from the purpose of Wikipedia. On articles about topics with many fansites, including a link to one major fansite is appropriate, marking the link as such. See Wikipedia:External links and m:When should I link externally for some guidelines.

Interpreting that in this case, I would say that there is nothing wrong with linking to a mill's own web site from an article describing that mill. But linking to lots of such web sites from a list of mills is definately a step too far down the collection of external links road.

Incidentally there is absolutely nothing wrong with lists of redlinks, so long as there is some realistic chance of the linked article being written 'one of these days'. If you don't think there is any such chance (ie. the subject isn't notable enough) the correct action is to remove the list entry altogether, not to go to some half-hearted 'oh well we will put in an extlink instead' action. -- Chris j wood 15:02, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps lists with external links are out of order, but I still think that (as a temporary measure) such linking is better than nothing. May be the result will be that some one with the time can produce a series of short articles on individual mills, based on their own websites. That is certainly even better than what I had in mind. Unfortunately I do not have the time to produce a lot of such articles myself, much as I might like to. Peterkingiron 15:55, 6 August 2006 (UTC)