External links
External links are available for songs, albums, artists, tags and events.
Main purposes of external links are
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- Provide ways for the viewers to legally purchase or download the albums or songs.
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- Provide ways for the viewers to find out more about the artists or albums.
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- Provide points of reference.
The first two points should be obvious. VocaDB is not intended to provide all the possible information about artists, nor can the users buy albums on VocaDB. Artists’ own websites, online stores and sometimes other wikis are better for explaining this.
The third point means that links to reliable reference sites, such as vgmdb, Discogs, Hatsune Miku Wiki and the Vocaloid wiki are encouraged. As long as the linked sites are reliable, having more links to such sites makes the information on VocaDB more trustworthy as well. The other sites might still have some useful information that’s not on VocaDB. Links to official sources such as artists’ website are of course even better, but having multiple references is a good thing.
The link description and category will be guessed automatically based on the URL if the domain is known: WebLinkMatcher.ts
Link icons are maintained on the ExtIcons-repository and implemented on ExtLinks.css.
Link categories
Link categories (official, commercial, reference, other) are available for the main entry types (songs, albums and artists).
Official links
- Official
- Commercial
Official links are links to content that the artist can directly control: official websites, social media links, etc. Official links that include commercial features (such as album/song purchase) should be marked as Commercial.
Unofficial links
- Reference
- Other
Unofficial links are links to content that artist doesn’t directly control: Wikipedia pages, fansites, etc. If the link is not referencing the content of the entry, it should be marked as Other.
Link category examples
| Entry type | Official | Commercial | Reference | Other |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Song | Official karaoke links | (Prefer adding the link to the album entry) | Wiki article of the song | Wiki article of the song theme |
| Album | Official album websites | Official commercial websites | Wiki article of the album | Wiki article of the album theme |
| Artist | Official artist websites, social media links | Artist’s profile page on commercial websites | Wiki article of the artist | Wiki article of the artist theme |
Removing links
External link removal guidelines are documented on Content removal guidelines.
Mobile links
Some websites have a separate URL for pages meant to be viewed on mobile:
Always prefer adding the desktop version of the link.
Email addresses
Some artists share their email addresses publicly for example on their NicoNico profile. These email addresses are not considered very useful information on VocaDB, so adding those is generally discouraged. Most of the time such public addresses are so full of spam that the artists have abandoned them anyway.
Forbidden links
Direct download links to files (for example .mp3 or .flac) or Google Drive links are not allowed, even if they’re legal. Instead, you should always link to the artist’s page if possible, be that piapro or some blog. There are multiple reasons for this, but the most important being that this way the artist gets traffic for the downloads.
Links to sites whose main purpose is illegal file sharing are not allowed.