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

[quiddity]

On Mon, Mar 29, 2010 at 2:58 AM, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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.
>


General Thoughts:
The editors who feel most strongly about these issues congregate at
WP:EL, WP:SPAM, WP:COI, and the related noticeboards and wikiprojects
(WP:ELN, WP:WPEL, WP:WPSPAM, WP:COIN).

Some of the work that the "cleaners and spamcops" do is _immensely_
helpful, clearing out the blatant SEO/spam links, and even worse items
like the malware and shocksites.

However, a few take the perspective and skills of a spamcop, and apply
them to "imperfect" links and user-contribs, such as when an academic
archivist goes around adding links to their university's collection to
multiple articles, or when someone goes around fixing urls to a site
after it gets restructured.
A few vocal editors would even prefer that we only ever had a single
"Official site" link in the EL section, and would like all the
[[:Category:External link templates]] to be deleted.

eg the current (basically biannual) discussion to eradicate all links
to wikis, that aren't official sisterproject wikis.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:External_links#Using_Wiki.27s
eg the latest (long) discussion concerning archivists
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Conflict_of_interest#What_we_want_and_what_they_want
eg the most recent (October) discussion concerning links to archives
of official websites at archive.org (wayback machine)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:External_links/Archive_27#ELs_of_official_websites_archived_on_web.archive.org
etc etc etc.

There is definitely a small but active number of editors who have
extreme views (as with any subjective issue). Sometimes they happen to
be in the same place at the same time, which could give the impression
of a "gang or cabal" engaged in a "war". The only thing that can
really be done, is to provide the counter-perspective, and hope that
consensus results in something sensible. Each and every time.
Thankfully, most editors have moderate views on these things. Sadly,
we get tired of repeating the same arguments regularly.



Small specific example:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Geoff_Dyer&diff=350129846&oldid=350126288
I wrote the original stub, so I _know_ those links were used during
its creation (they're 90% interviews with the author). I added them
back, and left a note on the editor's talkpage, but he was more
interested in removing the single link that had been apparently
spammed (which as-it-happens was to a very informative video interview
with the author), so he re-removed them all. However, he did take my
advice, and at least left a copy on the talkpage this time).
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Novaseminary&oldid=350145519
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Geoff_Dyer&diff=350145148&oldid=350140311
I'll add them back eventually, all cited and tidy, but readers won't
be likely to find them in the meantime...



As has been said before: Most of these types of conflicts can be
boiled down to [[m:Immediatism]] vs [[m:Eventualism]].
(imho) Immediatism is great for BLPs, and CurrentEvents, and dealing
with unambiguous problems; but Eventualism is one of the core reasons
behind Wikipedia's successes, a fact that is sometimes insufficiently
recognized.

Quiddity