[WikiEN-l] External links

[Geoff Burling]

On Fri, 30 Jan 2004, Jimmy Wales wrote:

> Which subdomains are linked to most often as 'external links' in
> Wikipedia?
>
> Looking for bias in this list is a dangerous activity.

I feel a useful, if not particularly exciting, Wikipedia task is to
periodically check these links, to verify that they still work, that
they offer useful material, etc.
>
> I personally think that the BBC is horribly biased, and so I was
> alarmed to see how often we link to them, as compared to other sources
> that may give a more "fair and balanced" perspective (yes, you know
> what I mean, and yes I'm having fun).

I didn't know Al Franken had a web page.

More seriously, I guess this preference of links to news sites with a
center to left POV reflects the interests & nature of the WP community.
All of my links to news sites have been to my local newspaper, which
historically presents a Republican POV (although it has been gradually
drifting to the left relative to the rest of the media).

>       HOWEVER, a huge proportion of
> hte BBC links are from the page *about* the BBC, which links to lots
> of divisions of the BBC.
>
> Most of the other cases are similar.

One catagory that surprised me was the number of external links back to
Wikipedia. Surely most of them can be modified to a simple hyperlink.

I wasn't surprised at the number of links to the Internet Movie Database,
though; variations on its URL make it the first & third most linked
site. However, having used it frequently over the years (since it was
nothing more than a collection of perl scripts on a server in Wales),
I know that as a resource it is thin in facts as compared to WP currently,
& even admitting many of our articles need work.

Geoff