[WikiEN-l] Overlinking!!!

[Delirium]

Marc Riddell wrote:
> on 10/20/08 2:30 PM, Oskar Sigvardsson at oskarsigvardsson at gmail.com wrote:
>   
>> Small tip if this really annoys you: use the Modern skin. I personally
>> think it looks better than monobook, and it makes the links much less
>> stand-outy (as Joss Whedon would have said). I barely notice
>> overlinking.
>>
>>     
> Thanks for the tip, Oskar. The major point I have been trying to make for
> some time is: for now and especially the future, if you want really serious
> people, and really serious contributors, to take this Project really
> seriously, a great deal of work needs to be done on its consistency and
> stability. Right now it seems that the only "consensus" is that that there
> is none. And the amazing thing is that most people seem to find that OK! It
> needs to put down the pom-pons, stop with the "aren't we the greatest
> because we have a zillion Articles" and get serious about cleaning up its
> organizational act. In the larger scheme, the Project is still in its
> infancy. Even adolescence is still a far way off.
>   
I guess it depends on the issue. I don't see consistency of things like 
linking patterns, date formats, and reference styles to be among the top 
problems with a consensus-built summary of knowledge, nor the biggest 
issues likely to rankle serious contributors. Much more problematic are 
things like what counts as verifiability, what counts as undue weight, 
how to deal with issues where consensus differs (sometimes sharply) 
between different subgroups, e.g. different academic fields, or 
different nations' historical views; how to avoid excellent articles 
bit-rotting into pablum; and so on.

The other sort of inconsistency, academics at least are used to dealing 
with all the time---the literature Wikipedia uses as references is 
itself a big hodge-podge of inconsistency, which is why we have to 
arbitrarily choose between e.g. competing naming schemes in the first place.

-Mark