[Wikipedia-l] On Interlanguage links and seeding articles on other langas.

[Steve Vertigo]

Conversation from Talk pages:

ANGELA:I've just seen your post to the intlwiki
mailing list. I can't reply there as I'm not currently
subscribing to it and I've forgotten my password to
re-subscribe, so I'll reply here instead. Feel free to
copy this to the list if you want to.

I disagree with creating articles which consist only
of interlanguage links and I tend to delete such pages
from the English Wikipedia. It wastes someone's time
if they follow a link thinking they will get some
useful information, only to find a blank page. It may
be useful for those who want to write articles in
other languages, but frustrating and confusing for
those trying to read Wikipedia. Linking should occur
after the article is written, not before. Angela
21:59, 16 Aug 2003 (UTC)

STEVERTIGO:Paraphrasing what you said,(apologies :) in
a different context: {I disagree with creating stub
articles which consist only of a couple paragraphs and
I tend to delete such pages from the English
Wikipedia. It wastes someone's time if they follow a
link thinking they will get some useful information,
only to find a unprofessional and incomplete article.
It may be useful for those who want to add or
contribute to these articles, but frustrating and
confusing for those trying to read Wikipedia.
Professional quality should be attained before not
after the article is written.} ??sv 22:20, Aug 16,
2003 (UTC)
P.S -- I wrote back to Tarq on
http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/intlwiki-l/2003-August/001999.html

ANGELA:But a stub can contain useful information. IL
links do not. They only tell you that there may or may
not be some info in some other language somewhere. A
blank page is confusing. A page with only a little bit
of info is not. Angela

STEVERTIGO:Bu shi ! A stub can also contain useless
information -- the point is not to generalize what
stubs are and what they are good for. Some stubs are
better than others. -- "IL links do not"-- Bu shi ! If
you look at an page with just a title and an IL
link--and you cant read that language--just hover over
the ILlink! Bingo. You can do it right now on the
ar:wikipedia. Thats one situation (as unusual as it
is) where what you said is not true. There are many
more. Where in the rules does it say you cant put x in
front of X? In fact in some ways its better that
making a whole system and then trying to link them up
in some way -- each should give the other ideas about
how to structure stuff organization. Do you mind if I
load this talk up to the mail? -S- P.s -- mail Walter
to reset your password intlwiki-l-owner AT Wikipedia
DOT org 

ANGELA: Hovering over links is only useful if you are
in the encyclopedia of a language you don't read. Why
you be there in the first place? If you are in en:
then a link which tells you the page title in Arabic
won't help. I agree with linking the WPs together, but
linking up a load of blank pages is not useful. The
red links are there to tell you a page does not exist.
If you put a link in, it makes it look like the page
does exist.     re: load this talk up to the mail... I
don't mind. re: mail Walter. I already clicked the
"send me a new password button" but it hasn't done
anything. I shall do as you suggest.

STEVERTIGO:IL links/usefulness - I respectfully
disagree. TBC-


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