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Greetings, the External links section is an oftentimes neglected and sometimes ignored section. Some things just grow during incremental edits and sometimes get out of hand. The "External links" section, one of the optional appendices, has 9 entries. Three seems to be a community acceptable number and of course, everyone has their favorite to try to add for a forth. The bottom line is that a discussion and consensus is a deciding factor over consensus by silence, as long as policies and guidelines are considered. There does seem to be a lot written about the section.
None is actually needed for article promotion.
WP:ELNO (#1): Any site that does not provide a unique resource beyond what the article would contain if it became a featured article. In other words, the site should not merely repeat information that is already or should be in the article. Links that may be used to improve the page in the future can be placed on the article's talk page.
ELpoints #3) (content guideline) states: Links in the "External links" section should be kept to a minimum. A lack of external links or a small number of external links is not a reason to add external links.
LINKFARM (policy) states: There is nothing wrong with adding one or more useful content-relevant links to the external links section of an article; however, excessive lists can dwarf articles and detract from the purpose of Wikipedia. On articles about topics with many fansites, for example, including a link to one major fansite may be appropriate.
ELMIN (content guideline): Minimize the number of links. --
ELCITE (content guideline): Do not use {{cite web}} or other citation templates in the External links section. Citation templates are permitted in the Further reading section.
External linksThis page in a nutshell: External links in an article can be helpful to the reader, but they should be kept minimal, meritable, and directly relevant to the article. With rare exceptions, external links should not be used in the body of an article.
Second paragraph, acceptable external links include those that contain further research that is accurate and on-topic, information that could not be added to the article for reasons such as copyright or amount of detail, or other meaningful, relevant content that is not suitable for inclusion in an article for reasons unrelated to its accuracy.
On lessor classed articles I would simply trim excess links or move them to the talk page for any future possible discussion. On higher classed articles a simple review is usually all that is needed.
Please note:
WP:ELBURDEN (content guideline): Disputed links should be excluded by default unless and until there is a consensus to include them.
Walter Reed Biosystematics Unit. – Listed as "Links to the online mosquito catalog, keys for mosquito identification, images and information on medically important species and much more." For some reason this returns: "www.wrbu.org doesn’t support a secure connection". The addition of this link may fall under WP:NOTCATALOG.
level-5 vital article is rated GA-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale.
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