[CliffordK (OP)]

I try to add a few hyperlinks to references as I type.

However, when reading certain websites like Wikipedia, there are many hyperlinks.  For example, I was reading about endemic areas of Foot and Mouth Disease.

In the list there are numerous countries which are hyperlinks to more information about the country.  Perhaps it is good to be able to quickly gain general information about the country, but since I was reading about a disease, I'm only interested in data that is relevant to that disease. 

I.E.  I know general information about North & South America.  So, links to general information about those countries is irrelevant.  In fact, later in the article it talks about specific outbreaks in different countries which would be much more relevant.

So,
How can one get just the right amount of pertinent hyperlinks, without getting the irrelevant ones?

[evan_au]

Use Google?
Something like "wiki foot and mouth disease asia"?

[RD]

Use Google?
Something like "wiki foot and mouth disease asia"?

Google via an anonymous proxy to avoid a filter bubble, so only the search terms you insert are used for that Google search, (otherwise the search will be biased by your previous Google searches which could throw up irrelevant results).

[nicephotog]

Thats a Non question.
Your talking about the way information is "architected" (e.g. information architect), that's the editor or site architect(not necessarilly the site designer).
What can be done is javascript or XML("Data"(information) markup) e.g.
You would build a select box with two choices "Natioanl Links general" and "National Links article context"
your hyperlinks would the have an "id=" attribute representing each country by a number, the link gets clicked and the url is operated from a function by obtaining the link "id" number for the country the select box controls which array is chosen, general links or biological research links.

[yor_on]

It depends on how much time you're willing to spend learning?
Try http://www.woodmann.com/searchlores/ for some ideas.