charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com wrote:
Two principles:
- wiki believes external linking is a basic permission
- pedia believes we are here to do a specific job, and all uses of the site's space are subordinate to doing that
We need to get recognition that external linking is only a basic permission _other things being equal_; and that administrative restrictions of some kind on the site's space are not unreasonable. enWP has 10 million pages. The AC can still tell people not to do certain things in that space.
To my mind it depends on whether the link is just a "see also" type thing to a random site containing a bit of info (less important), or is an official site of the subject of the article, in which case pointing out its existence is part of the article content, just as pointing out books an author has written is a part of the article's content. The information that Michael Moore runs a relatively high-traffic website at michaelmoore.com is, I think, of the latter sort of information. It's simply part of a complete biography to mention that, and I'd guess that traditional encyclopedias will come around to that viewpoint soon too, if they haven't already. And I can think of other cases that are even more clear-cut: It would be completely unreasonable to omit the information that [[Markos Moulitsas]] runs a popular website at dailykos.com, even if dailykos.com were engaged in frequent attacks on Wikipedia. You just can't write a reasonable encyclopedia article on him without mentioning that bit of information.
-Mark