Linking to is not as important as getting a link FROM an authority site.

It is a good idea, because if your site has no outlinks and a bunch of in links, it will look weird. If you have a link or two to an authority site, it will help you out and make you look more natural.

Definitely worthwhile...we try to put 1 or 2 links to authority sites on each of our sites at a minimum.

Aside from the SEO benefit and looking natural (see above) it also just provides for a better user experience. Sure, you may lose a couple of clicks to that authority site, but it helps the user ultimately, right?

Coo.....thanks for the replies kid!

I think it's worth it - I noticed at one point a couple years ago that I could getting traffic from pages that had good authority and trackbacks if I linked to them - because of the trackback - but that mostly applies to linking strong blog/news type sites that have trackbacks activated

so lets say we have a site on camping equipment. we can say visit wikipedia.com/whatevertopicyouchoose and that will link to them?

is that what you mean or am i not even close?

It’s important because Google sees that you are directing your readers to more useful information.
Remember that Google wants to provide good user experience, so if a searcher clicks on your site and from there he can be directed to more information without returning to Google you are helping G out.

In the words of John Chow: "Put The user first, and google second"

I have followed this philosphy for years and it pays off.