On 5/17/12, Gwern Branwen <gwe...@gmail.com> wrote: > Incidentally, I have been finishing an experiment involving the > removal of 100 random external links by an IP; I haven't analyzed it > yet, so I don't know the outcome, but this gives us an opportunity!
I carried out another experiment (though I didn't realise it was one until now, and it is not a breaching one as yours seems it might be - your wording above is unclear). 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 PS. We have gone way off-topic. _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l