"David Gerard" wrote
There's little low-hanging fruit left, as we've noted here before - but any WikiProject will have endless lists of red links just waiting for someone to do the legwork to research and write an article.
Bah. I still dispute this.
Someone with university-level research facilities should be able to do a much better job than from a mere Googling, in not much more time.
A proper library for writing a proper article, OK. But let's not propagate the fallacy that one can't write a good stub any more.
Charles
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On 10/30/07, charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com wrote:
"David Gerard" wrote
There's little low-hanging fruit left, as we've noted here before - but any WikiProject will have endless lists of red links just waiting for someone to do the legwork to research and write an article.
Bah. I still dispute this.
Someone with university-level research facilities should be able to do a much better job than from a mere Googling, in not much more time.
A proper library for writing a proper article, OK. But let's not propagate the fallacy that one can't write a good stub any more.
Charles
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There's plenty of low hanging fruit for writing good starts using just teh google. In fact, I wrote one yesterday: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La Cuisinière and last friday: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Fournier_de_Belleval and the friday before that: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rom%C3%A9o Beaudry and so on. It's really not very hard at all. The obiggest problem is probably the anti-redlink culture that's growing very strong, that keeps people uninformed on what needs writing.
More than anything else, the fact that writers are so strongly biased against redlinks these days is a huge reason new page creation has gone down.
WilyD
On 30/10/2007, Wily D wilydoppelganger@gmail.com wrote:
On 10/30/07, charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com wrote:
"David Gerard" wrote
There's little low-hanging fruit left, as we've noted here before - but any WikiProject will have endless lists of red links just waiting for someone to do the legwork to research and write an article.
Bah. I still dispute this.
Little of what casual visitors would think of as low-hanging fruit, then!
Someone with university-level research facilities should be able to do a much better job than from a mere Googling, in not much more time.
A proper library for writing a proper article, OK. But let's not propagate the fallacy that one can't write a good stub any more.
There's plenty of low hanging fruit for writing good starts using just teh google. In fact, I wrote one yesterday:
Oh yeah. I still find new things to write.
It's really not very hard at all. The obiggest problem is probably the anti-redlink culture that's growing very strong, that keeps people uninformed on what needs writing. More than anything else, the fact that writers are so strongly biased against redlinks these days is a huge reason new page creation has gone down.
This is bad. How to get across to the fervently anti-redlink (and they exist) their error?
- d.
On Oct 30, 2007 12:30 PM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
This is bad. How to get across to the fervently anti-redlink (and they exist) their error?
Simple, Add
a.new { text-decoration: none; color: #002bb8; background: none; }
To their monobook.css.... It worked with one user for a number of years. Sadly, due to oversight-mania that delightful bit of Wikipedia history has been lost.
David Gerard schreef:
On 30/10/2007, Wily D wilydoppelganger@gmail.com wrote:
It's really not very hard at all. The obiggest problem is probably the anti-redlink culture that's growing very strong, that keeps people uninformed on what needs writing. More than anything else, the fact that writers are so strongly biased against redlinks these days is a huge reason new page creation has gone down.
This is bad. How to get across to the fervently anti-redlink (and they exist) their error?
The only solution I can come up with is to ask them on their talk page why they don't think [[subject]] can have a Wikipedia article.
Oh, and one other thing: give the people at [[Wikipedia:Featured article candidates]] a stern talking-to. Some of the search results for "red link" on the current page:
"Only a little problem - red links should be adressed or removed." "For FA, I'd lose the red links, either create stubs or unwikify, just for aesthetics." "For instance, the names in the infobox, if linked, will generate a lot of red links, which aren't desirable."
etc., all by different editors.
Eugene
Quoting Eugene van der Pijll eugene@vanderpijll.nl:
David Gerard schreef:
On 30/10/2007, Wily D wilydoppelganger@gmail.com wrote:
It's really not very hard at all. The obiggest problem is probably the anti-redlink culture that's growing very strong, that keeps people uninformed on what needs writing. More than anything else, the fact that writers are so strongly biased against redlinks these days is a huge reason new page creation has gone down.
This is bad. How to get across to the fervently anti-redlink (and they exist) their error?
The only solution I can come up with is to ask them on their talk page why they don't think [[subject]] can have a Wikipedia article.
Oh, and one other thing: give the people at [[Wikipedia:Featured article candidates]] a stern talking-to. Some of the search results for "red link" on the current page:
"Only a little problem - red links should be adressed or removed." "For FA, I'd lose the red links, either create stubs or unwikify, just for aesthetics." "For instance, the names in the infobox, if linked, will generate a lot of red links, which aren't desirable."
etc., all by different editors.
Eugene
Yes, I've tried to bring this up before. If one of the goals of featured articles is to get new editors then having redlinks is a good thing. Gives new editors stuff to work on.
On 30/10/2007, Eugene van der Pijll eugene@vanderpijll.nl wrote:
David Gerard schreef:
This is bad. How to get across to the fervently anti-redlink (and they exist) their error?
Oh, and one other thing: give the people at [[Wikipedia:Featured article candidates]] a stern talking-to. Some of the search results for "red link" on the current page: "Only a little problem - red links should be adressed or removed." "For FA, I'd lose the red links, either create stubs or unwikify, just for aesthetics." "For instance, the names in the infobox, if linked, will generate a lot of red links, which aren't desirable." etc., all by different editors.
I've commented at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Featured_article_candidates#Remo...
I ask anyone interested to comment there as well.
- d.
In quite a number of articles , the redlinks represent places where articles were removed, not where they have not been written. Ideally, the linking should probably be removed when the linked-rto article is deleted, but often people forget.
Another complication is spamming, especially in lists of names or businesses. There are some articles I watch where removal of redlinks makes very good sense if there is to be any integrity.
And of course many of the redlinks often just need fixing to the correct form, or writing a redirect
so how do we tell all this apart ?
On 10/30/07, Eugene van der Pijll eugene@vanderpijll.nl wrote:
David Gerard schreef:
On 30/10/2007, Wily D wilydoppelganger@gmail.com wrote:
It's really not very hard at all. The obiggest problem is probably the anti-redlink culture that's growing very strong, that keeps people uninformed on what needs writing. More than anything else, the fact that writers are so strongly biased against redlinks these days is a huge reason new page creation has gone down.
This is bad. How to get across to the fervently anti-redlink (and they exist) their error?
The only solution I can come up with is to ask them on their talk page why they don't think [[subject]] can have a Wikipedia article.
Oh, and one other thing: give the people at [[Wikipedia:Featured article candidates]] a stern talking-to. Some of the search results for "red link" on the current page:
"Only a little problem - red links should be adressed or removed." "For FA, I'd lose the red links, either create stubs or unwikify, just for aesthetics." "For instance, the names in the infobox, if linked, will generate a lot of red links, which aren't desirable."
etc., all by different editors.
Eugene
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On 31/10/2007, Wily D wilydoppelganger@gmail.com wrote:
There's plenty of low hanging fruit for writing good starts using just teh google. In fact, I wrote one yesterday: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La Cuisinière and last friday: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Fournier_de_Belleval and the friday before that: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rom%C3%A9o Beaudry and so on. It's really not very hard at all. The obiggest problem is probably the anti-redlink culture that's growing very strong, that keeps people uninformed on what needs writing.
More than anything else, the fact that writers are so strongly biased against redlinks these days is a huge reason new page creation has gone down.
It was only let to get this far because no-one was willing to make a conclusive policy pro-redlinks. The extensive use of WP:CONTEXT does not help in this way. In theory CONTEXT works because people are discouraged from linking everything, but in practice with multi-person inputs, it ends up being the absolute lowest set of links that people are willing to accept, instead of a larger variety.
Personally, as a moderately red colourblind person, I think that red text stands out just enough... I can't imagine the hassle about reading redlinked articles that I have heard from normal vision people.
Peter