On Wed, 12 Jan 2005 13:49:55 +0000, actionforum@comcast.net actionforum@comcast.net wrote:
The subject is the edit summary from the edit that removed NSK's link. Independent of the particulars of NSK's site, this summary is not a valid excuse, wikipedia articles can grow to a level of completeness that most external sites cannot match, yet a lot of our information comes from external sites, and it can be important to cite those sites even though their information has been included in the article and a subsequent editor unfamiliar with the history may now consider them redundant.. -- Silverback
While I see your point, and even agree, it is probably preferable in such a case to put the link in a "references" section, rather than simply giving it some invisible immortal status in the "external links" section. By which I mean, if an editor can come along and say "this link gives me no useful information beyond what's already here", the link has ceased to be useful *as further reading*, which is what the majority of External links provide, so they are quite justified in saying so. If it was a reference used in *creating* the article, it should be cited as such, and then people will know that that is why it is listed, and comments about comparitive levels of content become irrelevant.