I define excessive linking on a webpage -- however relevant-- as link fatigue.
Pages on Wikipedia are perfect examples of link fatigue.
To reduce link fatigue on our pages, I have installed a "Link Only if not Already Linked somewhere in the Page" rule in my CMS. So if a keyword like Gandhi appears more than onece in the page, only one of them will be hyperlinked, and not every occurance.
The only time when excessive linking might be acceptable is to define cross references like my page on Ramayana where every character can be studied.
Links
• Library Journal: Do Digital Libraries Volate Ranganatha's Laws? (via Librarian.net )
• Ranganathan -- India's First IT Guru
