On Wed, 2008-10-15 at 12:00 +0000, wikien-l-request(a)lists.wikimedia.org
wrote:
> From: WJhonson(a)aol.com
> The '''[[September 11]], [[2001]] attacks''' were a series of
> coordinated....
> attacks.... upon the [[United States]].
I do not think we should link strong text which is usually shown bolded.
That's bad style because it makes some words from the title look like
different things, while in fact the whole title is one undivided entity,
and we should choose individual parts of it for linking
--
Thanks,
NSK Nikolaos S. Karastathis, http://nsk.karastathis.org/
In a message dated 10/14/2008 11:25:49 AM Pacific Daylight Time,
charlottethewebb(a)gmail.com writes:
How would you handle something like:
> The '''September 11, 2001 attacks''' were a series of coordinated....
> attacks.... upon the [[United States]] on [[September 11]],
> [[2001]].>>
--------------------------
I just wildly prefer simple language when possible.
If this paragraph were *within* an article called "September 11, 2001
attacks" already then:
The '''[[September 11]], [[2001]] attacks''' were a series of coordinated....
attacks.... upon the [[United States]].
If this paragraph were *not within* an article called "September 11, 2001
attacks" then:
The '''[[September 11, 2001 attacks]]''' were a series of
coordinated....attacks.... upon the [[United States]].
So within the main article about an event, you link the dates. However
outside that main article, you link *to* that article and let it link the dates.
That dimenishes that overlinking of dates where their mention is tangential.
Will Johnson
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On 10/13/08, Andrew Gray <shimgray(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> "The '''1972 Ruritanian federal election''' was a [[Federal elections
> in Ruritania|federal election]] held in 1972 in [[Ruritania]].>>
------------------------------
Redundant. I would edit this to say
The '''1972 [[Federal elections in Ruritania|Ruritanian federal
election]]''' was an election]] held in 1972 in Butonia, the capital of [[Ruritania]].
It's silly to say the election of X was held in X. And my moving the link
fixes the disamg issue entirely.
Will Johnson
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Now I was reading the mailing list a while ago, and I thought of a memorable experience from when I was editing Wikipedia as [[User:Ziggy_Sawdust]].
On the Reference Desk, some of you may recall a character called the Avril Lavigne troll. He used about 10 IPs, an army of redlinked accounts, and asked a bunch of ridiculous questions, mostly pertaining to Avril Lavigne, but the unifying characteristic was that none of them had any place on the Reference Desk, let alone Wikipedia. He did do some vandalism to the Reference Desk header too, but that wasn't a primary part of his actions.
Now what I did is I set up a subpage on my userspace. He and I agreed that he could ask his redonkulous questions there, I (or whoever else wanted to) could answer them, and he would leave the Reference Desk alone.
He did.
Now this isn't going to be representative of all "trolls", of course, but for some of them, yes. What have we learned? That sometimes, if someone wants attention, we should make a small compromise and give them what they want instead of flat-out denying it, which would make them seek it harder.
I read Wikipedia a lot and I always enjoy clicking on date/year links,
or using popups on them, because I am interested to place the
information I read within a historical context, which is rarely provided
by the article text.
Often I am interested in historical context not directly related to the
article itself, for example if I read about a person born in 19th
century Europe I may be interested to learn how 19th Africa was like.
The reason is that as a reader I read in a nonlinear way and I like to
integrate information in new ways.
Furthermore, I use dates and years (as well as geographical links) to
escape from a set of interrelated articles when I lose interest in them.
This is also why I like links that are not relevant to the context: if
I am reading about pop music and all links are also about pop music and
I get bored about pop music then I cannot escape easily, unless there is
a link not relevant to the context so that I can jump to another theme
of articles. Linked years, geographical terms, and "irrelevant" links
provides me with the opportunity to read Wikipedia in a nonlinear way,
hopping from theme to theme and returning back as I see fit, and
integrating the information I read in my way.
However, delinking dates and years, or only allowing links directly
relevant to the context, denies me the opportunity to read Wikipedia's
historical information in a nonlinear way easily, as I have to use the
search box, which I very rarely do (and with the skin I use, Nostalgia,
is not very easy to use because I can't see easily the Ajax suggestions,
it's bug 15902 for which I have provided a patch on bugzilla). Without
year links and "irrelevant" links, I only have geographical links to
escape from a theme of articles (and I don't use the random page feature
too often becaue it usually only returns me pop music stuff or American
villages), and if an article doesn't have them then I am stuck with
reading in the oldfashioned linear way, therefore my reading experience
as a reader diminishes and I get less value from Wikipedia compatred to
what I could get if the years and "irrelevant" links were left in place.
Hoping this will provide an insight into why some people want years
linked and why they so like to build the web.
--
Thanks,
NSK Nikolaos S. Karastathis, http://karastathis.org/
Context-free searches for dates generate a large number of false positives.
In a message dated 10/14/2008 9:56:28 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time,
skyring(a)gmail.com writes:
Realistically, linking all dates and years in wikipedia just makes
articles confusing and overlinked. You really want to know what
happened on a specific day, do a search. That's not hard.
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Are you sure of this? It's my understanding that you have the same legal
remedies.
In a message dated 10/11/2008 2:38:27 P.M. Pacific Daylight Time,
saintonge(a)telus.net writes:
but without registration the available legal remedies are
more limited.
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I unified my accounts, but unfortunately the way unified login is
implemented has some disadvantages which are showstoppers for me,
therefore I would like to disable my account unification and return to
the previous state. Is this possible?
Alternatively, is there any way to keep my accounts unified but get rid
of this "successful login" message? (yes this is the showstopper)
Thanks,
--
Thanks,
NSK Nikolaos S. Karastathis, http://karastathis.org/