From CoinFactsWiki

Contents 1 Sandbox 1 2 What to link to 3 What not to link to 4 External link format 4.1 Good 4.2 Bad 5 External link usage 6 Further guidelines 6.1 Don't mislead 6.2 Use short readable links 6.3 English-language sites 6.4 Unpack links 7 Special cases 7.1 Open Directory Project 7.2 Wikipedia 8 See also

[edit] Sandbox 1

The purpose of this page is for development of pages and experimentation.

External links are links to other web sites besides CoinFactsWik. In general the CoinFactsWik policy is that external links should be kept to a bare minimum, and only links to primary sources should be used. There should not be an external links section on any article.

[edit] What to link to

External links should point to primary sources. For example:

• The official tourist office or government web site for Numismatists
• The official web site for a museum.
• The official web sites of cultural and educational organizations offering programs of interest to Numismatists, such as foreign mints and Numismatic sites.

Using only primary sources makes our guide more succinct: where there is usually one or sometimes two primary source links for any subject, there can be hundreds or thousands of secondary source links. We also avoid subjectivity and conflict. It's difficult to decide collaboratively which of the thousands of English-language newspapers, magazines, and Web sites has done Official sites do not need to contain English text pictures, prices, schedules etc can still come in handy, and some WikiNumismatists will be able to read the language or use online translation services to decipher it.

[edit] What not to link to

Avoid linking to secondary sources - for example, avoid links to:

• Personal image galleries and photo/video sharing websites (Flickr, Webshots, YouTube, etc)
• Personal blogs.
• Search engine results (http://www.google.com0
• Wikipedia articles that have a different subject to the Wikitravel article.
• Other Numismatic guides, including audio guides, virtual tours, auctions and webcams

We should avoid links to other Numismaitic guides, to ensure we have numismatic information in CoinFactsWiki, not linked from CoinFactsWiki. This is an incentive issue; if we have lots of links to other numismatic guides, we lose the impetus to create our own. In addition, one of our goals is to produce a guide useful for printing or offline use, and therefore we need information to be within the article rather than linked to at another site.

[edit] External link format

There are three possible formats for "external" links. For the sake of consistency, we only use the first:

[edit] Good

• Example, [1]. To create a footnote style external link the syntax is [http://www.example.com/].

Note that "http://" is included in the link. The software won't recognize a link if the "http://" is missing from a link.

[edit] Bad

Don't use these:

• Front-linked example. [http://www.example.com Front-linked example] (with caption)
• Unpacked http://www.example.com/. http://www.example.com/ (without [ and ] )

[edit] External link usage

There are XXXXX possible uses for external links:

• Official Mint links: If an official web site exists for the destination then it should be linked to only once, within the first sentence of the article, immediately after the name of the destination. Only primary links should be used; a web site that is not maintained by the destination would not be appropriate. For example, in the XXX article, a link to http://www..com/ and only to that web site is appropriate.

• In-article text links: Links within the article text should be kept to a minimum and should point only to primary sources. Examples of valid links might include airline companies, bus companies, and sites offering daily updates and warnings about a destination's condition

[edit] Further guidelines

[edit] Don't mislead

What the reader expects to be at the end of a link, should be at the end of the link. A link to a service provider web page, where permitted by policy, should always be preceded by a mention of the service providers name in the text.

[edit] Use short readable links

Remember that for print versions of CoinFactsWiki , links will be presented in all their URLish ugliness. Readers of the print versions will have to type in by hand the URL that you add. For this reason, try to use the shortest URL possible for links, even if it means a little more work on the part of the reader when they click through a link. Where possible, try to trim out "housekeeping" stuff from the URL. You can almost always leave off "index.html", "index.htm", "index.asp" or "index.php" from a link, for example.

If http://www.example.com/ redirects automatically to a home page like http://www.example.com/home/index.asp?id=384&lang=en, use the shorter version, even though it's "really" going to the long version. Similarly, if http://www.example.net/ has a "splash screen" which eventually takes you to http://www.example.net/index2.htm or something, leave the top-level link in, even though the "real information" is located elsewhere.

Tip:

Of course, if the page you're linking to isn't at the "root" of the site, it makes sense to leave the path part of the URL in. Don't change http://examples.org/scottish-country-dance/ to http://examples.org/, since that top-level page probably doesn't have the same dance information.

[edit] English-language sites

This version of CoinFactsWiki is for English-language speakers (but see language versions of CoinFactsWiki). With few exceptions, it's preferable to include only links to English-language sites or pages. Sites don't have to be exclusively in English, but they should provide some English-language information that will be valuable to the traveller.

Many sites have the information in several languages, e.g., the local language and English. They handle this in different ways:

• Some use the browser's language preference in which case you just use a link to the main page. This has the advantage that if a non-English speaker uses the English Wikitravel and follows a link to a page also available in his/her language, the right version will be displayed. You will have to set you browser's language preference to English to test if there is an English version or you can enter the URL in a proxy such as Proxify. You can check the language preference of your browser, also.
• Some sites have an English version with a good permanent URL, such as: http://travel.example.com/english, use that URL
• Some sites have a main page in a non-English language with a cryptic link to an English page, such as http://travel.example.com/fff?349sdshd.asp. This might not be a permanent link, so it is better to use the URL of the main page and let Wikitravel users find the current link to the English version.

[edit] Unpack links

A link is not a substitute for actual information. Our goals include creating pages useful as printed guides. So, we need to include information that's at the other end of a link, even if it may seem redundant for on-line use.

For example, in a CoinFactsWiki:listing, ===Print version===

When CoinFactsWiki articles are printed the CoinFactsWiki stylesheets are set up so that the full URL of a link will appear in text enclosed in parentheses immediately after the link text. For example, an attraction listing would print as:

[edit] Special cases

[edit] Open Directory Project

We have a special format that features links to the Open Directory Project in a special part of the page - see Links to Open Directory.

[edit] Wikipedia

We have a special format that features links to Wikipedia in a special part of the page - see Links to Wikipedia.

[edit] See also

• CoinFactsWiki:Internal links
• CoinFactsWiki:Links to Wikipedia
• CoinFactsWiki:Links to Open Directory
• CoinFactsWiki:Inter-language links