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WP:CONTEXT archives Support and opposition Archive 1 Archive 2 Archive 3 Archive 4 – repeating links Archive 5 – links in quotations Archive 6 Archive 7 – final archive WP:BUILD archive Archive WP:MOSLINK archives Archive 1 Jul 2006 and earlier Archive 2 Archive 3 Sep 2006 – Jan 2009 Archive 4 Jan 2009 – May 2009 Archive 5 May 2009 – Jun 2009 Archive 6 Jul 2009 – Aug 2009 Archive 7 Sep 2009 – Feb 2010 Archive 8 Feb 2010 – Jun 2010 Archive 9 Apr 2010 – Sep 2010 Archive 10 Sep 2010 – Nov 2010 Archive 11 Nov 2010 – May 2011 Archive 12 May 2011 - Oct 2011 Archive 13 Oct 2011 - April 2012

This page has archives. Sections older than 60 days may be automatically archived by Lowercase sigmabot III when more than 4 sections are present.

I've manually archived everything up to April 2012. Could someone take a look at the Miszabot code at the top of the page and figure out why it's not working? DoctorKubla (talk) 17:00, 29 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Finally figured it out. Should be okay now. DoctorKubla (talk) 08:55, 27 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Tony, Masem et al. might find it entertaining to contemplate an article in which I have just done a bit of editing of some of my earliest work, produced while I had been brought under the impression that almost any word whose concept appeared in an article should be linked, and in fact, linked frequently. Later I developed a bit more perspective that, in a triumph of hope over overwhelming evidence, I am trying to present in a constructive spirit to some of my fellow-editors. The article is Cassytha. The point I wish to make here is firstly that I had linked names such as Africa, Asia, Australia, and the Americas. Secondly, that I have now unlinked them in the light of subsequent experience. Thirdly, that I left Australasia linked, but am in doubt about whether I should.

Why? Because, looking at the text, it was plain that anyone reading the article would not in context be looking for general info in articles on those continents, and if they did link to those sites they probably would not find Cassytha explicitly mentioned, and if they did happen to find it, it would only be after a long, long search. However, Australasia left me scratching my head. Most educated people would have a more or less broad idea of what it means, but some, such as my late aunt Maggy Youngfly, would be likely to say: "Huuuhhh???" and for the likes of her I made it easy to rid their minds of their doubts at the cost of two clicks.

So why mention Australasia in the first place? What is wrong with vanilla Australia? Because Australasia is a geographical region relevant to the genus.

And if in fact the articles in question had indeed mentioned material relevant to the topic, I should unhesitatingly and unapologetically have linked to them, either under their own names, or under the description of the material in question, or both, no matter how familiar the Great Washed might be with their names.

Even more recently I not only edited Calico cat and Tortoiseshell cat and Cat coat genetics, but actually linked them to each other, even though every educated person is familiar with the topics and their mutual relevance, and I'm glad, glad, glad!!! Maybe someone uneducated will read the articles and become educated! I realise that it is not the function of WP to educate, but I cannot help thinking that a little incidental education can't do too much lasting harm. Can it?

OK guys, am I making sense? Comments? JonRichfield (talk) 18:58, 27 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Australasia is a reasonable geographic term to link because it is not a commonly used name and as you note its specialized for this specific area. Heck, the only thing in that article that I'd contest is the linking of "common name" (which you have linked twice in the same para), the rest of the links show high levels of germaine or , in cases of words like "vector", the specialized meaning to that field. --MASEM (t) 19:25, 27 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Oooopsie! Thanks Masem; that was a slip. I have delinked the second one. (Shows how non-distracting the links can be!  ;-) ) And I appreciate the complimentary note. JonRichfield (talk) 08:11, 28 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

So why not spell it out in the text? "Australia and New Zealand", so the reader understands without fuss or diversion? Tony (talk) 03:58, 28 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Tony... I recommend that you check on the Australasia article. Also, whether one spells out a meaning where one word (possibly linked) does the work of two, one could argue the choice of expression as a matter of taste. Where one word does the work of several in an unambiguous fashion in context, there is reasonable justification for preferring the more compact form. (Sez me anyway!) Anyway, since the word is biogeographically useful and most readers will have no need to use the link, it is a service to those that do use it, to introduce them to it in context, without significant penalty. No? JonRichfield (talk) 08:11, 28 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

One of the problems of linking to Australasia is that the article itself is equivocal in defining the term. That's why it's better to nail it in the anchor text. I think the intended meaning is of just the two countries (which is what many people understand it to be). Tony (talk) 10:50, 28 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Actually not; You might argue that Tasmania is part of Aus, but it is not mainland Australia, and several of the species of interest occur in New Guinea as well. Those are some of the main reasons that it is convenient to refer to it by one word; and convenience is a virtue; ask any politician or lawyer. (But not any administrator of course. Keep the red tape flying...) JonRichfield (talk) 15:31, 28 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

and link to Flora of Australia instead, as 'Australasia' appears too broad a topic. -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 04:14, 28 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Here you lose me. The topic is Cassytha; some of the species are variously Australasian. How did Flora of Australia get into this as a topic? Are we at cross purposes? JonRichfield (talk) 15:31, 28 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Australasian ecozone? — A. di M.  16:40, 1 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Have a heart Adim! I am a naive little humourless lad who takes things that people say seriously seriously! JonRichfield (talk) 18:30, 1 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Wow... Sorry Adim, I misread what you said a while ago and was in a rush. I just happened to pass through this way today and realised that I had boobed and you were quite right. I have now changed that link to match. Thanks muchly. JonRichfield (talk) 21:00, 16 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

After reviewing the above debate, I am appalled at Masem's position and believe JonRichfield and Boundlessly have fully articulated the better position. Masem has clearly not traveled enough or had enough life experience. (I hate to be a snob about this, but I have visited over 20 U.S. states and 11 foreign countries on five continents.) What Masem doesn't seem to understand is that many intelligent people who can use English quite well at a high school level or better are still operating in dramatically different cultural frames of reference, especially in the context of an encyclopedia with a global audience like Wikipedia. --Coolcaesar (talk) 12:28, 15 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I was reading the "Chronological items" section and wondered why it didn't have blue links to the articles it was discussing, such as February 24 and 1789. Sure enough, on checking the history I found that the links had been removed in this pair of edits with the edit summary "Remove links to Years per Manual of Style/Linking".

I don't think the MOS applies here, because the text is talking about the Wikipedia articles having these names, and not about the dates and years themselves. I have restored the links. -- John of Reading (talk) 21:13, 24 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Applause for the deed and yet more applause for the reasoning. Some folk are going to hate you. JonRichfield (talk) 19:33, 27 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

In my time I have encountered a sizable number of cultures at various depths of intimacy and intensities of mutual incomprehension. There may be cultural levels at which sense of humour is so rudimentary as to be practically incomprehensible to Joe Miller, but in the circles at which we correspond I reckon the you might as well forget the idea. That there are cultural incompatibilities is unquestionable (I frequently remember events such as when a lot of us in a South African office were recounting our favourite Goon Show snippets and killing ourselves, and I caught sight of the blankly uncomprehending face of an expat Scandinavian) but these incomprehensions are as a rule symmetrical. It is not cultures that are without humour, but individuals. The fact that cultures and their members do not share their humour globally or indiscriminately need not mean that they are respectively impoverished, just that their contexts don't match. The fundamental mechanics of humour are to a good approximation universal in principle, if not necessarily in mood.

Irony? Sure the Americans have it cut and dried, practically composted; they just often use it in different conventions and situations and moods from those of the British, or the Germans (whose irony, like South African, also is drier than that of most Britons). But even in making those generalizations, I am creating a nonsense that I can't spend enough time on to salvage. The British themselves hardly appreciate the British sense of humour because the British sense of humour is legion, not any one thing. What works in one county might earn you blank or black looks in the next. Quite unlike the Americans, Ozzies, Greeks, Chinese, French or Indians of course. And as for the idea that there might be a Briton without a sense of humour -- perish the joke! JonRichfield (talk) 19:33, 27 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

This edit added this rule. However, there was no discussion around this specific change, and if my memory serves me, previous discussions on the issue were not conclusive on this point; I think there was considerable scepticism due to a) the aesthetics of patchy linking in a table format and b) the impact on sortable tables, given that you can't necessarily say which is the "first" occurrence. And, searching as I write, here is the most recent discussion. N-HH talk/edits 12:02, 4 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Yea, that new line needs some clarification. In sortable tables, repeating links (if links are being used) are necessary since the sort can change which comes first. I can agree that in an unsortable table (which includes the infobox) that the once-per-table is good practice, though with sensible exceptions. (The same reasoning applies to inline cite reference links if used, since reordering cites within the article body can easily reorder which cite goes first.) --MASEM (t) 16:24, 4 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

What Masem says sounds very sensible. Tony (talk) 10:34, 5 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

With apologies for putting pigeons among cats, and thereby departing from a sturdy old tradition, in this case I find myself compelled to point out that the foregoing is largely reasonable and I cannot be expected to maintain my disagreement with everything that is said anywhere. Better luck next time! JonRichfield (talk) 17:25, 6 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Despite the sarky edit summary, I was not "huffing and puffing" about "a point ... unlikely to elicit dissent". I was merely pointing out that people have not been calling for – and have certainly not agreed to – to the removal of this long-standing, substantive qualification and reverted its removal (I quite happily left all the other changes). They haven't, and in fact it has been the subject of voluminous and moderately acrimonious discussion previously. Consensus does matter you know, however convinced anyone might be that their preferred version is much, much better. I'm also going to revert the latest change you've tried, which is not refinement but a second attempt at removal, albeit with a replacement qualification this time. It is not unreasonable to expect someone to propose a change of this sort on talk first, especially once their first attempt to change it without doing that has been challenged.
The suggestion that something needs to be "helpful to the reader's understanding" has a very different meaning – if it has any meaning at all – from the qualification of being "particularly relevant to the topic of the article". The point there is that while, for example, one would not normally link passing mentions of "dog" in most articles, one might well link it in the page about a poodle, which seems a pretty clear, objective and sensible distinction, one would have thought. How one assesses what millions of different readers might, individually, "understand" or what is "helpful" to them in that respect, I am not sure. Nor am I sure that "helping understanding" is the sole aim of linking. Facilitating navigation between "related information" is also important, as the lead to this guidelines states. N-HH talk/edits 07:45, 18 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

My edit summary said, "It's not necessary to huff and puff about consensus every time a point is made which is unlikely to elicit dissent", though perhaps (in addition to spelling consensus correctly) I should have said "It's not necessary to huff and puff about consensus when making a point which is unlikely to elicit dissent" -- that is, you were making the point that it's important to be clear in warning against overlinking, and it's unlikely there will be significant dissent from that concept. I made an edit which I thought improved that warning; you think maybe the old wording was better. Fine. Why not just focus on the wording instead of yelling consensus right away? For all we know everyone might have happily sat back while you and I, through a series of friendly edits with explanatory summaries (explanatory of thoughts about content, that is -- not about WP policy) came up with wording everyone found satisfactory. If not, then we discuss to consensus. Just calm down, that's all I'm asking. And see below. EEng (talk) 14:40, 18 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed. Too many articles link every word beyond a primary-school reading level as "helpful to understanding". — kwami (talk) 08:04, 18 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The first edit did though leave the provision with no qualification, such that the guidelines basically said "never link common words", without any following qualification; ie in one way the proposed changes are looking to restrict linking. I've always been in favour of avoiding such links in most cases, but I think we do need that longstanding exception to allow, or even recommend, such links where they clearly relate directly to the main topic at hand. WP entries do more than simply define words, they provide further and detailed information, which will be worth linking to in some contexts even if the basic concept, thing or event is well known per se – assuming, even, we can define "well known" for a disparate millions-strong readership. And of course what "helping understanding" means is even more impossible to pin down and, as noted, can be cited by those in favour of more linking as much as it can be used to back up the more radical delinking. N-HH talk/edits 08:28, 18 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

My apologies for not having been involved in this bunfight, and I don't expect to make any more progress than before against the weary drone of "...from distractions and duplications of links, good Lord deliver us!" The younger members among us won't remember this, but in the distant past we had carefully reasoned, structured, and compiled lists of when to link, when to duplicate, and in each case, what reasoning to apply, which was not necessarily the same in all cases <shock!> or for all users <horror!> Where would we have been by now if we had not been protected by the valiant cadre who erected a zareba of "everyone who disagrees with us is a head-in-butt compulsive linker who wants every article to be blue from title to tilde (yes! I am pointing at you bowb, you with your finger on that square bracket key!)"? Heaven knows where it all would have ended. How feeble in response is the whimper of "...but links are supposed to be useful, whether duplicated or not...<snvl> ...why not just see whether the linked site is relevant and can or should contain material helpful to anyone likely to be reading this <snff>... why not just offer options for people who come out in pemphigus whenever they see blue and see red whenever they see red, to avoid these horrid contingencies... <boohoo>?" Good Grief folks! Rally round the boma; some articles contain some unnecessary links and our foundations are straining under the burden -- if we do not maintain eternal vigilance we might find ourselves in an actual encyclopedia! JonRichfield (talk) 09:06, 18 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with N-HH on many matters, but here, I have to take the lead from Kwami instead: helpful to readers (above primary school level indeed) is the operative word for optimising the utility of the wikilinking system. Tony (talk) 09:08, 18 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

BTW, I notice that the drone omits the question (among a lot of other valid and relevant points that are best omitted) that in picking on common words as an automatic target of anti-linking fervour, is to ignore links in which the topic is most smoothly and helpfully supported by a link of a word or phrase that looks like something out of a kindergarten, but links to a relevant, non-trivial topic, whereas a link to a forbiddingly technical term might be useless, because though the word matches the title and the sense, the article does not contain any reference to the concept in context. For example, though chimps occur in Kenya, the word does not appear in the Kenya article, so one should think carefully whether to link to Kenya from a chimp article. I leave it to the reader as an exercise in development of a sense of functionality, to decide when it might be worth linking to an article that does not mention the subject of the linking article. (Helpful hint to the baffled: "Unless particularly relevant" won't cut it!) JonRichfield (talk) 09:31, 18 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

"Relevant" combines the ideas of connectedness and "appropriate" (whatever that means, which is the problem). The latter is what we want links to be, but I worry most people think of relevant as meaning merely "connected somehow", and that's what we need to work against. If I'm right about this, then we need something more than relevant, or something else. By substituting "serves the reader's understanding" (or whatever) I was attempting to provide a goal in terms of serving the reader, instead of a statement about the abstract relationship between two topics. That's all. I wasn't "pushing to remove" anything [1].

N-HH raises the very real problem of "Who is the audience?" -- a child or a well-informed adult. But I don't think this goes away by appealing to relevance instead of helpfulness -- either is relative to the audience. Honestly I don't think any brief criterion stated here is going to resolve that problem. I was only trying to provide a better statement of principle to inform the zillions of individual linking discussions, which for the moment are going to have to resolve the who-is-the-audience question for themselves, since so far we aren't doing it here (or anywhere else that I'm aware of). I'm not married to it.

How about somthing like this (though please help with the drafting):

In particular, the following are not usually linked unless particularly helpful and relevant to the reader's understanding. Particularly helpful and relevant means that a link exists from Article on Topic X links to Article on Topic Y only where Y contains (or would be expected to contain, once appropriately developed) information which [and here my creative powers are exhausted, as I trip over this already overextended sentence ... can someone jump in?]

EEng (talk) 14:40, 18 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Everything seems to have gotten a little back to front here. My general position is not to worry that much about "overlinking" and to be happy to see links to related and relevant pages even if they relate to supposedly "well known" things (nonetheless I do support broad guidance against the unthinking mass linking of common terms when mentioned in passing). Plus, Tony, this is not the "consensus version", it is the version EEng added only a few hours ago, which no one – whatever else they think – has yet explicitly backed up or agreed to. Also, I'm confused by your comment about agreeing with me generally but with Kwami here. In fact of course, we tend to disagree about many linking matters (although not, overall, by as much as is sometimes suggested); and in this section, Kwami, AFAICT, was expressing scepticism about "helpful to readers"-type wording, since it can be taken to mean all things to all people and, specifically, would encourage "overlinking" of the sort I know you deprecate. In respect of some other comments, and the point more generally, I have been pretty clear above and previously about the wording I would prefer and why, which, as it happens, is more or less the long-standing qualification re "relevance". If anyone wants a recommendation from me, that's it. I can't see, for example, that the draft suggestion improves much either in terms of clarity or intention. N-HH talk/edits 16:03, 18 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• I actually prefer "relevant" for the reason that it removes the subjectivity as to what could be considered 'useful' – we've been around the houses here with no real consensus as to what "useful" actually is, but I have often gotten the impression it's been argued by some to add navigational and gloss links to further clutter up the screen. I actually think it might be good to replace "relevant" with "relevant and useful". -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 02:55, 19 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

That intention is not unreasonable, but the idea of "particularly relevant" is not a lot better than "particularly true" or "particularly unique". Accordingly it is not a good basis for justifying the use of the term in a guideline. Something more like "...particularly likely to be helpful to some readers..." maybe? Whether it is relevant or not should not be an issue; it it is not decidedly relevant, it should not be linked at all, never mind more than once. It can of course happen that a link would be irrelevant in the article in the first place that the term occurs, but that it is relevant in the third place, in which case that is where it should be linked. It also can happen that it is relevant in one connection and shortly after becomes relevant in a different connection in another place near by, in which case it should be linked in as many places as matter. The fact that we don't have an absolute criterion for measurement of the attribute of relevance hardly matters; it is the sort of thing that is routinely decided on by editors as a matter of good sense, either alone or in discussion, and rightly so. Mindless delinking remains an offence against the WP and its users and editors either way. JonRichfield (talk) 12:55, 19 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

"...particularly likely to be helpful to some readers..." – yecch, no thanks! Even more subjective and even more likely to precipitate edit wars. I also share a dislike for "particularly relevant", "particularly true" or "particularly unique". Why don't we go for "germane". -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 15:29, 19 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Ye.e.e.sss... You have a point, though in this connection germane is really an uncomfortably close simile to relevant. How about "apposite" or "apt"? Both of them have the "relevant" meaning, but also have the meanings and usages along the line of "appropriate" or "fitting" or even of "the very ticket", supplying what is needed, which was the main thing I felt to be lacking in "relevant". They correspondingly also have the merit that there is nothing uncomfortable about using either with relative terms like "more" or "most" or "highly". Of course you might consider "appropriate" itself, but that strikes me as too vague. JonRichfield (talk) 16:17, 19 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I can't see a huge difference between "particularly relevant" and "germane" (and nor do I see a problem with the former phrase, which is not in the same order of redundancy as "particularly true" or "particularly unique", whose problems are more obvious. Relevance is a relative concept, with differing degrees, in a way that truth and uniqueness are strictly not). Anyway, the point, surely, for each of those is that they are relatively objective, clear and substantive, something that "useful", "appropriate" or "fitting" are not really. The latter are impossibly vague, and such clarity as there is will depend on people's criteria and the context. By contrast – to stick with the dog example I've used before – the term dog is obviously relevant/germane/whatever to the page on Dachshunds, and should surely be an exception to any instruction to avoid the linking of common words; it is not relevant/germane to the page on Karl Marx were that to mention that he first formulated his labour theory of value while walking his dog. And that will be the case whether the reader is a 12 year-old with English as a second language who left school last year and has never seen a dog or a 50 year-old university lecturer and part-time dog-breeder. By contrast, if we were to look to "useful", by one set of criteria, the second dog link might be very useful to the former, at quite a basic level. It might even be useful for the latter, if they happened to want to quickly access and read – or edit, for that matter – the WP page on dog (which does much more than simply say "four-legged furry thing, man's best friend"). N-HH talk/edits 16:36, 19 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I didn't mean to stir up such a hornets' nest. These judgments are subjective no matter what -- no getting away from that: germane, relevant, helpful. Again, I do think that a standard based on the purpose of links (which, inarguably, is to help the reader) is better than a standard about the abstract strength of relationship between two concepts, ignoring the reader or whether is might help him. But the more I think about how to gauge this the more of a headache I get. Further up the page (WP:BTW) is the advice, Ask yourself, "How likely is it that the reader will also want to read that other article? Maybe that's something like what I'm after, but I feel like that's a few steps' progress on a goal that's still far, far away. Foregoing analogy originally expressed as five feet of progress on a five-mile trip but I can't remember the units-conversion syntax and I don't want to get yelled at as anti-metric or something. MOS discussions put everyone on eggshells.

And we're still stuck with Which readers are we talking about? I suspect a lot of linking debates have their origin in different visions of WP -- as a place of discovery (for children, say, at one extreme) versus a crisp reference work for otherwise well-read individuals (at the other extreme). I vaguely recall technical proposals for links with varying color saturation to indicate how germane (relevant, helpful, childish, on-point, discursive, whatever) each is judged to be; or maybe the reader can select a level of link filtering. But I don't relish arguing over whether a particular link should be designated as this or that "level".

On the other hand, suppose that linking worked exactly as it does now (linkes manually designated via [[ ]]) but on top of that, some sort of automatic linking would link everything else on the page right down to dog and so on; these links would only be apparent as the reader hovered the cursor over a given word or phrase (only words/phrases without [[ ]]-type links). Then a child suddenly inspired to find out more about dogs could do so easily, while grownups aren't distracted by everyting being blue. I'm not really proposing this (and -- believe me -- I fully recognize the technical/computational/definitional problems here) but as a thought experiment, imagine how many debates over what to explicitly link would disappear if all the leftovers were linked in this unobtrusive, automatic way. Just musing.

EEng (talk) 17:02, 19 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Because there's so many different ways WP could be used or written towards, we have to decide on who the target reader is to normalize our MOS and writing style towards - including how and what we link. This, traditionally, has been a fluent English speaker with the equivalent of some high-school education. Thus, we should be considering links in light of this reader, and that's why terms like "germane" or "relevant" are better than "useful" or "helpful", because we can at least have reasonable discussion of what terms would be germane or relevant to someone with that education level. Terms like "useful" ignore that and have a slippery slope towards linking every noun ever because potentially they all could be useful.

Remember: we have a search bar - we can assume our readers are intelligent enough that if they see an unfamiliar term that isn't linked they can copy and paste it into that search bar and find out more. So it is better to play on the sparser side of links, again emphasizing germane/relevant concepts for linking. --MASEM (t) 17:16, 19 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

My personal linking philosophy is consistent with yours (see [2] and [3] which, though of course the work of many, are linked in a way with which I'm perfectly happy). As to audience, I think that's about right, but... is there a formal guideline on the subject? I can only imagine what those debates must have been like... EEng (talk) 17:56, 19 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know of any specific past discussion a formalization of a target audience though the point has come up before with this seeming to have consensus. The closest advice is probably listed at WP:TECHNICAL, but we don't specifically spell out what the average reader is. (I also consider that given the goals of the Simple English wiki, there's a reason we can work at this level) Personally, I would think we would do well to have some place to state that, with appropriate exceptions, that we treat the reader as having X schooling and Y years of English behind them, as to help simplify discussions about this. Of course, TECHNICAL provides lots of advice that would override that (eg highly technical articles may not be easily discussed in terms of basic high school knowledge), but most cases when we run into overlinking, for example, are topics of broad understanding. --MASEM (t) 19:44, 19 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Isn't the whole point that we can – and should – bypass and avoid theoretical debate about putative readers and target audience, not least because there is no way of identifying either of those things? And surely the point about relevance is not about refiguring that whole debate and debating what is supposedly relevant to one reader or another, but about what topics and subjects are relevant to each other? N-HH talk/edits 23:27, 19 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Is it worth beginning a discussion on how to complete the following?

In particular, the following are not usually linked unless a reader who is [insert magic language here] would find them particularly relevant to the topic of the article:

It is recognized that this may put the cat among the pigeons, which is why I want to know how people feel about such an effort before even making a stab at it myself. One problem, for starters, is we certainly can't express the reader's level in terms of US "high school", though as a temporary crutch I suppose we could add "or its equivalent in other countries" or some skimpy fig leaf like that. EEng (talk) 20:33, 19 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

We seem to have a perfectly simple and obvious guideline currently – don't link everything, especially things that might be "well known" at a basic definitional level, but equally, when clearly relevant, it's OK. I'm confused why we are even having this convoluted debate about all that. Let's all go and do something more useful.N-HH talk/edits

I was reading a Swiss gov't historical page. All black, no aggressive, obnoxious blue links, just a faint dash underline under certain words here and there to indicate a link. Nirvana!

Has a more discreet, user-friendly linking format, such as the one mentioned, ever been discussed?--Lubiesque (talk) 16:26, 18 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The likes have been discussed back in the mesolithic; like every attempt to improve the system they all got shot down by guys who knew that they didn't have to demonstrate anything but that any criticism of the existing standards was a plot on the part of evil spirits who want every word in every article to appear in blue. (Read the archive if you doubt me). They also wanted every link to appear only in their own choice of format and shouted down every suggestion for alternatives or enhancements as forcing other standards on unwilling readers who wanted nothing but blue, and blue that never appeared more than once per article at that. (Incoherent and implausible enough for you? You should have seen the actual discussions!)

Themes that were shouted down included optional user-clickable formats of linking. Some alternatives were:

Options that would not work on mobiles in case they afforded PC users an unfair advantage, for example links that pop up when the cursor hovers over them.

Anything like an on-screen toggle button that could suppress display of links that people of varied tastes find distracting or irritating, such as underlining links, which annoys people who wonder why they were underlined, or blinking or coloured links that cause epilepsy in readers who wonder why they are coloured or blinking, or black links that people see as racist, or any other highlighting that someone might find aggressive or obnoxious, or underlining because it might be overlooked because it is too faint on one screen, or because it is too strident on another.

Any form of hiding links to render repeated links invisible; you see, even if you couldn't see them, concealment like a worm i' the bud still would ... errr... feed on their damask or something.

Anything that looks like pandering to the depraved tastes of users who don't like the existing standards; if you don't like blue, you are subversive. After all, we already have options that we could code in to make links that look like normal text; and readers could try clicking on every word in turn in case it happens to be a link, and if it isn't you can search the page to see whether it isn't a link somewhere else, and if it isn't there either, you can type it into the search box in case you happen to think of the right word for the right explanatory article, and if you fail in that you can always look it up in a book on on google. Flexibility is what it is all about, see?

As for me, I am beyond the pale; I have spent lifetimes in dungeons for suggesting that there be a toggle button somewhere that would permit:

Default as it is, or even like the Swiss Nirvana if you insist, who cares?

Hovering cursor as the current options permit

Links remain operative whether visible or not

Clicking on the toggle button either flips between visible or invisible (but still functional) links, or if someone wants to be fancy, offers various other link format options.

An added option that would be nice would be one that permits one to select any text the reader chooses, then by some suitable click, say a right-click, launches a search for an article with a matching title, or, failing that, for articles containing that text, just as we can do now by typing it in. But don't spend your energy on anything like that; the BROTHERHOOD won't like it. JonRichfield (talk) 08:12, 20 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Your question is based on the false premise that using "a faint dash underline" rather than blue links is more user-friendly (presumably, you mean "I don't like blue links"). You have provided no evidence to support your premise; and my view is that the change you request would be confusing for a significant number of our readers. Also, you are quite at liberty to apply your own style sheet, to format links according to your personal preferences. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:18, 20 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

<Ahem!>... JonRichfield (talk) 12:29, 20 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, and of course, I forgot to mention red links; what about red links huh? What about red links? JonRichfield (talk) 12:29, 20 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

This is about the visual appearance of links, not about what to link, so I guess a more appropriate place to discuss that is MediaWiki talk:Vector.css and/or some village pump. — A. di M.  17:23, 20 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think so. If a visually less aggressive, more discreet way of indicating a link was to be adopted, then the raison d'être of this whole (very antagonistic) discussion about what to link would subside because normal reading would not be disrupted, as it is now, due to the obnoxiousness of those coarse blue links;)--Lubiesque (talk) 19:03, 20 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

(For the record, I would find underlining more disrupting than colour. YMMV. Note also that certain systems display colours darker or lighter than they should – the small squares in this image ought to be the same brightness as the surrounding large squares, but they often aren't; if in the rightmost squares the centre looks brighter than the surrounding to you, links appear brighter to you than they do in average. — A. di M.  10:37, 23 January 2013 (UTC))[reply]