Wikipedia:We don't care what happens to your website

The external links guideline on the English Wikipedia provides detailed advice about the number, types, and formatting of external links to other websites.

Some editors are surprised to discover that some "obvious" criteria are not included in the guideline, such as whether the website owner hopes to make money. Fundamentally, Wikipedia doesn't care what happens to your website. What happens to your website as a result of our decision to link or not link to a page on it has no bearing on our decision to link it.

We don't care if you try to make some money

A webpage is linked because that particular page contains useful and appropriate information. Does some other page try to sell products? We don't care. There is no rule that prefers a not-for-profit website over a commercial website. Go ahead: become wealthy. We don't care.

We do restrict links to pages that are actually selling things, like a link to a page selling mobile phones in an article about mobile phones. But if the page itself contains appropriate information, then the existence of some other page on the site that tries to sell something is okay with us. The vast majority of our readers won't click the link to that website anyway, and very few of those who do will look at any other page on that website.

We don't care if your traffic increases

Some website owners are excited about the increased traffic that is sometimes associated with a Wikipedia link. They think it will bring them fame or fortune. Will your website get more traffic? We don't care. Will you have to buy more bandwidth? We don't care. Will your website die under the Slashdot effect? We don't care.

We link to web pages because we think that they will be interesting or appropriate for our readers, not because we're trying to help or hurt you.

We don't care if your website dies

Traffic costs money, and Wikipedia readers are not necessarily good customers. You might not appreciate extra traffic from non-paying customers. Will you lose money as a result of this link? We don't care. Will you waste time reading inquiries from people with many questions, but no intention of buying anything from you? We don't care. Will you get nasty notes from people who disagree with you? We don't care.

Similarly, if we decide that your link isn't desirable for our article, then we're going to remove it. Will your website wither away without Wikipedia readers? We don't care. Will your business fail and many people lose their jobs? We don't care.

We care about the encyclopedia. We do not care about your external website.