(Axel Boldt <axelboldt(a)yahoo.com>)m>):
--- Lee Daniel Crocker <lee(a)piclab.com> wrote:
> (Axel Boldt <axelboldt(a)yahoo.com>)m>):
Yes,
that's a real problem; when linking to something, you can
never be sure whether the target is a disambiguation page or not.
That's not a bug, it's a feature. Seriously, accidental discovery of
vaguely related things is one of the fun parts of Wiki surfing, and
part of the value of the medium. Let's not go overboard and "fix"
things that are useful just because they seem unplanned.
Well, if a link to a disambiguation page is planned, then that's fine I
suppose, but often the author is unaware of it and the link may then
become imprecise and unhelpful. For example, in the eighteenth century
there were three mathematicians named "Johann Bernoulli". Also, lots of
technical terms have various definitions depending on context, and
while experts can usually tell which one is meant, those people are not
our main audience.
I have to repeat that "unplanned" or "unintentional" aren't bad.
"Wrong" is of course bad, but that's a minority case. There was a
time when a link on the "Jesus" page that was supposed to go to the
apostle Bartholomew actually went to Bart Simpson--that was bad.
Funny, but bad. But the majority of cases, people will just put a
link around something like "Mercury" without knowing that it will go
to a page that shows links to 4 or 5 different subjects, one of which
will be intended and the rest accidental--but that's a /good/ thing.
If someone is researching the god or the element and just happens to
run across articles on the space program, that's part of the Wiki
experience, so long as he can /also/ find what he's actually looking
for without much trouble.
--
Lee Daniel Crocker <lee(a)piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lee/>
"All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past,
are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified
for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC