[WikiEN-l] yay external links!

[Charlotte Webb]

On 6/7/07, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
> When J. Random Reader visits an article with obvious vandalism, he
> snorts and thinks "man, Wikipedia sucks." When he visits an article
> with a spam link, he will likely not even notice it. So IMO it's more
> important to get rid of the obvious vandalism first.

Exactly.

> I think the point that Charlotte is trying to make is not that this one
> particular link is necessarily a good thing (I haven't looked at it
> myself so I don't have an opinion on it myself) but rather that an
> unmoderated reaction of "OMG commercial link on Wikipedia die die die!"
> is going to throw out some pieces of the baby along with the bathwater.

Actually my point is... if you thoroughly inspect an article... and
you conclude that one external link is getting more traffic than it
deserves... and if that was the most serious concern that you could
find... the page is probably ready to be nominated for Featured
Article status.

—C.W.