Firstly, I think google is up to something lately and it does involve links. My incoming links were zero for a couple of days, and now the opposite from BB1 is true, CAP has a ton and GPWA a few. You know BB1, when google looks at forum links it actually only counts a few? You don’t get credit for every post when they do the actual evaluation, no matter what they show.
Additionally, my PR dropped, my indexed pages shrivelled, and my serps, visitors and spider visits went up. I wouldn’t put too much creed in google at the time.
I am a firm believer in quality links. Someone with ten pages of links is not a valuable partner unless the link is very old. Each link carries minute value.
I definitely recommend taking a day to weed. PR is not that important IMO, link value and site content are, and the quality of sites linking into your partner is too. It all reflects on you.
I always say it’s like the AIDS saying: you sleep with everyone your partner sleeps with.