At 02:13 PM 6/29/02 -0700, you wrote:
On Saturday 29 June 2002 12:01 pm, Bryan Derksen
wrote:
Candy worms, sure, but I can easily imagine
writing an article about
something computery and referring simply to "worms" within it because the
"computer" context is already clear to the reader of the article. Why make
the editor check every link to be sure that it doesn't lead to some
completely irrelevant article that just happens to have a name in common
with what you really wanted?
Why would [[computer worm]] be anything else? Why wouldn't [[worm]] be about
the most common usage? This is why we have naming conventions that aim to
naturally disambiguate terms from each other using the least complex naming
scheme.
The question of what's the "most common usage" is a matter of opinion,
however. Wikipedia is on the Internet, so naturally there's going to be a
lot of computer-oriented people accessing it. I know that when I'm in a
conversation specifically about computer security, I never say "computer
worms" or "computer viruses"; I just say "worms" and
"viruses," and the
people I'm talking to know what I'm talking about. Likewise, when I'm
talking about genetics and I mention "viruses", there's usually no
ambiguity there either. I don't think it's good to hard-code an assumption
about what the subject of the linked-from articles will be about.
I recall briefly debating about whether the planet/greek god pages should
be disambiguated or whether the page should belong to the god with a "see
also:" for the planet, and this was another case where I felt that it was
far too opinion-dependant deciding whether the greek god or the planet
should have "precedence." When I hear "Venus" I think
"planet" first, but
I'm sure there are plenty of less astronomically-oriented people out there
who think "god" first and would be put off by having their links lead to
the "wrong" article.
I guess that's my main point, really; I am much less disturbed by clicking
on [[blah]] and getting an article containing a list of alternate meanings
than I am by clicking on [[blah]] and getting a full article about the
_wrong_ meaning ("wrong" in this case simply meaning "not the meaning I had
in mind when I clicked on the link").
If we can't assume at least some intelligence from
our contributors to
naturally disambiguate terms then we might as well turn [[Paris]] into a
non-article disambiguation page to catch those pitiful souls who expect to
link to an article on Paris, Texas by typing [[Paris]] -- just because the
article they were writing in was in the context of Texas history.
It's a rather extreme example, but yes, I wouldn't have a problem with
that. :) At least it makes Paris, France's article title more standardized
with the other city titles when the reader gets to it.
I think it's a bad idea to assume some kind of universal context when
writing articles, because everyone has a slightly different idea of what
the universal context is.
--
"Let there be light." - Last words of Bomb #20, "Dark Star"