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

[Charlotte Webb]

On 10/12/08, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> Generally I see that as a pattern of linking to something boring and
> generic that I could easily look up if I were interested in it and in
> which reading about would not enhance my knowledge of the subject at
> hand very much.

Sounds like the MOS guys' post-de-linker advice, which seems to be
"copy what you think might be an article title, and paste it in the
search box". I only wish I was grossly exaggerating.

> If I'm reading about the discovery of [[Uranus]] the material on
> "1781" and especially "March 13" are of no more value to me
> than "injury", "malice", or "baldness" are in your example.

Makes it easier to confirm that the discovery of Uranus is mentioned
those pages (as it bloody ought to be). I believe systematically
de-linking the day/month/year pages will sharply impede their
development.

If somebody wants to write about events of [[1699]] they probably
depend on whatlinkshere to learn that [[William Gustav of
Anhalt-Dessau]] was born that year and [[Hortense Mancini]] died that
year. I'm not sure how else they'd realistically find that out, google
maybe?

> I do not intend to say completely without value, but not more
> than other generic things in the article text.

I agree that "injury", "malice", and "baldness" are near-useless in my
example, and I'm am frustrated that the de-linking scourge is targeted
toward links which actually are useful, including but not limited to
days, years, months, countries, languages, oceans, U.S. states except
for Gerogia, provinces of Canada, famous cities which require no
disambiguation (such as Toronto, Moscow, etc.), all based on an
incredibly narrow estimate of what the mythical average reader will
intentionally click on.

—C.W.