[Wikipedia-l] Meta-question: wiki links in list/news posts

[Ray Saintonge]

Richard Grevers wrote:

> I notice that many wikipedians refer to wikipedia pages in these 
> discussion groups using wiki markup: e.g. [[this_article]]. That's 
> very cute, but highly impractical in terms of actually linking to the 
> article from a mail/news client. I usually have to resort to 
> searching, particularly with meta pages that I'm not familiar with the 
> url syntaxt of. Would it not be much better to paste the full url from 
> the browser in list messages?
>
Not really.  Sometimes using the Wiki markup is simply shorthand for 
saying "The article named "this article'".  It lets us know that 
reference to an article is intended.  Pasting the full URL is a lot of 
work when you are just trying to send off a quick note.  The reader who 
wants to check the article in question (if it is not a purely 
hypothetical one) can still copy and paste to the search box on any 
Wikipedia page, and press "Go".

Eclecticology