Quoting links stops further links

Does quoting the text of people who link to you actually discourage people

[trumble]

I've been running a site for a few months now. In its early days it was quite a hot new link that people would pass around.

I decided to create a page that provided exerpts of reviews from other people. My thinking was, this would add credibility and give ideas to lazy webmasters and bloggers who like the site, but don't know how to describe it.

Shortly after publishing it, new links dried up. Newspaper articles continued, but live links (the stuff that really gives you the traffic) just ceased.

So I'm wondering if it's just coincidence or is there something about the psychology of someone who links to you. Do they feel they're giving their users the latest hot thing, more than letting them know of a credible source? Does the fact that other people have written about your site make linking to it less exciting? They're not breaking the story.

What do people think?

[Perplexed]

It is hard to imagine that this could be the case but I know that when I look at pages full of testemonial snippets I tend to take them with a pinch of salt.

Letters of complaint that start off "I think you have a great site BUT" tend to get transferred into testimonials only saying "I think you have a great site"

Speaking purely for myself, I would rather see a couple of in depth letters from users than 20 "snippets"