Date: Tue, 30 Mar 2010 16:33:36 +0100
From: Charles Matthews <charles.r.matthews(a)ntlworld.com>
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] A war on external links? Was: Inside Higher
Ed: Does Wikipedia Suck?
To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
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
I see nothing unwiki-like in suggesting that a person should defend their
additions to an article when disputes arise. That's a pretty standard
expectation in any collaborative environment. There's no lack of assumption
of good faith involved in an editor removing an addition if they have reason
to believe it is not beneficial to the article.
Sxeptomaniac