Wikipedia:Links to other websites

For the guideline on citation/reference links, see Wikipedia:Citing sources. For the style guide for internal links, see the Manual of Style.

This page is a guideline on the Simple English Wikipedia. Many editors agree with the ideas on this page. It is a good idea to follow it, but it is not policy. You can change the page as needed, but please use the talk page to make sure that other editors agree with any big changes.

This page in a nutshell: Links to other websites in an article can be helpful to the reader. They should be kept to a minimum, and directly relevant to the article. See below: Links normally to be avoided.

Wikipedia articles may include links to web pages outside Wikipedia. They should not be used in the body of an article. All links to other websites must follow certain formatting rules. Some acceptable links include those that contain further research that is accurate and on-topic, information that could not be added to the article for reasons such as copyright or amount of detail, or other meaningful, relevant content that is not suitable to be included in an article for reasons not related to its accuracy.

Some links to other websites are welcome (see "What should be linked", below), but it is not Wikipedia's purpose to include a long or complete list of links about each topic. No page should be linked from a Wikipedia article unless it meets these guidelines and common sense. The person adding the link has to show that it meets the guidelines.

This guideline is about links to other websites that are not citations to sources supporting article content. If the website or page to which you want to link includes information that is not yet a part of the article, consider using it as a source for the article, and citing it. Guidelines for sourcing, which include links to other websites used as citations, are discussed at Wikipedia:Reliable sources and Wikipedia:Citing sources.