VI.C.iv. CROSS-REFERENCES AND EXTERNAL LINKS.

Under the heading of cross-references and external links, the most important item to note is that Nupedia articles will not--yet--have very many external links, because we do not yet want to go to the considerable trouble of maintaining these links.

We can distinguish between three kinds of links that we might consider including in a Nupedia article:

1. cross-references to other Nupedia articles and resources; e.g., the article kangaroo will have a link to the article marsupial;
2. links to off-site material that is essential to understanding the text of the article; e.g., an article about a classical Roman author will feature links to websites where that author's texts can be found; and
3. links to purely supplementary material; e.g., an article on horses might have a link to a general informational website about horses.

Internal cross-reference links (of type (1)) will be added within the text of a new article only if an article on the topic in question exists.  In that case, the writer, for the benefit of those who will mark the article up in XML, should indicate the link as if it were an HTML link.  The XML crew will render these links correctly.  For example:

Plato posited the existence of what are called &#60a href="article about Platonic forms">"Forms" or "Ideas"</a> (these words are sometimes capitalized and sometimes not; they are translations of the Greek "eidos," prn. \'ay-dohs\).

Moreover, when a new article is accepted, the writer or other Nupedia members should compile a list of other text mentions in other articles that should contain direct links to the new article.

Links of type (2) are permitted, if we are more confident than we would be for the average website that the URL in question will not change (i.e., we are confident that the URL is "stable").  The URLs for any links of type (2) should be specified by the authors of articles.

As stated above, links of type (3) will, for now, be left out of Nupedia articles entirely.  We might (and probably will), eventually, include associated web information--what would be, essentially, a Nupedia web directory, integrated with our own content.