quiddity wrote
The thing is, we can't guess or know what a reader might be looking for, so we try to aid them /based on the title they arrived at/.
Well, actually the problem here seems to be that you have an idea about _how_ they will navigate and find something, and you are imposing it. And in fact you can't guess how navigational pages will be used, either.
*If they arrived at the page [[Boll]], they were probably looking for something called "Boll". *If they were looking for the thing discovered by a guy named Boll, or for the nationality of a specific guy named Boll, then they can find that via his article.
or
*If someone wanted to find the article on "Calhoun County", but the only thing they could remember about the place was it contained a city named "Springfield", then they'll have to make an extra click to go along with their extra mental jump.
So, Calhoun County and rhodopsin should not be wikilinked at those 2 dab pages (According to our current guideline). This is with the intention of making the dab pages efficacious to use for the majority of readers (in all their diverse forms).
I think you completely missed the point of those examples.
And you miss a major point about being a wiki, which is that hyperlinking is made easy for a reason. It is not "efficacious" to have rules about linking like this. It is overly prescriptive.
The issue is fairly simple, I think, and has little to do with hypotheses about how pages could, should or would be used. About 90% of the time, anyway, excess bluelinks on a line in a dab page make it somewhat harder to read. So overlinking of that kind should be discouraged, and I quite agree with that. Making it a hard-and-fast rule, and not a guideline, is a bad idea.
It will probably not be long before someone decides a bot is needed to "enforce" this guideline, and purge links that are useful. Which would be ridiculous, in my view.
Charles
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On 10/6/08, Charles Matthews charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com wrote:
About 90% of the time, anyway, excess bluelinks on a line in a dab page make it somewhat harder to read.
{{fact?}}
Sometimes I have found it harder to select and copy a word from the middle of the link (in order to paste elsewhere) but never harder to read.
I guess the blue is dark enough this doesn't become an issue for me. Maybe other browsers or skins will have a fainter color for "visited" links, and they might be "harder to read", I really don't know.
As long as the most relevant link be the left-most one on each line I could care less how many others there are, though Mark has raised some good examples of how more links might be helpful when dealing with seventh-circle political units you've never heard of.
Most of the time I don't think it matters much.
—C.W.
On Mon, Oct 6, 2008 at 8:26 AM, Charles Matthews charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com wrote:
quiddity wrote
The thing is, we can't guess or know what a reader might be looking for, so we try to aid them /based on the title they arrived at/.
Well, actually the problem here seems to be that you have an idea about _how_ they will navigate and find something, and you are imposing it. And in fact you can't guess how navigational pages will be used, either.
As opposed to - *not* having any ideas about how someone will navigate and find something?
Are you suggesting we should scrap the current disambig style recommendations ("guidelines"), and treat them all like standard articles?
Please don't accuse me of an inability to guess.
I think you completely missed the point of those examples.
And you miss a major point about being a wiki, which is that hyperlinking is made easy for a reason. It is not "efficacious" to have rules about linking like this. It is overly prescriptive.
The issue is fairly simple, I think, and has little to do with hypotheses about how pages could, should or would be used. About 90% of the time, anyway, excess bluelinks on a line in a dab page make it somewhat harder to read. So overlinking of that kind should be discouraged, and I quite agree with that. Making it a hard-and-fast rule, and not a guideline, is a bad idea.
"90%" ? So who decides which specific words fall into the other 10%?
It *is* a guideline. It is not a hard-and-fast rule, or policy, or law, or anything else. I completely agree.
I don't know who you are arguing with?! The {{Disambig_editintro}} template wording? So go change it! Good grief. You are "missing the point" about how wikis work, if you expect someone else to do things for you...
It will probably not be long before someone decides a bot is needed to "enforce" this guideline, and purge links that are useful. Which would be ridiculous, in my view.
[[slippery slope]] for the win?
Q.
On Mon, Oct 6, 2008 at 10:55 AM, Charles Matthews charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com wrote:
quiddity wrote
Allwiki is one extreme, plain-unlinked-text is the other - we each decide individually where we fall in between. I'm not trying to "convince" you of anything!
The trouble is ... the "where" should largely be regulated by common sense. In fact, both by good sense, and the communal sense we have of what we're trying to do. Guidelines should help with this, not be a hindrance and certainly not a reason to hide behind "this has been decided". Judging by my recent experiences, at CfD, and with dab page and redirect issues, the pendulum has swung away from common sense to people's personal theories being given full rein and a rather spurious status. We get told "that is not useful, this would be", but on flimsy grounds.
I feel the editing message is shoving that attitude down our throats.
Charles
Oh! "Common sense". Well I'm glad you hold such a high-regard for the common-sense of all our editors! Except when you disagree, and then they're "missing the point"...
To clarify: The {{Disambig_editintro}} template is intended to prevent well-meaning editors from FULLY-wikifying dab pages. (Which happens a lot. Despite your hope for universal common sense).
The relevant line (that the template is attempting to summarize) is at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style_(disambiguation_pages...
* To avoid confusing the reader, each bulleted entry should, in almost every case, have only one ''navigable'' (blue) link. '''Do not wikilink any other words in the line''', for example: ** [[Dark Star (song)|"Dark Star" (song)]], by the Grateful Dead<!-- note: it is not necessary to repeat the word "song" in the description as per "keep description to a minimum" below. --> ** '''not:''' [[Dark Star (song)|"Dark Star" (song)]], a [[song]] by the [[psychedelic]] [[rock band]] [[The Grateful Dead]]
{{sofixit}} if you think it is wrong.
I remember why I don't post to the mailing lists though. Everyone (that replies) is just itching for an offwiki argument, it seems.
Q.