Talk:2014 United States House of Representatives elections in North Carolina

External links

Binksternet is wrong in his reverting the use of the DMOZ template. I highlighted the relevant phrase of WP:ELMAYBE below:

Links to be considered

Shortcut: WP:ELMAYBE.

3. A well-chosen link to a directory of websites or organizations. Long lists of links are not acceptable. A directory link may be a permanent link or a temporary measure put in place while external links are being discussed on the article's talk page. Many options are available; the Open Directory Project is often a neutral candidate, and may be added using the DMOZ at DMOZ template.

As anyone can plainly see, there is no requirement for only one link, or an ongoing discussion about EL in the article, or anything else he might try to claim in future. Articles which use the DMOZ template in EL also list any official links, followed by any major resources. For example, a country might list its official government site, the CIA World Factbook link, the link to the current Chief of State and Cabinet Members list, and the DMOZ category. Wikipedia has NEVER required or even suggested that all links be deleted and replaced with the DMOZ template. Binksternet himself was part of the "consensus" which decided which of the fields in Template:CongLinks were important enough to remain. Now he's telling a very different story. He is edit-warring. See this, which explains the group's rather odd determination to remove all links to such things as complete campaign contributions, voting records, statements, writings, appearances on C-SPAN - in short, the non-partisan, non-cherry picked, non-spun information available for politicians. People come to Wikipedia to find information, not the lack thereof:

Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2014 January 3#Template:CongLinks

*Delete (preferred), alternative is refocus and substitute, and mark the template substitute-only if kept. Some of the links are relevant for many congresspersons and candidates, and approach WP:ELYES unless already used as a reference. Among the documented tags:

• • congbio, congress: approaches "Official" and likely to have information which can and should be used
  • ballot: marginal; it is a quasi-wiki; not always relevant
  • fec: reliable, but not always relevant
  • govtrack, opencong, opensecrets, legistorm, followthemoney, ontheissues: generally reliable, usually not relevant
  • c-span, rose: Quasi-search results
  • imdb, nndb (sorry, that one's not documented), worldcat: Usually not relevant
  • bloomberg, guardian, nyt, wsj, washpro: much like a search result.
• My second choice (after an outright delete) would be to substitute only the congbio, congress, and fec links, and then delete and repurpose the template to a substitute-only use. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 00:02, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

71.23.178.214 (talk) 22:04, 8 May 2014 (UTC)

I don't see the DMOZ link adding anything relevant enough to justify its inclusion. --Ronz (talk) 19:46, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

Let the record show that Ronz again states that material relating to the work and activities of the political candidates isn't relevant to their election article. 71.23.178.214 (talk) — Preceding undated comment added 17:57, 15 May 2014 (UTC)

I have now removed the two links I added in November (Ballotpedia and Open Secrets). There was no discussion, let alone "consensus" when I added them. Oddly enough, Binksternet and Ronz have been adamant that those two sources aren't "relevant", yet when I replaced Ballotpedia with DMOZ, Binksternet was just as adamant in reverting that. (He obviously didn't bother to research who had added those earlier links.) This is clearly not about the links themselves, but some personal agenda they (and a few others) share. I have seen nothing but aggression, bullying, stonewalling, wiki-filibustering from them. I have NOT seen any rational statements explaining the supposed "irrelevance" of these links from them. So let the record show yet again.... 71.23.178.214 (talk) 18:36, 15 May 2014 (UTC)

What you did with that removal has a name: it is called disrupting Wikipedia to make a point. My "rational" statement on this issue has always been a general one about each new external link requiring a greater level of scrutiny. The first link should be easy to add. The second link should be judged somewhat more severely. The third link should be examined more closely than that, and so on. Binksternet (talk) 19:07, 15 May 2014 (UTC)

Discussion at ANI. --Ronz (talk) 14:49, 17 May 2014 (UTC)