This page 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.
Nandesuka 16:06, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC) Linking to every possible adjective is super-distracting.
Chuck18:42, 1 August 2005 (UTC) See
User:Peak's comments below. Also, very distracting when trivial links are included. Link items where a reader might want to follow based on context.
Tony (Canadian Paul, you can follow up trunk-and-branch links with greater freedom by just typing words into the box, without the disadvantages of formal linking.)
Silence00:23, 6 December 2005 (UTC) Everything is subjective, that's why Wikipedia exists. And one can still easily follow a bizarre chain of links without linking to irrelevant pages. Trivial date-linking is painfully eye-catching, all that blue...
CRGreathouse: Irrelevant links waste time. If the text says "a Serbian election" and I see it's linked, I want it to go to that election -- not to
Serbia and
Election. "
acontested2008Serbianelection" is the worst thing I can imagine for usability.
Canadian Paul (I've found that my favourite thing about Wikipedia is that I can start off with Rodney Dangerfield and end up in Communists in Azerbaijan)
Tempshill19:50, 2 February 2006 (UTC)(I support most of this guideline; I dislike the trivial links; but cannot support the discouragement of creating red links unless you plan to quickly run off and write the article. Red links are great.)
N-true 18:28, 21 June 2006 (CET) — Redlinks: not everything should be linked, but everything that would indeed be worth having an article, such as languages that are yet to be written about.
Vsion02:01, 22 June 2006 (UTC) Change to "Only make links that are relevant or point to important concepts", remove "to the context".
Daniel Quinlan: good style, I might suggest a rephrase to "the most relevant" along with a guideline that a moderate number of links should be used, but the intent is the same.
Daniel Quinlan 05:15, Dec 15, 2003 (UTC)
mydogategodshat - Links are overused. Not too long ago I found one of my articles glowing with red and blue links; almost half the text. Why would anyone reading an article on strategic management theory want links to "flash light", "sound", "1981" etc.
Peak: The selection of appropriate hyperlinks is as important to good writing as the selection of appropriate words. Selective linking actually allows an author to convey additional information: "this link contains (or ought to contain) information that I, the author, judge to be relevant and maybe worth your attention." A good hyperlink is like a good guide. The concerns of those who seem to want as many links as possible are best addressed in other ways, e.g.:
Google and similar excellent tools can be used for comprehensive searches for words and phrases;
the "Go" box is just a mouse click away if a reader wants to check on anything that is not linked;
if the effort of copy/paste/GO is the issue, then I'm sure the Wiki software developers could give us RIGHT-MOUSE-CLICK or some such to transport us instantly from
ignorance to
bliss. It would however be good to have a better title for this page. Perhaps something along the lines of one of the following?
"Fewer hyperlinks convey more information."
"Select your wikilinks as carefully as your words."
"A good wikilink is worth ten thousand mindless hyperlinks."
Secretlondon hyperlinks are good and are one of ways that wikipedia is superior to an paper encyclopedia. I think that linking to dates is a bit much, but places etc should stay.
User:Steeev Without links the world wide web would be nothing, and the same goes for Wikipedia. The more links there are to articles the better. From network theory, if we take the Wikipedia as a network of nodes (articles), the value of the network equals the number of available node interactions (hyperlinks between nodes). A "mesh" (many-to-many) network has more intrinsic value to its members (more information per cost of connection) than a "hub-and-spoke" network.
User:Steeev raises an interesting point in the voting above. Without any links, Wikipedia would lose a lot. But I'm not sure that I can agree with his logical extension that more is automatically better. His application of network theory assumes that each node interaction adds positive value to the network. That is not always the case. Irrelevant or inappriopriate node connections can have zero or even negative value. They consume time, frustrate the user and erode confidence in the network as a whole. Granted, you may not consider those costs high, but to pretend that there are no negative consequences is unfair. I don't think anyone was advocating not linking - merely that we link where the link has positive value.
Rossami 04:08, 16 Dec 2003 (UTC)
IMO, it should be possible to click on any word and get a dicdef or a link to a corresponding article. Inclusionists argue that no one has to read an article; by the same token, no one has to click on a link, but if one is available, at least the reader has the choice. Unless there is a hardware or software cost, there should be no limitation to where one can go from an article, except where linking each word would produce irrelevant red links. It's too bad Wikipedia has chosen underlined text as the default to display links; non-underlined links are readily identifiable yet far less obtrusive. It is a basketload of underlined links that makes a page look amateurish, even if they are all legitimate.
Denni☯ 03:33, 2005 Feb 9 (UTC)
This page 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.
Nandesuka 16:06, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC) Linking to every possible adjective is super-distracting.
Chuck18:42, 1 August 2005 (UTC) See
User:Peak's comments below. Also, very distracting when trivial links are included. Link items where a reader might want to follow based on context.
Tony (Canadian Paul, you can follow up trunk-and-branch links with greater freedom by just typing words into the box, without the disadvantages of formal linking.)
Silence00:23, 6 December 2005 (UTC) Everything is subjective, that's why Wikipedia exists. And one can still easily follow a bizarre chain of links without linking to irrelevant pages. Trivial date-linking is painfully eye-catching, all that blue...
CRGreathouse: Irrelevant links waste time. If the text says "a Serbian election" and I see it's linked, I want it to go to that election -- not to
Serbia and
Election. "
acontested2008Serbianelection" is the worst thing I can imagine for usability.
Canadian Paul (I've found that my favourite thing about Wikipedia is that I can start off with Rodney Dangerfield and end up in Communists in Azerbaijan)
Tempshill19:50, 2 February 2006 (UTC)(I support most of this guideline; I dislike the trivial links; but cannot support the discouragement of creating red links unless you plan to quickly run off and write the article. Red links are great.)
N-true 18:28, 21 June 2006 (CET) — Redlinks: not everything should be linked, but everything that would indeed be worth having an article, such as languages that are yet to be written about.
Vsion02:01, 22 June 2006 (UTC) Change to "Only make links that are relevant or point to important concepts", remove "to the context".
Daniel Quinlan: good style, I might suggest a rephrase to "the most relevant" along with a guideline that a moderate number of links should be used, but the intent is the same.
Daniel Quinlan 05:15, Dec 15, 2003 (UTC)
mydogategodshat - Links are overused. Not too long ago I found one of my articles glowing with red and blue links; almost half the text. Why would anyone reading an article on strategic management theory want links to "flash light", "sound", "1981" etc.
Peak: The selection of appropriate hyperlinks is as important to good writing as the selection of appropriate words. Selective linking actually allows an author to convey additional information: "this link contains (or ought to contain) information that I, the author, judge to be relevant and maybe worth your attention." A good hyperlink is like a good guide. The concerns of those who seem to want as many links as possible are best addressed in other ways, e.g.:
Google and similar excellent tools can be used for comprehensive searches for words and phrases;
the "Go" box is just a mouse click away if a reader wants to check on anything that is not linked;
if the effort of copy/paste/GO is the issue, then I'm sure the Wiki software developers could give us RIGHT-MOUSE-CLICK or some such to transport us instantly from
ignorance to
bliss. It would however be good to have a better title for this page. Perhaps something along the lines of one of the following?
"Fewer hyperlinks convey more information."
"Select your wikilinks as carefully as your words."
"A good wikilink is worth ten thousand mindless hyperlinks."
Secretlondon hyperlinks are good and are one of ways that wikipedia is superior to an paper encyclopedia. I think that linking to dates is a bit much, but places etc should stay.
User:Steeev Without links the world wide web would be nothing, and the same goes for Wikipedia. The more links there are to articles the better. From network theory, if we take the Wikipedia as a network of nodes (articles), the value of the network equals the number of available node interactions (hyperlinks between nodes). A "mesh" (many-to-many) network has more intrinsic value to its members (more information per cost of connection) than a "hub-and-spoke" network.
User:Steeev raises an interesting point in the voting above. Without any links, Wikipedia would lose a lot. But I'm not sure that I can agree with his logical extension that more is automatically better. His application of network theory assumes that each node interaction adds positive value to the network. That is not always the case. Irrelevant or inappriopriate node connections can have zero or even negative value. They consume time, frustrate the user and erode confidence in the network as a whole. Granted, you may not consider those costs high, but to pretend that there are no negative consequences is unfair. I don't think anyone was advocating not linking - merely that we link where the link has positive value.
Rossami 04:08, 16 Dec 2003 (UTC)
IMO, it should be possible to click on any word and get a dicdef or a link to a corresponding article. Inclusionists argue that no one has to read an article; by the same token, no one has to click on a link, but if one is available, at least the reader has the choice. Unless there is a hardware or software cost, there should be no limitation to where one can go from an article, except where linking each word would produce irrelevant red links. It's too bad Wikipedia has chosen underlined text as the default to display links; non-underlined links are readily identifiable yet far less obtrusive. It is a basketload of underlined links that makes a page look amateurish, even if they are all legitimate.
Denni☯ 03:33, 2005 Feb 9 (UTC)