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

[Charles Matthews]

Matt Jacobs wrote:
>> Anyway, the point is not that external links are systematically
>> persecuted (they may be patchily persecuted); but that they now have few
>> actual rights.
>>
>> Charles
>>
>>     
>
> And why should links have any particular "rights"?  External links should be
> justified in the same way as any addition to the article.  They may not
> require the same verifiability standards, but they should be judged to be a
> recommended place for further reading.  In some way or another, they should
> add content the editors judge to be useful, and not simply be about the
> subject.  Considering that for every good link I've seen inserted, I've also
> seen one that was useless or even misleading or libelous, why would they
> need any special protection?
>   
The point would be no different from (say) unreferenced content: there 
the distinction between "may be removed" and "must be removed" is quite 
important. And there is the "right", not of the link but the editor 
adding it, to have "good faith assumed": other things being equal, 
assume that the link was added to help develop the encyclopedia. The 
onus is not always on the editor adding to an article to "justify" 
additions: that is a very unwiki-like attitude, if I may say so.
> I see no reason why we need additional policy and bureaucracy specifically
> for links.
>
>   
For one thing, the page WP:EL is very bureaucratic as it stands; the 
good part of it is the "maintenance and review" section, where templates 
for tagging links regarded as potential problems are mentioned.

Also, this discussion thread reveals fairly clearly that there are 
differing views on the matter.

Charles