[WikiEN-l] A war on external links? Was: Inside Higher Ed: Does Wikipedia Suck?

[Gregory Maxwell]

On Sun, Mar 28, 2010 at 3:24 PM, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at fairpoint.net> wrote:
>> And
>> further reading sections can point the way for future expansions of
>> the article, or for the reader to go and find out more about the
>> topic.
>>
>> Carcharoth
>
> That is why I despise the war on external links and further reading some
> editors seem to think is appropriate.

I don't think I've seen much evidence of a "war on external links"
... what there is is, however, is pressure against an unfiltered flood
of external links.

Anyone capable of using Wikipedia is also capable of using Google,
Bing, or any of a number of other search engines.  Beyond a point
adding links reduces the value that Wikpedia provides over these
resources.

Even if you held the position that the world needed another
unselective source of links, Wikipedia isn't especially well
structured to provide it:  There is little to no automation to remove
dead or no longer relevant things,  no automation to find new
worthwhile links, and a lot of vulnerability to manipulation by
interested parties.

I think that at its best Wikipedia should be directly including all
the information available up to Wikipedia's coverage depth, linking
only for citations,  then it should have links to the most valuable
external resources which go deeper into the subject than Wikipedia
reasonably can. If you need a raw feed of sites related to some
subject area this is what the search engines do well.