We recently announced some changes to the h2g2 Front Page - namely, that we'd now be linking to non-h2g2 and indeed non-BBC websites on our front page.

For technical reasons, conversation threads on the Announcements page are closed once announcements are made, and some of you very reasonably pointed out in h2g2 Feedback that there should be a more prominent place to discuss the changes. Another thread arose on Ask h2g2. As we agree that it's an important issue then we have decided to devote this week's Talking Point to that very subject.

Something that isn't always so readily apparent to people outside the BBC is that we are obliged, as a public service broadcaster, to link to external sites. Since the government's review of our online services in 2004, the Graf Report, BBC sites have been urged to 'include more consistent and transparent links to all relevant commercial and public sources, and not only link to BBC pages...' in order that the BBC 'should continue to act as a guide to the Internet for those who require it.'

We have always tried to do this within actual h2g2 Entries, but more recently we've been encouraged to link to non-BBC sites on our front page too.

As a result we will now devote two sections of the current promos at the bottom-right of the page to External Links. The first set of three links will be to sites which may be of interest to h2g2 Researchers from a content point of view, and the second set is for links to 'h2g2 on the Web' - these reflect h2g2's presence elsewhere, on social networking sites such as Facebook but also as described on Wikipedia and other sites.

What we're most pleased about, though, is that at long last we'll be able to give more prominent publicity to the work that the h2g2 AViators have been producing on other online platforms.

This sounds like common sense to us - research shows that in the end sites that link out get more traffic in return. Some of our biggest referrers are sites which some people might regard as our 'competition', such as Wikipedia. However, we're very aware that it might seem counter-intuitive to do so.

So, this week, we ask you:

• Do you think these new links on the homepage are a good idea?

• Why do you think this?

• What other external sites do you think we should link to?

• Can you think of any other places on the Internet apart from the ones chosen so far that have a strong h2g2 'presence', that we might link to?