[WikiEN-l] "How the Professor Who Fooled Wikipedia Got Caught by Reddit", _The Atlantic_

[Durova]

On Thu, May 17, 2012 at 8:32 AM, Carcharoth <carcharothwp at googlemail.com>wrote:

>
> About six months ago now, I stumbled on an article that wasn't in
> great shape, added some text over a series of edits, and increased the
> number of links in the 'external links' section from 5 to 22. Now,
> admittedly I wasn't editing as an IP (I always edit logged in) and I
> added the external links in such a way as to make clear why they were
> useful, but still, I didn't arouse some huge storm of editors
> demanding that I reduce the number of external links (they are all
> still there). The number of external links will reduce as the article
> is expanded, but if you format external links and arrange them
> logically, they can function as a holding place for sources to be used
> later to write/expand the article.
>
> Maybe that means that the question of external links is more one of
> quality, and your analysis is oversimplistic? I submit that
> well-formatted and well-chosen external links tend to stick, while
> drive-by additions (or removals) don't. Which is not entirely
> surprising.
>
> Carcharoth
>
>
That conclusion would be far more convincing if you weren't who you are.