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The current policy states: "Generally, a link should appear only once in an article, but if helpful for readers, a link may be repeated in infoboxes, tables, image captions, footnotes, hatnotes, and at the first occurrence after the lead. Citations stand alone in their usage, so there is no problem with repeating the same link in many citations within an article."
However, on articles this is often a problem for me, especially long articles, because I might be reading just a section of the article. On occasion I have to actually go searching in the rest of the article to find the wikilink. This is annoying and a pointless waste of my time! One time I even added a wikilink because I looked for it and couldn't find it, and it was removed because it was elsewhere in the article - just in a section I hadn't read (because I was only interested in that particular section!)
Wikilinks are cheap - why not relax this and allow them once per section?
Proposed re-wording:
"Generally, a link should appear only once in an article, but if helpful for readers, a link may be repeated in infoboxes, tables, image captions, footnotes, hatnotes, and at the first occurrence in a section. Citations stand alone in their usage, so there is no problem with repeating the same link in many citations within an article."
This might cause over-linking but given the "if it is useful to readers" language, this allows it when it is useful, and overlinking where it is not necessary (i.e. if there are very few sections or if the sections are very short) could still be removed.
Mvolz ( talk) 08:54, 3 May 2021 (UTC)
twice per body if long - I think we could simply relax it a bit. We can generally recognize overlinking -especially in egregious sea of links articles-, but it is not completely simple to recognize the point where it would be useful to add it again. Myself, I would allow a second in the body if the article is long, but not two wlinks in the same top-level section. When I remove extra links, I find that often that second links or more are close together. I attribute this to different editors adding a new sentence and not noticing the previous wlink. Or rewrites. I would not add too much complexity to the rule. Let's not swing too far from the one per body rule. Alaney2k ( talk) 13:36, 8 June 2021 (UTC)
It's that easy... for those of our readers who are on a desktop computer. Try to use the mobile view: by default it shows sections as collapsed. The MOS must cater to all of our readers (and a huge number of them are on mobile), and making our articles more usable may be worth
dilut[ing] the hyperlinking system. Overlinking is bad, but underlinking is worse. — Kusma ( talk) 08:59, 15 June 2021 (UTC)
[[Americans|American]] [[physician]]
" (to give an example I saw earlier hours ago). A "sea of blue" is a problem because "
American
physician" looks like it's a single (two-word) link, but clicking on the first word doesn't take you to the same page as if you click on the second word.[[Americans|American]] [[physician]]
" more likely than "a [[physician]] in the [[Americans|US]]
", which is not a sea of blue – so I'm wondering if what you mean is that you worry that editors will turn most of the words blue (which could be an aesthetic problem, but it's not a problem with figuring out where one link stops and another starts).
WhatamIdoing (
talk)
15:37, 18 June 2021 (UTC)
but definitely not requiring "once per section"But this is not at all what's being proposed. The proposed wording was:
Generally, a link should appear only once in an article, but if helpful for readers, a link may be repeated [...] at the first occurrence in a section.Colin M ( talk) 15:50, 20 June 2021 (UTC)
You are invited to join the discussion at
Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals) § WikiProject links in navigational templates. --
Trialpears (
talk)
16:02, 8 July 2021 (UTC)
An editor has created multiple RfCs at several recent FIFA world cups about whether the nations should be linked: Talk:2002 FIFA World Cup#Inline link RfC Talk:2006 FIFA World Cup#Inline link RfC Talk:2010 FIFA World Cup#Inline link RfC Talk:2014 FIFA World Cup#Inline link RfC Talk:2022 FIFA World Cup#Inline link RfC. Since one was at Brazil and another Japan, the examples here might need to change if the decision is to link. Walter Görlitz ( talk) 06:36, 25 July 2021 (UTC)
I personally don't think these articles should be linked in any of these. I think the editor who opened these is forum shopping. Rubbish computer Ping me or leave a message on my talk page 14:32, 25 July 2021 (UTC)
Looking at MOS:SEAOFBLUE, there doesn't seem to be a clear rule on whether it's preferable to link per [[Riverside, California]]
or
Riverside, California for places that are suffixed by a state or county. A bit further down, it says
However, there may be instances in which it is useful to have the state or county following the place, and not everyone knows that Buffalo is in New York state (including self). (Also, if separated by a comma, it's not really a sea of blue.) Readers may like to read something about the state separately from the town name. I would like to see this spelt out to make it clearer whether it's supposed to be optional - IMO it could be left up to the discretion of the editor. We currently have a situation, e.g. where some places may be followed by a state within the same link in the infobox and others with a separate link for state (Berkeley, Gloucestershire vs Cheltenham; Newcastle, New South Wales vs Brewarrina; etc.). Laterthanyouthink ( talk) 07:23, 3 August 2021 (UTC)
[[Buffalo, New York]]
or [[Buffalo, New York|Buffalo]], New York
or [[Buffalo, New York|Buffalo]], [[New York (state)|New York]]
may be appropriate. Making mass changes or reverting simply "because MOS" is usually disruptive. Also worth pointing out that the buffalo rule was only added last month after
this discussion. I don't think this was a good idea as the addition was made based on the strength of participating editors' personal convictions despite the fact that they were undermined by the little available data on reader usage. –
Uanfala (talk)
13:50, 3 August 2021 (UTC)Hi all! What's the rule with this please? DeFacto has edited multiple pages changing the direct link to an article, to a redirect they created themselves, which then goes on to the actual article eg here and here. The article's name 'Treachery of the Blue Books', is the acceptable form; John Davies notes in The Welsh Academy Encyclopaedia of Wales that the name took hold of the public imagination to such an extent that ever since the report has been known by that name. Reference: see here. Isn't using another name to hide the true article name a form of censorship, and therefore in the spirit of Wikipedia, should be disallowed? Thanks! Llywelyn2000 ( talk) 07:43, 30 August 2021 (UTC)
do not use a piped link where it is possible to use a redirected term that fits well within the scope of the text". However, if your question is more about your disagreement over the wording used in any specific article, then this probably isn't the appropriate talkpage to discuss that. -- DeFacto ( talk). 08:48, 30 August 2021 (UTC)
{{
R with possibilities}}
or similar, which might one day become a full article in its own right. In the case of
Treachery of the Blue Books that doesn't apply, because none of the inward redirects has any
R templates at all. There are presently five redirects:
1847 Inquiry into the State of Education in Wales;
Inquiry into the State of Education in Wales 1847;
Reports of the commissioners of enquiry into the state of education in Wales;
Reports of the Commissioners of Inquiry into the state of education in Wales; and
Treason of the Blue Books, and there may be valid reasons to use one of these, particularly if one of these phrases is used by an authoritative source. --
Redrose64 🌹 (
talk)
09:04, 31 August 2021 (UTC)
Hi. I want to create an internal link to my block log for my bio page. How can I render this as a blue link? Piotr Jr. ( talk) 18:49, 17 September 2021 (UTC)
Is it OK to link to a category from an article's body? I'm looking at scholars of translation studies in the second paragraph of Skopos theory#Background. Largoplazo ( talk) 10:00, 21 September 2021 (UTC)
From a discussion on my talk page, would it be reasonable that within context of OVERLINK that there are certain worldwide events of significant scale that we should not link to when they're just name-dropped in an article?
This would be events like World War I/II, but possibly also going to things like the COVID-19 pandemic. Eg common we would see in a biography phrasing like "His parents immigrated to the United States from Eastern Europe in 1941 during World War II." and it can be argued that while adding WWII can bring significant in context, the link itself is unnecessary given that its a commonly known event to nearly all English readers. Or on many recent films "The film was delayed to (date) due to the COVID-19 pandemic." Of course, in these types of events, there are huge heirarchies of articles under them, and if a more specific link that was better context for the event. In the latter case, it would be better to have something like Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on cinema as a target link, eg "The film was delayed to (date) due to the COVID-19 pandemic." or something like that, if it needs to be linked at all.
This is not to say that when WWII as a link itself can't be used when the war itself is the specific topic of relevant, eg History of Poland (1939–1945) better link World War II directly (among other links within that heirarchy).
And I would say this should avoid other major events that may be known worldwide but lack the worldwide significance, and thus may not be as readily known to all English speakers and that they should be linked - eg: Korean War, Vietnam War, September 11 attacks, Falklands War, French Revolution, Russian Revolution, etc., though editors should use reasonable discretion given context. -- Masem ( t) 18:51, 29 September 2021 (UTC)
Hi, in Viktor Axelsen infobox, there were some linking to countries: Denmark and United Arab Emirates. Per MOS:LINKSTYLE and MOS:OVERLINK it is right or not? Stvbastian ( talk) 14:43, 16 October 2021 (UTC)
In the overlink section, there should be a section about America linking, Wikiedia's most infamous overlinks. Many pages have America links, including pages for people films, bands, companies, and even disambiguation pages (!) and user pages. -- 2A01:36D:1201:319:D7B:67F9:1B9B:5307 ( talk) 06:14, 11 October 2021 (UTC)
I had a minor discussion with User:FunkMonk on this, so figured I'd ask here. This might not be an interesting enough case to add to the guidance, but still interesting to see what people think. The current duplicate links guidance says:
What about when a link arises due to the expansion of a template - especially a template generally used in parentheses? I would personally argue that this is equivalent to the "footnote" case except with a classic parenthetical in-text footnote, and thus shouldn't "count" in general toward the duplicate links guideline. This is especially true if the link is relevant in the prose case and not-very-relevant in the templated case. The main example I'm thinking of here is the {{lang-XX}} family of templates that not only italicize a foreign phrase, but also include an explanatory link to the relevant language. For example, from the lede of the article Royal Spanish Academy:
In my opinion, linking Spanish language in prose is "important" and useful here. The fact that "Real Academia Española" is in Spanish isn't as interesting, and the average reader's eyes will skip over the parenthetical part because that's what readers are trained to do. One solution would be to change the lang-es template to include |link="no" of course ( France does this, for example) but I don't even think this should be necessary - the language link is harmless in the same way that repeated footnote links are harmless. Any thoughts on the matter? Does the duplicate link guidance extend even to links from expanded templates? If it does, how much latitude is there to IAR ignore this sometimes? SnowFire ( talk) 21:28, 8 November 2021 (UTC)
|links=no
, so the above should be rendered "Spanish: Real Academia Española". --
Michael Bednarek (
talk)
01:04, 9 November 2021 (UTC)
From MOS:SECTIONLINKS I surmise that it is okay to wikilink within an article. But this page doesn't clearly say that. Is there a place on this page to put that information? Butwhatdoiknow ( talk) 17:25, 14 November 2021 (UTC)
What is wrong with clicking on items in the TOC? Tony (talk) 22:33, 14 November 2021 (UTC)
Regarding
this revert, the reverting editor offers two concerns: First, "This is already covered in"
MOS:SECTIONLINKS. Second, "it doesn't fit with the higher-level philosophy" at the
MOS:BTW section on this page.
User:Sdkb: Regarding the first concern, the reverted text says why within-article links are appropriate and explains when they should be used. Where in the
MOS:SECTIONLINKS (how) content can I find text that already covers why and when? -
Butwhatdoiknow (
talk)
22:31, 20 November 2021 (UTC)
User:Sdkb: Turning to the second concern, you state that when to self-link is a practical rather than philosophical issue. What is your opinion regarding why self-links are appropriate - practical or philosophical? Butwhatdoiknow ( talk) 23:53, 20 November 2021 (UTC)
You are invited to join the discussion at
Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/SdkbBot 2. {{u|
Sdkb}}
talk
21:20, 22 November 2021 (UTC)
I just looked and found the discussion from past May–June, where the general sentiment regarding repeated links seemed to be that some flexibility should be or is already allowed. However, some were concerned that the current wording didn't seem to convey this, and I concur. The current wording, "Generally, a link should appear only once in an article, but if helpful for readers, a link may be repeated in infoboxes, tables, image captions, footnotes, hatnotes, and at the first occurrence after the lead," reads to me as, "Generally, only once must apply. However, these six exceptions are allowed." This doesn't seem to reflect what most editors think the guideline should say or already does, which is that the entire once-per-article-plus-exceptions is but a general rule. I know this can get contentious very easily, so I'd like to suggest a very small modification for now, changing the phrasing to read:
Generally, a link should appear only once in an article but may be repeated, if helpful for readers, in infoboxes, tables, image captions, footnotes, hatnotes, and at the first occurrence after the lead.
I hope this will help convey that the entire sentence describes the general rule, which is what most editors think should be or already is. -- Paul_012 ( talk) 11:42, 3 October 2021 (UTC)
Really?: I did not interpret a difference, but did see the word order changes. No, it was not a joke. Yes, I might be the only one. Regards.— Bagumba ( talk) 16:37, 3 October 2021 (UTC)
As it's been a week with input being either supportive or not seeing a difference (which I interpret as neutral to the change), I've implemented the edit. -- Paul_012 ( talk) 04:52, 10 October 2021 (UTC)
Generally, a link should appear only once in an article, but it may be repeated if helpful for readers, such as in infoboxes, tables, image captions, footnotes, hatnotes, and at the first occurrence after the lead.Paul_012, could you link the April/May discussion so I can get a better sense of prior discussion on this? {{u| Sdkb}} talk 05:17, 11 October 2021 (UTC)
It doesn't allow an exception for a new section deep in a long article. It should. Herostratus ( talk) 18:38, 7 December 2021 (UTC)
@
Kwamikagami, you reverted me
here, after I made an edit to follow up on
this prior discussion. I agree it's contextual—would but generally not e.g.
East Timor
(with added "generally") be acceptable? Note also that the list is introduced Unless a term is particularly relevant to the context in the article, the following are usually not linked:
, so there is already some wiggle room built in. {{u|
Sdkb}}
'
05:20, 11 October 2021 (UTC)
When is it acceptable to wikilink countries, and what guidance should
MOS:OVERLINK provide on this matter?
{{u| Sdkb}} talk 18:53, 17 October 2021 (UTC)
This RfC arises out of a question that came up a little while back about whether or not to wikilink East Timor in a main page appearance. The current guidance is as follows (irrelevant bullets cut out):
Unless a term is particularly relevant to the context in the article, the following are usually not linked:
- The names of subjects with which most readers will be at least somewhat familiar. This generally includes major examples of:
- countries (e.g., Japan/Japanese, Brazil/Brazilian)
In subsequent discussions here and above, confusion has arisen both about what our guidance currently dictates and about what it ought to dictate. This RfC seeks to resolve those questions. {{u| Sdkb}} talk 18:53, 17 October 2021 (UTC)
usuallyand
major), but there is often confusion about this point, so I support adding East Timor as an example of a country that should generally be wikilinked to help clarify. This would only take a few words within the parenthetical, so there are no significant WP:CREEP concerns. I most strongly oppose option A, which would mean changing our rules but keeping guidance that contradicts them. {{u| Sdkb}} talk 18:53, 17 October 2021 (UTC)
This generally includes major examples of, and I tend to be wary of overly prescriptive guidance that seems to attempt to micromanage the entire project via the MOS. Archon 2488 ( talk) 11:48, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
names of subjects with which most readers will be at least somewhat familiar.None of A–D exactly says this.— Bagumba ( talk) 10:30, 14 November 2021 (UTC)
Courtesy pinging prior participants: @ Moxy, Walter Görlitz, Hemiauchenia, Khajidha, Tony1, Stepho-wrs, Johnbod, Super Dromaeosaurus, and Largoplazo:. {{u| Sdkb}} talk 18:53, 17 October 2021 (UTC)
FWIW, I've always linked to every country, as long as it was only once per article. Example: I wouldn't repeatedly link to Canada, within the same article. GoodDay ( talk) 19:04, 17 October 2021 (UTC)
This generally includes major examples of:. It is clear that the rule for generally avoiding links to countries doesn't apply to non-major ones. – Uanfala (talk) 19:37, 17 October 2021 (UTC)
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
In general, should articles be allowed to have self-links (wikilinks that go to sections or anchors elsewhere on the same page) in their prose? {{u| Sdkb}} talk 04:49, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
The most common situation in which articles
self-link in prose seems to be in the lead. For instance, the
current revision of Arsenal F.C. links over the destruction of their South London stadium
in the lead to an
anchor in the history section where the destruction is discussed, and the
current revision of Domain Name System links over Resource Records
in the lead to the Resource Records section. This usage, while very uncommon, appears to be permitted by the language of
MOS:SECTIONLINKS, which was
added in 2010. Preliminary discussion above has revealed that there are differing views about whether it is desirable, something this RfC seeks to clarify. Please note that this only concerns links within article prose—other types of self-links, such as {{
sfn}} references, links within infoboxes (e.g.
at Animal), and self-links on project pages, are presumed to be permissible and are not under discussion here. The "in general" caveat also excludes unforeseen unusual situations in which we might want to make self-links. {{u|
Sdkb}}
talk
04:49, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
{{
Section link}}
.
Colin M (
talk)
05:44, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
In particular, no program P computing a lower bound for each text's Kolmogorov complexity can return a value essentially larger than P's own length (see section § Chaitin's incompleteness theorem);Colin M ( talk) 08:14, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
the idea here isn't to issue a "blanket ban"is in conflict with the RfC as written; an outright ban is exactly what the RfC is about. If you mean for us to comment on discouraging or limiting or some other textual proposal, then please do rephrase the RfC to reflect that. — JohnFromPinckney ( talk / edits) 12:33, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
like to seeany rephrasing; I'm happy to see this thing snowdrift to a Yes = retain-the-status-quo close. But I guess one could try, "Should our guidance be changed to discourage the use of same-page links in the lead?" or something. That seems to be what you're actually concerned about, even if it varies from your actual request. But I agree with EEng below; it would have been good to collaboratively work out the RfC question in advance rather than giving a zero-seconds-long notice that you were going to start an RfC. — JohnFromPinckney ( talk / edits) 00:12, 18 November 2021 (UTC)
{{
section link}}
) as it can be useful and appropriate in some cases (although not the bizarre case of ToC-obviating links in the lead suggested by Sdkb). I do not expect every bluelink to take me to a complete article somewhere else, nor do I expect
a surfeit of links in the lead, but I do expect an appropriately helpful set of links to help me understand the prose I'm reading and provide details where I'm likely to need them. Outlawing same-page links would override our editorial discretion and keep us from providing in-page links in the (rare) cases where they're appropriate. —
JohnFromPinckney (
talk /
edits)
12:33, 17 November 2021 (UTC)actual language of the questionjuxtaposes
should articles be allowed(text connoting a blanket ban) with
in general, which you seem to think means "but not really". So which is it? Do you want to allow or disallow this linking? And if your answer is, "it depends", or "in some cases", that why are we spending time discussing this proposal? What specific change in the MoS do you wish to see implemented. Write that, and then we can have a fruitful discussion. — JohnFromPinckney ( talk / edits) 23:14, 7 December 2021 (UTC)
Links to a section of article from within the prose of that same article should typically be avoided (it's confusing for readers and redundant to the table of contents), but they may be included if judged particularly helpful. They may be used as needed in non-prose settings like infoboxes, references, and project pages.
marking the start of a paragraph. Paradoctor ( talk) 12:11, 20 December 2021 (UTC)
The guidline currently says:
I have always applied this to "chains" of more than two places. I have run into a situation where an editor thinks that it only applies to the last element: [[Buffalo, New York|Buffalo]], [[New York (state)|New York]], U.S. instead of [[Buffalo, New York]], U.S.. I don't believe that adding the (unlinked) country nullifies the guideline as it applies to the other components of the name. Should we state this more explicitly in the guideline or at least give an example? MB 23:23, 21 January 2022 (UTC)
If you confused by what I'm talking about I'm going to give an example from the Donald Trump in popular culture article:
Trump has an article on the online encyclopedia Wikipedia. Editors of Wikipedia often have contentious discussions on what should be included in the article, and there are accusations of political bias among editors. The article has extended confirmed protection, so only certain editors (editors with at least 30 days of activity and 500 edits) can edit the article as well an unofficial editorial board.[75][76] The website "Loser.com" directs to Trump's Wikipedia article, and it is unclear who runs the site.[77][78]
In this excerpt notice how there is a link to the article Wikipedia:Protection policy. I think this type of link is inappropriate. There should be no linking to articles that are within Wikipedia, since these articles are not meant to be content articles, but pages to help editors. I have seen this a few times on Wikipedia and I don't believe it's addressed in guideline. It needs to be addressed and formally discouraged or banned. Iamreallygoodatcheckers ( talk) 03:54, 10 February 2022 (UTC)
I linked the word germane to the wikitionary article on it. This was reverted by EEng, with the edit summary 'We assume our editors are basically literate' given as motivation. I think this is a fairly uncommon word. Per the Manual of Style itself, "Everyday words understood by most readers in context (e.g., education, violence, aircraft, river)" should not be linked, but germane is not such a word.
As I don't want to get into an edit war, I started this discussion page. Thoughts? TypistMonkey ( talk) 02:18, 23 April 2022 (UTC)
[[wikt:germane#Adjective|germane]]
→
germane. --
Redrose64 🌹 (
talk)
12:30, 23 April 2022 (UTC)
Hi. If non-existing articles have drafts, then visitors of article space see large editnotices. An example of what such notices look like:
Among other reasons, such editnotices are "in order to prevent the unnecessary creation of duplicates". As you know, some titles are ambiguous and therefore require a qualifier. Related to the above example,
Luminary is the disambiguation page, while
Luminary (podcast network) has a draft article associated with the ambiguous title. Editors who would like to - read; if it doesn't exist - create an article about the network, are much more likely to check the disambiguation page than they'll (correctly) guess/search+find the qualifier. My opinion is therefore that it makes sense to allow editors to link to such drafts on disambiguation pages. Currently,
MOS:DRAFTNOLINK does no include an exception that allows such links. (Even though MediaWiki already uses {{
Template:Draft at}}
in article space.) Do you agree it makes sense to allow linking to drafts on disambiguation pages? I attempted to do so
here, but my edit was reverted. --
77.162.8.57 (
talk)
10:36, 21 March 2022 (UTC)
In the section "More words into a link", the guideline endorses the example:
This is awkward because the hyperlink splits up the noun phrase "the Republic of Texas", taking only the word "Texas" from it. Reading the hyperlink alone results in a parse that conflicts with the sentence as a whole.
Including the entire noun phrase fixes this:
Alternatively:
Jruderman ( talk) 11:29, 30 May 2022 (UTC)
There's a discussion at Talk:London#Linking of cities about whether we should be consistent and link to all cities mentioned in that article, or apply MOS:OVERLINK when an editor adds a link. I'd appreciate input, whether agreeing with me or correcting me, from editors more used to weighing such questions here than I am. NebY ( talk) 20:55, 30 May 2022 (UTC)
It's fairly common for articles to begin with a sentence of the form SUBJECT is an X Y
, where X and Y are both linkable topics. That situation presents three possible paths, each with pros/cons:
SUBJECT is an X. It is a Y, and...Sometimes this works well, but often it results in clunky phrasing.
Let's assume for the sake of argument that there's no super elegant path available for options 1/2, as that'd be a cop out. I'm interested to hear from folks how you weigh the three options.
Personally, I tend to lean toward option 3, since
research indicates readers don't tend to click links often, making the clunky phrasing of 1 a big downside, but when they do, position matters a ton, creating a downside to 2. Seas of blue are never ideal, but I'm not sure they actually harm enough to need to be avoided at all costs (something the guideline acknowledges with the when possible
caveat), and I feel that they can be overpoliced because they're comparatively easy to identify. Thoughts? {{u|
Sdkb}}
talk
21:39, 5 April 2022 (UTC)
...is an American football quarterback for the...could be re-written as
...is an American football player who is a quarterback for the...Every case is different, but here some might not know that a quarterback is a playing position.— Bagumba ( talk) 17:38, 6 April 2022 (UTC)
The link, Phoenix, Arizona's Chinatown, is unclear because it could be read as either the Chinatown in Phoenix (as intended), or that "Arizona's Chinatown" is called Phoenix. I proposed fixing this by linking it as Phoenix, Arizona's Chinatown. Others have suggested that is an Easteregg link and should not be used. I think is sufficiently transparent. If you click on the link, would you be surprised/confused to be reading about the Chinatown in Phoenix, and not any Chinatown? This relates to a DYK hook and should be concise, not something unnaturally wordly. Thoughts? To avoid forking the discussion, Please comment at DYK. MB 20:35, 21 April 2022 (UTC)
Hi there. There's a discussion on Talk:Christian Bale ( | subject | history | links | watch | logs) about whether repeated linking is appropriate when the linked article's first and second mentions are contextually different and/or too far apart. I hope this page's watchers take interest in this discussion to help strengthen it. Thank you! KyleJoan talk 11:26, 9 July 2022 (UTC)
From Talk:List_of_diplomatic_missions_in_Ottawa
MANY years ago I noticed some wiki-bot(sic) tool Wikipedia was using to sanitize the pervasive use of INSECURE, privacy leaking, non-TLS links on Wikipedia. Seriously, what gives? Why do wiki pages such as 'List_of_diplomatic_missions_in_Ottawa', basically almost trick unsupecting users into clicking these links?
Isn't their wiki policy around this? There is no technical reason and this is extremely unethical. Fellow library users, wifi-hotspot fans, litterally multiple tech companies(and we know they log EVERYTHING) and whomever happens to be curious (i.e. listening in where the embassy site is housed(co-located) all get free open text viewing of this access of the embassy site. I did a quick perusal of policy, guidelines etc., but I'm at a loss and kinda shocked. I'm almost positive this is an already solved problem (automation fixes this easily), so why (and WHERE) are policy regarding this issue? 198.91.228.76 ( talk) 00:31, 10 August 2022 (UTC)
An editor/reviewer on Aug. 9 twice reverted my WP link to the article "United States" in the first sentence of Languages of the United States. The link, he/she said, violates the WP:overlink policy of never linking "common terms." I'd say this is a "primary term," and every country-related WP article (ex., "Languages of...," "Demography of...," etc.) is linked to its country article upon first mention. The editor is unimpressed that 99.99% of country-specific articles in WP are already blue-linked this way; no, my link runs counter to the guidelines. I think the editor misreads "common term," and shouldn't the thousands of similar articles be de-linked to their country as well? Mason.Jones ( talk) 14:32, 11 August 2022 (UTC)
At (for example) the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal page's infobox, I've been trying to implement avoiding SEAOFBLUE. I've been reverted in that attempt. What have I done wrong? GoodDay ( talk) 22:49, 14 August 2022 (UTC)
|location=
, while others might have |city=
and |state=
, probably from before linking standards had evolved to where they are now. While changing these infobox templates would not be worth the effort, when I am editing one for another reason, I combine the info into one field to comply with
MOS:GEOLINK (e.g. |city=Buffalo, New York
and leave |state=
blank. Occasionally I am reverted by someone who claims that each parameter must be used because they exist, and apparently, that an implied consensus existing from having legacy separate parameters overrides the expressed consensus of GEOLINK. See
Chester School District as an example.So I propose the addition of "This applies regardless of separate infobox parameters" at the end of the GEOLINK bullet.
MB
21:11, 23 August 2022 (UTC)
|state=
field does not require that it also be linked. I dont believe this one-off template requires any new wording in the MOS. Consider adding guidance like {{
Infobox school district}}'s for |country=
: "...see
WP:OVERLINK.." or updating
Wikipedia:WikiProject Schools/Article advice regarding GEOLINK.—
Bagumba (
talk)
15:11, 29 August 2022 (UTC)
|location=
or similar where this is no so much of a concern"). Adding "This applies regardless of separate infobox parameters" here covers them all in one place.
MB
17:05, 29 August 2022 (UTC)
city = [[Buffalo, New York]]
without using |state=
, or use city=[[Buffalo, New York|Buffalo]]
and |state=New York
(unlinked).|location=
that is entirely free-form, where the editor can specify line breaks and format the address/location any way they wanted.
MB
14:01, 6 September 2022 (UTC)
"This applies regardless of separate infobox parameters"would be contrary to {{ Infobox university/doc}}, the example in {{ Infobox school district/doc}} and the UK example in {{ infobox school/doc}}, and frequent if not common use of those templates. To avoid conflict or disruption, the template documentation should be changed if MOS:GEOLINK is changed, and it might be good to have some degree of acceptance from some of the editors who have a particular interest in school and university articles. As yet, I don't see any notification of this discussion on either the template talk pages or at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Schools and Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Higher education. NebY ( talk) 16:07, 10 September 2022 (UTC)
Is the only use of the city, state, and country parameters (at least in the university infobox, the only one that edit) to display a location in the rendered infobox? I ask because I am wary of making that assumption without checking to see if those parameters are used in other ways, some of which I assume have been subsumed into Wikidata. If that is the only use of those (and any other similar) parameters, I would be happy to help adjust the template's documentation to reflect this project-wide consensus. (If it matters, this is not the decision that I would make nor the one I like; I merely acknowledge that local consensus or practice cannot override project-wide consensus.) ElKevbo ( talk) 02:58, 25 September 2022 (UTC)
As requested, I posted notification at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Schools and Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Higher education and in four weeks, there has been one additional comment.
In summary, I see the following:
There was one objection, one that did not express an opinion, and the other five expressing varying levels of support. I believe this is a consensus to add the statement "This applies regardless of separate infobox parameters". MB 21:28, 22 October 2022 (UTC)
MOS:PIPESTYLE probably should mention that the "derived names" format should not be used with piped links (for example, although [[Class (set theory)|class]]es
works, [[Class (set theory)|classes]]
is preferred). —
Mikhail Ryazanov (
talk)
17:45, 15 October 2022 (UTC)
If you have an article about various chart achievements for a particular music chart, is it over linking to repeatedly link songs and artists who appear in multiple sections? Or are those instances fine? On the List of Billboard Hot 100 chart achievements and milestones page, almost every table or section is completely linked but then there are places in prose and/or some tables where Taylor Swift for eg. is linked and then places where she is not. I'm working on fixing up the World Digital Song Sales page and I'm a bit confused on where to remove links and where to add them (obvious over linking in the same table aside, which I am getting to slowly). Or is it that a reader should be able to click anywhere in any table and be taken to the relevant song or artist page regardless? -- Carlobunnie ( talk) 17:21, 18 October 2022 (UTC)
Is it permissible to link a year as part of a date within a table? e.g. a sports season page such as linking "28 October
2022" if it were within a table of a golfer's win list? Obviously per
WP:DATELINK, linking year articles should be avoided e.g.
2022, however is it possible to link the PGA Tour season within the date as similar to the [[1787 in science|1787]]
example given in the policy outline.
Jimmymci234 (
talk)
19:26, 28 October 2022 (UTC)
[[1787 in science|1787]]
example, if someone would reasonably expect such a link there. But given the full-date example above, "28 October
2022", I doubt this is the case. It would probably help to see the table. In general, though, I can't think of any other sports articles doing this, except in tables that have something like a season column, with links to season articles that are obviously links to season articles. —
SMcCandlish
☏
¢ 😼
20:03, 10 November 2022 (UTC)
You are invited to join the discussion at
Talk:Miss Universe 2022 § MOS:OVERLINK does not apply?. ☆
Bri (
talk)
17:35, 14 November 2022 (UTC)
Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Lead section has an RFC for possible consensus. A discussion is taking place. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments on the discussion page. Thank you. InfiniteNexus ( talk) 07:03, 30 November 2022 (UTC)
Should hatnote links to Simple English Wikipedia be discouraged? fgnievinski ( talk) 20:09, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
Responding to A D Monroe III's creep concerns above, a "yes" result here doesn't necessarily mean that we need to expand the MoS if this isn't a recurring issue; editors can just link back to this RfC anytime it comes up. {{u| Sdkb}} talk 21:36, 19 October 2022 (UTC)There are established pathways for interproject linking, and those should be used instead of arbitrarily choosing some articles to attach this to. Because Simple English is about language choice, not complexity, it's not clear what those would be — {{ Introductory article}} exists for inherently complex subjects, and articles that needlessly use advanced language can be tagged with {{ Technical}}. In both cases, we can handle the issue here on English Wikipedia without pushing readers to a different language version.
Hi! I've recently had this brought up at Wikipedia : Featured article candidates/2022 World Snooker Championship/archive1 about the MOS. I understand the need for making articles readable from any background, and that you shouldn't need to have an understanding of the topic to understand an article. However, where is the limit on explaining a term that is common in the subject matter, where a link is not enough?
The above example is regarding the use of break in an article on snooker, which is about as common a jargon term as there is, and I've also seen an argument about this on the terms of "yellow card" and "goal" in football, but similar terms might be for a "shooter" in video gaming or a broadcast for television shows.
My big issue with explaining in prose a common term that takes a while to explain is that it doesn't make the article have better prose, and slows down reading for an informed reader. I understand the current wording is intentionally quite vague, but perhaps if we add something to the effect of it being unnecessary to overly explain a term if it interupts the flow of an article.
Let me know your thoughts. It's not that I object so much to this term, but I can see it being applied to every article (or theoretically could be) and wouldn't improve how articles are written. Lee Vilenski ( talk • contribs) 18:30, 2 January 2023 (UTC)
At a minimum, I expect technical sports terms to be linked. I think it's a balance between being helpful to a reader who knows nothing about the sport versus a casual follower finding it verbose or even patronizing. If I was reviewing a page for a sport I knew little about, I'd make the point about making it accessible to non-fans, while deferring—within reason—to the sport experts on how to balance it. AGF on both sides is essential.— Bagumba ( talk) 14:02, 5 January 2023 (UTC)Do not unnecessarily make a reader chase links. If a technical term can be meaningfully explained with very few words or with a footnote, this may be preferred to a link.
if a highly technical term can be simply explained(my emphasis), and the removal of "highly" does not seem to have been discussed. For example, the article about a snooker championship also links the technical terms frame, foul shot, black ball, doubling, clearance, fluke, in-off, free ball and session to spare. Would it benefit readers of this article to have each of these terms explained or footnoted, or would the clutter worsen the readability of the article unnecessarily, given its likely readership? Are we also imposing too much on editors and throwing away the great advantages of a hyperlinked encyclopedia? NebY ( talk) 16:38, 5 January 2023 (UTC)
If a technical term can be explained with very few words or with a short footnote, this is preferred to a mere linkrepresents a major shift away from hyperlinking and is not in accord with MOS:UL
"In general, links should be created for ... Articles explaining words of technical terms, jargon or slang expressions or phrases—but you could also provide a concise definition instead of or in addition to a link", I've reverted. NebY ( talk) 17:06, 5 January 2023 (UTC)
I ran into some similar issues last year when doing GA reviews for several articles on ice hockey players. I know little about hockey and had questions about quite a few terms: natural hat-trick, taxi squad, top pair, and several others. I could see that explaining everything inline would be disruptive for readers familiar with the sport. I asked for links, and as I recall everything I had a question about ended up being linked. I don't know that we can define clearly the boundaries between terms that need inline explanations, those that need footnotes, and those that just need to be linked -- it's going to be different for different readers. "Pike" is completely obvious to me, though I think it should be linked; a century break is also obvious (I grew up watching Pot Black), but I can see it means no more than "taxi squad" to someone who's never played or watched snooker. I don't know how to codify this, but I think if knowledgeable readers feel that the flow is being broken up too much by inline explanations, non-knowledgeable readers should accept that, and be willing to accept links instead, or, if absolutely necessary, an explanatory note. The canonical example of this sort of problem is mathematics, where Laplace transform, a not very obscure mathematical tool, could not possibly be explained to someone with a math background in a single article. Mike Christie ( talk - contribs - library) 21:30, 8 January 2023 (UTC)
if knowledgeable readers feel that the flow is being broken up too much by inline explanations, non-knowledgeable readers should accept that, and be willing to accept links instead, or, if absolutely necessary, an explanatory noteis what I'd thought one of Wikipedia's guiding principles as a wide-ranging hyperlinked encyclopedia. To find an example, I looked in Wikipedia:Featured articles for a baseball article (never played it, never watched a game, no interest) and found 2004 World Series. This non-knowledgeable reader isn't familiar with third straight wild card team to win, swept the Cardinals in four games, bench-clearing brawl, RBI single, single, double, top of the fourth, skip off the lip of the infield, right field foul pole, left-center field bullpen, a single to right field that scored Mueller, earned run.... I made guesses about some and kept going, much as I would if reading a newspaper article. Now imagine the average US reader's reaction if bench-clearing brawl [a] and top of the eighth [b] were distractingly marked as if someone who wanted further details about the brawl could find them in the footnotes [c], just like in a book, and started clicking. They might not agree that it was even a Good article and suggest, in nontechnical and profane terms, that it be reviewed. NebY ( talk) 01:10, 9 January 2023 (UTC)
Notes
I don't see why country shouldn't be linked. Its generally educationally helpful to the reader to state the country especially if its name/type of state is different from what is present in that geography today. Comrade-yutyo ( talk) 12:05, 28 January 2023 (UTC)
OK so I'm having a bit of an issue with Chiswick Chap here in [5] - he says that linking Wagner in that sentence is not an excessive amount of linking, despite the fact that this was a sequence of three nouns linked. Now it's a sequence of four nouns where "opera" isn't linked, but I still don't quite see the point. Can someone else assess this? -- Joy ( talk) 11:44, 15 February 2023 (UTC)
celebrating Siegfried in Wagner's opera Der Ring des Nibelungenseems fine to me. I might spell out "Richard Wagner", as if he's unfamiliar enough to link, he's also unfamiliar enough we should give his full name.
User_talk:Snickers2686#John_G._Koeltl. Apokrif ( talk) 23:08, 7 March 2023 (UTC).
@ Masem, do you disagree with both of the sentences you removed?
I kind of doubt that you really want people to add and remove links on aesthetic groups or their personal perception that it's hard (or easy) to read. WhatamIdoing ( talk) 23:48, 10 February 2023 (UTC)
References
{{
cite journal}}
: Cite journal requires |journal=
(
help) Graduate thesis in psychology, University of Turku, 2017
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
read from top to bottom like a regular article.I saw a lot of people state during the recent Vector 2022 RFCs that they don't read Wikipedia articles the way they read a novel, and that they come here for some specific information on a topic rather than reading the whole article top to bottom. On mobile, sections are collapsed by default, so it's actually super inconvenient to encounter some term that has been linked once somewhere above in the article, and now I have to expand all the sections individually and hunt for where it was initially mentioned and linked.Another negative experience I've had due to application of this policy is encountering a term in the context where it first becomes interesting enough to check out on its own, but again it's been mentioned in passing somewhere above, and I have to go find the first instance to follow the wikilink. I'll also add that when a list of related topics are introduced somewhere in an article, and exactly one isn't wikilinked because it's been mentioned already, it looks unattractive.What I'm wondering is if we can loosen the guidance in the DL section to
...may be repeated if helpful for readers, such as in infoboxes, tables, image captions, footnotes, hatnotes, and at the first occurrenceThis should help accomodate mobile readers, as well as desktop readers who click anchor links from the TOC instead of reading the entire article. Folly Mox ( talk) 14:33, 13 May 2023 (UTC)after the leadin a section.
Would this trickle over to MOS:SURNAME, where we would mention the full name of people in each section?— Bagumba ( talk) 15:39, 6 June 2023 (UTC)
Mobile and long articles I see two arguments for more re-linking: mobile and long articles. For phone view, all sections are collapsed (not so on my tablet). Someone jumping to a section, might miss an earlier link, thus the proposal to link once per section. However, this doesnt apply for subsections (e.g. 2.1, 3.1.2, etc), which are all viewable once its respective top-level section is uncollapsed. Does that mean this linking change generally applies to top-level sections and not subsections i.e. ink once per section, but not once every subsection. If so, this might also address some who had concern that there might be excessive linking if sections were (too) short.— Bagumba ( talk) 16:49, 6 June 2023 (UTC)
In a discussion on the Salmon chaos page, I was involved in a discussion with @ Drmies because I did not understand the purpose of linking. They explained how things should work and I think the page should be edited so that the guidelines reflect these principles and prevent further confusion.
I interpreted this page to mean that pages should be linked if they are relevant (e.g. WP:BUILD's "Ask yourself, "How likely is it that the reader will also want to read that other article?"" or the lead's "Whenever writing or editing an article, consider [...] what links to include to help the reader find related information"), but they explained that pages should only be linked if they explain something. Obviously these are very different approaches. I have the immediate suggestions of:
1. Changing OVERLINK to read "We should not link to commonly used words and names, including the names of (current) countries" (etc).
2. Deleting "Ask yourself, "How likely is it that the reader will also want to read that other article?"" from WP:BUILD as this is irrelevant.
3. Deleting the first bullet point from UNDERLINK.
4. Generally, changing the guidance on principles and under- and over-linking to emphasize that we should link to specifics about which readers are unlikely to know, regardless of whether or not they help readers understand the page in general.
Does anyone have any further suggestions to help other editors? CohenTheBohemian ( talk) 15:11, 21 March 2023 (UTC)
particularly relevant to the context in the article. As for the bigger question, it's a good idea to be parsimonious with links, but as the guidelines make clear, linking isn't only done for unfamiliar words. – Uanfala ( talk) 13:20, 5 April 2023 (UTC)
When styling a label (in [[Main page|label]]
), one can add the style code inside or outside the brackets:
[[Main page|''ABC'']]
→
ABC[[Main page|<span style="background: pink">DEF</span>]]
→
DEF'''[[Main page|GHK]]'''
→
GHK<span style="background: pink">[[Main page|LMN]]</span>
→
LMNBoth options work as expecteed, and no WP:LINTER errors reported. Special:ExpandTemplates does not alter them. My question is: is there a preferred convention in this? DePiep ( talk) 14:33, 26 February 2023 (UTC)
[[Main page|OPQ<sub>2</sub>]]
or [[Main page|RS''T'']]
, the formatting must be inside the label. Therefore if one wanted to have a preference, it might be a good idea to prefer the version that always works, rather than preferring the version that only works if the link label gets the same formatting throughout.[[Main page|RS''T'']]
reason given above, but only if it's what VE does. If VE puts the markup outside by default, then all bets are off and we just have to throw up our hands. —
SMcCandlish
☏
¢ 😼
02:33, 14 June 2023 (UTC)
[[This|''That'']]
and on the outside if for a simple link: ''[[This]]''
.
WhatamIdoing (
talk)
02:45, 14 June 2023 (UTC)The link in the edit summary for this edit should have been to wp:FIXTHEPROBLEM. Sorry about that. - Butwhatdoiknow ( talk) 20:07, 25 June 2023 (UTC)
![]() | This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 15 | ← | Archive 19 | Archive 20 | Archive 21 |
The current policy states: "Generally, a link should appear only once in an article, but if helpful for readers, a link may be repeated in infoboxes, tables, image captions, footnotes, hatnotes, and at the first occurrence after the lead. Citations stand alone in their usage, so there is no problem with repeating the same link in many citations within an article."
However, on articles this is often a problem for me, especially long articles, because I might be reading just a section of the article. On occasion I have to actually go searching in the rest of the article to find the wikilink. This is annoying and a pointless waste of my time! One time I even added a wikilink because I looked for it and couldn't find it, and it was removed because it was elsewhere in the article - just in a section I hadn't read (because I was only interested in that particular section!)
Wikilinks are cheap - why not relax this and allow them once per section?
Proposed re-wording:
"Generally, a link should appear only once in an article, but if helpful for readers, a link may be repeated in infoboxes, tables, image captions, footnotes, hatnotes, and at the first occurrence in a section. Citations stand alone in their usage, so there is no problem with repeating the same link in many citations within an article."
This might cause over-linking but given the "if it is useful to readers" language, this allows it when it is useful, and overlinking where it is not necessary (i.e. if there are very few sections or if the sections are very short) could still be removed.
Mvolz ( talk) 08:54, 3 May 2021 (UTC)
twice per body if long - I think we could simply relax it a bit. We can generally recognize overlinking -especially in egregious sea of links articles-, but it is not completely simple to recognize the point where it would be useful to add it again. Myself, I would allow a second in the body if the article is long, but not two wlinks in the same top-level section. When I remove extra links, I find that often that second links or more are close together. I attribute this to different editors adding a new sentence and not noticing the previous wlink. Or rewrites. I would not add too much complexity to the rule. Let's not swing too far from the one per body rule. Alaney2k ( talk) 13:36, 8 June 2021 (UTC)
It's that easy... for those of our readers who are on a desktop computer. Try to use the mobile view: by default it shows sections as collapsed. The MOS must cater to all of our readers (and a huge number of them are on mobile), and making our articles more usable may be worth
dilut[ing] the hyperlinking system. Overlinking is bad, but underlinking is worse. — Kusma ( talk) 08:59, 15 June 2021 (UTC)
[[Americans|American]] [[physician]]
" (to give an example I saw earlier hours ago). A "sea of blue" is a problem because "
American
physician" looks like it's a single (two-word) link, but clicking on the first word doesn't take you to the same page as if you click on the second word.[[Americans|American]] [[physician]]
" more likely than "a [[physician]] in the [[Americans|US]]
", which is not a sea of blue – so I'm wondering if what you mean is that you worry that editors will turn most of the words blue (which could be an aesthetic problem, but it's not a problem with figuring out where one link stops and another starts).
WhatamIdoing (
talk)
15:37, 18 June 2021 (UTC)
but definitely not requiring "once per section"But this is not at all what's being proposed. The proposed wording was:
Generally, a link should appear only once in an article, but if helpful for readers, a link may be repeated [...] at the first occurrence in a section.Colin M ( talk) 15:50, 20 June 2021 (UTC)
You are invited to join the discussion at
Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals) § WikiProject links in navigational templates. --
Trialpears (
talk)
16:02, 8 July 2021 (UTC)
An editor has created multiple RfCs at several recent FIFA world cups about whether the nations should be linked: Talk:2002 FIFA World Cup#Inline link RfC Talk:2006 FIFA World Cup#Inline link RfC Talk:2010 FIFA World Cup#Inline link RfC Talk:2014 FIFA World Cup#Inline link RfC Talk:2022 FIFA World Cup#Inline link RfC. Since one was at Brazil and another Japan, the examples here might need to change if the decision is to link. Walter Görlitz ( talk) 06:36, 25 July 2021 (UTC)
I personally don't think these articles should be linked in any of these. I think the editor who opened these is forum shopping. Rubbish computer Ping me or leave a message on my talk page 14:32, 25 July 2021 (UTC)
Looking at MOS:SEAOFBLUE, there doesn't seem to be a clear rule on whether it's preferable to link per [[Riverside, California]]
or
Riverside, California for places that are suffixed by a state or county. A bit further down, it says
However, there may be instances in which it is useful to have the state or county following the place, and not everyone knows that Buffalo is in New York state (including self). (Also, if separated by a comma, it's not really a sea of blue.) Readers may like to read something about the state separately from the town name. I would like to see this spelt out to make it clearer whether it's supposed to be optional - IMO it could be left up to the discretion of the editor. We currently have a situation, e.g. where some places may be followed by a state within the same link in the infobox and others with a separate link for state (Berkeley, Gloucestershire vs Cheltenham; Newcastle, New South Wales vs Brewarrina; etc.). Laterthanyouthink ( talk) 07:23, 3 August 2021 (UTC)
[[Buffalo, New York]]
or [[Buffalo, New York|Buffalo]], New York
or [[Buffalo, New York|Buffalo]], [[New York (state)|New York]]
may be appropriate. Making mass changes or reverting simply "because MOS" is usually disruptive. Also worth pointing out that the buffalo rule was only added last month after
this discussion. I don't think this was a good idea as the addition was made based on the strength of participating editors' personal convictions despite the fact that they were undermined by the little available data on reader usage. –
Uanfala (talk)
13:50, 3 August 2021 (UTC)Hi all! What's the rule with this please? DeFacto has edited multiple pages changing the direct link to an article, to a redirect they created themselves, which then goes on to the actual article eg here and here. The article's name 'Treachery of the Blue Books', is the acceptable form; John Davies notes in The Welsh Academy Encyclopaedia of Wales that the name took hold of the public imagination to such an extent that ever since the report has been known by that name. Reference: see here. Isn't using another name to hide the true article name a form of censorship, and therefore in the spirit of Wikipedia, should be disallowed? Thanks! Llywelyn2000 ( talk) 07:43, 30 August 2021 (UTC)
do not use a piped link where it is possible to use a redirected term that fits well within the scope of the text". However, if your question is more about your disagreement over the wording used in any specific article, then this probably isn't the appropriate talkpage to discuss that. -- DeFacto ( talk). 08:48, 30 August 2021 (UTC)
{{
R with possibilities}}
or similar, which might one day become a full article in its own right. In the case of
Treachery of the Blue Books that doesn't apply, because none of the inward redirects has any
R templates at all. There are presently five redirects:
1847 Inquiry into the State of Education in Wales;
Inquiry into the State of Education in Wales 1847;
Reports of the commissioners of enquiry into the state of education in Wales;
Reports of the Commissioners of Inquiry into the state of education in Wales; and
Treason of the Blue Books, and there may be valid reasons to use one of these, particularly if one of these phrases is used by an authoritative source. --
Redrose64 🌹 (
talk)
09:04, 31 August 2021 (UTC)
Hi. I want to create an internal link to my block log for my bio page. How can I render this as a blue link? Piotr Jr. ( talk) 18:49, 17 September 2021 (UTC)
Is it OK to link to a category from an article's body? I'm looking at scholars of translation studies in the second paragraph of Skopos theory#Background. Largoplazo ( talk) 10:00, 21 September 2021 (UTC)
From a discussion on my talk page, would it be reasonable that within context of OVERLINK that there are certain worldwide events of significant scale that we should not link to when they're just name-dropped in an article?
This would be events like World War I/II, but possibly also going to things like the COVID-19 pandemic. Eg common we would see in a biography phrasing like "His parents immigrated to the United States from Eastern Europe in 1941 during World War II." and it can be argued that while adding WWII can bring significant in context, the link itself is unnecessary given that its a commonly known event to nearly all English readers. Or on many recent films "The film was delayed to (date) due to the COVID-19 pandemic." Of course, in these types of events, there are huge heirarchies of articles under them, and if a more specific link that was better context for the event. In the latter case, it would be better to have something like Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on cinema as a target link, eg "The film was delayed to (date) due to the COVID-19 pandemic." or something like that, if it needs to be linked at all.
This is not to say that when WWII as a link itself can't be used when the war itself is the specific topic of relevant, eg History of Poland (1939–1945) better link World War II directly (among other links within that heirarchy).
And I would say this should avoid other major events that may be known worldwide but lack the worldwide significance, and thus may not be as readily known to all English speakers and that they should be linked - eg: Korean War, Vietnam War, September 11 attacks, Falklands War, French Revolution, Russian Revolution, etc., though editors should use reasonable discretion given context. -- Masem ( t) 18:51, 29 September 2021 (UTC)
Hi, in Viktor Axelsen infobox, there were some linking to countries: Denmark and United Arab Emirates. Per MOS:LINKSTYLE and MOS:OVERLINK it is right or not? Stvbastian ( talk) 14:43, 16 October 2021 (UTC)
In the overlink section, there should be a section about America linking, Wikiedia's most infamous overlinks. Many pages have America links, including pages for people films, bands, companies, and even disambiguation pages (!) and user pages. -- 2A01:36D:1201:319:D7B:67F9:1B9B:5307 ( talk) 06:14, 11 October 2021 (UTC)
I had a minor discussion with User:FunkMonk on this, so figured I'd ask here. This might not be an interesting enough case to add to the guidance, but still interesting to see what people think. The current duplicate links guidance says:
What about when a link arises due to the expansion of a template - especially a template generally used in parentheses? I would personally argue that this is equivalent to the "footnote" case except with a classic parenthetical in-text footnote, and thus shouldn't "count" in general toward the duplicate links guideline. This is especially true if the link is relevant in the prose case and not-very-relevant in the templated case. The main example I'm thinking of here is the {{lang-XX}} family of templates that not only italicize a foreign phrase, but also include an explanatory link to the relevant language. For example, from the lede of the article Royal Spanish Academy:
In my opinion, linking Spanish language in prose is "important" and useful here. The fact that "Real Academia Española" is in Spanish isn't as interesting, and the average reader's eyes will skip over the parenthetical part because that's what readers are trained to do. One solution would be to change the lang-es template to include |link="no" of course ( France does this, for example) but I don't even think this should be necessary - the language link is harmless in the same way that repeated footnote links are harmless. Any thoughts on the matter? Does the duplicate link guidance extend even to links from expanded templates? If it does, how much latitude is there to IAR ignore this sometimes? SnowFire ( talk) 21:28, 8 November 2021 (UTC)
|links=no
, so the above should be rendered "Spanish: Real Academia Española". --
Michael Bednarek (
talk)
01:04, 9 November 2021 (UTC)
From MOS:SECTIONLINKS I surmise that it is okay to wikilink within an article. But this page doesn't clearly say that. Is there a place on this page to put that information? Butwhatdoiknow ( talk) 17:25, 14 November 2021 (UTC)
What is wrong with clicking on items in the TOC? Tony (talk) 22:33, 14 November 2021 (UTC)
Regarding
this revert, the reverting editor offers two concerns: First, "This is already covered in"
MOS:SECTIONLINKS. Second, "it doesn't fit with the higher-level philosophy" at the
MOS:BTW section on this page.
User:Sdkb: Regarding the first concern, the reverted text says why within-article links are appropriate and explains when they should be used. Where in the
MOS:SECTIONLINKS (how) content can I find text that already covers why and when? -
Butwhatdoiknow (
talk)
22:31, 20 November 2021 (UTC)
User:Sdkb: Turning to the second concern, you state that when to self-link is a practical rather than philosophical issue. What is your opinion regarding why self-links are appropriate - practical or philosophical? Butwhatdoiknow ( talk) 23:53, 20 November 2021 (UTC)
You are invited to join the discussion at
Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/SdkbBot 2. {{u|
Sdkb}}
talk
21:20, 22 November 2021 (UTC)
I just looked and found the discussion from past May–June, where the general sentiment regarding repeated links seemed to be that some flexibility should be or is already allowed. However, some were concerned that the current wording didn't seem to convey this, and I concur. The current wording, "Generally, a link should appear only once in an article, but if helpful for readers, a link may be repeated in infoboxes, tables, image captions, footnotes, hatnotes, and at the first occurrence after the lead," reads to me as, "Generally, only once must apply. However, these six exceptions are allowed." This doesn't seem to reflect what most editors think the guideline should say or already does, which is that the entire once-per-article-plus-exceptions is but a general rule. I know this can get contentious very easily, so I'd like to suggest a very small modification for now, changing the phrasing to read:
Generally, a link should appear only once in an article but may be repeated, if helpful for readers, in infoboxes, tables, image captions, footnotes, hatnotes, and at the first occurrence after the lead.
I hope this will help convey that the entire sentence describes the general rule, which is what most editors think should be or already is. -- Paul_012 ( talk) 11:42, 3 October 2021 (UTC)
Really?: I did not interpret a difference, but did see the word order changes. No, it was not a joke. Yes, I might be the only one. Regards.— Bagumba ( talk) 16:37, 3 October 2021 (UTC)
As it's been a week with input being either supportive or not seeing a difference (which I interpret as neutral to the change), I've implemented the edit. -- Paul_012 ( talk) 04:52, 10 October 2021 (UTC)
Generally, a link should appear only once in an article, but it may be repeated if helpful for readers, such as in infoboxes, tables, image captions, footnotes, hatnotes, and at the first occurrence after the lead.Paul_012, could you link the April/May discussion so I can get a better sense of prior discussion on this? {{u| Sdkb}} talk 05:17, 11 October 2021 (UTC)
It doesn't allow an exception for a new section deep in a long article. It should. Herostratus ( talk) 18:38, 7 December 2021 (UTC)
@
Kwamikagami, you reverted me
here, after I made an edit to follow up on
this prior discussion. I agree it's contextual—would but generally not e.g.
East Timor
(with added "generally") be acceptable? Note also that the list is introduced Unless a term is particularly relevant to the context in the article, the following are usually not linked:
, so there is already some wiggle room built in. {{u|
Sdkb}}
'
05:20, 11 October 2021 (UTC)
When is it acceptable to wikilink countries, and what guidance should
MOS:OVERLINK provide on this matter?
{{u| Sdkb}} talk 18:53, 17 October 2021 (UTC)
This RfC arises out of a question that came up a little while back about whether or not to wikilink East Timor in a main page appearance. The current guidance is as follows (irrelevant bullets cut out):
Unless a term is particularly relevant to the context in the article, the following are usually not linked:
- The names of subjects with which most readers will be at least somewhat familiar. This generally includes major examples of:
- countries (e.g., Japan/Japanese, Brazil/Brazilian)
In subsequent discussions here and above, confusion has arisen both about what our guidance currently dictates and about what it ought to dictate. This RfC seeks to resolve those questions. {{u| Sdkb}} talk 18:53, 17 October 2021 (UTC)
usuallyand
major), but there is often confusion about this point, so I support adding East Timor as an example of a country that should generally be wikilinked to help clarify. This would only take a few words within the parenthetical, so there are no significant WP:CREEP concerns. I most strongly oppose option A, which would mean changing our rules but keeping guidance that contradicts them. {{u| Sdkb}} talk 18:53, 17 October 2021 (UTC)
This generally includes major examples of, and I tend to be wary of overly prescriptive guidance that seems to attempt to micromanage the entire project via the MOS. Archon 2488 ( talk) 11:48, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
names of subjects with which most readers will be at least somewhat familiar.None of A–D exactly says this.— Bagumba ( talk) 10:30, 14 November 2021 (UTC)
Courtesy pinging prior participants: @ Moxy, Walter Görlitz, Hemiauchenia, Khajidha, Tony1, Stepho-wrs, Johnbod, Super Dromaeosaurus, and Largoplazo:. {{u| Sdkb}} talk 18:53, 17 October 2021 (UTC)
FWIW, I've always linked to every country, as long as it was only once per article. Example: I wouldn't repeatedly link to Canada, within the same article. GoodDay ( talk) 19:04, 17 October 2021 (UTC)
This generally includes major examples of:. It is clear that the rule for generally avoiding links to countries doesn't apply to non-major ones. – Uanfala (talk) 19:37, 17 October 2021 (UTC)
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
In general, should articles be allowed to have self-links (wikilinks that go to sections or anchors elsewhere on the same page) in their prose? {{u| Sdkb}} talk 04:49, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
The most common situation in which articles
self-link in prose seems to be in the lead. For instance, the
current revision of Arsenal F.C. links over the destruction of their South London stadium
in the lead to an
anchor in the history section where the destruction is discussed, and the
current revision of Domain Name System links over Resource Records
in the lead to the Resource Records section. This usage, while very uncommon, appears to be permitted by the language of
MOS:SECTIONLINKS, which was
added in 2010. Preliminary discussion above has revealed that there are differing views about whether it is desirable, something this RfC seeks to clarify. Please note that this only concerns links within article prose—other types of self-links, such as {{
sfn}} references, links within infoboxes (e.g.
at Animal), and self-links on project pages, are presumed to be permissible and are not under discussion here. The "in general" caveat also excludes unforeseen unusual situations in which we might want to make self-links. {{u|
Sdkb}}
talk
04:49, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
{{
Section link}}
.
Colin M (
talk)
05:44, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
In particular, no program P computing a lower bound for each text's Kolmogorov complexity can return a value essentially larger than P's own length (see section § Chaitin's incompleteness theorem);Colin M ( talk) 08:14, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
the idea here isn't to issue a "blanket ban"is in conflict with the RfC as written; an outright ban is exactly what the RfC is about. If you mean for us to comment on discouraging or limiting or some other textual proposal, then please do rephrase the RfC to reflect that. — JohnFromPinckney ( talk / edits) 12:33, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
like to seeany rephrasing; I'm happy to see this thing snowdrift to a Yes = retain-the-status-quo close. But I guess one could try, "Should our guidance be changed to discourage the use of same-page links in the lead?" or something. That seems to be what you're actually concerned about, even if it varies from your actual request. But I agree with EEng below; it would have been good to collaboratively work out the RfC question in advance rather than giving a zero-seconds-long notice that you were going to start an RfC. — JohnFromPinckney ( talk / edits) 00:12, 18 November 2021 (UTC)
{{
section link}}
) as it can be useful and appropriate in some cases (although not the bizarre case of ToC-obviating links in the lead suggested by Sdkb). I do not expect every bluelink to take me to a complete article somewhere else, nor do I expect
a surfeit of links in the lead, but I do expect an appropriately helpful set of links to help me understand the prose I'm reading and provide details where I'm likely to need them. Outlawing same-page links would override our editorial discretion and keep us from providing in-page links in the (rare) cases where they're appropriate. —
JohnFromPinckney (
talk /
edits)
12:33, 17 November 2021 (UTC)actual language of the questionjuxtaposes
should articles be allowed(text connoting a blanket ban) with
in general, which you seem to think means "but not really". So which is it? Do you want to allow or disallow this linking? And if your answer is, "it depends", or "in some cases", that why are we spending time discussing this proposal? What specific change in the MoS do you wish to see implemented. Write that, and then we can have a fruitful discussion. — JohnFromPinckney ( talk / edits) 23:14, 7 December 2021 (UTC)
Links to a section of article from within the prose of that same article should typically be avoided (it's confusing for readers and redundant to the table of contents), but they may be included if judged particularly helpful. They may be used as needed in non-prose settings like infoboxes, references, and project pages.
marking the start of a paragraph. Paradoctor ( talk) 12:11, 20 December 2021 (UTC)
The guidline currently says:
I have always applied this to "chains" of more than two places. I have run into a situation where an editor thinks that it only applies to the last element: [[Buffalo, New York|Buffalo]], [[New York (state)|New York]], U.S. instead of [[Buffalo, New York]], U.S.. I don't believe that adding the (unlinked) country nullifies the guideline as it applies to the other components of the name. Should we state this more explicitly in the guideline or at least give an example? MB 23:23, 21 January 2022 (UTC)
If you confused by what I'm talking about I'm going to give an example from the Donald Trump in popular culture article:
Trump has an article on the online encyclopedia Wikipedia. Editors of Wikipedia often have contentious discussions on what should be included in the article, and there are accusations of political bias among editors. The article has extended confirmed protection, so only certain editors (editors with at least 30 days of activity and 500 edits) can edit the article as well an unofficial editorial board.[75][76] The website "Loser.com" directs to Trump's Wikipedia article, and it is unclear who runs the site.[77][78]
In this excerpt notice how there is a link to the article Wikipedia:Protection policy. I think this type of link is inappropriate. There should be no linking to articles that are within Wikipedia, since these articles are not meant to be content articles, but pages to help editors. I have seen this a few times on Wikipedia and I don't believe it's addressed in guideline. It needs to be addressed and formally discouraged or banned. Iamreallygoodatcheckers ( talk) 03:54, 10 February 2022 (UTC)
I linked the word germane to the wikitionary article on it. This was reverted by EEng, with the edit summary 'We assume our editors are basically literate' given as motivation. I think this is a fairly uncommon word. Per the Manual of Style itself, "Everyday words understood by most readers in context (e.g., education, violence, aircraft, river)" should not be linked, but germane is not such a word.
As I don't want to get into an edit war, I started this discussion page. Thoughts? TypistMonkey ( talk) 02:18, 23 April 2022 (UTC)
[[wikt:germane#Adjective|germane]]
→
germane. --
Redrose64 🌹 (
talk)
12:30, 23 April 2022 (UTC)
Hi. If non-existing articles have drafts, then visitors of article space see large editnotices. An example of what such notices look like:
Among other reasons, such editnotices are "in order to prevent the unnecessary creation of duplicates". As you know, some titles are ambiguous and therefore require a qualifier. Related to the above example,
Luminary is the disambiguation page, while
Luminary (podcast network) has a draft article associated with the ambiguous title. Editors who would like to - read; if it doesn't exist - create an article about the network, are much more likely to check the disambiguation page than they'll (correctly) guess/search+find the qualifier. My opinion is therefore that it makes sense to allow editors to link to such drafts on disambiguation pages. Currently,
MOS:DRAFTNOLINK does no include an exception that allows such links. (Even though MediaWiki already uses {{
Template:Draft at}}
in article space.) Do you agree it makes sense to allow linking to drafts on disambiguation pages? I attempted to do so
here, but my edit was reverted. --
77.162.8.57 (
talk)
10:36, 21 March 2022 (UTC)
In the section "More words into a link", the guideline endorses the example:
This is awkward because the hyperlink splits up the noun phrase "the Republic of Texas", taking only the word "Texas" from it. Reading the hyperlink alone results in a parse that conflicts with the sentence as a whole.
Including the entire noun phrase fixes this:
Alternatively:
Jruderman ( talk) 11:29, 30 May 2022 (UTC)
There's a discussion at Talk:London#Linking of cities about whether we should be consistent and link to all cities mentioned in that article, or apply MOS:OVERLINK when an editor adds a link. I'd appreciate input, whether agreeing with me or correcting me, from editors more used to weighing such questions here than I am. NebY ( talk) 20:55, 30 May 2022 (UTC)
It's fairly common for articles to begin with a sentence of the form SUBJECT is an X Y
, where X and Y are both linkable topics. That situation presents three possible paths, each with pros/cons:
SUBJECT is an X. It is a Y, and...Sometimes this works well, but often it results in clunky phrasing.
Let's assume for the sake of argument that there's no super elegant path available for options 1/2, as that'd be a cop out. I'm interested to hear from folks how you weigh the three options.
Personally, I tend to lean toward option 3, since
research indicates readers don't tend to click links often, making the clunky phrasing of 1 a big downside, but when they do, position matters a ton, creating a downside to 2. Seas of blue are never ideal, but I'm not sure they actually harm enough to need to be avoided at all costs (something the guideline acknowledges with the when possible
caveat), and I feel that they can be overpoliced because they're comparatively easy to identify. Thoughts? {{u|
Sdkb}}
talk
21:39, 5 April 2022 (UTC)
...is an American football quarterback for the...could be re-written as
...is an American football player who is a quarterback for the...Every case is different, but here some might not know that a quarterback is a playing position.— Bagumba ( talk) 17:38, 6 April 2022 (UTC)
The link, Phoenix, Arizona's Chinatown, is unclear because it could be read as either the Chinatown in Phoenix (as intended), or that "Arizona's Chinatown" is called Phoenix. I proposed fixing this by linking it as Phoenix, Arizona's Chinatown. Others have suggested that is an Easteregg link and should not be used. I think is sufficiently transparent. If you click on the link, would you be surprised/confused to be reading about the Chinatown in Phoenix, and not any Chinatown? This relates to a DYK hook and should be concise, not something unnaturally wordly. Thoughts? To avoid forking the discussion, Please comment at DYK. MB 20:35, 21 April 2022 (UTC)
Hi there. There's a discussion on Talk:Christian Bale ( | subject | history | links | watch | logs) about whether repeated linking is appropriate when the linked article's first and second mentions are contextually different and/or too far apart. I hope this page's watchers take interest in this discussion to help strengthen it. Thank you! KyleJoan talk 11:26, 9 July 2022 (UTC)
From Talk:List_of_diplomatic_missions_in_Ottawa
MANY years ago I noticed some wiki-bot(sic) tool Wikipedia was using to sanitize the pervasive use of INSECURE, privacy leaking, non-TLS links on Wikipedia. Seriously, what gives? Why do wiki pages such as 'List_of_diplomatic_missions_in_Ottawa', basically almost trick unsupecting users into clicking these links?
Isn't their wiki policy around this? There is no technical reason and this is extremely unethical. Fellow library users, wifi-hotspot fans, litterally multiple tech companies(and we know they log EVERYTHING) and whomever happens to be curious (i.e. listening in where the embassy site is housed(co-located) all get free open text viewing of this access of the embassy site. I did a quick perusal of policy, guidelines etc., but I'm at a loss and kinda shocked. I'm almost positive this is an already solved problem (automation fixes this easily), so why (and WHERE) are policy regarding this issue? 198.91.228.76 ( talk) 00:31, 10 August 2022 (UTC)
An editor/reviewer on Aug. 9 twice reverted my WP link to the article "United States" in the first sentence of Languages of the United States. The link, he/she said, violates the WP:overlink policy of never linking "common terms." I'd say this is a "primary term," and every country-related WP article (ex., "Languages of...," "Demography of...," etc.) is linked to its country article upon first mention. The editor is unimpressed that 99.99% of country-specific articles in WP are already blue-linked this way; no, my link runs counter to the guidelines. I think the editor misreads "common term," and shouldn't the thousands of similar articles be de-linked to their country as well? Mason.Jones ( talk) 14:32, 11 August 2022 (UTC)
At (for example) the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal page's infobox, I've been trying to implement avoiding SEAOFBLUE. I've been reverted in that attempt. What have I done wrong? GoodDay ( talk) 22:49, 14 August 2022 (UTC)
|location=
, while others might have |city=
and |state=
, probably from before linking standards had evolved to where they are now. While changing these infobox templates would not be worth the effort, when I am editing one for another reason, I combine the info into one field to comply with
MOS:GEOLINK (e.g. |city=Buffalo, New York
and leave |state=
blank. Occasionally I am reverted by someone who claims that each parameter must be used because they exist, and apparently, that an implied consensus existing from having legacy separate parameters overrides the expressed consensus of GEOLINK. See
Chester School District as an example.So I propose the addition of "This applies regardless of separate infobox parameters" at the end of the GEOLINK bullet.
MB
21:11, 23 August 2022 (UTC)
|state=
field does not require that it also be linked. I dont believe this one-off template requires any new wording in the MOS. Consider adding guidance like {{
Infobox school district}}'s for |country=
: "...see
WP:OVERLINK.." or updating
Wikipedia:WikiProject Schools/Article advice regarding GEOLINK.—
Bagumba (
talk)
15:11, 29 August 2022 (UTC)
|location=
or similar where this is no so much of a concern"). Adding "This applies regardless of separate infobox parameters" here covers them all in one place.
MB
17:05, 29 August 2022 (UTC)
city = [[Buffalo, New York]]
without using |state=
, or use city=[[Buffalo, New York|Buffalo]]
and |state=New York
(unlinked).|location=
that is entirely free-form, where the editor can specify line breaks and format the address/location any way they wanted.
MB
14:01, 6 September 2022 (UTC)
"This applies regardless of separate infobox parameters"would be contrary to {{ Infobox university/doc}}, the example in {{ Infobox school district/doc}} and the UK example in {{ infobox school/doc}}, and frequent if not common use of those templates. To avoid conflict or disruption, the template documentation should be changed if MOS:GEOLINK is changed, and it might be good to have some degree of acceptance from some of the editors who have a particular interest in school and university articles. As yet, I don't see any notification of this discussion on either the template talk pages or at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Schools and Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Higher education. NebY ( talk) 16:07, 10 September 2022 (UTC)
Is the only use of the city, state, and country parameters (at least in the university infobox, the only one that edit) to display a location in the rendered infobox? I ask because I am wary of making that assumption without checking to see if those parameters are used in other ways, some of which I assume have been subsumed into Wikidata. If that is the only use of those (and any other similar) parameters, I would be happy to help adjust the template's documentation to reflect this project-wide consensus. (If it matters, this is not the decision that I would make nor the one I like; I merely acknowledge that local consensus or practice cannot override project-wide consensus.) ElKevbo ( talk) 02:58, 25 September 2022 (UTC)
As requested, I posted notification at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Schools and Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Higher education and in four weeks, there has been one additional comment.
In summary, I see the following:
There was one objection, one that did not express an opinion, and the other five expressing varying levels of support. I believe this is a consensus to add the statement "This applies regardless of separate infobox parameters". MB 21:28, 22 October 2022 (UTC)
MOS:PIPESTYLE probably should mention that the "derived names" format should not be used with piped links (for example, although [[Class (set theory)|class]]es
works, [[Class (set theory)|classes]]
is preferred). —
Mikhail Ryazanov (
talk)
17:45, 15 October 2022 (UTC)
If you have an article about various chart achievements for a particular music chart, is it over linking to repeatedly link songs and artists who appear in multiple sections? Or are those instances fine? On the List of Billboard Hot 100 chart achievements and milestones page, almost every table or section is completely linked but then there are places in prose and/or some tables where Taylor Swift for eg. is linked and then places where she is not. I'm working on fixing up the World Digital Song Sales page and I'm a bit confused on where to remove links and where to add them (obvious over linking in the same table aside, which I am getting to slowly). Or is it that a reader should be able to click anywhere in any table and be taken to the relevant song or artist page regardless? -- Carlobunnie ( talk) 17:21, 18 October 2022 (UTC)
Is it permissible to link a year as part of a date within a table? e.g. a sports season page such as linking "28 October
2022" if it were within a table of a golfer's win list? Obviously per
WP:DATELINK, linking year articles should be avoided e.g.
2022, however is it possible to link the PGA Tour season within the date as similar to the [[1787 in science|1787]]
example given in the policy outline.
Jimmymci234 (
talk)
19:26, 28 October 2022 (UTC)
[[1787 in science|1787]]
example, if someone would reasonably expect such a link there. But given the full-date example above, "28 October
2022", I doubt this is the case. It would probably help to see the table. In general, though, I can't think of any other sports articles doing this, except in tables that have something like a season column, with links to season articles that are obviously links to season articles. —
SMcCandlish
☏
¢ 😼
20:03, 10 November 2022 (UTC)
You are invited to join the discussion at
Talk:Miss Universe 2022 § MOS:OVERLINK does not apply?. ☆
Bri (
talk)
17:35, 14 November 2022 (UTC)
Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Lead section has an RFC for possible consensus. A discussion is taking place. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments on the discussion page. Thank you. InfiniteNexus ( talk) 07:03, 30 November 2022 (UTC)
Should hatnote links to Simple English Wikipedia be discouraged? fgnievinski ( talk) 20:09, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
Responding to A D Monroe III's creep concerns above, a "yes" result here doesn't necessarily mean that we need to expand the MoS if this isn't a recurring issue; editors can just link back to this RfC anytime it comes up. {{u| Sdkb}} talk 21:36, 19 October 2022 (UTC)There are established pathways for interproject linking, and those should be used instead of arbitrarily choosing some articles to attach this to. Because Simple English is about language choice, not complexity, it's not clear what those would be — {{ Introductory article}} exists for inherently complex subjects, and articles that needlessly use advanced language can be tagged with {{ Technical}}. In both cases, we can handle the issue here on English Wikipedia without pushing readers to a different language version.
Hi! I've recently had this brought up at Wikipedia : Featured article candidates/2022 World Snooker Championship/archive1 about the MOS. I understand the need for making articles readable from any background, and that you shouldn't need to have an understanding of the topic to understand an article. However, where is the limit on explaining a term that is common in the subject matter, where a link is not enough?
The above example is regarding the use of break in an article on snooker, which is about as common a jargon term as there is, and I've also seen an argument about this on the terms of "yellow card" and "goal" in football, but similar terms might be for a "shooter" in video gaming or a broadcast for television shows.
My big issue with explaining in prose a common term that takes a while to explain is that it doesn't make the article have better prose, and slows down reading for an informed reader. I understand the current wording is intentionally quite vague, but perhaps if we add something to the effect of it being unnecessary to overly explain a term if it interupts the flow of an article.
Let me know your thoughts. It's not that I object so much to this term, but I can see it being applied to every article (or theoretically could be) and wouldn't improve how articles are written. Lee Vilenski ( talk • contribs) 18:30, 2 January 2023 (UTC)
At a minimum, I expect technical sports terms to be linked. I think it's a balance between being helpful to a reader who knows nothing about the sport versus a casual follower finding it verbose or even patronizing. If I was reviewing a page for a sport I knew little about, I'd make the point about making it accessible to non-fans, while deferring—within reason—to the sport experts on how to balance it. AGF on both sides is essential.— Bagumba ( talk) 14:02, 5 January 2023 (UTC)Do not unnecessarily make a reader chase links. If a technical term can be meaningfully explained with very few words or with a footnote, this may be preferred to a link.
if a highly technical term can be simply explained(my emphasis), and the removal of "highly" does not seem to have been discussed. For example, the article about a snooker championship also links the technical terms frame, foul shot, black ball, doubling, clearance, fluke, in-off, free ball and session to spare. Would it benefit readers of this article to have each of these terms explained or footnoted, or would the clutter worsen the readability of the article unnecessarily, given its likely readership? Are we also imposing too much on editors and throwing away the great advantages of a hyperlinked encyclopedia? NebY ( talk) 16:38, 5 January 2023 (UTC)
If a technical term can be explained with very few words or with a short footnote, this is preferred to a mere linkrepresents a major shift away from hyperlinking and is not in accord with MOS:UL
"In general, links should be created for ... Articles explaining words of technical terms, jargon or slang expressions or phrases—but you could also provide a concise definition instead of or in addition to a link", I've reverted. NebY ( talk) 17:06, 5 January 2023 (UTC)
I ran into some similar issues last year when doing GA reviews for several articles on ice hockey players. I know little about hockey and had questions about quite a few terms: natural hat-trick, taxi squad, top pair, and several others. I could see that explaining everything inline would be disruptive for readers familiar with the sport. I asked for links, and as I recall everything I had a question about ended up being linked. I don't know that we can define clearly the boundaries between terms that need inline explanations, those that need footnotes, and those that just need to be linked -- it's going to be different for different readers. "Pike" is completely obvious to me, though I think it should be linked; a century break is also obvious (I grew up watching Pot Black), but I can see it means no more than "taxi squad" to someone who's never played or watched snooker. I don't know how to codify this, but I think if knowledgeable readers feel that the flow is being broken up too much by inline explanations, non-knowledgeable readers should accept that, and be willing to accept links instead, or, if absolutely necessary, an explanatory note. The canonical example of this sort of problem is mathematics, where Laplace transform, a not very obscure mathematical tool, could not possibly be explained to someone with a math background in a single article. Mike Christie ( talk - contribs - library) 21:30, 8 January 2023 (UTC)
if knowledgeable readers feel that the flow is being broken up too much by inline explanations, non-knowledgeable readers should accept that, and be willing to accept links instead, or, if absolutely necessary, an explanatory noteis what I'd thought one of Wikipedia's guiding principles as a wide-ranging hyperlinked encyclopedia. To find an example, I looked in Wikipedia:Featured articles for a baseball article (never played it, never watched a game, no interest) and found 2004 World Series. This non-knowledgeable reader isn't familiar with third straight wild card team to win, swept the Cardinals in four games, bench-clearing brawl, RBI single, single, double, top of the fourth, skip off the lip of the infield, right field foul pole, left-center field bullpen, a single to right field that scored Mueller, earned run.... I made guesses about some and kept going, much as I would if reading a newspaper article. Now imagine the average US reader's reaction if bench-clearing brawl [a] and top of the eighth [b] were distractingly marked as if someone who wanted further details about the brawl could find them in the footnotes [c], just like in a book, and started clicking. They might not agree that it was even a Good article and suggest, in nontechnical and profane terms, that it be reviewed. NebY ( talk) 01:10, 9 January 2023 (UTC)
Notes
I don't see why country shouldn't be linked. Its generally educationally helpful to the reader to state the country especially if its name/type of state is different from what is present in that geography today. Comrade-yutyo ( talk) 12:05, 28 January 2023 (UTC)
OK so I'm having a bit of an issue with Chiswick Chap here in [5] - he says that linking Wagner in that sentence is not an excessive amount of linking, despite the fact that this was a sequence of three nouns linked. Now it's a sequence of four nouns where "opera" isn't linked, but I still don't quite see the point. Can someone else assess this? -- Joy ( talk) 11:44, 15 February 2023 (UTC)
celebrating Siegfried in Wagner's opera Der Ring des Nibelungenseems fine to me. I might spell out "Richard Wagner", as if he's unfamiliar enough to link, he's also unfamiliar enough we should give his full name.
User_talk:Snickers2686#John_G._Koeltl. Apokrif ( talk) 23:08, 7 March 2023 (UTC).
@ Masem, do you disagree with both of the sentences you removed?
I kind of doubt that you really want people to add and remove links on aesthetic groups or their personal perception that it's hard (or easy) to read. WhatamIdoing ( talk) 23:48, 10 February 2023 (UTC)
References
{{
cite journal}}
: Cite journal requires |journal=
(
help) Graduate thesis in psychology, University of Turku, 2017
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
read from top to bottom like a regular article.I saw a lot of people state during the recent Vector 2022 RFCs that they don't read Wikipedia articles the way they read a novel, and that they come here for some specific information on a topic rather than reading the whole article top to bottom. On mobile, sections are collapsed by default, so it's actually super inconvenient to encounter some term that has been linked once somewhere above in the article, and now I have to expand all the sections individually and hunt for where it was initially mentioned and linked.Another negative experience I've had due to application of this policy is encountering a term in the context where it first becomes interesting enough to check out on its own, but again it's been mentioned in passing somewhere above, and I have to go find the first instance to follow the wikilink. I'll also add that when a list of related topics are introduced somewhere in an article, and exactly one isn't wikilinked because it's been mentioned already, it looks unattractive.What I'm wondering is if we can loosen the guidance in the DL section to
...may be repeated if helpful for readers, such as in infoboxes, tables, image captions, footnotes, hatnotes, and at the first occurrenceThis should help accomodate mobile readers, as well as desktop readers who click anchor links from the TOC instead of reading the entire article. Folly Mox ( talk) 14:33, 13 May 2023 (UTC)after the leadin a section.
Would this trickle over to MOS:SURNAME, where we would mention the full name of people in each section?— Bagumba ( talk) 15:39, 6 June 2023 (UTC)
Mobile and long articles I see two arguments for more re-linking: mobile and long articles. For phone view, all sections are collapsed (not so on my tablet). Someone jumping to a section, might miss an earlier link, thus the proposal to link once per section. However, this doesnt apply for subsections (e.g. 2.1, 3.1.2, etc), which are all viewable once its respective top-level section is uncollapsed. Does that mean this linking change generally applies to top-level sections and not subsections i.e. ink once per section, but not once every subsection. If so, this might also address some who had concern that there might be excessive linking if sections were (too) short.— Bagumba ( talk) 16:49, 6 June 2023 (UTC)
In a discussion on the Salmon chaos page, I was involved in a discussion with @ Drmies because I did not understand the purpose of linking. They explained how things should work and I think the page should be edited so that the guidelines reflect these principles and prevent further confusion.
I interpreted this page to mean that pages should be linked if they are relevant (e.g. WP:BUILD's "Ask yourself, "How likely is it that the reader will also want to read that other article?"" or the lead's "Whenever writing or editing an article, consider [...] what links to include to help the reader find related information"), but they explained that pages should only be linked if they explain something. Obviously these are very different approaches. I have the immediate suggestions of:
1. Changing OVERLINK to read "We should not link to commonly used words and names, including the names of (current) countries" (etc).
2. Deleting "Ask yourself, "How likely is it that the reader will also want to read that other article?"" from WP:BUILD as this is irrelevant.
3. Deleting the first bullet point from UNDERLINK.
4. Generally, changing the guidance on principles and under- and over-linking to emphasize that we should link to specifics about which readers are unlikely to know, regardless of whether or not they help readers understand the page in general.
Does anyone have any further suggestions to help other editors? CohenTheBohemian ( talk) 15:11, 21 March 2023 (UTC)
particularly relevant to the context in the article. As for the bigger question, it's a good idea to be parsimonious with links, but as the guidelines make clear, linking isn't only done for unfamiliar words. – Uanfala ( talk) 13:20, 5 April 2023 (UTC)
When styling a label (in [[Main page|label]]
), one can add the style code inside or outside the brackets:
[[Main page|''ABC'']]
→
ABC[[Main page|<span style="background: pink">DEF</span>]]
→
DEF'''[[Main page|GHK]]'''
→
GHK<span style="background: pink">[[Main page|LMN]]</span>
→
LMNBoth options work as expecteed, and no WP:LINTER errors reported. Special:ExpandTemplates does not alter them. My question is: is there a preferred convention in this? DePiep ( talk) 14:33, 26 February 2023 (UTC)
[[Main page|OPQ<sub>2</sub>]]
or [[Main page|RS''T'']]
, the formatting must be inside the label. Therefore if one wanted to have a preference, it might be a good idea to prefer the version that always works, rather than preferring the version that only works if the link label gets the same formatting throughout.[[Main page|RS''T'']]
reason given above, but only if it's what VE does. If VE puts the markup outside by default, then all bets are off and we just have to throw up our hands. —
SMcCandlish
☏
¢ 😼
02:33, 14 June 2023 (UTC)
[[This|''That'']]
and on the outside if for a simple link: ''[[This]]''
.
WhatamIdoing (
talk)
02:45, 14 June 2023 (UTC)The link in the edit summary for this edit should have been to wp:FIXTHEPROBLEM. Sorry about that. - Butwhatdoiknow ( talk) 20:07, 25 June 2023 (UTC)