At the risk of sounding accusatory or morally superior, I feel the need to comment on something that I’ve noticed for a long while now (and after a few discussions, I’m hardly the only one): Ars Technica hardly ever links to anyone but themselves.

Let me just say that I think Ars Technica is for the most part very well-written and looks nice, but seriously what is up with them quite often coming late upon a story, giving summations that are often little more than a dozen other things that I’ve read in the days leading up to their’s, and yet they never seem to link to anyone but themselves? Are we to believe that they simply come up with these stories completely by themselves out of the blue even though most of the Internet has been talking about them for hours or even days beforehand? Maybe they do not use the Internet except to press the ‘Post’ button?

There are an almost inexhaustible number of places where they should probably link to a source, and just don’t – even when they mention them! Here’s one example:

First rumored by AppleInsider, CNBC is now *confirming* the existence of preproduction models of the MacBook Thin

You might think that link above would go to AppleInsider and not to another Ars Technica story – but you’d be wrong.

Now I’m not saying that I’m the absolute best at external linking – because I’m certainly not – but I do try to do my best to give credit where credit is due while still referencing earlier thoughts of mine. The way Ars Technica seems to go about their business, you’d think that aside from press releases or a few official pages, they’ve hardly ever read another site in their lives – something which I just have a very hard time believing – especially when the entirety of the Internet is talking about something often hours before they weigh in with some of the very same points and ideas.

I would simply say to the folks at Ars Technica, you’re a member of the Internet, why not act like it? I’d recommend you read over Louisgray’s post about Internal Linking and consider how it makes you look to the rest of us out here in Internet land. No website is an island.

[UPDATE]: Duncan Riley has a very to-the-point post with the very similar thoughts from July. The example he gave apparently even caused Ars to go back and give a link to the story he notes!

I’ll give an example of the title “phenomenon” from my own site:

December 11th at 11AM I publish: ‘NBC Continues the “Anyone But Apple” Approach, Puts Content on SanDisk Service‘

Same day at 10:05PM Ars Technica publishes: “NBC continues anything-but-Apple strategy with SanDisk deal“

I wish that were the only example…