>The article has neither a link to its text nor an identifying number,
This is so very typical of "old-school" news organizations that do not "get" the internet, nor do they understand the power of connections (HTML links in this case). Of course, the lack of "getting it" is somewhat understandable given that these old-school orgs. are coming in to this "new-fangled" internet tech. with a mindset grounded in 100 years worth of creating paper for dissemination of information. Since paper ca not directly connect a reader to a base source, they never saw any reason to provide the information necessary for a reader to obtain the base sources for themselves. And they continue this practice onto the web, which from their mindset is just another "paper printing press" to disseminate information across.
Additionally, there's the somewhat conspiracy theorist viewpoint that hiding the base source information is overtly purposeful on their part, because that way they can have a better effect in influencing opinion (because the only data you get is that which they deem you suitable to receive) and without any ability to get to the base sources, you are much less likely to form any independent opinions that might diverge from what they want you to believe.
> Technologists criticizing websites for not linking to external primary sources is a little bit like the pot calling the kettle black.
Unless you are a technologist that believes the best SEO is not gaming your internal links but being a good Web-citizen (i.e. providing external links to primary sources). ;)
For sure I do. I'm just trying to further theorize why many websites do not link externally. Short-sightedness is the best I can come up with.
Is it fair to say that most popular news websites tend to link more often to themselves than external sites? Recently I've noticed more are linking to primary sources, but it wasn't so common as recent as 2 years ago, in my recollection.
> I'm just trying to further theorize why many websites do not link externally. Short-sightedness is the best I can come up with.
Surely some sort of short-sightedness I think mostly related to the paper-printing philosophy presented by the ultimate-parent comment.
From an SEO angle, I'm guessing it has less to do with internal vs external links, but an attempt to generate more backlinks to the secondary source (boosting SEO of the secondary source) instead of providing an easier path to create backlinks to the primary source.
> Recently I've noticed more are linking to primary sources, but it wasn't so common as recent as 2 years ago, in my recollection.
I'm glad this does seem to be the trend recently for a lot of sites; I don't remember so clearly the state a few years ago.
> This is so very typical of "old-school" news organizations that do not "get" the internet, nor do they understand the power of connections (HTML links in this case).
It's also typical of "new-school" news organizations and bloggers.
This is so very typical of "old-school" news organizations that do not "get" the internet, nor do they understand the power of connections (HTML links in this case). Of course, the lack of "getting it" is somewhat understandable given that these old-school orgs. are coming in to this "new-fangled" internet tech. with a mindset grounded in 100 years worth of creating paper for dissemination of information. Since paper ca not directly connect a reader to a base source, they never saw any reason to provide the information necessary for a reader to obtain the base sources for themselves. And they continue this practice onto the web, which from their mindset is just another "paper printing press" to disseminate information across.
Additionally, there's the somewhat conspiracy theorist viewpoint that hiding the base source information is overtly purposeful on their part, because that way they can have a better effect in influencing opinion (because the only data you get is that which they deem you suitable to receive) and without any ability to get to the base sources, you are much less likely to form any independent opinions that might diverge from what they want you to believe.