Is self-linking a tear in the fabric of the web?

More often than not, web and blog publishers are linking to their own related stories on the same or related web properties instead of providing out-bound links. Topic pages like those found on CNN accomplishe this in search engine-like fashion. The objective, of course, is to keep readers on their sites instead of going to search engines for related information. But is this a tear in the fabric of the web? Tim O'Reilly thinks it is and in Is Linking to Yourself the Future of the Web? he offers two guidelines for anyone adopting this "link to myself" strategy:

1. Ensure that no more than 50% of the links on any page are to yourself. (Even this number may be too high.)
2. Ensure that the pages you create at those destinations are truly more valuable to your readers than any other external link you might provide.

[JH]