Right. It's important to build the trust (with Google or Bing, or whatever #search #engine).
To speak for myself, I've never been "afraid" to link to real High-quality sites. If they're REALLY Good, as Wikipedia is .. it is a sound thing to do!
I often will look up a website (to check it's authority & how many #backlinks it has, as well as its Age ). So I devote a certain AMT of Time to doing this; it's an important part of the process, I feel.
I use a tool called MKT SAMURAI to take a look at the Site's Age, Links, Authority etc.
If it's a Video (and I want to chk its TOTAL backlinks), I use a special tool for that.