User:Jonkerz/One fish in the ocean

On every given subject there are multiple possible external links within the scope of the article's topic. One fish in the ocean refers to the links that easily could be substituted for each other, or, if we are linking one should link all equal links for consistency.

Most of the guidelines at Links normally to be avoided are pretty straight-forward and could not be interpreted in more than one way. When it comes to link promotion it's getting messy. Promotional links to commercial sites are easily identified, but link promoting does not only refer to commercial entities but a wide range of organizations: charities, governmental institutions or a local museum, etc. ad infinitum; while not as obvious as the former, they usually lose the fight given an editwar.

Rationale

 * 1) The value of a unique link (i.e. a specific paper) among countless unique links is offset by how hard it's to find, that is, Wikipedia should not promote it.
 * 2) The value of a general link (i.e. a dictionary) among countless general links is offset by how easily it's found, that is, Wikipedia do not need to promote it.

In both cases the reasoning goes like this: link one → link all → Wikipedia is not a link farm → link none

Articles about museums with an X collection do never need to link specific museums; science article X do not need to link research groups on X or courses on X; etc.

This is what one fish in the ocean is all about.

Unique resources

 * Academic papers
 * News articles
 * Organizations

General resources

 * Videos (movies, documentaries, clips)
 * Photo galleries
 * Software

The alternatives

 * A directory link, these sites are dedicated to collecting the links Wikipedia should avoid linking.
 * Incorporate into article's text if possible, and replace the external link with a reference.
 * No links, or only interwiki links, is sometimes sufficient. Every article do not need external links. Readers may use a search engine with the additional benefit of being dynamically updated and most probably not affected by any bias or conflict of interest on a case-by-case basis. Foremost, a search engine is of the reader's choice.