There seems to be some confusion about the usefulness of external links. Some editors appear to be determined to eradicting not only external links, but also the sections that contain them. In the past two weeks, I have been given confusing and contradictory advice about how to handle external links.
1. Most recently, I was advised by an editor that organisations or journals listed as external links, if sufficiently notable, should have articles developed. Then the article could use a wikilink, preferably in the article body, or in the "See Also" section, thus avoiding any need for an external link at all.
2. About a week ago, I was advised by a different editor "to establish inclusion criteria to dissuade future additions which are less than desirable." Talk:Market segmentation/Archives/2017#Discussion copied from User Talk Page
3. Several weeks prior to that, an editor deleted all links to commercial organisations because any link to any commercial organisation was deemed "promotional in character."
To clarify, Wikipedia's guidelines make no assumptions about external links automatically being 'promotional' in character. Intead, it is clear that the article's context and content are important in terms of evaluating what might be considered to be an acceptable external link or an unacceptable link. Wikipedia's guidelines, which as per usual, are spread across multiple pages, but specifically state that "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." (See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:What_Wikipedia_is_not#Wikipedia_is_not_a_mirror_or_a_repository_of_links.2C_images.2C_or_media_files AND https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:External_links). In addition, these guidelines also state that external links should also include a brief explanation as to why it is useful. Relevant shortcuts: See WP:LINKFARM; WP:NOTADVERTISINGWP:ELPOINTS