Marc Riddell wrote:
on 1/24/07 8:50 PM, Geoffrey Burling at llywrch@agora.rdrop.com wrote:
Three or four years ago, Jimbo ranted about all of the external links he was finding in articles. IIRC, his point was that we didn't need any external links, that a Wikipedia article ought to stand on its own, and be better than any other website on the subject.
Maybe we should have listened to him.
At least one value of external links that I can think of is that they provide access to additional information which, for a variety of reasons, cannot be included in the Article's text.
Yes, I think this is important, but I also think external links are overused. It would be weird to have an article on Amazon without a link to amazon.com, or an article on the Embassy of France in the United States without a link to ambafrance-us.org. But that doesn't mean the article on the card-game hearts should link to some random website giving opinions on good and bad strategies (as it did until recently).
-Mark