Talk:Continental drift/Archive 2

Archive 1

Archive 2

External links

I think the last edits (converting the http links in "External links" to citations) is ill-advised. I believe it is generally understood (?) that "links" in this context are meant to be www hyperlinks to external web sites that may be of interest to the reader. Citations of sources in support of elements of the article, which may have links to the sources, are in standard bibliographic format for purposes of documenting the source, but that is over-kill for pointing the reader to other sites. I suggest that these edits be reverted. - J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 21:12, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

It is important that all links on Wikipedia (internal or external) give adequate information on where you end up if you actually click the link. Most people probably understand that the links are external, but more often than not, external links on Wikipedia fail to describe what information the page actually offers. External links should not only describe the nature of the target, but also explain its relevance to the article subject. Basically, any external link section needs to make clear why external links are "reliable sources" and why they are relevant to the article. Using templates is a good way to implement that. --Fama Clamosa (talk) 22:40, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

I agree that external links should give some indication of what the link is and possibly why it is recommended. But I do not believe that external links are expected to conform to the same level of "reliable sources" that are used in the article. Putting these links into bibliographic format is so rare as to be contrary to established practice. I think you should reconsider. - J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 23:11, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

You're right. No need for external links to be "reliable sources". Per WP:EL: External links should identify the link and briefly summarize the website's contents and why the website is relevant to the article. This is the relevant guideline. My use of reference templates is unorthodox and the result probably looks slightly overdone.

However, before I cleaned up the section it looked like this:

• A brief introduction to Plate Tectonics, based on the work of Alfred Wegener.
• Maps of continental drift, from the Precambrian to the future
• Four main evidences of the Continental Drift theory
• Wegener and his proofs

This could be four blogs. The third link, kids.earth.nasa.gov, is dead, so I removed it. In none of these cases the target is "identified", there is no information on how old the information is and who produced it. Templates make the entire section more informative and hopefully new links will be added more thoughtfully. If nothing else, these templates will hopefully remind new contributors that the links should be relevant/directly related to the article. --Fama Clamosa (talk) 17:15, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

I have no objection to the substantive changes you made. My objection is to your admittedly unorthodox use of the citation template in this context, which I say is inappropriate. (Secondarily, I would regard such a significant change of format something that should not be done without consensus of other editors.) If your changes were just formatting I would simply revert them, but I don't want to revert the substnative changes. So I ask: would you mind putting those links back into link form, not as links buried in a bibliographic citation? - J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 20:21, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

-Are these videos and maps of continental drift worth including this article as external links?

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uGcDed4xVD4&ab_channel=SpaceRip
 Paleogeographic Views of Earth's History provided by Ron Blakey, Professor of Geology, Northern Arizona University
 http://cpgeosystems.com/index.html

Jcardazzi (talk) 14:42, 23 April 2015 (UTC)jcardazzi

The relevant questions would be 1) do they significantly add to the topic? and 2) do they so better than the existing links? It seems to me they don't; there are better depictions of how plate tectonics works. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 18:47, 23 April 2015 (UTC)