Matt Jacobs wrote:
Anyway, the
point is not that external links are systematically
persecuted (they may be patchily persecuted); but that they now have few
actual rights.
Charles
And why should links have any particular "rights"? External links should be
justified in the same way as any addition to the article. They may not
require the same verifiability standards, but they should be judged to be a
recommended place for further reading. In some way or another, they should
add content the editors judge to be useful, and not simply be about the
subject. Considering that for every good link I've seen inserted, I've also
seen one that was useless or even misleading or libelous, why would they
need any special protection?
The point would be no different from (say) unreferenced content: there
the distinction between "may be removed" and "must be removed" is
quite
important. And there is the "right", not of the link but the editor
adding it, to have "good faith assumed": other things being equal,
assume that the link was added to help develop the encyclopedia. The
onus is not always on the editor adding to an article to "justify"
additions: that is a very unwiki-like attitude, if I may say so.
I see no reason why we need additional policy and
bureaucracy specifically
for links.
For one thing, the page WP:EL is very bureaucratic as it stands; the
good part of it is the "maintenance and review" section, where templates
for tagging links regarded as potential problems are mentioned.
Also, this discussion thread reveals fairly clearly that there are
differing views on the matter.
Charles