--- Stephen Gilbert <canuck_in_korea2002(a)yahoo.com>
wrote:
--- "Michael R. Irwin" <mri_icboise(a)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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