On 10/4/08, Charles Matthews charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com wrote:
The second is more serious. Per WP:MOSDAB, a guideline, it now says "one bluelink per line". OK, I agree with the principle of light wikification in this context. But not as a rule set in stone - guidelines are not to be treated that way.
I think this is for the benefit of bots and other automated tools for retargeting incoming links (changing [[Boll]] to [[Franz Christian Boll|Boll]] "using AWB" or whatever), with the logic that a shorter multiple-choice list makes the operation more efficient.
This is also part of the reason people remove topics for which no article exists, even those which are discussed at length in a broader article, saying "nobody would ever link to this meaning that".
Let's say "Bubba Jackbob Boll" is verifiably the name of a minor character appearing in one episode of some offbeat TV show (My Name Is Earl perhaps). Even being more inclusionist than the average pokémon trader I'd concede that not enough info will exist for an article about this grit, but I would still list him on the disambig page, and from there the name would probably redirect to the episode.
More rabidly, some people will remove red links from disambiguation pages or delete disambiguation pages consisting only of red links, even when the German version lists half a dozen actual articles.
To avoid this sort of nimrodry I would advocate changing the word "articles" to "topics" in the {{disambig}} template.
Beyond that, there are those who would replace Bubba and Franz with a link to something like [[Boll (surname)]] and list their full names one step further away, again saying "nobody would ever link to [[Boll]] in reference to a specific person". But this isn't really relevant. It may be sensible to do this in cases where the main disambig page is too crowded, but that would be a wholly unrelated concern.
In all cases we should think first of the readers. Maybe in the not-too-distant future it will be feasible for (what currently we know as) disambiguation pages to be generated and updated automatically by the software. Something like Special:Search, only a lot smarter and friendlier, who knows...
—C.W.