[WikiEN-l] Ars Technica: Prof replaces term papers with Wikipedia contributions, suffering ensues

[David Goodman]

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 at vanderpijll.nl> wrote:
> David Gerard schreef:
> > On 30/10/2007, Wily D <wilydoppelganger at 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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-- 
David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S.