Today we have opened up a moderator only discussion thread (in our series of mod only discussion) to the general public named Site Wide Links: Do They Help or Hurt?
We have some excellent responses from Rand of SEOMoz, Donna from SEOScoop, Ben from RankSmart and also Darrin Ward. They go over the historical changes of SEO and site wide links, they discuss the value in obtaining them today and they also discuss the risk/reward of the site wide links.
The details are available at our forums, feel free to add your two cents.
Forum discussion at Search Engine Roundtable Forums.