Wikipedia talk:Make only links relevant to the context

Supporters of this rule include: HelgeStenstrom, 24, AdamW

Opponents include: sjc, Mike Dill, Patrick, Pizza Puzzle, tbc, fonzy,

What I mean is: If someone has a liberal idea of usefulness of links and found it worth the effort to put in many, do not undo his or her work just because you do not need them, they do not do any harm. It is better to improve the link, if needed, or improve the linked article. For example, due to a link to pressure I noticed that only physical pressure was discussed in the article, and as a start, added a little bit more. - Patrick 22:35 9 Jun 2003 (UTC)

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Now wait a sec -- I'd like to put in a word for the opposing view. I say, link liberally (not insanely, but liberally).

Who the heck am I to say whether a particular word or phrase in the text is "relevant"? -- I say, leave it up to the reader. If they are interested in clicking, they can click. If not, the linked page isn't going to jump onto their screen by itself.

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I admit that some of this advice has more relevance on a system where a link in one direction always causes a link in the other, and that (as of late 2001) Wikipedia is not such a system, but when most encyclopedias cross-reference, they cross-reference to related articles. And perhaps some of this is just a "liberal vs. conservative" difference. --Damian Yerrick

Update: Under the new software, Wikipedia is now such a system thanks to special:whatlinkshere (http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki/special:whatlinkshere&target=Wikipedia_talk:Make_only_links_relevant_to_the_context). --Damian Yerrick

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I don't have a strong opinion either way on this.

I do take VERY, VERY (gee, am I shouting?) issue with the comparison of Wikipedia to Everything2. Everything2 is, in my opinion (and in the words of another Wikipedian) a random collection of crap. Wikipedia at least aspires to be neither random nor crap. That's all I wanted to say. :-) --LMS

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I don't compare the content of Wikipedia to the content of Everything2.com. Rather, I was comparing the software behind Wikipedia (wikipedia:PHP script) to the software behind E2 (Everything Engine 0.8 + e2clone nodeball). --Damian Yerrick

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I'm inclined to go with "author's discretion" here as well. Some articles might work better linked liberally and some better linked conservatively. -- Lee Daniel Crocker

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This is a wiki. If the reader thinks (s)he needs information on one of the terms on the page, (s)he can edit the page, add a link to the term, and then follow it. If the link is relevant it will probably lead to the right page. If the link is somewhat irrelevant, it will lead to an unrelated page, indicating the need to change where the link points to, or the need to disambiguate.

Link conservatively. Others coming after you are more likely to add new important links than to unlink irrelevant ones. -- Miguel

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I am wondering if I have been guilty of overly liberal linking. I agree that we certainly don't want all dates to be links. It is a question of significance. In particular I rather like to have many dates in history articles be links. For one thing it makes the what links here link from the date be more valuable. This gives an intermediate step to listing everything that mentions a date in the events section of the date. If anyone wants to look back from 1502 or 1503 they will be able to find my tracks. Let me know if you think I've gone overboard. -- Jeff

I just took a stroll through 1503. I see nothing wrong with the birth or death dates of Julius II, Margaret of Burgundy, Elizabeth of York, Henry II, Alexander IV, Nostradamus, etc., but I would say that it is overkill to link the dates of minor events in the history of Muscovy, the Grand Duchy of Baden, the Augustinian order, the lives of Michaelangelo (summoned to Rome), Copernicus (the year of his doctorate), or Borgia's imprisonment. Pope Pius's death is okay in his own article, but maybe not in Machiavelli's. I think the question to ask is, Would this event ever appear on a timeline under this date?. Ortolan88

That's good feedback Ortolan88. Your timeline question is an interesting one. My question is, What is someone looking for when they click on 1503? What I am looking for is the most interesting/important stuff that happened in that year. So as long as the date article doesn't run more than two pages, I would rather see more details, even if somewhat more minor. Perhaps separateing Events from Minor Events or Slice of life or something. These minor events might help ground history for a student or might lead them to new areas of interest.

I hadn't realized that both Machiavelli (on the death of Pope Pius) and Michaelangelo were both sent to rome in 1503. Find that interesting coincidence and a good example of why the minor events in major figures, or major events of minor figures, ought to fight for links. I say fight because there are clearly deminishing returns at some point.

The Muscovy article might be a good example to pick on. There are quite a lot of dates linked, but as I reviewed it, they didn't jump out at me as being inappropriate. Since the only back links would occur from what links here someone would want to look beyond the major events that appear on the date page. -- Jeff

So I guess my proposal is that the be a somewhat looser criteria for linking dates:

Table of contents 1 Proposed hints for linking of dates 2 Less links 2.1 Legislation 3 Relevant links

Proposed hints for linking of dates

• The date should be relevant to some important aspect of the article
• The standard for importance be more strict for recent dates
• Date articles should be managed to show the most significant events and kept to a reasonable length. Thus, the further back in time, the lower the standard for inclusion.

The What links here for a date should provide a wide range of links to what events transpired in the window of time. -- Jeff

So, how would you edit the hints on the meta page to reflect these ideas? The reason I used the timeline criterion was the notion that someone might actually come along with a piece of software to pull all the linked dates together and make a timeline, or a java page that did something cute with "slice of life". I just don't think the Muscovy-Lithuania peace treaty of 1503 would ever warrant being picked up by any such software to be placed on a timeline. It's in the "noise" of European history and will never emerge, or so it seems to me. Ortolan88

Exactly. It's in the noise. So someone reading that article might think: "what were the main events at the time of this minor peace treaty" and then follow the link ... -- Tarquin 22:44 Dec 6, 2002 (UTC)

If making that kind of meta page, you'll probably want to weight links based on some measure of perceived relevence; for instance, based on how many other pages link to them (à la Google) --Brion 22:56 Dec 6, 2002 (UTC)

Where they are very likely to find (being the wikipedia way): "Lithuanians make peace with Muscovy". Some circles should be broken. Ortolan88

My proposal for the change to the hints on the meta page was listed. -- Jeff

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What[?], exactly[?], is the problem[?] with[?] liberal linking[?]? I see no[?] real issues. --Dante Alighieri 22:54 Dec 6, 2002 (UTC)

Clutter. The year Copernicus got his doctorate is only of interest to his mom. Ortolan88

... and to people doing their doctoral theses on Copernicus. ;) Sorry, I thought it was clear, I was kidding. Liberal linking can obviously cuse clutter. --Dante Alighieri 23:07 Dec 6, 2002 (UTC)

We will certainly get people following a link to the year XXXX, and then adding what they came from to that year page, out of a desire for "completeness". We'll have to make it clear somewhere that the year pages aren't meant to be complete, but useful summaries. We might need to go through them and trim from time to time. (the same way thousands of pages will link to the Order of Magnitude chain articles, but each chain page should give only a digestible list.) -- Tarquin

Right now there are some 30 links to 1503 (other than from other dates pages). There are about 80 hits searching wikipedia for "1503" and there are 19 items (8/5/6 events/births/deaths). This is after some work on my part to pull into the 1503 page events that I felt should be there, and linking references to 1503 that I found relevant. I don't see this as an overwhelming flood of information. In that context a peace treaty, however minor the players, might be worthy of note -- to the person who is bothering to look for what was happening in 1503. -- Jeff

I suspect that most pages pre-1750 or so will be even less well linked. (With notable exceptions like 1492 or 1066). For example, 1507 has nothing listed. Did nothing of note really happen in 1507? No body of interest was born or died? -- Jeff

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I'm in favour of a simpler policy regarding links to and from dates:

• All years, decades, centuries, etc in a non-date article should ideally be linked to the relevant date article. It provides context.
• A reverse link from the date article to the non-date article should generally not be made, unless the event is genuinely significant for that year, decade, or century.

Which is what I do at the moment, and nobody's complained yet, and I was quite surprised to see this policy page, which contradicts that... Martin

Less links Moved from Wikipedia:Village pump

I am hoping to encourage a slightly calmer approach to linking. I think the below list looks better if the dates are not linked. I do not think a user will come to that part of the article and decide to look at the date. I would suggest that dates be linked within an article, but not within a list of dated events which have their own articles.

Legislation

• 1961 - Juvenile Delinquency and Youth Offenses Control Act[?] PL 87-274
• 1968 - Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act[?] PL 90-351
• 1968 - Gun Control Act[?] PL 90-618
• 1970 - Organized Crime Control Act[?] PL 91-452
• 1970 - Omnibus Crime Control Act[?] PL 91-644
• 1984 - Omnibus Spending Bill Anti-crime package[?] PL 98-473
• 1990 - Gun-Free School Zones Act
• 1994 - Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act PL 103-159
• 1994 - Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act[?] Amendments PL 103-322
• 1994 - Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act

I used to think as you do, when I was young and brash. Like, 5 months ago. But now I have come to see the beauty of WikiWays. I now embrace WikiCulture, with its excessive linking (which is called "wikification", by the way), edit conflicts and that ruling elite that's never around when you need them. Take comfort in the fact that Wikipedia is not the most heavily linked website on the Internet -- I once saw a dictionary where every word was a link to the other dictionary entries. -- Tim Starling 04:45 Apr 22, 2003 (UTC)

Shino, what you say above is just plain common sense. Alas, some fool will come along and put links around every date and word in sight, sooner or later. The Wiki policy is to only link relevant things, but somehow it's much easier to add a doubtful link than it is to remove one. So our articles wind up being over-linked most of the time. Tannin

Actually, I'd link years in the above list (thus proving Tannin's point about fools... ;-). Reader "story" to justify it - Alice, a girl of just 14, reads the article on gun control. She's not a lawyer (though she will grow up to be a specialist in international law), and doesn't particularly want to get into legal nitty gritty, so the link to Gun Control Act[?] looks uninviting. But Alice wonders "what was 1968 like? What kind of society was it that decided that guns needed control. So she clicks on the 1968 link and finds... well, probably a large collection of random links, but ideally she'd find an overview of that year.

The "problems" with overlinking are the underlines, which impair speedreading. The solution is to change the stylesheet so that links are a different colour, but not underlined. They can go underlined on mouseover. Martin

You can set in the preferences whether you want links underlined or not. - Patrick 20:40 Apr 22, 2003 (UTC)

As a beast radiating in curiosity, I love clicking on what seem like meaningless links. Once you get there, you're off on some exploration. You chance upon something, and your knowledge changes. Regulations are in place that weed out the useless articles; therefore, ideally, all articles in wikipedia are useful; therefore, there can be no useless links. All wiki-links link to something useful. Part of what makes wikipedia so fantastic is ability to explore, to make connections. Personally, the more wiki-links within an article, the better, because (ideally) all wiki-articles are useful. Kingturtle 23:16 Apr 23, 2003 (UTC)~

Consider me in agreement with Kingturtle. I find following links addictive like eating potato chips or peanuts, & part of the fun of Wikipedia, as I explain on my home page. Feel free to debate me about this there. -- llywrch 23:35 Apr 23, 2003 (UTC)

Relevant links Moved from Wikipedia:Village pump on Friday, June 13th, 02003.

What is the policy on linking? Apparently some user's (like User: Dan Keshet[?] and User: Evercat[?]) cant tolerate a link to international community on a page about a leader in the "international community" nor a link to governor-general about a man who was a governor-general; whereas, other user think such linking is part of the very core of wikipedia.

I wonder why, if someone doesn't like the links, they don't edit their preferences differently. Pizza Puzzle

Those particular links wouldn't make a lot of sense in context. Rather, link to international community and Governor-General. --Brion 20:52 9 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Thats really not the point Brion, this isnt a case of their improving my link, they are simply deleting it. A link to governor is better than no link at all, when the topic is a "military" governor. Pizza Puzzle

That's exactly the point. If you're going to pepper the text with links, they must be relevant. Sometimes linking individual words by themselves doesn't provide a link that is informative, but rather goes to an article on a different concept. Sometimes disambiguation on the titles is necessary, but often as not you can get away with linking to the right concept with a different word. For instance, dialogue is about literary forms; in the context of international politics, you probably want to link to something more like diplomacy. You can make the link 'transparent' to the existing text by using a 'pipe' character: [[diplomacy|dialogue]] -> dialogue, etc. --Brion 21:25 9 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Actually, I just reverted to the last version that didn't have silly links to pressure and absolute[?], for example. I'll re-instate the link to international community. (we're talking about Abu Mazen, btw.) Evercat 20:53 9 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Any why not link to pressure, pressure is just as much of a concept in politics as it is in physics. And why not link to dialogue, if we have an article on dialogue, and a world leader states that dialogue is so important that its the only quote we have from him, it doesnt seem "silly" to link to dialogue. Pizza Puzzle

Or how about the deletion of my link to Muslim, at the page on Jinnah. Not linking to Muslim there is sort of like not linking to Christianity when one has an article on Aquinas. I believe the most recent biography on Jinnah refers to him as one of the 3 most influential Muslims in history; yet, my link is "excessive". Pizza Puzzle

A link to Muslim still exists at that page (Muhammed Ali Jinnah). But some of your other links there were a bit excessive. I don't really think that when you say someone died, this actually requires a link to death, for example. Evercat 21:05 9 Jun 2003 (UTC)

And why not? When else are we going to link to death? Many people like to browse the links. Pizza Puzzle

Wikipedia should probably not look like this[?]. :-) Evercat 21:30 9 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Obviously, opinions vary about when linking is appropriate. Too many of them, and it gets hard to read an article. Too few, and it's hard to determine an article's context within wikipedia. I think of them as "key words"; I usually don't link on common words, especially when the meaning is relatively clear from the context. Uncommon words, I usually link on the first occurrence. I also treat them as a sort of "see also" within the article, like: Robert Fripp was one of the founding members of King Crimson. I dunno, seems like a matter of preference to me. -- Wapcaplet 21:07 9 Jun 2003 (UTC)

I just don't see how linking to laws, judges, and presidents, is an excessive notion when one is writing about laws, judges, presidents. Pizza Puzzle

Well, to use your example of dialogue in the Abu Mazen article... I think putting a link there is distracting and in a way takes the quote out of context. It makes it seem as if he is saying "There is no substitution for the Wikipedia article on dialogue." -- Wapcaplet 21:14 9 Jun 2003 (UTC)

There is a Wikipedia:Make Links Relevant debate already. But the discussions there had been inconclusive, and eventually faded out several months ago. --Menchi 21:42 9 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Linking to death would be appropriate in an article about the existence of the soul, or life after death, since in that case you would want to know as much as possible about the terms being discussed. Linking to death when talking about somebody who just happened to die is not relevant. -- Nelson 15:00 11 Jun 2003 (UTC)