[WikiEN-l] Lists and redlinks and link maintenance

[Carcharoth]

On Thu, Aug 6, 2009 at 1:56 PM, Steve Bennett<stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Aug 4, 2009 at 10:16 AM, Carcharoth<carcharothwp at googlemail.com> wrote:
>> Only three of those 24 articles, in my opinion, have moved much beyond
>> being a single line article or a few lines at most, even though
>> impeccably referenced. You might say "go and help expand those
>> articles" (and I might well do that). But there is a subtle difference
>> between the motivation to write a new article and to expand an
>> existing one. There absolutely *shouldn't* be that differerence, but
>> human nature being what it is, that is a factor, I fear.
>
> I've made a hundred or so stubs. A few have been expanded by others. A
> very few have been expanded massively (particularly [[Calcot Manor]].
>
> But I think your premise is wrong. Say I turn a redlink into a tiny
> stub. You're assuming that some other editor was going to turn that
> redlink into a big article, and now refrains from editing it because
> it's not a redlink any more. I suggest that he picks a different
> redlink instead. That is:
>
> Your theory:
> Before: 2 redlinks
> After: 1 redlink, 1 tiny stub
>
> You prefer:
> After: 1 redlink, 1 big article
>
> My theory:
> Before: 2 redlinks
> After: 1 tiny stub, 1 big article.

I think the most useful thing that can be done when writing stubs, is
not to just find one source and write one sentence. Even if only the
most basic facts can be written in the available time, I think the
minimum is to leave sources for someone else to carry on writing the
article. Whether on the talk page or as external links or as further
reading or whatever.

In other words, leave four or five sources behind you, to encourage
others to expand the article.

But this is getting more into what the "perfect stub" is... :-)

The most complete "initial" article I created recently (I don't create
that many articles) was this one:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_W._Moore

An example of an article where I dumped a load of other sources in the
external links (some were behind a paywall, so I couldn't access
them), is this one:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geoffrey_Jefferson

Oh, cool! Someone came along and added this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Geoffrey_Jefferson&diff=304677112&oldid=304023235

Another example is this one:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Muir_(pathologist)

Again, several obituaries and biographies linked at the bottom in the
hope that others will come along later and add more. I suppose the
question is whether such articles are better built up bit by bit over
time from a small stub, or given a hefty start.

Carcharoth