--- Stephen Gilbert canuck_in_korea2002@yahoo.com wrote:
--- "Michael R. Irwin" mri_icboise@surfbest.net wrote:
It seems like silly makework to me.
The article will be recreated again anytime anyone clicks on one of the links leading to it.
If it is a good title then it is an invitation for anyone who encounters it to add to it.
Here's the situation. Pretend Wikipedia had not article on, say, the Protestant Reformation. Someone follows a link to the empty article, edits the page and types "sadlhfhg". Now, when someone is reading another article with a link to the Protestant Reformation, it looks like we have an article. If they don't visit the page, they won't know that there's actually no article. If, however, the Protestant Reformation page was deleted, people will see empty links and think, "Hmmm... we should really have something on that topic."
Do any of you sometimes use the special print feature (printable version)? I do from time to time print some articles I want to keep, and read carefully, and confront to other articles.
When one does print an article, all the links in the text are indicated filled (they all seem to lead to an existing article, as they are colored and underlined).
Though I understand looking at an article with ? at the end of words would look pretty weird on paper, I find that confusing.
I know we are in electronic times, but jee, my office is still crowded with papers, for I used prints quite a lot (to avoid losing information, for my poor eyes sake, for online connexion availability, slow understanding, for easier working out, annotation). It doesnot kill interconnectivity process, and I believe an encyclopedia article is something that must be printable somehow.
However, I think it a poor idea to show all the links as if they were filled. First, because it is somehow "cheating" to pretend that information is available, and of course, for all the reasons many of you give against very short stubs (in particular, the fact you don't feel the urge to get up in the middle of the night to add something yourself).
Empty links and filled links should appear differently on prints.
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