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

[Gregory Maxwell]

On Mon, Mar 29, 2010 at 4:39 AM, Charles Matthews
<charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:
> Of your three points, I don't really find anything to agree with. Taking
> the attitide that "External links" is the name of a "Further reading"
> section for reading that happens to be online, what exactly _are_ you
> arguing? That trawling through the first hundred hits on well-known
> search engines will always produce those links? That is easy to refute.
> For many sites of high academic value, precisely no (zero) SEO is done.
> I can easily think of examples. Very good links can be very hard to
> find, unless you have a good reason to suspect they are there.

High value links should always be provided.  Can you provide an
reference to a Wikimedian arguing that links to the most useful
additional resources shouldn't be provided?   I'll gladly go and
disagree with them.


But I do believe that  a list of, say, 50 links tagged onto the end of
an article typically has negative value for the following reasons:
* Readers will be inundated, no one is likely to follow more than a
couple so the very high value links will be lost in the less valuable
ones.
* Wikipedia editors are unlikely periodically review links in a large
collection (supported by the high density of dead links, and the
malicious sites I've found in prior scans of our internals links).
* Long lists provide plausible denyability for someone attempting to
profit by placement, as additions to link soup doesn't look suspect.
* Someone looking for a large collection of assorted links on a
subject can find a larger and more current list from any of the search
providers.

> Given your style of argument, which is that we should be relying on the
> utility of commercial entities over which we have no control at all, to
> help our readers find the further information that we know (because WP
> does not aim to give complete coverage) they will need, I would say that
> Fred's worries are amply justified.

I bothered making the argument here because I believed that Fred was
likely mischaracterizing the nuanced position people have taking in
trying to balance the value of additional links vs their cost as a
simple "war on external links", when no one was likely carrying on any
such war:  Just because someone has decided on a different benefit
trade-off than you doesn't make their activities a "war on all X".

I wish there were a usable non-commercial search engine. But Wikipedia
clearly isn't that.  Wikipedia's value is in human editorial review.
A search engine's value is in enormous scale automation, "machine
neutrality" (not the google results are neutral, but it is resistant
to many kinds of bias which wikipedia is not), and automated updates.
Everyone on the internet already has access to high quality search
engines. I just don't think that making Wikipedia into a poor search
engine at the expensive of diluting the selectivity is a net positive
for the reader.