[Wikipedia-l] Re: [Wikitech-l] Hyperlink convention

[Arwel Parry]

In message <1096261098.9992.59.camel at bad>, Evan Prodromou 
<evan-zOntnoXveK8sA/PxXw9srA at public.gmane.org> writes
>On Mon, 2004-09-27 at 09:35 +0530, shantanu oak wrote:
>> Hi,
>> What are the implied rules of creating hyperlinks?
>>
>> Let's assume I am reading the page....
>>
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MandrakeSoft
>>
>> I have understood 2 things about links...
>> 1) Red links don't contain any text.
>> 2) External links are marked (a convention, I wish all websites 
>>should follow)
>>
>> But I completely fail to understand why certain words are hyperlinked.
>> For e.g. in the following para why does the date January 27 is linked?
>> I clicked on that date and could not find anything related to the
>> current page i.e. MandrakeSoft.
>>
>> MandrakeSoft operated under bankruptcy protection from [[January 27]],
>> [[2003]] to [[March 30]], [[2004]]. Despite its efforts to cut losses
>> and improve profits, MandrakeSoft was forced to file for protection
>> due to a series of quarterly losses.
>>
>> Too much (and mostly unnecessary) hyperlinks makes me shy away from 
>>using wiki.
>
>Hmm. We're kind of in a double bind, here. If we don't fix up everything
>in the encyclopedia to be completely perfect, you're not going to
>participate. But if we fix everything to be completely perfect, we don't
>really need your participation after that. B-)
>
>On a more serious note: you should probably look over the manual of
>style for English Wikipedia. If I'm not mistaken, linking dates and
>years just because is not recommended. You can help Wikipedia by taking
>out the links in the page you found.

On the contrary -- linking dates is strongly encouraged, so that they 
are displayed according to the readers' preferences. [[27 September]] 
[[2004]] will display variously as 27 September 2004, September 27, 
2004, or 2004-09-27. It saves a great many edit wars that way. Anything 
which will pour oil on the troubled waters of Transatlantic writing 
styles is a good thing.

-- 
Arwel Parry
http://www.cartref.demon.co.uk/