Abe wrote:
First, Hemanshu brings up a potential POV problem: "do we want endless arguments over whether America influenced the Taliban; George Bush influenced oil markets; oil influenced Gulf war.... to name a few?"
To avoid this, there is one rule: an influence must already be present in the article to be made an "influence link". This way, only assertions that have already passed the wiki test are admissible.
That doesn't work. If people disagree on whether X influenced Y, our NPOV policy dictates that the article should state, "People in group ABC tend to believe that X influenced Y, but other people tend to disagree". Your "influence links" can't do that: They are either there (asserting a definite influence) or not (asserting a definite lack of influence).
Timwi