On Mon, Mar 29, 2010 at 2:58 AM, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
High value links should always be provided. Can you provide an reference to a Wikimedian arguing that links to the most useful additional resources shouldn't be provided? I'll gladly go and disagree with them.
General Thoughts: The editors who feel most strongly about these issues congregate at WP:EL, WP:SPAM, WP:COI, and the related noticeboards and wikiprojects (WP:ELN, WP:WPEL, WP:WPSPAM, WP:COIN).
Some of the work that the "cleaners and spamcops" do is _immensely_ helpful, clearing out the blatant SEO/spam links, and even worse items like the malware and shocksites.
However, a few take the perspective and skills of a spamcop, and apply them to "imperfect" links and user-contribs, such as when an academic archivist goes around adding links to their university's collection to multiple articles, or when someone goes around fixing urls to a site after it gets restructured. A few vocal editors would even prefer that we only ever had a single "Official site" link in the EL section, and would like all the [[:Category:External link templates]] to be deleted.
eg the current (basically biannual) discussion to eradicate all links to wikis, that aren't official sisterproject wikis. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:External_links#Using_Wiki.27s eg the latest (long) discussion concerning archivists http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Conflict_of_interest#What_we_wan... eg the most recent (October) discussion concerning links to archives of official websites at archive.org (wayback machine) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:External_links/Archive_27#ELs_of... etc etc etc.
There is definitely a small but active number of editors who have extreme views (as with any subjective issue). Sometimes they happen to be in the same place at the same time, which could give the impression of a "gang or cabal" engaged in a "war". The only thing that can really be done, is to provide the counter-perspective, and hope that consensus results in something sensible. Each and every time. Thankfully, most editors have moderate views on these things. Sadly, we get tired of repeating the same arguments regularly.
Small specific example: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Geoff_Dyer&diff=350129846&... I wrote the original stub, so I _know_ those links were used during its creation (they're 90% interviews with the author). I added them back, and left a note on the editor's talkpage, but he was more interested in removing the single link that had been apparently spammed (which as-it-happens was to a very informative video interview with the author), so he re-removed them all. However, he did take my advice, and at least left a copy on the talkpage this time). http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Novaseminary&oldid=3... http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Geoff_Dyer&diff=350145148&... I'll add them back eventually, all cited and tidy, but readers won't be likely to find them in the meantime...
As has been said before: Most of these types of conflicts can be boiled down to [[m:Immediatism]] vs [[m:Eventualism]]. (imho) Immediatism is great for BLPs, and CurrentEvents, and dealing with unambiguous problems; but Eventualism is one of the core reasons behind Wikipedia's successes, a fact that is sometimes insufficiently recognized.
Quiddity