You can't please everyone, Jen - but you're a moderator, you know that already. :-)

Sure, there are sites which call for links opening in a new window to be a hanging offence, but in this age of tabbed browsers I don't see that as a problem. My own preference (see my signature) is for links which branch away from the topic of the page to open in a new window, and links which are on-topic to re-use the same window.

I use Opera, where I have the choice of making any link open in the same window, in a new tab, or in a new window regardless of what the webmaster coded, so I don't really care. LOL