On Tue, Mar 30, 2010 at 2:09 PM, Fred Bauder fredbaud@fairpoint.net wrote:
On Tue, Mar 30, 2010 at 6:10 AM, Fred Bauder fredbaud@fairpoint.net wrote:
Yes, that disposes of them. The point is to have external links and further reading available to users of the reference at the foot of the article. The consensus to routinely remove such material arose a few years ago and it diminishes the utility of Wikipedia as a reference work.
Fred Bauder
I don't think there's such a consensus, site wide. I have seen articles where someone OWNs it and there is a local consensus.
Keep in mind that we risk ending up with our articles web link farms which is are not maintained in any consistent manner.
I support good links, and add them. But there's a downside there too.
-george william herbert george.herbert@gmail.com
External links and further reading are content like any other content. They require maintenance and sound judgment. What I object to is the meataxe approach to editing with respect to external links and further reading as well as article content. We all understand the problem when it's done with article content.
I agree that this is a similar problem. In theory, the 'external links' section of an article should grow and take shape in proportion to the article's size and maturity, not stay constant over time. We have been doing a good job of expanding footnote-style references and external links -- I spoke to a business school class yesterday where a student said "isn't excellent citation one of Wikipedia's main attractions?" -- but there is also value in links to general further reading.
A feature to improve the curating and presentation of these links might be handy. We have a few places were having a "set of links" as a first class member of the wikiverse would be useful * external links or further reading * a list of images related to an article (which may not all fit neatly in the article) * interlanguage and interproject links to a set of articles about the same topic
SJ