[WikiEN-l] a few new wrinkles in the external link issue

[Ray Saintonge]

Jeff Raymond wrote:

>I've brought this up at the talk page at [[Wikipedia:External links]] 
>and ended up with more contempt than actual answers, so maybe some 
>people in the know will be nice enough to actually clear some things up 
>for us.
>
It looks like yet another POV zoo.  Sometimes the swath of destruction 
from these rule-mongers is beyond belief.  I can no longer be bothered 
with these rules debates, because unlike the rule-mongers I find there 
are more interesting things to do.  Left to their own devices they can 
invent whatever silly rule they want by sheer brute force.  No stretch 
of the imagination will conclude that any type of consensus has been 
reached.  Most of these rules are unlikely to affect what I do, but that 
does not prevent me from being troubled by the fundamental disrespect of 
fairness that these rule-mongers practise.

>I'm starting to think that our focus on spam is becoming a problem 
>rather than a benefit to the project.  How much collateral damage are we 
>willing to accept in the project to take care of this "problem" that 
>people think is massive?  One out of every 10?  5% poor hits?  Do we 
>have some sort of measurement we're using here?
>
No problem like spam can ever be eradicated completely.  When some 
people become obsessed with removing any link that might seem to be 
promoting a product, no matter how relevant to the article things have 
probably gone too far.  I am very much aware of the dangers of excess 
advertising, and how easy it would be to be overrun by it, but once it 
has gone below a certain threshhold maybe there are other priorities.

Ec