[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:
> Those are all terrible sentences which would confuse or mislead
> readers even in the absence of links.
>
> I have no doubt that you could cook up some examples which were were
> not ambiguous,

You are correct, but that doesn't mean such sentences don't appear "in
the wild" so to speak.

> but rejecting a 99.999% solution because it's not a 100% solution
> is a perfect way to abandon being good entirely.

It wouldn't be a 7% solution or even a 3/5 compromise as "client side"
links would be all in our heads, not existing outside of the user's
screen.

> However, we have no clue what screen size and text size the client is
> viewing with, and it varies rather dramatically.  So, once per "screen
> height" is simply not achievable in the text, though it could be
> accomplished via scripting on the client side.

You mentioned scripting earlier. The point I was trying to make is
that it's disproportionately easier for a machine to reliably remove
links than restore them. This applies to content in general but that's
another matter.

> I dunno that I'd find once per screen would be much of an improvement
> though:  I'll see a word that I want to click on, but now I have to
> scan up to find a prior linked instance. Maybe one exists, maybe it
> doesn't.  I'd be better off just searching.

That was shorthand for:
> once per ==section==, unless
>> The sections are "too short", in which case once every other section, or
>> The sections are "too long", in which case once every paragraph, unless:
>>> The paragraphs are "too short", in which case once every other paragraph, or
>>> The paragraphs are "too long", in which case more than once per paragraph, but not "too much"
>> The article doesn't have sections to begin with, in which case FAIL

Which of course would be just as subjective as screen height. What I
really mean is I don't like having to jump through ridiculous hoops to
navigate from one article to another.

—C.W.