I see that User:DuncanCraig1949 YESTERDAY added an external link to a short video recording (based at YouTube) of Easwaran, the author of the Passage Meditation book covered in this page. The external link was removed as "spam" by User:Carl.bunderson. It seems to me that linking to a book-relevant video by the author of the book could improve the page and be informative, helping readers to enhance their understand the book and its author. And according to WP:Spam#Videos, I do not see how this would be spam (e.g., "a video is not a spamming video if it refers to the official site associated with the Wikipedia article"). However, I'm not sure that it was sufficiently clear that the linked video is relevant to the book. DC1949's final link was to a video on "Training Attention", which is an important theme in the Passage Meditation book, but that theme is not made clear on this page. It strikes me that either the page should be updated to make it clear how training attention is a theme of the book, or else a link to some other video, more clearly relevant to the book, would be more appropriate. Health Researcher (talk) 04:22, 30 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
See WP:NOTDIRECTORY. Wikipedia does not list every external website, or even a representative sample of websites, that mention or feature the work of an author. Wikipedia is not intended to provide guidance on how to perform a certain procedure. In short, the removal of the youtube link by Carl.bunderson was correct. Johnuniq (talk) 05:29, 30 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Johnuniq appears to have partly concurred but partly missed the point. An external link to a video that provides page-relevant additional information is neither forming a directory nor is it turning Wikipedia into an instruction manual (WP:NOTHOWTO). There is no prohibition against linking to instruction manuals (even if that had been the case here); the issue is what is "relevant to an encyclopedic understanding of the subject": WP:EXTERNAL#What_should_be_linked states that "What should be linked [is]... Sites that contain neutral and accurate material that is relevant to an encyclopedic understanding of the subject and cannot be integrated into the Wikipedia article due to... amount of detail... or other reason". An appropriate video could fit that criterion and improve the page vis-a-vis Wikipedia's mission of building an encyclopedia. For example, the article on Richard Feynman has long included external links to several videos (here in 2006 as a "good article" [1]). Not that including such a video on this page would necessarily make a big improvement. No big deal. But there is nothing inherently wrong with it. Health Researcher (talk) 06:20, 30 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I PROPOSE THIS NEW LINK to replace the deleted one - hopefully this makes clear why this video link is relevant to the Article. I don't myself see this video as providing guidance or instruction: rather, it is the author of this book giving a further explanation of the purpose of (passage) meditation. The title of the link (in blue) are the first words spoken on the video, and introduce the subject.
I hope you feel this link is now in the spirit of wikipedia and a useful addition to an encylopedic knowledge of the subject. Alternatively, if you think it would be more appropriate, I could add the link inside the article itself, for example where it says:
According to Easwaran, the practice of meditating on a specific passage of text (Easwaran suggests the Prayer of Saint Francis or Psalm 23 as examples[3]) has the effect of eventually transforming "character, conduct, and consciousness."
I could replace this with:
According to Easwaran, the practice of meditating on a specific passage of text (Easwaran suggests the Prayer of Saint Francis or Psalm 23 as examples[3]) trains the attention and has the effect of eventually transforming "character, conduct, and consciousness."
I had removed the link because of this line from WP:EL: "Many videos hosted on YouTube or similar sites do not meet the standards for inclusion in External links sections". I presume that youtube links do not meet EL criteria until proven otherwise. But if there is consensus on this page to include the link, I would be fine with that. And Duncan, if you do include the link in the article itself, it should be as a reference, and not as a naked link. carl bunderson(talk)(contributions)16:25, 1 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The link fails WP:EL because this article is about a book, and the video does not mention that book. The talk in the video is probably similar to some of the content of the book (and the two are by the same author), but that is not a reason to link to the video. The article is somewhat ambiguous in that most of its attention is devoted to describing a meditation technique apparently based on the book. However, the video does not even mention "passage meditation". There are hundreds of available websites and videos with opinions on meditation, and there appears no encyclopedic reason to link to this particular video. The Eknath Easwaran article links to easwaran.org and it's up to that website to provide a list of videos. Johnuniq (talk) 10:41, 2 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
