[WikiEN-l] Delinking years and only making links relevant to the context considered harmful

[Thomas Dalton]

> In your example I would have expected "ping poing player" to
> link to an article about the specific involved ping pong player.

Ouch, that's *my* pet peeve! Don't link to an article using text that
could well be the title of another article. A generic phrase like
"ping pong player" should only link to a generic article about ping
pong players (or the player section of the ping pong article if we
don't have an article dedicated to ping pong players). If you want to
link to a specific player, use their name as the link text. Piping is
great when using an alternative name for something or for using
something in a different part of speech than the title of the article
(redirects work just as well), it shouldn't be used for hiding what
article is actually being linked to. You should be able to tell from
the link text what to expect when you click on it.