Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Linking/Archive 18

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Main points deleted?

Why have many of the main point of the subpages deleted? I think having all the main point here is much better then having to run all over to find them. I suggest a revert and a discussion of reworking of the page. -- Moxy (talk) 20:35, 29 June 2015 (UTC)

In this edit this edit I removed the statement that links should not be given special colors, because (a) there's already a general prohibition on coloring text, and (b) I've never see this happen in eight years anyway. Certainly if others think it should remain it should be put back. Other than that, can you provide one or two diffs where the "main points of the subpages [were] deleted"? Thanks. EEng (talk) 21:09, 29 June 2015 (UTC)
link colors happens all the time.... and is a main point for accessibility for our readers. All the main points on linking... the do's and don'ts should be listed. Best not to make our readers have to run around to 12 sub pages just to get the main points on linking.
Based on what you're saying the don't-color-links warning should remain. But I don't know what you mean about the 12 subpages. Can you list a couple of diffs to illustrate what you mean? EEng (talk) 22:18, 29 June 2015 (UTC)
In particular, people are apt to monkey with link colors in colored-background table cells if we don't "forbid" this.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  05:46, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

For each proposed change, EEng, can you please open a discussion, and give your rationale and explain why these changes would be necessary? As I stated in my Edit Summaries, many of your edits removed a lot of relevant material, changed the tone of the guideline, or moreover, changed the meaning of the guideline. For bold changes like this, it'd be important that they are discussed, especially after being reverted for obvious reasons (see WP:BRD). WP:EW is no way to go, I am afraid. Jayaguru-Shishya (talk) 22:52, 29 June 2015 (UTC)

Changes don't have to be "necessary", and the idea of opening separate discussions for edits such as [1] or [2] or [3] is ridiculous. Each edit is self-explaining via the change it makes to the text itself plus its edit summary. There's nothing I can add until you point to something you specifically object to, but you've refused to do this despite multiple requests (e.g. [4]). There are 12 edits, and you say they're all inappropriate, so it should be very easy for you to supply diffs for two or three you object to, with a short reason. EEng (talk) 23:23, 29 June 2015 (UTC)

Discussion of individual edits (1)

"No substantive objection"? Are you kidding me? As you can from above, there is objection to your bold edits. Instead of discussing your bold edits, trying to explain your rationale and to establish consensus, you have been WP:EDITWARring instead.
  1. Why did you change the tone (and even the meaning) of text?[5] The original version was not about "accidental linking" but about "confirming that the context is helpful". This can be the case even if the linked article was from the same subject area, but if it didn't deal with the context of the wikilink at all.
  2. Why did you remove this passage[6]? Self-supporting per Edit Summary again? Please see WP:REVTALK.
  3. Why did you remove this one as well?[7] As explained in no. 1, those two are different things. Therefore, it is completely reasonable to emphasize this aspect as well.
  4. In this edit again you keep going on about that mantra of "mistakenly linking".[8] The previous formatting was very descriptive, really well-written, had a nice tone... Now it's all changed, why?
  5. Why were these step-by-step instructions removed?[9] Although you and I might not need that sort of instructions, there's a whole variety of people editing Wikipedia. Have you ever followed WP:TEAHOUSE discussion? Trust me, there's a lot of people volunteering to answer questions that might seem obvious for the most of us.
  6. Although not entirely wrong[10], I don't understand the tweak as the former version was way better English.
  7. Here you changed the whole meaning of the former two passages (!)[11]. The previous version clearly said "do not unnecessarily make a reader chase links" and "as far as possible do not force a reader to use that link to understand the sentence". You changed it into "should be not only linked, but briefly glossed (if possible)...", as if linking is something one is supposed to do and explaining the term is just something additional to that. No, that's not what the original version said.
  8. Why did you remove this well-prosed passage and replace it with some clumsy parentheses? How does this help to capture the original essence of the guideline?
  9. Why did you move this passage?[12] It was there for a reason. Please see WP:SEAOFBLUE above, something it is strictly related to.
  10. See what I just wrote above[13], they might demand a higher density of links (see WP:SEAOFBLUE), not often have a higher density of links. This is a guideline, and our guideline is "might".
  11. Again, this is a guideline[14], therefore "Do not" instead of "The function of".
  12. And again, what's with this?[15]
EEng, this is the first and last time I will give you a detailed explanation about "WHY NOT" to keep the changes you made, instead of you explaining "WHY" to keep the changes you made. Remember, you made the bold edits, you are ought to discuss the changes and seek consensus, and the WP:BURDEN is on you. Besides, this is not just about some individual edits. Nobody is able to catch the original essence of the guidelines if you remove all explanatory material around them, for no reason. Jayaguru-Shishya (talk) 16:31, 3 July 2015 (UTC)

No, I'm not kidding. Any old vague "objection" isn't "substantive objection", and generalities such as "many of your edits removed a lot of relevant material, changed the tone of the guideline, or moreover, changed the meaning", without specifically saying where you see that happening, are nonsubstantive. And please stop linking to policies and guidelines you don't yourself understand e.g. BURDEN applies to article content, not project material.

1. The old text's image of "a physicist speaking of" something made no sense in a discussion of article editing, and "what the system offers" was a bizarre way of saying "the linked article". I see your point about the linked article being "helpful in context", but I think it's not a useful criterion: if the linked article is the one intended -- e.g. a physics article linking to barn (unit), not barn -- then it's hard to see how it could fail to be helpful to many readers in context (no matter what its actual content) because even a stub would be helpful to a reader who'd never heard of that unit. And even if one argues that Article Y, linked from Article X, omits the very thing the reader of X wants, a properly developed version of Y would include that material, and we wouldn't not link from X to Y just because Y isn't properly developed yet. I'd be interested to hear what other editors think about this.

2. This bullet point was restored (see edit summary here) as a result of discussion earlier in this thread. The fact that you don't seem to know this raises serious question about how carefully you've considered the changes you're complaining about.

3. As you must have noticed, the very next edit (i.e. #4) reinserted this material elsewhere, so your complaint here is nonsense.

4. I don't believe in mantras. Editors don't need to be told it annoys readers when a link goes to the wrong article, that article titles need to be exactly right, that there are often multiple articles with similar titles, or other obvious and/or unimportant stuff that made this bullet point twice as long without giving editors any clearer idea what they're expected to do. The important point is to encourage editors to verify that links go where they think they're going; once that's pointed out the reader will readily understand why that's important without talking down to them. I'll be interested to hear from other editors whether they think my revision does or does not do that as (or more) effectively than the old text; it certainly is less tiresome to read.

5, 6. (These two adjacent edits are best evaluated as a single diff [16].) No, it was badly written, with a tin ear for calibrating instructions to what the reader can or cannot be reasonably expected to know already.

  • Editors don't need to be told to key in links "carefully" -- that's useless advice that applies to everything.
  • "display mode" -- that's not a term we use on WP to my knowledge -- why not "preview mode" (though I don't recall any talk of "modes" at all)? And even assigning it this reasonable meaning, what other "mode" would you be in after clicking "Preview"? So what's the point of saying it at all?
  • Telling editors to "check [links] go where you intend" is fine, but can you possibly think it necessary to then say "if they do not, fix them"??? Well, duh! Everybody knows that, and to bother saying such a thing is a beautiful example of completely unnecessary instruction bloat.
  • Similarly, everyone knows that a redlink should be checked to see if adjusting it will turn it blue (assuming they know what a redlink is -- and if they don't they won't have understood 80% of anything else being said in this guideline anyway).
  • What's an "internal link"?
  • "When there is not yet an article about the subject, a good link will make the creation of a correctly named article much easier for subsequent writers." Blah blah blah blah. Once you remind editors to use good naming conventions, that's all that's needed. If they don't see why good naming conventions should be followed, then they're not going to understand the naming conventions anyway, so all this motivation is just so much instruction bloat. In fact, I've made a further edit [17] along those lines.

7. You seem preoccupied with whether new text says exacty what the old text said, but that's not what matters. What matters is whether the new text as effectively, or more effectively, induces the behavior in editors we want to induce. Technical or specialized terms should be linked (at least on their first appearance in any given article) plus if possible they should be glossed where used, so that the reader might be able to skip chasing the link and still generally understand the passage -- he or she can follow the link or not depending on the level of understanding desired. The new text makes it clear that glossing is in addition to, not instead of, appropriate linking. As elsewhere, I look forward to other editors' thoughts on whether this is an improvement or not.

8. (You're talking about [18]). I look forward to whether other editors agree that the old text --

Don't assume that readers will be able to access a link at all; remember that it is not always possible. For example, a reader might be working from a printed copy of an article without access to facilities for following links.

-- wasn't bloat rightly reduced to the new text:

Note that readers working from hardcopy cannot follow links at all.

BTW, the idea that parentheses are inherently clumsy is the kind of mindless rule relied upon by people who don't know how to make stylistic decisions for themselves; parenthesizing this motivating aside is completely appropriate.

9. No, SEAOFBLUE is specifically about immediately adjacent links that appear visually to be a single link. The text we're discussing is about the overall density of links in a particular kind of article as a whole. I therefore moved it to the section on over- and underlinking, which is where it belongs.

10. Saying techincal articles "might demand" more links is effectively no different from saying they "often have" more links -- one is a statement of what the article "needs" and the other states what editors typically "give them". Either way the reader understands that more links are appropriate. You have extremely rigid ideas about the way ideas should be expressed.

11. Contrary to what you imply, the new text says "do not" just like the old text does.

12. What's with it is that this text specifically regards linking in the lead, so I moved it to the section on linking in the lead (with a very slight change in wording). If you'd actually looked at the edit in context you'd know that.

EEng (talk) 04:22, 4 July 2015 (UTC)

Of course, I am also interested to hear what other editors think about the changes. You must be familiar with the WP:BRD cycle (bold, revert, discuss)? You made a series of bold edits, you got reverted, but instead of discussing your bold changes, you decided to re-revert. And not just you ignored the discussion part, you started demanding other editors to explain why your edits do not satisfy (!). So you recently made bold changes to the stable version of the guideline, and now you are defending it as it'd be the long-term consensus.
Besides, you first criticized that "the objection was vague, not substantive". In your later response, however, you admit that the bold changes did indeed change the tone and meaning, but now you argument that the changes are an improvement in your opinion. Jayaguru-Shishya (talk) 00:01, 5 July 2015 (UTC)
No, I did not admit that "tone" was changed, nor meaning (except in a very narrow sense as explained in my response "1." above). If you have further comment on these changes then please offer it, instead of yet again rehashing your rigid ideas about who should have done what, when. EEng (talk) 00:48, 5 July 2015 (UTC)
I just looked at the page, it was a very big edit to a guideline page without any discussion. That much change should have had at least a discussion of not an RFC to determine if there was consensus for making it. It appears an edit war happened to keep the changes. Thats not how WP is supposed to work. This isnt an article, but a guideline that will affect tons of articles. AlbinoFerret 01:01, 7 July 2015 (UTC)
It wasn't a big edit -- it was 12 small edits, each linked and discussed above. Do you have anything specific to say about any of them? EEng (talk) 01:37, 7 July 2015 (UTC)
You are aware that edits in succession without another editors making an edit are counted as one for most purposes? In this case it makes substantial changes to the page. Can you point me to any discussion before making these changes to a guideline? AlbinoFerret 04:59, 7 July 2015 (UTC)
That's not the point. With minor exceptions each change is small and independent of the others, so it can be easily understood and discussed. Instead of obsessing about protocol why don't you step through the changes and comment on any you think are problematic, or boldly fix or improve them? EEng (talk) 12:17, 7 July 2015 (UTC)
Let's get this straight, EEng: if you want to make substantial changes to the guideline, you start a Talk Page discussion, explain your proposed changes and try to convince other editors and gain consensus. Not the other way around. And I don't see consensus for your changes. You've already been formally warned about WP:EDITWARing, so please make sure that won't happen again. Cheers! Jayaguru-Shishya (talk) 15:52, 7 July 2015 (UTC)
Let's get this straight, JS. We're having the discussion right here in this very thread, and your vague concerns have been answered, with no response from you. You've already been warned about obsessing about process instead of substance, so please make sure that won't happen again i.e. engage the explanations I (and now Boson, below) have given you. EEng (talk) 16:34, 7 July 2015 (UTC)
Yeah, it is a little rude to edit a guideline page at all without discussion, but 67 times in one edit!?!That's so outrageous, seriously, al editors should propose even the tiniest changes on the page first, and wait for a reasonable consensus to develop first. IMO, BOLD, had no place on guideline pages. LesVegas (talk) 14:03, 16 July 2015 (UTC)

Discussion of individual edits (2)

To get back to the content ...

Short version: I agree with all the edits being "discussed".

But let's discuss the individual edits, if we must:

  • No. 1: This edit changed

    Beware of linking to an article without first confirming that it is helpful in context; the fact that its title matches the concept you wish to link to, does not guarantee that it deals with the desired topic at all. For example, a physicist speaking of barns is highly unlikely to wish to link to Barn instead of Barn (unit), and any reader needing to click on such a link almost certainly will struggle to make sense of what the system offers.

to

Beware of mistakenly linking to the wrong article among a group of articles with similar titles. For example, in a physics article discussing "barns", a hasty link to Barn (instead of Barn (unit)) will puzzle the reader.

which is much more concise and gets the point across better.
Preliminary approve -- Boson.
Oppose The original version was not just about "accidental linking", but also about "confirming that the context is helpful". This can be the case even if the linked article was from the same subject area, but if it didn't deal with the context of the wikilink at all; or moreover, if the linked article was from a different subject area, but only so tangentially related that it fails to deal with the context. Jayaguru-Shishya (talk) 19:58, 9 July 2015 (UTC)
Please review my response in the prior subthread, and if you're still not satisfied, please give a concrete example of the situation you're talking about. EEng (talk) 23:53, 9 July 2015 (UTC)
Would the following be an acceptable compromise?
"Check that you are not inadvertently linking to an inappropriate article or disambiguation page. For example, in a physics article discussing "barns", a hasty link to Barn (instead of Barn (unit)) will puzzle the reader."
--Boson (talk) 21:05, 10 July 2015 (UTC)
I don't think that addresses JS' concern, but until he offers an example of what he's talking about I doubt there's anything we can do. (I did reword slightly [19] prompted by your suggestion.) EEng (talk) 00:21, 11 July 2015 (UTC)
  • No. 2: This edit then removed the text completely from that location because it was redundant. As the edit summary said "already handled in its own section ". It is indeed handled elsewhere, and more appropriately, in the section WP:TESTLINK.
Preliminary approve -- Boson.
Oppose Per No. 1 Jayaguru-Shishya (talk) 19:58, 9 July 2015 (UTC)
  • No. 3: In the separate section referred to above, this edit then replaces the prolix

    One of the most common errors in linking occurs when editors do not check to see whether a link they have created goes to the intended location. This is especially true when a mistake is not obvious to the reader or to other editors. The text of links needs to be exact, and many Wikipedia destinations have a number of similar titles. To avoid such problems, which can be irritating for readers, the following procedure is recommended, especially for editors who are new to creating links.

with the (already quoted) more concise text

Beware of mistakenly linking to the wrong article among a group of articles with similar titles; for example, in a physics article discussing "barns", a hasty link to Barn (instead of Barn (unit)) will puzzle the reader. To avoid such errors the following procedure is recommended:

Approve. --Boson (talk) 14:47, 7 July 2015 (UTC)
Oppose The original entry is not just about the "mistakenly linked" ones. For example, at one moment there might be a working link to, let's say, a sub-section of an article. Later, however, the sub-section might get deleted, merged into the rest of the article, or merged into another article. Therefore, it's not just about "similarly named" ones.
The text needs to get the idea across, not be absolutely general and precise. Rewording to incorporate the generalized concept of location (i.e. maybe just an article, or maybe article#section) would complicate things to the confusion of novices, without telling experienced editors anything they don't already know. Editors sophisticated enough to use the # syntax know without being told that, when testing new links, they should check that the # took them to the right section.
Extended content
  • No. 4: This edit removes the following help text that does not really belong here

    To avoid such errors the following procedure is recommended:

  1. Carefully key in the link.
  2. Click on "Show preview".
  3. In the display-mode, click on the links (or open them in a new browser tab) to check they go where you intend; if they do not, fix them. If a :destination page does not appear to exist, do a quick search to determine whether the article has a differently worded title or the subject is treated in a section of another article. Adjust the link accordingly or leave it as a red link.
  4. Return to the "Show preview" page using your browser's return button (or close the browser tab showing the linked article).
  5. Click on "Save page".
replacing it with the much more concise and appropriate

To avoid such errors, strive to remember to use Show preview and actually follow new links you've created (using "Open link in new tab") to verify they lead to the articles you intended.

Approve. --Boson (talk) 14:47, 7 July 2015 (UTC)
Approve Jayaguru-Shishya (talk) 16:52, 27 July 2015 (UTC)
  • No. 5: This edit removed "remember to" from

    To avoid such errors, strive to remember to use Show preview and actually follow new links you've created (using "Open link in new tab") to verify they lead to the articles you intended.

and changed

By following naming conventions, an internal link will be much more likely to lead to an existing article. When there is not yet an article about the subject, a good link will make the creation of a correctly named article much easier for subsequent writers.

to

If you leave a redlink in an article, follow good naming conventions to maximize the chance that when the missing article is created, its title will match your link.

Much tighter, so
Approve. --Boson (talk) 14:47, 7 July 2015 (UTC)
Approve Jayaguru-Shishya (talk) 19:58, 9 July 2015 (UTC)
  • No. 6: This edit changed

    Do not unnecessarily make a reader chase links: if a highly technical term can be simply explained with very few words, do so. Do use a link wherever appropriate, but as far as possible do not force a reader to use that link to understand the sentence

to

Technical or specialized terms in nontechnical articles should be not only linked, but briefly glossed (if possible) as well, so that the typical reader won't need to follow the link to understand the surrounding passage.

Good copy edit, so
Approve. --Boson (talk) 14:47, 7 July 2015 (UTC)
Strongly oppose This changes the spirit of the whole passage. The proposal says "...should be not only linked..." (compulsory), whereas the stable version says: "Do not unnecessarily make a reader chase links: if a highly technical term can be simply explained with very few words, do so. Do use a link wherever appropriate, but as far as possible do not force a reader to use that link to understand the sentence" (optional, case-by-case discretion). Also per WP:JARGON: "Avoid excessive wikilinking (linking within Wikipedia) as a substitute for parenthetic explanations such as the one in this sentence." Jayaguru-Shishya (talk) 19:58, 9 July 2015 (UTC)
I adjusted the text to address your concern [20]. EEng (talk) 23:19, 9 July 2015 (UTC)
  • No. 7: this edit changed

    Don't assume that readers will be able to access a link at all; remember that it is not always possible. For example, a reader might be working from a printed copy of an article without access to facilities for following links.

to

(Note that readers working from hardcopy cannot follow links at all.)

Much simpler, so
Approve. --Boson (talk) 14:47, 7 July 2015 (UTC)
Oppose While I agree there is something redundant (e.g. "without access to facilities for following links", I'd like to propose something like this: "Don't assume that readers will be able to access a link at all. For example, a reader might be working from a printed copy of an article, and therefore be unable to follow links" Descriptive, good-prose, not too bloated, IMHO. Jayaguru-Shishya (talk) 19:58, 9 July 2015 (UTC)
That's essentially the same as the old text and, like the old text, squeezes lots of words into very little meaning. EEng (talk) 23:35, 9 July 2015 (UTC)
Oppose The sentence was located there for a reason. See, when it comes to WP:SEAOFBLUE, that usually occurs with technical subject articles. Therefore, that serves as a sort of relieve (a strong relieve) for the WP:SEAOFBLUE rule. The IT-articles for example, we might have three lengthy terms following each other, but all being very relevant to the actual article. Does it break WP:SEAOFBLUE? Yes, it does. Could you just zoom to the most specific article, or link to the most specific one already dealing with all three? No, unfortunately no. Jayaguru-Shishya (talk) 19:58, 9 July 2015 (UTC)
The moved text was originally inserted by this edit [21] after this [22] short discussion; from this it's clear that what you're saying is simply untrue -- this text is about link density, period, and nothing to do with SEAOFBLUE. SEAOFBLUE happened to be the last thing on the list as that moment, so when this text was added it naturally came next. SEAOFBLUE already says When possible, avoid and consider rephrasing, making it clear that eliminating immediately adjacent links may not always be possible. EEng (talk) 23:03, 9 July 2015 (UTC)
  • No. 9: This edit then changed

    Articles on technical subjects might demand a higher density of links than general-interest articles, because they are likely to contain more technical terms that general dictionaries are unlikely to explain in context.

to

Articles on technical subjects often have a higher link density than nontechnical articles, because they are likely to contain more terms and concepts unfamiliar to the general reader.

Good copy edit, so
Approve. --Boson (talk) 14:47, 7 July 2015 (UTC)
Oppose Not a "declaration of the current state", not all "technical articles" demand a higher density of links. Sometimes they might demand higher density of links, therefore might. Jayaguru-Shishya (talk) 19:58, 9 July 2015 (UTC)
Often communicates "sometimes but not always" the same as does might. EEng (talk) 00:51, 10 July 2015 (UTC)
Extended content
  • No. 10: This edit changed

    Do not create links in order to highlight or draw attention to certain words or ideas in an article. Links should be used to help clarify the meaning of linked words, not to place emphasis on the words.

to

The function of links is to clarify, not emphasize: do not create links in order to draw attention to certain words or ideas.

Approve. --Boson (talk) 14:47, 7 July 2015 (UTC)
Approve Jayaguru-Shishya (talk) 19:58, 9 July 2015 (UTC)
Approve. --Boson (talk) 14:47, 7 July 2015 (UTC)
Approve Jayaguru-Shishya (talk) 19:58, 9 July 2015 (UTC)
  • No. 12: This edit removed the redundant text

    Refrain from implementing colored links that may impede user ability to distinguish links from regular text, or color links for purely aesthetic reasons.

As the edit summary said:

Coloring text is a general no-no anyway (Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Text_formatting#Color) & this seems like a warning against something not actually seen in the wild

Approve. --Boson (talk) 14:47, 7 July 2015 (UTC)
Oppose I think the proposer even himself already discarded this change after the comment by user Moxy[23] (although the series of subsantial changes were questioned, this one was able to been recovered) Jayaguru-Shishya (talk) 19:58, 9 July 2015 (UTC)

Arbitrary break

Hello there, Boson! I already left my reply above. Anyway, I think an RfC might be the best way to proceed, don't you think? Especially now when there's a lot of editors from the northern Hemisphere enjoying their summer holidays and the editing activity is rather slow, it'd give enough time for editors to have a look at the proposed changes.

I was hoping that the original proposer could start an RfC, but I am ready to do that also if needed. Cheers! Jayaguru-Shishya (talk) 16:09, 7 July 2015 (UTC)

Sure, yeah, right. There are some 400 editors watching this page -- you think they're all on vacation? The idea of an RfC when you don't yourself engage in meaningful dialogue is a complete misunderstanding of what's appropriate. Please respond to what Boson and I have said. EEng (talk) 16:34, 7 July 2015 (UTC)
I most definitely do not think an RfC would be the best way to proceed, sans any attempt to resolve the content dispute (if there is one). Since the changes are just copyediting rather than substantive, I don't see any reason to make a big deal of it. And an RfC for a lot of small copyedits can be very messy. I have deliberately signed each change, so that others can express their opinion on each change. If you oppose any particular change, I would suggest you add your opinion, starting with Oppose this change, followed by a short reason explaining why the previous version was better. If you want to add anything in addition to a short reason for opposing the change, I would suggest adding a section entitled "Discussion" at the bottom, where the concise reasons can be elaborated, and discussion of those reasons can be conducted. --Boson (talk) 22:27, 7 July 2015 (UTC)
So two editors find the changes substantive, and two editors do not. Interesting, especially if the proposing party is not in favor of an RfC. I thank you for your reply on the individual edits Boson, but please note that I've already given my response above that explains the problematic nature of these edits changing the tone/meaning, or removing plenty of good descriptive material. Cheers! Jayaguru-Shishya (talk) 21:27, 8 July 2015 (UTC)
The number of editors taking a given position isn't relevant, rather the quality of their arguments is. Your "explanations of the problematic nature" was to ask, over and over, "Why? Why? Why? Why? Why?". I answered your questions, and you have ignored those answers, just as you have ignored Boson's comments. It's not a discussion if you don't respond to what we've said. EEng (talk) 22:23, 8 July 2015 (UTC)
If you really want to start an RfC, I believe it would be useful if you use my format of including a link to the individual edit but also quoting the before and after text, and allowing comments on each edit. We could even just add an RfC template with an introductory explanation at the beginning of the section I added, along with a couple of additional section headers. Otherwise it is difficult to understand what exactly you are objecting to in terms of content and it is harder for a newcomer to the discussion to assess if a particular edit made the text better or worse. It is also much harder to follow the discussion if each participant repeats the same structure or makes statements that are difficult to assign to a particular change and and other participants' comments on that change. I am not sure if we are using substantive in the same way. What I meant was that the changes were not intended to tell the editor to do anything substantially different but rather to improve the way in which the advice was expressed. --Boson (talk) 01:21, 9 July 2015 (UTC)
I wonder, Boson, if an RfC is really appropriate, given that JS has been failed to engage in meaningful discussion. It seems like an enormous waste of many editors' time just to accommodate one editors misunderstanding of the concept of substantiveness; the fact that he opposes every edit‍—‌even those clearly appropriate‍—‌underscores the problem here. EEng (talk) 01:50, 9 July 2015 (UTC)
I didn't mean to suggest that I was in favour of an RfC. As I said before "I most definitely do not think an RfC would be the best way to proceed ...", but if Jayaguru-Shishya wants to conduct one anyway, I think it would be essential to show exactly what the content differences are and present the reasons against disputed individual edits, rather than presenting editors invited to participate with more general statements. I would prefer those currently engaged in the discussion (and any other page watchers) to look at the individual edits and think seriously about whether each edit is an improvement. I can understand editors' consternation at finding several edits made without prior consultation, but I also recognise that guidelines need to be constantly reviewed to remove the accumulated cruft that results from the way Wikipedia is edited, with no real co-ordinating editor, and that it is difficult to perform such copyedits aimed at greater "clarity and grace" by committee. If separate discussion of each edit is not desired, I would have to say that the overall effect of the edits is positive, so it would be more productive to accept the edits (without prejudice) and continue the discussion on the basis of the new version. --Boson (talk) 08:12, 9 July 2015 (UTC)
Agree with EEng that an RfC is not reqruied. I don't find anything undesirable with the general thrust of these edits. I like the concision. Just as long as nothing is being let through that weakens guidance for smart linking practice. Tony (talk) 09:09, 9 July 2015 (UTC)
Hi Boson and Tony1! I left my response above[24], hopefully I could express myself more clearly this time :-P I tried to focus myself on the most substantive issues in my opinion, and explain which ones need further improvement. I don't think the exact wording is important, as long as the original spirit of the entries remains. Other opinions of wording I shall leave in the hands of the others (except I commented an instance or two).
We're still missing the rationale of the proposer, however. EEng, could you please explain the original intention behind your edits? Everyone else seems to have given specific commentaries except you. Cheers! Jayaguru-Shishya (talk) 20:18, 9 July 2015 (UTC)
I explained them very carefully already [25]. And exact wording is important, because a page like this has thousands of readers, and much depends on getting the key ideas across without boring or confusing editors into just giving up and navigating away. Per the suggestion of Tony and Boson, I'm reinstalling the changes, after which I'll make a few changes to address some of the concerns you've expressed. Please wait until I'm done with that, then let me know what you think. EEng (talk) 22:35, 9 July 2015 (UTC)

You have continued to WP:EDITWAR over the additions even, 1) you have not bothered to explain your edits (the diff above focuses more on attacking those views disagreeing with you), 2) you have been warned not to edit war but explain your rationale at the article Talk Page instead[26], 3) and you clearly do not have consensus here at the article Talk Page as three editors find your edits more or less problematic.

Instead of discussion, you decided to edit war over the content just after two hours[27] a major input to the discussion[28]. Again, you don't have consensus for the majority of your edits (except for a few), and you reverted before any serious Talk Page discussion had really taken a place. I'd like to WP:ASSUMEGOODFAITH, but as you have keep reverting over the material to your own preferred edit instead of discussion... Jayaguru-Shishya (talk) 23:35, 9 July 2015 (UTC)

I'm sure Tony1 and Boson will be happy to set you straight on whether this is anything like an edit war. Are you ever going to engage anyone else's comments on the edits themselves? For example, on "No. 1" I asked you for an example of what you're talking about. [29] Will you do that, please? A enormous amount of time has been spent attending to your vague and largely unintelligible complaints. EEng (talk) 05:44, 10 July 2015 (UTC)
I value the input of both Jayaguru-Shishya and EEng to this page. Can we identify the specific points of disagreement? Tony (talk) 14:09, 10 July 2015 (UTC)
Jump back to the head of this subthread i.e. #Discussion of individual edits (2). The collapses are stuff on which there's no dispute. (See also earlier attempts at #Discussion of individual edits (1).) EEng (talk) 14:18, 10 July 2015 (UTC)
  • I have undid the changes, there is no consensus for any of it. If EEng wants to make these massive changes I invite them to start an RFC to judge community consensus for making over 3k in changes to a guideline. AlbinoFerret 21:35, 14 July 2015 (UTC)
Indeed a triumph for collaboration and common sense. It's been a week since I ask you to participate in discussion of the changes. Will you be doing that, or are you satisfied with just insisting that everything needs an RfC? EEng (talk) 02:10, 15 July 2015 (UTC)
If you think a consensus of 3 or or even 5 or 6 editors is enough to change a guideline that will affect almost every page in wikipedia I dont know what to say. AlbinoFerret 02:55, 15 July 2015 (UTC)
Well, I know what to say. These are meant to be non-substantive changes that affect only the organization and presentation of the guidelines, not what they tell editors to do. Both Boson and Tony have opined that that's exactly what they do, and to the extent they're right, no big falala is needed. If, inadvertently, I did something that really did change the substance of the guidelines, then please point that out, or just go ahead and fix it yourself if you want.
You seem to think no changes at all can be made without a big discussion, and that's just not true. Between January and May 2014 I made some 350 edits to MOSNUM, almost completely rewriting it from top to bottom. (Search the string EEng here [30].) There were no calls for RfCs and so on, because other editors there took the time to actually look at what I was doing. Now and then someone reverted or modified an individual change, and there were a few areas on which we had long discussions. Any issues were resolved amicably, and that's remarkable given the high-tension disputes that break out at MOSNUM regularly. The reason my work could go on in such an environment is that I wasn't changing what MOSNUM said, just how it was said. Where I slipped up on that, others noticed and set it right. What they didn't do was block progress by wielding BRD like a club. (At this point I modestly ask Tony1 and Boson to opine on whether my work at MOSNUM did or did not vastly improve its organization and presentation.)
This page has 400 watchers, and (not counting you and JS) the other 398 seem to have no problem with what I was doing. You and JS just keep saying, over and over, "RfC! RfC! RfC! RfC! RfC! RfC! RfC! RfC!", as if the bare fact that you can block change is a reason for blocking change. You've said nothing specific at all about how my edits change anything they shouldn't, and JS' comments, while at least somewhat substantive, show that he has language difficulties that cause him to misinterpret things. Why don't you discuss the actual changes, like we're supposed to, so we can move forward to improve the page? You can start by responding to my, Boson's, and JS' comments, found in the thread above. EEng (talk) 04:01, 15 July 2015 (UTC)
Let's see:
  1. Out of the first 12 edits[31], 7 are being discussed at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Linking#Discussion of individual edits (2), so better stop saying that I've not participated in discussion. Actually, we're still waiting for your contribution to explain what was the primary motive behind your edits. Was there something wrong with the original wording? Was there a reason to change the tone of the guidelines? Did altering the tone improve the guidelines in some manner?
  2. As you well know, this guideline page is under Arbcom's discretionary sanctions, and according to Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Article titles and capitalisation#All parties reminded: "...parties are encouraged to establish consensus on the talk page first, and then make the changes." You actually failed to do that, and waited for other people to start discussion instead. So far, you've been picking on other editors' comments, whereas it's you who should explain your own edits. Nobody else can do that for you.
  3. Although not all of your edits are substantive, it is highly misleading to say that "none of them is substantive". For example, why did you remove an essential part of WP:LINKSTYLE[32]? That's a guideline that I've referred to tens of times in my copy-editing. Your Edit Summary said: "...this explanation is severely in need of improvement in its presentation", and then you just removed it. Are you seriously telling me that it isn't substantial? Or this edit[33], brought up by PBS: "This is a big issue and usually would be discussed in a section on the talk page before such a change was made. In this case you made the change in a series of consecutive edits without clearly stating in the edit history what you were doing -- which is misleading."
  4. According to WP:CONLEVEL: "Consensus among a limited group of editors, at one place and time, cannot override community consensus on a wider scale. [...] Wikipedia has a higher standard of participation and consensus for changes to policies and guidelines than to other types of pages. This is because they reflect established consensus, and their stability and consistency are important to the community. As a result, editors often propose substantive changes on the talk page first to permit discussion before implementing the change."
Anyway, comments like: "A enormous amount of time has been spent attending to your vague and largely unintelligible complaints.", "your complaint here is nonsense", "Blah blah blah blah", "JS' comments show that he has language difficulties", those aren't really helpful. I will restore the unproblematic edits in the next few days. After all, there's WP:NORUSH. After that, user EEng is the most welcome to give his rationale for the substantive ones. Cheers! Jayaguru-Shishya (talk) 20:10, 15 July 2015 (UTC)
Ps. "enormous" begins with a vocal, so the article should be an, not a ;-)

Let's see:

1. Over and over the same thing has happened: you post some comments, others respond, and that's it -- you go stubbornly silent. Most recently [34] I reminded you that you hadn't responded to my comments posted six days ago, and you've simply ignored that.
2. The edits have been explained to you over and over. I explained them [35]. Boson explained them [36]. I explained them again [37].
3. Your most recent complaints demonstrate, again, that you're not taking the time to look at the actual effect of the edits.
  • You asked --
Why did you remove an essential part of WP:LINKSTYLE[38]? That's a guideline that I've referred to tens of times in my copy-editing. Your Edit Summary said: "...this explanation is severely in need of improvement in its presentation", and then you just removed it. Are you seriously telling me that it isn't substantial?
I removed the example because it was completely redundant to another example on the page. At the same time I moved the LINKSTYLE shortcut to be next to the remaining example. You only quote part of my edit summary, which actually read "Merge (this explanation is severely in need of improvement in its presentation)" i.e. merge the two examples, and (by the way) the explanation in the remaining example needs severe improvement. (And I made that improvement in later edits). So no, it's not a substantive change to the guidelines. (And you're getting the words substantial and substantive mixed up.)
  • Same with your second complaint, about [39]. I removed one of two duplicate statements (my edit summary said, "maybe 10 yrs ago people needed hypertext explained to them, and more than enough pep talk about building the web is in the lead") and moved the shortcuts from the location of the deleted material to the location of the other text (which happened to be the page's opening paragraph). This is perfectly obvious if you take the trouble to look at the text surrounding the changes -- don't you realize you can't just look at the diff??? PBS obviously didn't trouble to look either.
4. The higher-level-of-consensus standard applies to substantive changes i.e. changes to what the guideline tells editors to do, not changes to how it expresses that advice. Both Boson [40] and Tony [41] believe they meet this test, and as seen over and over (most recently in point "3." just above here) your attempts to show the changes are substantive have shown only that you don't grasp what the edits actually do.

As for the rest, I stand by everything I've said:

  • an enormous amount of time has been wasted on your vague and largely unintelligible complaints;
  • I said your complaint (about an edit which deleted something) was nonsense because it was nonsense (because if you'd actually looked at all the changes like you said you had, you'd have known that my very next edit reversed the deletion);
  • My blah blah blah blah expressed exasperation at the page's flabby and prolix verbiage -- nothing to do with you;
  • And lastly, you really do have serious language difficulties which hamper your ability to comment usefully. The typographical error of mine you so absurdly point out ("a enormous" instead of "an enormous") is nothing like
  • [42] "And not just you ignored the discussion part, you started demanding other editors to explain why your edits do not satisfy (!)."
  • [43] "Other opinions of wording I shall leave in the hands of the others (except I commented an instance or two)."

plus the fact that you don't seem to know what substantive, substantial or tone mean.

Please don't restore any of the edits. I prefer to clear up your procedural confusion first, because it will be impossible to proceed in this ridiculous way. Now for the love of God (referring to #Discussion_of_individual_edits_.282.29) will you please ...

  • (No. 1) Give the example I requested here [44], so we'll know what you're talking about?
  • (No. 3) Propose a modification that would fix your concern?
  • (No. 6) Say whether the modification I made to the text (linked in the discussion) is acceptable?
  • (No. 8) Say whether you still think the text I moved was related to SEAOFBLUE, given the links I laid out?
  • (No. 9) Explain how "Articles on technical subjects might demand a higher density of links" is any different from "Articles on technical subjects often have a higher link density" (or propose alternative text)?

EEng (talk) 05:40, 16 July 2015 (UTC)

Jayaguru-Shishya, if you want to continue to claim you're discussing in good faith, you need to respond to reasonable requests by your fellow editors. The above points have been pending for almost two weeks now, and you've ignored repeated requests that you engage them. EEng (talk) 03:33, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

Another arbor-treeish break

EEng you wrote above "PBS obviously didn't trouble to look either". I took the trouble to look at that edit and the other you made. It would have been irresponsible for me not to have done so before I placed a notification of Arbcom MOS discretionary sanctions on your talk page. I think perhaps you misunderstand why the links in the {{style-guideline}} are there. It is so that editors have a few common short-cut names to use in place of the rather verbose page name. But so that the links are familiar to other users, not only are they short but also descriptive and kept few in number. As such, not all of all the redirects to a page will usually be listed in the {{style-guideline}} template, and changes to the list ought to be discussed on the talk page first -- or at the very least. if you wish to be bold, to add a meaningful edit comment stating that you had changed the short-cuts at the top of the page. In this case for example why do you think that "WP:BTW" "WP:BUILD" should appear in the {{style-guideline}}? Your answer will be of interest to others who are actively editing the page, but I am not interested in getting involved in the content of this page and I am disinterested in whether those two links appear in the template {{style-guideline}}. It is however an example of an edit you made that prompted me to place the notification of Arbcom MOS discretionary sanctions on your talk page and highlight a paragraph of its content along with another paragraph in WP:CONSENSUS. -- PBS (talk) 12:20, 16 July 2015 (UTC)

Explaining in scrupulous detail

Let me explain this as carefully as possible. Here's what the opening of the page looked like before the edit in question [45]:

Manual of Style (MoS)
Content
Formatting
Images
Layout
Lists
By topic area
Legal
Arts
Music
History
Regional
Religion
Science
Sports
Related guidelines

Linking through hyperlinks is an important feature of Wikipedia. Internal links are used to bind the project together into an interconnected whole. Interwiki links bind the project to sister projects such as Wikisource, Wiktionary, and Wikipedia in other languages, and external links bind Wikipedia to the World Wide Web.

Appropriate links provide instant pathways to locations within and outside the project that are likely to increase readers' understanding of the topic at hand.

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.
Principles
Shortcuts

Wikipedia is based on hypertext, and aims to "build the web" to enable readers to access relevant information on other pages easily.

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.

The opening paragraph of the page, and the start of the Principles section, both say essentially the same thing about what links are for. Therefore, in this edit [46] I removed that bit from the Principles section, and also moved the WP:BTW and WP:BUILD shortcuts (which had been in the Principles section, associated with the text being removed) to the opening paragraph of the page, i.e. moved them to the other place discussing building the web and so on:

Manual of Style (MoS)
Content
Formatting
Images
Layout
Lists
By topic area
Legal
Arts
Music
History
Regional
Religion
Science
Sports
Related guidelines

Linking through hyperlinks is an important feature of Wikipedia. Internal links are used to bind the project together into an interconnected whole. Interwiki links bind the project to sister projects such as Wikisource, Wiktionary, and Wikipedia in other languages, and external links bind Wikipedia to the World Wide Web.

Appropriate links provide instant pathways to locations within and outside the project that are likely to increase readers' understanding of the topic at hand.

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.
Principles

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.

My edit summary was:

maybe 10 yrs ago people needed hypertext explained to them, and more than enough pep talk about building the web is in the lead

While not a model of clarity, that's certainly enough for a editor to understand what was done and why: Hmm... This bit at Principles was deleted. How come? Oh yeah, edit summary says "more than enough about building the web is in the lead" -- yeah, I see that stuff there in the lead -- so he deleted this redundant part in Principles. But why did he move these shortcuts? Wait, I see, those shortcuts went with the deleted bit, so he moved them to the other place that said the same thing.

So this is not, in fact, a "big issue" (as you said on my talk page), though there was a slight flaw in the edit. Here's how a helpful editor, wanting to build on the work of others instead of just reverting everything he doesn't immediately understand, might open the discussion on that flaw:

Hey, EEng. I see you moved those shortcuts. How come? --Helpul Editor
Well, I deleted some redundant text on building the web, so I moved the shortcuts to the other place where building the web is mentioned. --EEng
I saw that, but the problem is, you moved it into the {styleguide} box. The shortcuts there are meant to apply to the whole page not just one part of it, even if that part is right at the beginning. --Helpul Editor
Darn, you're right. I'll move those two shortcuts to a separate box now:
Manual of Style (MoS)
Content
Formatting
Images
Layout
Lists
By topic area
Legal
Arts
Music
History
Regional
Religion
Science
Sports
Related guidelines
Shortcuts

Linking through hyperlinks is an important feature of Wikipedia. Internal links are used to bind the project together into an interconnected whole. Interwiki links bind the project to sister projects such as Wikisource, Wiktionary, and Wikipedia in other languages, and external links bind Wikipedia to the World Wide Web.

Appropriate links provide instant pathways to locations within and outside the project that are likely to increase readers' understanding of the topic at hand.

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.
Principles

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.

So with all due respect, PBS what I said is true: you did not look at the edit, at least not long enough to understand what it was meant to do. The edit summary explains the text deletion, and the reason for moving the shortcuts is therefore obvious (the minor error in where they landed notwithstanding). And even given what, in your haste, you thought you saw, why didn't you just ask me‍—‌if you had, we'd have had the little discussion narrated above (leading to the simple fix) instead of the ton-of-bricks AE Enforcement notice, including the outrageous statement (on my talk page) that my edit summary was "misleading"?

So, can you point to an edit of mine which really is a "big issue" (as you also said on my talk page) requiring advance consensus, instead of normal copyediting (possibly to be followed by discussion and improvement)? You said above "I took the trouble to look at that edit and the other you made", but I have no idea what "other edit" you are talking about.

This is important. A great deal of hard work has been discarded, on your say-so based on your mistaken characterization of one edit. It's worth noting that Albino Ferret has completely declined to engage in discussion, and JS has still, after nine days, refused continue discussion of the 5 edits still at issue (see #stillwaiting, above). Don't you see what's going on here?

EEng (talk) 02:18, 18 July 2015 (UTC)

  • The most obvious problem with this change is that it eliminated the key phrase "build the web". This is a "stock phrase" on Wikipedia, like "follow the sources", and mustn't be eliminated willy-nilly. Doing so also made the WP:BUILD and WP:BTW shortcuts meaningless and confusing. There's really no point at all in having shortcuts go directly to the lead of the page. That's irregular, confusing, and serves no clear rationale. The larger, more general problem is that, as with all Wikipedia leads, the intro to this page is an overall summary highlighting the most important points that can be found within; every point in it should be redundant with more detailed material below. Yet this edit mingles in some of the principles material, and then removes it as one of the principles! MOS:LEAD as a set of "rules" doesn't technically apply to non-articles, but we do in fact write the leads of policy/guideline pages (and well-constructed essays) in the same way. It's just "the WP way". This page's lead is an overview. The "Principles" section is not, its a listing and explication of principles we apply, one of which also happens to be mentioned in different wording in the lead.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  05:21, 20 July 2015 (UTC)
Well, actually, WP:MOS, WP:MOSNUM, and WP:LEAD (just random pages I grabbed) don't seem to have "leads" in anything like the sense you're talking about. But that's really not important, and is beside the point right now‍—‌I'm happy for any individual change to be reverted or modified if they're problematic. The problem is that two editors are blocking all copyediting by insisting that even minor changes be subject to RfCs in advance, instead of just making changes in situ and reverting/adjusting the few that need it. They recruited PBS to their cause, who managed to turn the fact that I accidentally moved two shortcuts into the {style-guideline} box (instead of their own {shortcut} box) into an AE notification. That's what my above ridiculously overdetailed explanation is about.
Since to my recollection you're generally sane, I'd really appreciate it if you'd add your comments to #Discussion_of_individual_edits_.282.29. (If there's some flaw which you can see how to fix, please just give the wording you'd prefer rather than flat-out "opposing".) EEng (talk) 07:04, 20 July 2015 (UTC)
I'll try to take a look at it, but have a lot on my plate. As for MOS and LEAD, they have pretty "rich" leads that do their job well. I would like to improve LEAD's lead (and actually have, more than once), but people editwar about that one a lot. MOS/MOSNUM literally must have a different kind of lead, more like that of a glossary or list article, because MOS pages are just lists of do/don't items that cannot be summarized, really, other than as a long outline (which is what the ToC is already). In a case like that, the lead has to lay out what the approach is, not what the content can be summarized as. (But more to the point, you can't disprove a general best practice by hunting down an exception or three; this doesn't work in the real world, and it doesn't work on WP either, where we call that the WP:OTHERCRAPEXISTS argument. :-) I think what is really happening here (and it's happened to me for similar reasons) is you're being strident, and it's annoying people, who filibustering you out of frustration at your debate tactics. If you put yourself in an adversarial position, you get blockaded. My edits are not being blockaded, because I've not pissed anyone off lately (among other reasons; my addition of glossary and list-related observations reflects a prior discussion and reflects actual WP practice being observed, while the changes you're making mostly seem to be about restructuring, in ways that not everyone sees as helpful).  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  07:42, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

Procedural commentary

I concur with Jayaguru-Shishya's summary of the issue: "many of [EEng's] edits removed a lot of relevant material, changed the tone of the guideline, or moreover, changed the meaning of the guideline." It can be unhelpful to make so many different kinds of edits without much explanation and then vent about objections. On the other hand, it can come across as disrespectful and lazy to mass-revert someone's changes instead of revert the specific portions you don't like; WP:BOLD is policy, and "I'm not sure about all of this" (however worded) is not a rationale for reverting all of it. WP grows and evolves by people adding material, others reverting what they don't agree with for certain, and letting the rest of other editors' changes stand, and be improved over time by other editors. This applies as much to guideline pages as to articles, though we need to be careful with guideline pages, as we would be with featured articles, or widely-deployed templates. So, both sides of this dispute need to rethink their approach. You know guideline pages are going to be resistant to change, so make discrete edits with their own edit summaries that adequately describe the changes. This helps other editors evaluate what the changes and their rationales are, and more easily only revert what they definitively object to.

Update: I posted a detailed analysis of the 12 edits, in #Discussion of individual edits (3), below.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  07:53, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

Wow! This is way more time and trouble than I meant for you to invest. Thanks much. You hit the nail on the head with, "It can come across as disrespectful and lazy to mass-revert someone's changes instead of revert the specific portions you don't like"‍—‌or, of course, just fixing whatever you see as wrong. I went to a lot of trouble to do exactly what you're suggesting i.e. make each edit a discrete quantum [47], exactly to invite that approach, but repeatedly found everything simply mass-removed for vague reasons. As mentioned earlier I made overhauled MOSNUM completely last year (in presentation, of course, not content), in hundreds and hundreds of edits [48], with absolutely nothing like this kind of reaction.
What I'd like to do is reinstall the changes we all seem agreed upon, then continue from there, but more slowly this time, with other editors modifying, fixing, and (where necessary) reverting in a targeted way. Are we all on board with this? EEng (talk) 14:49, 20 July 2015 (UTC)
That sounds reasonable, and it's even what WP:BRD would sanction, if you put any stock in that essay. (I no longer do; I don't need an essay to tell me that discussion is sometimes needed, nor to tell me when it's WP:FILIBUSTERing and should be abandoned in favor of just being WP:BOLD again.)  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  21:46, 22 July 2015 (UTC)
Hi SMcCandlish. I restored the uncontroversial edits[49] with some modifications that you suggested! Cheers! Jayaguru-Shishya (talk) 16:44, 23 July 2015 (UTC)
Jayaguru-Shishya, given that this bit I restored is widely practiced/standard on Wikipedia, how is removing that non-controversial? Flyer22 (talk) 23:14, 23 July 2015 (UTC)
Actually, it wasn't deleted, just moved. (Search the string as is typical in the diff JS just gave above). But since Jayaguru-Shishya jumbled it all up with many other changes in a single edit, it's not your fault you couldn't see that. See also my post to JS just below here. EEng (talk) 00:51, 24 July 2015 (UTC)
Hi Flyer22! Sorry, I must have been staring too closely at the Talk Page discussion (Discussion of individual edits (2)). The edit was originally made by user EEng[50], which I only restored. If you find the edit controversial, we can leave it out and discuss it first. Sorry for the inconvenience. It's been self-reverted by the original proposer now. Jayaguru-Shishya (talk) 20:16, 25 July 2015 (UTC)
EEng, yeah, I had wondered if that content was still in the guideline since I saw another piece still there despite looking like it was removed by viewing the diff-link. Jayaguru-Shishya, yes, I understand. Flyer22 (talk) 14:31, 3 August 2015 (UTC)

JS, though I didn't say so at the time, part of the reason I asked you not to restore any of my changes is I feared you'd mess them up, and here we are. Didn't you get anything out of the long discussions in this thread (above and below here), and especially sroc's and SMcCandlish's comments about appropriate ways to proceed?

What I've always done is to make small, discrete changes that others can follow, understand, and build on, fix, or (if really necessary) revert individually. You refused to take advantage of that structure, over and over reverting everything wholesale, leading to the long pointless round-and-round we see in this thread. Now to cap it off, you've done exactly what no one should ever do on a high-visibility page like this, which is to make a large number of changes bundled up in a single edit -- especially where some of those changes move material from one place to another, so that others easily fall into mistakenly thinking something's been deleted. Jeesh! Will you get a clue at long last?

I've reverted your edit. When I'm ready I'll proceed as agreed i.e. restore the changes at a slower pace (omitting some and modifying some, per the discussion so far). And hopefully you will proceed as SMcC, sroc, Boson, Tony1, and others have all counseled:

  • Don't revert an edit because it is unnecessary — because it does not improve the article. For a reversion to be appropriate, the reverted edit must actually make the article worse.
  • Build on, modify or fix if at all possible, reverting only when there's no other choice
  • Don't invoke BRD as your reason for reverting

EEng (talk) 00:51, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

The I feared you'd mess them up comment isn't called for. I think it's fine to edit the non-controversial stuff back in a bit at a time, though. There is no hurry, and it gives people time to digest each one. A downside of it, though, is you lose people's attention if it's done too slowly (with the risk that someone comes back a month later and mass-reverts a bunch of stuff over a small objection, and the whole thing starts all over again).  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  01:10, 24 July 2015 (UTC)
As mentioned, I didn't express my fear when it first occurred to me, only when it was so vividly realized. For someone who lectures so freely on how things should be done, he seems to have not a clue about it himself. It's incredible.
Actually, I don't think the 12 edits already discussed (some omitted, some modified, as mentioned) need the snail's pace. It's the further editing of the page after those that I'll try to dish out in bite-size pieces. And if someone comes back a month later to mass-revert over a small objection, I'm relying on you to be here to tell them that's not appropriate. EEng (talk) 01:48, 24 July 2015 (UTC)
'he seems to have not a clue' is another case in point. Address the edits not the editor, please. I looked over J-S's changes and most of them seemed adequate. I would suggesting doing less violence to this passage in the original: 'By following naming conventions, an internal link will be much more likely to lead to an existing article. When there is not yet an article about the subject, a good link will make the creation of a correctly named article much easier for subsequent writers.' The shortened version is too telegraphic. It can be shortened, but it makes two distinct points that need to remain clear, including to brand new editors who don't know what "redlinks" means by itself. There were two typos: 1) At '... emphasize: do ...' the "d" should be capitalized, because what follows the colon is a complete sentence. At '... use Show preview and ...' it should read '... use "Show preview" and ...'. The rest of J-S's edits seems OK to me, but some alternative wordings are probably OK, too. Relying on me to be here: LOL. I watchlist a lot of stuff and my attention wanders. I also take wikibreaks at random intervals, for 1-12 months.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  07:47, 24 July 2015 (UTC)
You miss the point. The problem (and it's an absolutely fatal one) is that JS wrapped all these changes up in a single edit, so that a newcomer won't understand what they're meant to do in some cases, particularly where text is moved from place to place and reworded at the same time (so that, even if you search for a characteristic word from the old text, you might not find it, and would conclude that the old text/bulletpoint had been deleted -- this must be what happened to Flyer). This goes exactly against everything we've been just saying -- make discrete changes, with explanatory edit summaries, that are individually easily understood, diffed, discussed, and modified. As to edits-not-editor, there comes a point when the contrast between harangues about procedure and right and wrong ways to edit (on the one hand) and lack of clue in one's one and only attempt at actually contributing anything since this sad affair began (on the other) becomes too much to ignore.
I didn't miss the point. I just don't agree that it's as significant as you do. I'm much more concerned about the exact wording that who made it in what edits. I agree that it should be done with individual edits that identify each change, and it should not include undiscussed changes. But it doesn't require angry finger-pointing to get this message across. (J-S can individually make his bold move of a passage from one section to another and see if it sticks, of course, and also see if revised wording sticks, but if he does both in the same edit again he should not be surprised to be reverted.) If the stress/irritation level has gotten to the "too much to ignore" stage, just walk away a while. A few days do wonders.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  22:54, 25 July 2015 (UTC)
Now, before the comments and comments-on-comments get completely impossible to digest, I'll try to get started this weekend. Those interested can thus discuss, fix, modify, and improve changes in situ instead of here at arms' length. EEng (talk) 12:49, 24 July 2015 (UTC)
The uncontroversial edits were restored in 16:33, 23 July 2015[51] per discussion at Discussion of individual edits (2) with few modifications suggested by SMcCandlish. However, the original edits were self-reverted in 00:56, 24 July 2015[52] by user EEng, the one who first introduced the edits.
EEng, re-inserting material that has already been reverted by several editors, even though done "at a slower pace", still doesn't make it any better. Actually, that can be considered as slow edit warring. Before forcing the edits of yours that have been already reverted, I'd suggest you to discuss and seek consensus for those first, just like many users, such as AlbinoFereret, PBS, LesVegas, and SMcCandlish have already told you to do.
I guess you read the policy pages that an administrator told you to read?[53] Or does your answer to him, "What a load of officious bullshit" mean "no"? Well, in a nutshell: It is your job to seek consensus for your edits first, edits that many editors have already disagreed with. Cheers! Jayaguru-Shishya (talk) 20:16, 25 July 2015 (UTC)
Extended content
What's this "WP:MOSNUM veneration" anyway? Just a quick glance at user EEng's Talk Page, and:
  1. "Please stop and desist from making any further changes to MOSNUM guidelines related to binary prefixes You do not have any consensus for those changes. You have three editors saying there is no consensus for the change, please listen to them."[54]
  2. "You are wrong because "21:59, 21 July 2015‎ Arthur Rubin I don't see a consensus for removal". Also I don't agree to the removal. Also Fnagaton doesn't agree to the removal. You do not have consensus for the change, stop forcing it. You are edit warring without engaging in talking about the change." [55]
Doesn't seem that rosy to me. Jayaguru-Shishya (talk) 21:02, 25 July 2015 (UTC)
Quoting a pair of SPAs who are as confused as you, while further displaying how limited is your facility with English, doesn't help you. And pinging them on my talk page [56], hoping they'll come to your assistance here, is an actual example of the canvassing of which you've falsely accused me. EEng (talk) 23:45, 25 July 2015 (UTC)
What you're saying has nothing to do with what I proposed. What I said I'd do (endorsed by both sroc and SMcCandlish‍—‌the only other two editors actively commenting recently) is "reinstall the changes we all seem agreed upon, then continue from there, but more slowly this time, with other editors modifying, fixing, and (where necessary) reverting in a targeted way." Since you have trouble following and understanding discussions, let me repeat in one things other editors have said to you:
  • it can come across as disrespectful and lazy to mass-revert someone's changes instead of revert the specific portions you don't like; WP:BOLD is policy, and "I'm not sure about all of this" (however worded) is not a rationale for reverting all of it.
  • Don't revert an edit because it is unnecessary — because it does not improve the article. For a reversion to be appropriate, the reverted edit must actually make the article worse.
  • Build on, modify or fix if at all possible, reverting only when there's no other choice.
  • Don't invoke BRD as your reason for reverting.
EEng (talk) 23:45, 25 July 2015 (UTC)
Not quite. What he said was: "We have some stuff we've agreed on the 12-points breakdown below. Let's add them, individually, and build on that, without introducing any other changes until done with that part."[57]. I agreed with that.[58] Jayaguru-Shishya (talk) 23:54, 25 July 2015 (UTC)
  • Damn, guys. We were actually making progress here. Several of the changes actually do have consensus. I agree that J-S reverting EEng's original string of individual and clearly identified edits all at once was unnecessary, but that some of the changes reverted were necessary to revert. The discussion that ensued was a pain in the butt by being a huge list of points hard to examine and discuss. But we did it. After we have consensus on a few items, and several of us at least think introducing those points one at a time is wise, it wasn't helpful for J-S to use his own wording to insert all of them at once, and mingle in other undiscussed changes (moving material around, excessively compressing several pieces). See WP:KETTLE. Both of you need to stop accusing each other of bad faith. If you like, consider that all of your bad-faith-assumption looks to third parties like bad faith itself, a desire to WP:WIN on the WP:BATTLEGROUND. As I reviewed above, I think some of the J-S wordings of the points we do have consensus on were okay, and some were not. The move of material from one area to another did confuse people but now that it's understood, it doesn't seem objectionable. EEng wants to make the changes step-wise so other editors (meaning way more people that the ones in this discussion) understand what is going on and why, and can identify on the talk page where there's consensus for the changes. I strongly concur with this. Unclear changes to MOS are almost always reverted, but not always when you think; it might happen a month or more later, after the rationales have already been archived and are hard to find and defend. Get it right the first time, so it sticks. Also, this or that editor's conduct in an unrelated matter like binary prefixes on another page is not relevant here. Both of you are making bold edits to MOS pages that others are objecting to. We have some stuff we've agreed on the 12-points breakdown below. Let's add them, individually, and build on that, without introducing any other changes until done with that part.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  22:54, 25 July 2015 (UTC)
I agree, those edits can be carried out piece-meal. Just one correction: moving the text was originally made by EEng[59], I just restored that very edit. Cheers! Jayaguru-Shishya (talk) 23:42, 25 July 2015 (UTC)
Christ, you really don't get it, do you? Yes, I moved the text, but I did it in a discrete edit (i.e. the very diff you link to) that made it obvious it was a move, not a delete. What you did was bind it up with ten other changes, in a single edit, so that no one could tell what was going on. Glad to hear you've finally agreed to get with the program. I'll probably start tomorrow. EEng (talk) 23:52, 25 July 2015 (UTC)
If you wanna make these edits individually[60], be my guest. Those have already been discussed in detail at Discussion of individual edits (2), so it should be very easy to follow. Cheers! Jayaguru-Shishya (talk) 00:00, 26 July 2015 (UTC)
Thanks, but I won't be following your edit, but rather making my own evaluation of the discussion points and making a series of edits based on that. This will leave us exactly where we would have been the first day had you not mass-reverted everything, but instead selectively corrected, modified, and built on the work of another, as you now apparently understand you should. And after only 200K of discussion! EEng (talk) 00:29, 26 July 2015 (UTC)
EEng, you seem to be missing the main point here: you did not revert my edits, you reverted your own edits. And you are not objecting to my edits now, you are objecting to your own edits :-) I added nothing of my own there, they were all yours (aside from few minor tweaks suggested by SMcCandlish.)
"...after only 200K of discussion"? When you make substantive edits that get reverted by multiple editors, it is your responsibility to discuss the edits at the article Talk Page and to gain consensus. The sooner you do this, the sooner editors can move on. As it's been said, enumerating the edits "was really EEng's job".
Anyway, the edits have already been discussed extensively at Discussion of individual edits (2), and most editors seem to agree with them (Boson, SMcCandlish, and I). Should there be need for any tweaks, modifications are the most welcome! Cheers! Jayaguru-Shishya (talk) 17:18, 26 July 2015 (UTC)

According the Talk Page discussion, I'll start restoring the edits that have gained consensus one-by-one.[61] Cheers! Jayaguru-Shishya (talk) 21:19, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

For crying out loud, will you please have the courtesy to let me do that, in my own way? EEng (talk) 23:40, 27 July 2015 (UTC)
Take turns or something. Let's just start doing that productive work instead of further arguing. Please?  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  00:18, 28 July 2015 (UTC)
EEng No, I won't have the courtesy. Or do you WP:OWN the guideline? Cheers! Jayaguru-Shishya (talk) 21:27, 29 July 2015 (UTC)

Not worth it

I give up. In my eight years of editing I've only once before encountered such determinedly self-confident cluelessness (see Dunning-Kruger effect) and faux civility. But that was in the context of a page I really cared about, and to which I was in a unique position to contribute. Not here. I'd hoped to do something to clean up what has obviously been years of accreted excess verbiage and organizational disintegration, but it's not worth my time to deal with such nonsense. Perhaps someone will review the edits I made over the last month and be able to make some use of them. (Here's [62] the final version of the page as I'd left it, just in case anyone might take inspiration from what they see there.) EEng (talk) 23:55, 29 July 2015 (UTC)

More procedural commentary

Re: "WP:BOLD is policy ..." (it's actually a guideline, but that's neither here nor there) "... 'I'm not sure about all of this' (however worded) is not a rationale for reverting all of it" (see: Wikipedia:I just don't like it). Note also that WP:BRD:

  • is not a policy or guideline either: "BRD is not a policy, though it is an oft-cited essay. This means it is not a process that you can require other editors to follow";
  • is not a licence to revert anything you don't like: "BRD is never a reason for reverting";
  • is not "a valid excuse for reverting good-faith efforts to improve a page simply because you don't like the changes. Don't invoke BRD as your reason for reverting someone else's work or for edit warring: instead, provide a reason that is based on policies, guidelines, or common sense."

See also: Wikipedia:Revert only when necessary. In particular:

Don't revert an edit because it is unnecessary — because it does not improve the article. For a reversion to be appropriate, the reverted edit must actually make the article worse. Wikipedia does not have a bias toward the status quo (except in cases of fully developed disputes, while they are being resolved). In fact, Wikipedia has a bias toward change, as a means of maximizing quality by maximizing participation.

Even if you find an article was slightly better before an edit, in an area where opinions could differ, you should not revert that edit, especially if you are the author of the prior text. The reason for this is that authors and others with past involvement in an article have a natural prejudice in favor of the status quo, so your finding that the article was better before might just be a result of that. Also, Wikipedia likes to encourage editing.

I haven't read through the entirety of the above discussion, as many and varied as the particular edits were, but I have perused it and tend to agree that EEng's were sensible and not evidently harmful. For example, #1 makes the text more succinct and seemingly clearer. In fact, the original wording is confusing in that it talks about links being "helpful in context" but then provides an example where a link is clearly to an inaccurate target ("Barn instead of Barn (unit)"): if the intention was merely to check links point to the intended article, EEng's edit makes this clearer; if the intention was that links should be "helpful" and not just provide links to every conceivable topic for no good reason, then it was an inappropriate example to illustrate this point and it should have been re-written as two separate points so this distinction was not lost. In either case, the original text was verbose at best and confusing at worst, and EEng's edit successfully made it clearer. It may be valuable to add another bullet point saying that links should only be used if they provide additional useful information (although this is covered in § Overlinking and underlinking). However, simply reverting EEng's edit to the original wording makes the guideline worse which is a justification for reverting the revert. —sroc 💬 14:31, 22 July 2015 (UTC)

"WP:BOLD is policy" is not the same statement as "WP:BOLD is a policy"; see WP:POLICY for the distinction. The rest of your policy points mirror mine. The "links should only be used if they provide additional useful information" idea isn't workable, because the person adding the link has no control over what the linked article will say five minutes from now. Rather, we link terms that should and hopefully do or someday will (they may be red right now) go to a location that provides addl. useful info.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  21:46, 22 July 2015 (UTC)
I'm not sure where you're drawing a distinction between "is policy" and "is a policy" , but that's not important right now.
I don't think "confirming that [a wikilink] is helpful in context" is analogous to "points to the desired article", so the wording prior to EEng's edit was poor and the wording after much more clearly and succinctly explains the latter. I think we're in agreement on this. —sroc 💬 10:46, 24 July 2015 (UTC)
@Sroc: Yes, I agree that the wording before EEng's was crappy on this point and his was a improvement.
Shirley, you can't be serious!
Re: "is WP:POLICY" vs. "is a policy" – The distinction is that all policies and guidelines (and some other stuff, too) are part of what forms policy (as a mass noun not a count noun) on WP. Something that is WP:POLICY is something with site-wide consensus that regulations how we do things here. Something that is a policy is a page with {{Policy}} at the top of it. Failure to understand this is why so many Wikipedians make fools of themselves by suggesting they don't need to do something "because that's just a guideline", failing to recognize that consensus is consensus and how we choose to tag the tops of pages in which we store some of that consensus in organized form has little to do with the matter. Certain things are policies because they address core values of the organization, and others are guidelines because they identify best practices. But the consensus level for the one is not automagically higher than for the other. Otherwise, for example, "just an essay" like WP:AADD would have no effect on XfD discussions; but in reality it affects them strongly, and the bulk of that page has more buy-in that many of our guidelines and some points of our policies.

I (and others) inject "X is WP:POLICY", in that form, into discussions when we run into arguments, situations, or behaviors that depend fallaciously on the idea that guidelines represent "less consensus" than policies, and that the nature of policy is to graduate from essay to guideline to policy as buy-in level increases. It's a fantasy. The three categorizations are conceptually different. When one moves from one category to another, it usually has to be substantially rewritten, and the change is made because the community's values have shifted. E.g., there is talk about extracting part of MOS:IDENTITY into a content policy, but doing so would leave the "how to avoid confusing wording" style material behind, and move the WP:CORE-related issue into the policy in some form. It wouldn't just be copy-pasted and "elevated" without revision. I can't remember the last time anything was "elevated" from one category to another without major recasting, to shift from recommending best practices to expounding core values, or (in going from essay to guideline) from expressing conventional wiki-wisdom to recommending best practices. The difficulty of such a rewrite is why elevation proposals usually go nowhere, and why most successful "demotion" proposals (that I can recall, and there have been so few) just resulted in {{historical}}, not rewriten as a different type of document.

I don't like this "elevation" language because it implies a hierarchy like getting promoted at one's job, where the "objective" of an essay is to become a guideline, and for a guideline to become a policy, like an article moving from B-Class to GA to FA. It's not true. Things are mostly written as they need to be and are in the category they belong in, like a company's legal, engineering, and marketing departments. This analogy is actually fairly close, since the legal department can tell everyone "you cannot/must do this", and the engineering dept. can tell the marketing department "what you want to do isn't feasible". A hierarchy only exists the sense of precedence in the case of a conflict of rules: On WP, policies trump guidelines which supersede essays, on any given point, because values determine how we practice them, which develops into wisdom about the practice. There's no hierarchy in any other sense at all. (Sorry to go on at such length; it's first-draft wording for an essay on this.)

 — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  01:09, 26 July 2015 (UTC)

Complaint about canvassing

WP:CANVASSing is no way to go:
EEng to sroc (23:40, 19 July 2015): "Please comment on the individual edits, if you care to, but more importantly on the question of whether the best way to proceed is to leave the edits in, and modify the few that may be problematic"[63]
sroc to EEng (14:34 22 July 2015): "I have added my support on your edits to the Linking guideline and hope this helps get your eminently sensible edits reinstated."[64]
Cheers! Jayaguru-Shishya (talk) 08:41, 23 July 2015 (UTC)
Again with the quoting of guidelines and policies you don't understand, and WP:ASPERSIONS is no way to go, I'm afraid. A neutrally worded request for a third opinion, made to an editor who has most assuredly not always agreed with me, is not canvassing. Here's a more on-point diff [65]:
Adjwilley to Jayaguru-Shishya: I think it would be best if you went back to focusing on content rather than on other editors, and quickly.
Cheers! EEng (talk) 13:18, 23 July 2015 (UTC)

Follow me to join the secret cabal!

Plip!

Follow me to join the secret cabal!

Plip!

Peanut gallery comment: Youse both should stop the tooth-gnashing. This isn't clearly canvassing, since it wasn't recruitment to support one position or the other, or recruitment of parties who are part of the same WP:FACTION and who will auto-support the requester. It's routine for us to notify people previously involved in a discussion that further input may be warranted. That's why the {{Ping}} system was added to the software semi-recently. In J-S's defense, the post wasn't totally unbiased; "modify the few that may be problematic" is an assertion that some are not problematic, and that maybe none of them are. The larger statement also suggests which question is more important. So J-S isn't acting in bad faith in bringing up the concern. Assertion that canvassing is taking place, rather than suggestion that it may be (or asking if it qualifies) seems like an accusation of bad faith though. So, one trout for each of you.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  01:44, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

Discussion of individual edits (3)

Alright. I took almost two hours to go over this mess. This thread is a perfect example of why not to try to put a whole bunch of unrelated proposals under a single banner. It makes it exceedingly difficult for anyone to follow and reply to the proposals. I'll do my best to get at them all, and in the order Jayaguru-Shishya (J-S hereafter) outlined them (and I concur with him that enumerating them was really EEng's job):

  1. The radical change in meaning, from linking when it's helpful to the reader, to something about accidental disambiguation failures was an inappropriate change. As it was self-reverted later, I consider this one a probably moot point. The use of similar, more concise new text, to replace old text elsewhere that is all about "mistaken linking" is okay.
  2. Multiple editors have given rationales for retaining the rules about not changing link colors. "No one seems to be doing that" means the rule is working, not that we need no rule! It's OK for this MOS page to reiterate, concisely, a rule given in more detail elsewhere, when it's also relevant in this page. EEng even argues for doing this for a point already covered in WP:LEAD; can't have his cake and eat it too. :-)
  3. This point was just someone confused about the self-revert, and can be ignored.
  4. This revision of the "Checking links as they are created" section has noble conciseness motives, but goes too far. The original is better, clearer wording that makes at least two points EEng's revision missed entirely (it's not always about "articles with similar titles", and such errors may be hard to notice for others, inside and outside the editorial pool, so it's important to get it right the first time. That said, the original's "which can be irritating for readers" point was kind of unhelpful, and EEng's "will puzzle the reader" is more to the point. Puzzlement is a description of confusion introduced by doing something, well, confusing. "Irritating" refers to an emotional reaction which we're not in a position to be certain about.
  5. EEng is correct that we don't need baby-steps instruction creep here. MOS pages are not "Help:" namespace pages. His specific objections to the original wording are cogent. But ...
  6. "Strive to remember to use" is logically correct (though "strive" is hyperbolic; just use "Try"). "Strive to use" makes no sense; the tools are not difficult to operate. Regarding the second part that changed here: well both versions are poor. The original rambled, but "to maximize the chance that when the" is awkward and blathery. That section does need tightening, but that first attempt at it fails.
  7. Same story here. I don't share J-S's view that the edit "changed the whole meaning of the former two passages (!)"; it's just too much of an awkward rewrite, in about 5 ways, which I can enumerate if necessary. But the original "chase links" stuff is just someone's personal jibberish, and doesn't meaning anything concrete. Somewhere between the two version is the good one.
  8. This point is missing a diff link, so I don't know what it refers to. Oh, I found it in later discussion. It would be a good edit for conciseness, if the original made sense. It is really making two important points both of which should be retained, and the confusion cleared up. Try this: 'The text needs to make sense to readers who cannot follow links. Users may print articles or read offline, and Wikipedia content may be encountered in republished form, often without links.'
  9. Agreed with J-S that the original location of this passage was important. Not everything that has something to do with technical/specialized writing has to be grouped; in this case it is not the more important relevance criterion; the relation to SEAOFBLUE is.
  10. Disagree with J-S's view that a guideline can only say "might"/"may". MOS makes many quite specific recommendations. And this isn't even one of them; EEng's edit clearly reflects reality. The ironic thing is that it's the original wording that's objectionable for prescriptivism. It doesn't say "might", it's says "might demand", which is just daft. It implies that after some unspecified criterion is met that it becomes mandatory to have a sea of blue! EEng's "often have a higher link density" is perfectly apt. The overall wording of EEng's change is helpful in other ways, from concision to removal of irrelevant crap about "general dictionaries". Keep that whole edit.
  11. J-S makes another "just a guideline" point that seems self-confused (both in itself, and in contradicting the last one). He even objects that the wording "do not" was removed, when it was actually just moved. EEng's edit here is spot-on. It makes exactly the same point in half the verbiage.
  12. Keep the sentence, without the footnotes. All of that is covered at WP:LEAD, to which we're already linking in the first half of the edit. It's perfectly fine to re-summarize this rule from LEAD, since it's relevant, but only one policy/guideline should ever define the full scope and rationale of a rule, or POVforking inevitably results over time. This has been a recurrent problem for MOS.

I reviewed Boson's comments, above, on the same points in series, and frankly the only criterion that editor appeared to apply at all was whether the new version was shorter; I don't consider that a useful analysis, sorry. I think what I've said above already clearly indicates which of PBS's points I do and don't concur with.

Later, there's a whole second set of numbered points:

  1. EEng demands "evidence" posts, in a timely manner. But this is not an article, and we don't have to source it or any of our views about it. This inter-personal pissing match isn't helpful to anyone or to this page. If either of you questions the other's faith again, you should get slapped with a {{Trout}}. Update: As, as you can see above, this has in fact happened. >:-| [sigh]  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  01:38, 26 July 2015 (UTC)
  2. EEng responds to complaints of lack of explanation by diffing the fact that detailed explanations have been provided twice (can't count someone else's review as an explanation, though). Valid point: It's WP:FILIBUSTERING and WP:ICANTHEARYOU to keep demanding re-explanations.
  3. EEng correctly defends his edit summaries. That doesn't make them non-controversial changes, but the complaint that seems to suggest bad-faith editing on EEng's part isn't justified.
  4. A note about "higher level of consensus" that is obviously correct, or these pages would never even get typo fixes. However, many of EEng's edits in this round do in fact trigger a higher level of consensus being needed, because they're substantive.

This is followed by EEng repeating various demands. Badgering other editors isn't helpful. Nor is picking on people's use of words like substantive and substantial. See WP:WIKIQUETTE.

I also note that AlbinoFerret reverted the changes, making multiple editors objecting to them, at least pending discussion and resolution of the issues raised. I think there's a consensus for a couple of these edits right now, but the rest either need substantial (and sometimes substantive) revision, and a few are just not workable because they misapprehend the nature of the original material.

I concur with Boson that an RfC is a terrible idea. This is too unfocused, too mixed a bag of unrelated changes. We can probably proceed with a few of these changes, tweaked a little (even J-S agreed with some of them). For the more controversial changes, take them one at a time for separate discussions (RfC-able if necessary), after the non-controversial ones settle in a bit.

Please don't nitpick at my responses. Producing this review was a huge pain; just take what I'm saying at face value, and don't inspire further debate. It just raises resistance levels. We need more input from more editors willing to pore over that list of a dozen proposed changes, not more argument about what their opinions are (I feel it's fair to argue pro and con both EEng's and J-S's enumerations of the 12 issues, since they're the two who've defined the entire debate. I'm not going to reply point-by-point to Boson or PBS, though).  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  09:45, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

Greetings SMcCandlish ☺! One tiny little question: considering No. 12, would you prefer keeping the original wording ("Links should not be placed in the boldface reiteration of the title in the opening sentence of a lead."), or the suggested wording ("If, as is typical, the lead contains a boldface reiteration of the title, the reiteration should not contain links.")? Both omitting the footnotes, of course. Jayaguru-Shishya (talk) 22:12, 29 July 2015 (UTC)
I slightly prefer the former as simply clearer, more compact wording. It's not like it states that there must be a boldface reiteration of the title. This would be the concise combination of the two approaches, I think: Links should not be placed in a boldface reiteration of the title in the opening sentence of a lead.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  01:22, 21 August 2015 (UTC)

Referring in article text to another article by its title

Occasionally in the running text of articles, another article is specifically referred to by its title (that is, not just by linking a mentioned term which is the title of an article). Is there a preferred style for this? Which of these examples, or some other way, is best?:

... some sentence. For more about this, see Example. Another sentence ...

or

... some sentence. For more about this, see the Example article. Another sentence ...

(Although this question was incited on sv:wp, let's disregard that. The question is about this wiki.)

--Pipetricker 12:51, 24 August 2015 (UTC)

I think it's going to depend on the context, the specific article title, and the author's preference. The article title should, however, always be capitalized since it is a proper name.
I don't see how any advice you get here could possibly be helpful on another wiki (except Simple English), since the details of how one structures a sentence that refers to an article are going to be language-dependent.--Srleffler (talk) 01:55, 25 August 2015 (UTC)
I think the difference between spelling out "the … article" and omitting it is basically the same in Swedish, so advice could be helpful there too. Other than that, I agree with your thoughts. I think I would be more inclined to spell out "the … article" for one-word titles than for multi-word ones, for the sake of readability. --Pipetricker 08:54, 25 August 2015 (UTC)
Hello! A description of how I do that might be helpful:
  • Avoid both "... see Example" and "... see the Example article" in articles, and massage the wording until the link blends in, for example. :)
  • An alternative to the previous bullet point is to simply use {{See also|Example}} hatnote in the appropriate section. Very readable.
  • On talk pages, I mainly use "... see the Example article" for an additional level of clarity, although it requires more typing. :)
Of course, all that is just my own preference. By the way, article titles should be capitalized when referring to the articles themselves; thus, it is, for example, correct to write "see the Example article for a clear example", in which "example" isn't a proper noun. — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 09:59, 25 August 2015 (UTC)
See also the MOS:XREF guideline for more related information, it's quite interesting. — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 11:29, 25 August 2015 (UTC)
Thanks for that! That possibly covers the cases where your advice may be hard to follow. And glad we all agree about the capitalization! --Pipetricker 11:55, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

(@Srleffler: Can I remove all mentions of other language/Swedish from both mine and your comments above? They're beside the point, I think.) --Pipetricker 10:24, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

No, of course not. Redacting comments in an ongoing discussion creates too many problems. Just leave it as-is and we won't discuss other languages further.--Srleffler (talk) 04:36, 26 August 2015 (UTC)

Saxon genitive and piping

Hi! With FrescoBot today I was fixing wikilinks piped for the sole purpose of inserting the saxon genitive within the link. For example:

  • ...on top of [[Worcester cathedral|Worcester cathedral's]] tower --> ...on top of [[Worcester cathedral]]'s tower

It was the first time I was fixing this issue and I considered it a simple extension of the original BRFA (2, 7), but I understimate it since someone argued that these two are visually different and the former is a deliberate choice. Other examples:

  • [[George Washington|George Washington's]] administration --> [[George Washington]]'s administration
  • The [[Canterbury Association|Canterbury Association's]] surveyor Captain Joseph Thomas... --> The [[Canterbury Association]]'s surveyor Captain Joseph Thomas...
  • [[The Simpsons|The Simpsons']] fifteenth season --> [[The Simpsons]]' fifteenth season

From my point of view this deliberate choice is a mistake: including the 's inside the wikilink is not correct per WP:LINKCLARITY because the topic we are linking is Worcester cathedral, not something that belongs to Worcester cathedral. The meaning of "Worcester cathedral" is the same of "the Worcester cathedral" or "the cathedral of Worcester", but it is different from "Worcester cathedral's" or "of Worcester cathedral" or "in the Worcester cathedral". For the very same reason I was fixing as well:

  • [[Bishop|Bishop of]] [[Washington, D.C.|Washington]] --> [[Bishop]] of [[Washington, D.C.|Washington]]
  • ...in the video game [[Tron: Evolution|Tron: Evolution.]] --> ...in the video game [[Tron: Evolution]].
  • [[cathedral|"cathedral"]] --> "[[cathedral]]"
  • [[1988|1988-]][[1989|89]] (1988-89) --> [[1988]]-[1989|89]] (1988-89)

Please note that all these fixes obviously affect the visual output of the page, nevertheless I believe that this problem is not just a matter of taste, but a (small) mistake we can fix. These changes make the wikitext more simple and readable and the links more semantically precise. -- Basilicofresco (msg) 10:23, 14 August 2015 (UTC)

There are two questions now.

  1. Why should we prefer a less precise and more complex [[Worcester cathedral|Worcester cathedral's]] over a correct [[Worcester cathedral]]'s? Esthetical reasons?
  2. What should I do now? Revert 4600 bot edits? Fill a new BRFA and then (when approved) go on with the replacement? Drop the job but avoid any unnecessary edit skipping the mass-revert?

Thanks. -- Basilicofresco (msg) 06:45, 15 August 2015 (UTC)

I'm under the impression that even if the apostrophe s is left outside the link brackets, it is still included in the link text (both clickable and blue). Am I mistaken? Because if that's true, there's absolutely no need for the more complex syntax and all instances should be changed to the more parsimonious version. (Please ping in reply) EvergreenFir (talk) Please {{re}} 05:19, 16 August 2015 (UTC)
EvergreenFir, yes, you are mistaken: The 's is not automatically included in the link: [[Worcester cathedral]]'s → Worcester cathedral's. You could have checked this yourself, either by looking at the previous version from Basilicofresco's first link in this topic, or by writing the code yourself and previewing the result. --83.255.46.175 (talk) 08:43, 16 August 2015 (UTC)
My vision must be going... you are correct. EvergreenFir (talk) Please {{re}} 16:14, 17 August 2015 (UTC)
@Basilicofresco and EvergreenFir: Is that what WP:LINKCLARITY states? I've wondered whether one style or the other (assuming the article title itself doesn't have an "'s" in the title) is preferred based on the MoS when writing an article recently:

The earliest known printed occurrence of "Adam's ale" is attributed to William Prynne's The Soveraigne Power of Parliaments and Kingdomes which was first printed in 1643.

WP:LINKCLARITY states Mozart's Requiem is okay (the "'s" is in the link), though it's not the same circumstance (it's a redirect). Does the manual of style state which is correct when stating something such as: [[Worchester cathederal]]'s tower vs. [[Worchester cathederal|Worchester cathederal's]] tower or [[William Prynne]]'s book vs. [[William Prynne|William Prynne's]] book. I'm not sure WP:LINKCLARITY addresses this point specifically, or perhaps I'm just misunderstanding it.
So basically my question (which I think is similar if not the same as Basilicofresco) is: Is one style that I've described above correct by the MoS, or is it just left to stylistic preference? It's sort of addressed in MOS:PIPE, but that only describes the technical limitations. WP:NOTBROKEN and WP:NOPIPE don't seem to address this specifically either.
@EvergreenFir: No, there are technical limitations, see MOS:PIPE.
—Godsy(TALKCONT) 05:32, 16 August 2015 (UTC) (@Basilicofresco and EvergreenFir: re-pinging as I used two ping templates and had lines in between- not sure if they went through —Godsy(TALKCONT) 05:48, 16 August 2015 (UTC))
IMHO, William Prynne's or Intel's, for example, look much better than William Prynne's and Intel's, respectively. Linking the 's as well is also somewhat more intuitive because it raises no "why it isn't all linked?" questions. — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 05:44, 16 August 2015 (UTC)
@Dsimic: I agree that the former looks better and with your second point. At the time when I looked into the matter, I checked a few featured articles and they seemed to use the latter style, so I assumed that was the proper way.—Godsy(TALKCONT) 05:50, 16 August 2015 (UTC)
WP:NOPIPE states: "First of all, keep links as simple as possible: avoid making links longer than necessary". This seems to be relevant here. -- Basilicofresco (msg) 07:18, 16 August 2015 (UTC)
We should check whether it would be possible to modify MediaWiki so it treats 's after ]] in the same way as, for example, s or ing. Asking for this kind of modification would probably be far-fetched, but should be worth asking; Village pump (technical) should be the right place for such discussions. — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 07:29, 16 August 2015 (UTC)
I think linking only part of a word, such as "speedboat", is generally ugly and should be avoided (and there are better examples of this where it could be argued that such partial linking is logical, but it's still ugly). And I think cathedral's is one word, so all of it should be linked.
The plural form of a word has a different meaning than the singular, but when mentioning a lot of boats, we link the whole word, even though the target article's title is in the singular form.
I don't expect there to be many article titles in possessive form, so I don't see any need to visually emphasize that a link is not in the genitive.
So I agree that MediaWiki should include a trailing 's automatically, if that's possible without undesired side-effects.
(And I would change 1988-89 to 1988–1989.) --83.255.46.175 (talk) 09:58, 16 August 2015 (UTC)
Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Linking/Archive 3#Possessive (discussion from 2007) --Pipetricker 10:14, 16 August 2015 (UTC)
Thanks for linking that discussion, which is obviously inconclusive. The main argument against linking the 's was that the possesive form is sometimes actually targeted ("Macy's", for example) and sometimes isn't ("Intel's", for example), but IMHO that doesn't hold water as the same may apply to the plural form whose suffix is automatically linked. For example, when typing "cats", it may be somewhat unclear whether it refers to the animal or to the musical (with missing capitalization), but the plural suffix s in [[cat]]s is automatically linked anyway. — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 11:29, 16 August 2015 (UTC)
Okay, so I wasn't crazy. I know something like this happened... so why don't we ask that the same be applied to 's? EvergreenFir (talk) Please {{re}} 16:16, 17 August 2015 (UTC)
I say, let's ask. :) WP:VPT should be the right place. — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 05:21, 18 August 2015 (UTC)
@Dsimic: I'd definitely support it. I'm headed to bed now, but if you start something at VPT, let me know! If not, I'll try to do it tomorrow. Cheers! EvergreenFir (talk) Please {{re}} 05:32, 18 August 2015 (UTC)
@EvergreenFir: Perhaps Basilicofresco would like to start a WP:VPT discussion? — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 05:44, 18 August 2015 (UTC)
Linking only part of a word is bad form. The changes made by the bot should be reverted by the bot.--Srleffler (talk) 06:38, 17 August 2015 (UTC)
@Srleffler: Is there a place that explicitly states this in the MoS?—Godsy(TALKCONT) 06:40, 17 August 2015 (UTC)
I am not sure, but at the least it is clear that there is not a consensus for moving the 's outside the link. In the absence of such a consensus, the bot should not be making this stylistic change in articles, and the changes already made should be immediately reverted. Bots are not supposed to be pushing style changes that are not explicitly authorized by the MoS or by consensus. --Srleffler (talk) 06:51, 17 August 2015 (UTC)
That's exactly why we're here to discuss it. Also, no irreversible damage has been done. — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 07:03, 17 August 2015 (UTC)
I agree that no irreversible damage has been done, however bots should not be creating reversible damage, and such damage should be reverted quickly when it happens. One of the reasons why we have restrictions on bots is that bots can do a lot of damage very quickly, and it is hard for individual editors to clean up afterward. Even slight damage by a bot is a concern, when it is replicated across thousands of articles.--Srleffler (talk) 01:45, 18 August 2015 (UTC)
Yeah, I agree. Bots should be designed so they contain mechanisms for reverting the changes they've made, either by recording the revision numbers or by applying inverse logic. Anyway, IMHO it's always much better to discuss any larger changes first, rather that reaching to the revert mechanism later. — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 05:21, 18 August 2015 (UTC)

@user:Basilicofresco

  1. As I was the person who initially raised this issue, and other have agreed with me, I am disappointed that you presented the choices in such a biased way eg "Why should we prefer a less precise and more complex ... over a correct ...". If this were an RfC and you presented the choices that way your statement would fail Include a brief, neutral statement of or question about the issue in the talk page section, immediately below the RfC template"
  2. There is clearly not a consensus for such a change, and there ought not to be for a bot either to change links from "'s]]" to "]]'s" or the other ways from "]]'s" to "'s]]". So Basilicofresco you are responsible for the bot, revert you changes. Do not change those which were not changed by your bot from "'s]]" to "]]'s" as that would be equally as wrong as the initial change. -- PBS (talk) 17:50, 17 August 2015 (UTC)
@Basilicofresco: You ask "What should I do now? Revert 4600 bot edits?" The answer is clearly yes. You made an honest mistake and exceeded your bot's authorization. This error must be fixed. --Srleffler (talk) 01:53, 18 August 2015 (UTC)

Some thoughts

  • As far as I know it is semantically less precise (likely good enough) and it's a fact that the involved syntax is more complex
  • I just discovered that it is hard to tell if [[Intel]]'s is one word or two words. It depends if the 's is considered a clitic (separate word) or a grammatical case. Apparently there is some debate among linguists and this paper explains that in the present day english it displays properties of, and to an extent is, both clitic and affix. In my opinion the key point of the whole problem (and the source of the above lack of consensus) is here.
  • Sounds a bit strange to me that now the best choice is to apply 4600 "equally wrong" changes
  • There are about 622000 articles with at least one 's outside the link and just 34000 with 's inside the link, so commonly (18:1) the 's is placed outside the link by editors

To me the existence of the debate clitic vs. affix is the only strong argument in this page against this fix, and it is more than enough to stop it forever. Can we take few days now to discuss about the "exit strategy"? -- Basilicofresco (msg) 05:57, 18 August 2015 (UTC)

Why don't you start a discussion on WP:WPT about modifying MediaWiki so it treats 's link suffixes in the same way as s or ing, for example? IMHO, that might be the best "exit strategy". — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 06:26, 18 August 2015 (UTC)
@User:Basilicofresco stop wriggling. The exit strategy is simple revert your [bot's] edits on this issue! Or are you wriggling because your bot does not log its changes? -- PBS (talk) 14:55, 18 August 2015 (UTC)
@Basilicofresco: you are missing an important point here, relating to the nature of Wikipedia and your relation to it as a bot operator. Individual editors are allowed to make style choices, because their edits can be easily reverted by other editors if they are bad. We do not allow bot operators to make choices in the same way that editors can when editing manually, because if we did each operator's individual choices could be forced into Wikipedia, with little opportunity for other editors to oppose them. You're arguing above that your personal style choice here is the better one, but that is not the issue. The issue is that you have forced your style choice into thousands of articles in a way that other editors cannot easily fix or oppose, and you are continuing to maintain this situation by not having your bot revert the unauthorized changes you have made. It was worthwhile starting a discussion here, only to determine whether there was a consensus in favour of your changes, in which case it might not have been necessary to revert them. It is clear now, that there is not a clear consensus in favour of your changes. That being the case, the changes you made must be reverted. You cannot make a stylistic argument in favour of them. The problem is not the style change, but rather the manner in which you have imposed it over the objections of other editors.--Srleffler (talk) 01:11, 19 August 2015 (UTC)

I reported the issue at phab:T109450. There has been already a discussion about it in 2008 at phab:T109450. -- Magioladitis (talk) 16:33, 18 August 2015 (UTC)

You wrote T109450 twice. There are several related discussions in a phab search on linktrail apostrophe. I guess you mean phab:T16655 which is from 2008 and mentioned in T109450. phab:T2468 is one of the others. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:58, 19 August 2015 (UTC)
@PBS It sounds like reverting thousand of bot edits just because they are just cosmetic changes. Performing 4600 equally problematic edits does not seem useful to the encyclopedia. I performed these edit in good faith and now I want to be sure that there is consensus for what you are asking for. -- Basilicofresco (msg) 17:22, 18 August 2015 (UTC)
@Basilicofresco: You need to re-read WP:BOTREQUIRE. You have the onus backward here. As a bot operator, it is not sufficient for you to edit in good faith, and it is wrong for you to insist on a consensus against what your bot has done. You are obligated to use your bot only to edit in ways where there is a consensus for what you are doing.--Srleffler (talk) 02:17, 19 August 2015 (UTC)
  • Prefer [[Worcester cathedral]]'s. We have link piping for a reason. Agree that reverting it all to the pointlessly long form would be a cosmetic mass-revert campaign for no encyclopedic purpose, just to undo changes "undiscussed" but not actually controversial, most of which any WP:GNOME would have made on their regular rounds without even thinking about it. (I know because it's a cleanup I regularly perform myself, and I don't get reverted on it, ever.)  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  01:28, 19 August 2015 (UTC)

The problem is that I do not think the changes are "cosmetic". There is a difference in the visual output and Basilicofresco should not have changed something without consensus and especially in that large scale. PBS is right on that. -- Magioladitis (talk) 09:34, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

Probably I was not able to properly explain my point about the mass revert. There was no hurry and I just wanted to be sure about right thing to do: there is still no consensus on a correct form, apparently we can't consider one form "broken" and therefore the only damage was changing the style itself. Changing it again fixing something that is not broken sounded strange to me. Anyway since I have no choice but to do it as soon as possible, I will stop writing about it and I will start doing it. -- Basilicofresco (msg) 11:44, 20 August 2015 (UTC)
That might be a good decision – if there's no consensus, things usually should be put back to their previous state. In the meantime, while you're preparing the mass revert, we might actually reach a consensus about the whole thing. — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 12:57, 20 August 2015 (UTC)
No opinion about the changes, but reverting doesn't seem useful to me. --Nemo 13:32, 20 August 2015 (UTC)
It is useful because there was no consensus for the changes. If there is one thing that has been proved time and again is that editors do not like changes being imposed on articles that they edit by bots if the bot is making unauthorised edits. For example would you (User:Nemo_bis) be comfortable with a bot going through all the colour/color articles (eg color theory) changing color to colour (and any other American spellings to British)? If not why is reverting this change any less useful than changing back all the theoretical alterations of color to colour in colour/color articles? -- PBS (talk) 19:17, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

One important difference across Wikis and a reason for not implementing "apostrophe s" as an extension such as is done with "s", is that "apostrophe s" has two meanings. It can mean belonging to of as in the "The dog's breakfast." or it can be a shorted from of "is" as in "The dog's eating." While the latter is uncommon on Wikipedia because if it appears anywhere it would be in a quote (as the use of the shortened form of "is" is none encyclopaedic grammatical form), it could be more common on other Wikis such as Wikisource. I think that while many people would think "The dog's breakfast", is stylistically better than the alternative, few who do, would also think "The dog's eating" is stylistically better than "The dog's eating". This was discussed in the earlier phab:T16655 (2008). So that is a reason I think phab:T109450 is unlikely to lead to a change. -- PBS (talk) 19:17, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

I have trouble seeing this as a legitimate issue (on WP anyway; agreed about pushing on all Wikis as an extension that's turned on by default, though it could be available as one), because we don't use contractions in article prose, per WP:MOS.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  01:19, 21 August 2015 (UTC)
  • I agree with the original poster, that the genitive 's should remain outside the link. Reasons: 1. As stated by said editor, because the article linked doesn't have the 's. 2. It makes for longer code, unnecessarily. Debresser (talk) 07:14, 23 August 2015 (UTC)
    @Debresser you asked on User talk:Basilicofresco "Where were edit of this type discussed? And this, same type. Debresser (talk) 17:09, 22 August 2015 (UTC)". The question is a fair one, but I think you are missing the point. The changes to which you refer were reversals of a previous edit which the bot had made to those same articles a couple of days before that had not been discussed. As you do not like the bot making a change to a format that you do not like, perhaps you can sympathise with those, who do not like the version which you prefer, not liking the bot making such a change. I think we can both agree that it is undesirable for a bot to be making any such change, so the bot needs to go through the changes it made to the status quo ante. Editors are then free to make manual adjustments 9as you did) to the style they prefer and as they have been doing for years. -- PBS (talk) 12:19, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

PBS today asked me why I did not revert Peninsular War. I created a list of the articles that PBS and Srleffler asked to revert and I analyzed them: about 80% of the pages had a 's positioning style not consistent before the FrescoBot fix.

  1. It is exceedingly difficult to revert just the changed 's and at the same time "preserve" the style inconsistency within one article.
  2. According to WP:MOS, style and formatting should be consistent within an article.
  3. There was no consensus about the mass-revert request.
  4. Nothing was broken, so WP:DONTREVERT fully applies here.

For these reasons, using my WP:COMMONSENSE, I did what I considered the best in this particular case: I just reverted the bot edits on the pages where all the 's were inside the link before the first FrescoBot edit. Doing this all the pages with a consistent style of the 's inside the link before the bot edit were reverted back and all the pages with an inconsistent style before the bot edit were left untouched because now they have a consistent style. I did not reverted Peninsular War because before the bot edit there was just 1 's inside the link and 27 's outside the links. Inconsistent style cannot be considered a deliberate choice. I did my best to find and enforce the best solution. -- Basilicofresco (msg) 20:34, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

Comment - I find it annoying that the 's doesn't turn blue without being piped when I edit, and I admit to having piped the link to avoid the non-link of 's. I personally feel that this is something that should be fixed on the "back-end" of Wiki in the same way that letters directly after the link are included as part of the link without requiring WP:PIPING. Just my 2 cents after seeing this on another's talk-page, Dr Crazy 102 (talk) 02:24, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

What a waste of time

I came here at Legobot's invitation. 83.255.46.175 has it right. Worrying about boat's verus boat's is like worrying about boats versus boats. Arguments about what's "semantically presice" are stupid, because our readers aren't computers; sometimes what matters is what looks good and reads well, not whether some speck of blue does or does not hypertechnically reflect the genitives and clitics and affixes. If some programmer some night hadn't made an arbitrary decision one way instead of another‍—‌if ]]'s turned blue on its own‍—‌no one would be worrying about this.

If MOS is going to take a side (which I think it should not) it should be that, normally, all of boat's (or boats' in the case of the plural‍—‌or even boats's, if that floats your boat or tickles your clitic) should be blue, because that looks good. But AFAICS it should not say anything about this at all, because to my knowledge (and I'm prepared to be corrected on this) this hasn't been a subject of dispute on multiple articles. If MOS does not need a rule on a question, then it needs to not have a rule on that question.

It's really a shame that someone took it upon himself to "fix" this "problem" project-wide, as now valuable time is being spent debating what has, until now, apparently been a nonissue. As a friend wrote:

One area the hit and run editor gets involved in is the formatting ... The quality of work has increased in some areas, which makes it harder to contribute without good knowledge in the subject matter and sources. Fiddling with the formatting seems to be a suitable alternative passtime.

Ritchie333 [66]

EEng (talk) 01:12, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

  • support reversion to 's]] -vs- ]]'s until Wikimedia can smooth in the look on the backend like they do for ]]s and ]]ing. FYI there is already another Bot running around WP scrubbing and fixing "apostrophe s" instances that fall outside the wikilinks. Having black and blue words is ugly. Checkingfax (talk) 03:32, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

Once

"Generally, a link should appear only once in an article" That is annoying, especially when you are directed into the article to a specific section. Why can't it be linked in each section? --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 02:36, 22 May 2015 (UTC)

The same reason style guides and standard practice is to expand and provide (initialism) only once, and subsequently to use the initialism only. The "I parachuted into a section" argument would have us insist that "National Rifle Association (NRF)" be spelled out in every section—tedious. It's generally accepted that if you do parachute into the middle of an article, you might need to scan back earlier to extract context, structural information, and links. Thank you. Tony (talk) 02:47, 22 May 2015 (UTC)
I concur. Certain kinds of list articles, like glossaries are an exception; it's nearly impossible to find the original mention of a term in a large glossary without doing keyword searches in the pages (not always easy with a mobile device), and the glossary articles are almost entirely linking to specific entries like mini-articles, then going back to the article you came to the glossary from. Hardly anyone literally reads glossary articles as articles, from top to bottom.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  07:29, 20 July 2015 (UTC)
Tony, I spent hours on the Lyndon B. Johnson article one late night removing/adding duplicate/missing wikilinks in the body. I also made spelling/lexicon fixes, and I updated people's names to be harmonious throughout the article and then another editor Dhtwiki reverted all my changes twice stating that (paraphrased) "we don't do that on Wikipedia [harmonizing all the name instances] and a long article is entitled to have duplicate wikilinks because people read long articles in sections." I reverted the wholesale rollback of my good faith edits and put in my edit comment for him/her to edit rather than rollback but s/he did another rollback anyway. S/he made a minor edit after the 2nd reversion which prevented me from doing a rollback. LBJ is over 16,000 words and has a seven paragraph lead. I tagged it with a lead too long tag and that was shot down too. My hard work on LBJ was flushed down the drain. Your comment above explains the one wikilink guideline very well. Thank you for that. Checkingfax (talk) 20:41, 3 September 2015 (UTC)
I see that I reverted 45 edits of yours in one swipe. That's a lot, but you made many small edits. When I saw that the aggregate diff wasn't to my liking, I rolled back, because I wasn't going to take the time to go through them one-by-one. You gave full names, by adding middle initials, to many names when not needed, contrary to encyclopedic and journalistic practice, and to what Tony1 seems to be saying above. Your removal of links seemed excessive, as well. You might consult this RfC discussion on the FDR Talk page, and a follow-on RfC at Village Pump (Policy), to see a fuller discussion of how overlinking can be considered appropriate (and in which I took the opposing view), although these discussions pertain to infoboxes, not so much to article text. I'm sorry that you felt your time was wasted. You made several helpful edits. However, the next time you want to take on such a large task, you might limit yourself at first, to see what the reaction is (especially on an article you're new to), or start a discussion on the talk page. Dhtwiki (talk) 04:51, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

Linking years and dates.

What's wrong with linking years and dates and why don't and shouldn't we do it unlike on other Wikipedias? -- PK2 (talk) 01:09, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

I think the question is rather why other Wikipedias would link them - in most cases they provide little value to the reader. The guiding principle is, per WP:BUILD, "How likely is it that the reader will also want to read that other article?" Nikkimaria (talk) 02:11, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

Clarification regarding repeated links vs. redirects happening to point to the same target

I would like to propose to add the following clarification regarding what should be counted as "repeated link" to the WP:REPEATLINK section:

"Also, links to redirects which happen to redirect to a page already linked to from the article should not be counted as repetition of a link if the link titles are sufficiently different so that it cannot be reasonably expected that the information on the redirect's subject can be found under another existing link already. In order words, what's relevant are the outgoing links from the perspective of an article's reader, not where and how the linked contents happens to be organized in other articles (which may change as articles get expanded or reorganized)."

Reasoning: I have repeatedly seen editors removing links to redirects, if these redirects happen to redirect to a page which was already linked to by another link, even if such links to the redirect were relevant in the context of the article and it could not be assumed that this information could be found by following another differently named link on the page as well - after all, the reader does not and cannot know how other articles are organized until s/he visists them (and it would be unreasonable if we'd assume that). But without a link title closely enough associated with what the reader is looking for, the reader will never find the information. This is against link clarity per WP:LINKCLARITY and against the idea of building the web per WP:BTW, which are both part of this guideline. We are not doing readers a service by removing such links on the grounds of WP:REPEATLINK. Also, if the target article gets reorganized and the information is moved elsewhere, a redirect is easily found and updated, but a no longer existing but now required link to the redirect is not (because it cannot be found by reverse-lookup any more).

Our guideline talks only about links from the source article (including links to redirects). However, subsequent links from redirects to somewhere else are a completely different matter. Therefore I consider the above proposed text a clarification of the existing guideline only, not a functional change. Thanks for your consideration. --Matthiaspaul (talk) 01:24, 8 October 2015 (UTC)

Matthias, could you perhaps provide diff examples of some the things you're referring to? In any case, the text you propose would need considerable editing. Tony (talk) 10:56, 8 October 2015 (UTC)
Hello! I would support this addition to the guideline, especially because such redirects may point to different places in the same article, and may also be expanded into separate articles at some point in time. — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 11:17, 8 October 2015 (UTC)

OLINK in reflist

I think its helpful for readers if all instances are linked (if available). Is it covered by this:

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.

Thanks. --124.107.75.38 (talk) 18:22, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

Another problem?

Well, there is a sort of thing I don't like with some links. Examples such as (just for example) Watermelon instead of Watermelon. Qwertyxp2000 (talk | contribs) 02:31, 19 November 2015 (UTC)

That comes under the advice against "bunching" in MOSLINK. Tony (talk) 03:49, 19 November 2015 (UTC)
I thought that falls under WP:SEAOFBLUE. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 20:09, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

Née

Should the term "née" be linked and/or italicized? I work with a lot of different biographical articles which reference the subjects' parents. This term is therefore used frequently. I remember in the past née was always linked to the appropriate article but this was removed as most editors deemed it now overlink. However, I have seen a few articles where editors insisted on linking and sometimes even italicizing the term. What is the guideline for this term? Thanks. 2602:306:C5D4:8750:18A5:ACC4:97A5:D0EC (talk) 03:22, 28 November 2015 (UTC)

Linking to a disambiguation page with a one-liner about the topic

Ran across an interesting case today and want to see what the guidance is. Knights of Legend links to Scorpia, which is a disambiguation page. However, Scorpia (game journalist) doesn't have her own page but she does have a one-line description on the dab page, which is not an unknown practice. Since I believe that an article could be written about this topic I could redlink Scorpia (game journalist) but that would remove access to the brief bit of info we have on the dab page. Are there any clean solutions to this other than just creating a new article for Scorpia (game journalist)? (courtesy pinging CapnZapp) Regards, Orange Suede Sofa (talk) 18:45, 7 December 2015 (UTC)

That's a plausible red link, so it should be red linked IMO. Someone who does a search (from the red link page) will likely find the disambiguation page. --Izno (talk) 19:54, 7 December 2015 (UTC)
Per WP:DABRELATED, an article should only be linked to from a dab page "if the term being disambiguated is actually described in the target article". So Scorpia the journalist shouldn't be included in the Scorpia dab page, because the linked article (Computer Gaming World) only mentions her once in passing – and if she was properly discussed in that article, the Knights of Legend page should link straight to it, bypassing the dab page. So either way, linking to the dab page isn't really appropriate here. DoctorKubla (talk) 09:48, 8 December 2015 (UTC)
Thank you for the courtesy, OSS. Just to clarify Dr Kubla: nobody is suggesting the link to Scorpia should be to the CGW magazine. OSS: feel free to change the links to a red one for Scorpia (game journalist) if you like. We could still use the disambiguation page's talk page as a repository for the known facts about the subject until such time somebody is inclined to create a page. Cheers CapnZapp (talk) 16:01, 8 December 2015 (UTC)
Oh I see, Kubla - somebody bluelinked my mention of the magazine. That was not my intention - I fully agree it isn't useful (especially since when Scorpia is mentioned by game articles, it's almost always right next to a link to the mag). But please don't use the actions of others as argument against OSS' proposal: as I see it, the problem is not that Scorpia is on the disambig, but that somebody added a link to a page that barely mentions her. CapnZapp (talk) 16:08, 8 December 2015 (UTC)
Scorpia being on the dab page is the problem, I'm afraid. Disambiguation pages have to lead the reader somewhere useful – that's what they're for. See MOS:DABRL: "Red links should not be the only link in a given entry; link also to an existing article, so that a reader (as opposed to a contributing editor) will have somewhere to navigate to for additional information. The linked article should contain some meaningful information about the term." DoctorKubla (talk) 18:20, 8 December 2015 (UTC)
First off, thank you for educating me of the exception to the general "one link only" rule. I didn't know you could have two links in this case. Then, ...well, what's then? I don't see anything wrong after redlinking to a future Scorpia journo page; do note that the passage you quoted is for the case where all pages that use the red link are disambiguation pages. Which is not the case, not since I linked to Scorpia from a bunch of the game articles that mention her reviews. DABRL starts by saying
A link to a non-existent article (a "red link") should only be included on a disambiguation page when an article (not just disambiguation pages) also includes that red link. Do not create red links to articles that are unlikely ever to be written, or are likely to be removed as insufficiently notable topics.
Right, so I believe my attempts meet all these requirements so far. Articles link to the disambig. The Scorpia article is not "unlikely ever to be written" (especially since Wikipedia would welcome a page on a woman pioneer). It's hopefully deemed notable, especially since I went through all that trouble to point how how ubiquitous her work were at the time. I suggest we do nothing now, but wait for some brave soul to actually write her article. Unless of course I've missed something. Best regards, CapnZapp (talk) 21:56, 10 December 2015 (UTC)
The point is that there shouldn't be links to a dab page in the body of an article (see WP:INTDAB), and an entry in a dab page shouldn't link to an article that doesn't provide any additional information on the subject. (I'm really not that fussed about this, I just want you to understand where I'm coming from.) DoctorKubla (talk) 11:30, 11 December 2015 (UTC)
Ah. I guess I'm used to Wikipedians being rather aggressive about conforming to protocol. Perhaps you mean "in general, I mean this" rather than "there's an error and I must fix this within X hours"? Because the policy clearly allows for us to create red links to articles not yet written. I realize now that even "red articles" can show you "what links here": the only reason I linked all those articles to the DAB page was to help establish notability by allowing a concerned editor to click "what links here" to see for him or herself that Scorpia is frequently discussed already here on Wikipedia. Since you can click "what links here" even for red links, I now realize I could have linked all those pages directly to Scorpia (game journo), and put the information bit on the DAB talk page instead for now. CapnZapp (talk) 12:41, 11 December 2015 (UTC)

In the meanwhile, let me return to what the orange suede sofa said: "[subject] doesn't have her own page but she does have a one-line description on the dab page, which is not an unknown practice" (my emphasis). Thoughts on the bolded part? CapnZapp (talk) 12:41, 11 December 2015 (UTC)

After digging some more, it looks like WP:DABSTYLE and WP:DABRELATED approve of this under specific circumstances. WP:DABSTYLE: "Each bulleted entry should have a navigable (blue) link, normally as the entry itself (see the previous bullet), or in the description if the entry is red-linked or unlinked." WP:DABRELATED: "Include articles only if the term being disambiguated is actually described in the target article. For example, a use of the term "set" is discussed in the article on Volleyball, so Set (disambiguation) legitimately includes "Set, the second contact in volleyball"." In this case, the entry for Scorpia (the journalist) in the dab page links to Computer Gaming World which does discuss Scorpia, albeit briefly. Regards, Orange Suede Sofa (talk) 21:10, 11 December 2015 (UTC)
You bring up two points. First, your response to my query, and I thank you for that. Secondly and secondarily, you provide ample illustration why the mention of the magazine Scorpia was working for should not be linked, since "the editorial staff included popular writers such as Scorpia" is only the briefest of mention and far from "actually described" in my view. However, to reiterate, that we should unlink CGW should not be taken as support for the stance her entire DAB line should be removed. Again, I support the stance which is "let her remain redlinked on the DAB page until someone creates a full article". Hope this was useful and not too repetitive. Best Regards, CapnZapp (talk) 23:37, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

Can we get a definitive list of countries/entities not to link?

I feel like editors are not linking to many counties and sub national areas that aren't common knowledge to people, for example I've seen Uttar Pradesh and Cambodia unlinked on major articles before. Heck, I wouldn't even be surprised if over half of the world's population is unable to identify France on a map, even though the guidelines tell us not to link it.--Prisencolin (talk) 02:03, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

France was unilaterally added as an example only recently. I agree it's debatable how we can define "major" or assert, for all readers, what might be said to be well-known and hence not worth linking by some people's rationale (which of course ignores the point that links are there to aid and enable navigation between related pages that contain detailed (ahem) encyclopedic information. The page on France doesn't simply say "France is a country in western Europe, in case you didn't know what it was, which most people do". By that logic, we may as well not even have a page on France at all). In any event, the guideline does of course say that such links are OK if the subject is "particularly relevant to the context in the article" – so, however they are defined, there is in fact no outright bar on such links. There's a lot on this in the archives, and a few hardcore editors who strip out such links from masses of pages with scripts, regardless of context, while declaring vaguely that there is an alleged "consensus" for such actions. N-HH talk/edits 17:23, 22 January 2016 (UTC)
I'm looking at List of box office records set by Star Wars: The Force Awakens, and it appears that literally no country is ever linked in the article, rendering this section to be pretty an indiscriminate list to anybody who didn't already know where these countries are. --Prisencolin (talk) 19:15, 3 February 2016 (UTC)

Village pump threads about this guideline

 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere.

There is a VPPOL thread open – at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#Motion to allow linking to large periods in prehistory and antiquity – proposing changes to this guideline (in rather unclear terms). While is has been suggested that the discussion should be moved here and clarified, the regulars here should at least be aware of it.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  10:32, 26 February 2016 (UTC)

 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere

There is a VPPOL thread open – at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#Somewhat related discussion: Linking and bolding of acronyms in alternate names in lead – arguing whether standardized designations like "BWV 7" for works of J.S. Bach, which redirect to the actual article titles and may sometimes be in them, should a) be boldfaced in the lead per MOS:LEAD (MOS:BOLDTITLE and MOS:BOLDSYN) and MOS:BOLD, and b) have the acronym linked (in the case of BWV to List of compositions by Johann Sebastian Bach#BWV) if it's not going to be spelled-out in situ, per MOS:LINK and MOS:ACRONYM.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  04:28, 6 March 2016 (UTC)

Novelization?

Is novelization a link-worthy term? I saw an editor linking it, but in my opinion it's a common enough term that a link shouldn't be necessary. Thanks for your thoughts! DonIago (talk) 14:07, 28 January 2016 (UTC)

There is a whole body of scholarship on the concept (see for example the Google Search); this means that the concept has a number of more complicated implications than just being a process of converting a movie or other media into a novel. Our article, doesn't quite do justice for the concept, but we ought to do an overhaul like I did with Novelist or Nautical fiction, but for such a broad topic, thats a huge bit of time. Building up the links to the article, is a good way to get more eyes on it, and in turn creating more interest amongst both our editors and readers in the article. In general, WP:OVERLINK suggests that any article that would clarify for a reader not deeply familiar with the topic, should be done. Sadads (talk) 14:47, 28 January 2016 (UTC)
I see your point, but I question how many readers are going to click the link, much less make any changes, precisely because for most readers the term is straightforward enough that they wouldn't feel they'd have anything to gain by pursuing the link. In other words, I suspect readers will think they're "familiar enough" with the topic, and the link will consequently serve no purpose.
That being said, I admit that having the term linked causes no harm beyond potentially making it look like we're linking an obvious term. But then, that's why I asked the question here. :) DonIago (talk) 15:02, 28 January 2016 (UTC)
Hi DonIago! You might also want to check out Wikipedia:Wikipedia is not a dictionary ;-) Cheers! Jayaguru-Shishya (talk) 00:43, 29 January 2016 (UTC)
I'm aware of that...is that an argument in favor of not linking, then? Sorry, not sure what you're going for. DonIago (talk) 16:48, 29 January 2016 (UTC)
I'm not sure what article this is on but I'd say it should be linked, because "novelization" is a broad concept that may not immediately be understandable to some readers. People may also want to read more about the process of novelization, which is described on that page, and probably not on a page about a movie.--Prisencolin (talk) 19:11, 3 February 2016 (UTC)
I would regard it as rather thoughtful editing to link this word. It's only fairly recently it has been in common use[67] so it will have passed some people by (I am one of them!). However, I suspect in context I would be able to guess the intended meaning. Thincat (talk) 12:32, 6 March 2016 (UTC)
Fair enough. I'll leave it alone if I see it in the future. Thanks all! DonIago (talk) 15:34, 7 March 2016 (UTC)

What sort of linking here

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_Major_League_Soccer_stadiums&diff=719436942&oldid=719408341

The issue appears to be that some locations, such as [[San Jose, California]] require a disambiguator, while other locations, such as [[Seattle]] are sufficiently unique that no disambiguation is required, yet to make them look the same the editor pipes these as [[Seattle|Seattle, Washington]]. Should this be done or not? 208.81.212.224 (talk) 02:26, 12 May 2016 (UTC)

Or even San Jose, California, and Seattle, Washington. MOSLINK recommends avoiding bunched link items unless there's a reason not to. Yes, consistency within a short space of text is good. But it's not a hard-and-fast rule. Generally, less blue and isolated blue are good (but it needs to be balanced with other factors in your editorial judgement). Tony (talk) 03:30, 12 May 2016 (UTC)
@Tony1: So nothing is wrong with this formatting? Consistency's issue is avoided by keeping everything consistent. Every other article uses [[City, State]] formatting and haven't seen the [[City]], [[State]] anywhere else except here. And the column is called Location, so shouldn't the [[City, State]] format be more appropriate? – Sabbatino (talk) 07:38, 18 May 2016 (UTC)
It's clearly a problem as it crease a sea of blue. Stick with [[San Jose, California|San Jose]], California, and [[Seattle]], Washington. By extension, why not include the country (there are two represented in the table) and, if you want location, it could easily include the GPS coordinates. Keep it simple: the city is the location, not the state. 208.81.212.224 (talk) 22:59, 18 May 2016 (UTC)
Some clearer guidance would be appreciated, as this issue comes up with some regularity. See, e.g., this example. Which is correct: (1) "Detroit, Michigan" (2) "Detroit, Michigan", or (3) "Detroit, Michigan"? Cbl62 (talk) 23:39, 18 May 2016 (UTC)
Cbl62, option 2 is the best because it 1) links directly to the article in question 2) avoids the excessive link to Michigan, and 3) preserves a consistent formatting/look when placed beside something like "Ann Arbor, Michigan". Jweiss11 (talk) 02:53, 19 May 2016 (UTC)
Jweiss -- But that seems inconsistent with the views expressed above by Tony1 and 208.81.212.224. I personally though that option 1 made the most sense. It would be nice to have input from the MOS/Linking experts and some broader consensus on this. Any MOS/Linking experts care to chime in? Cbl62 (talk) 03:06, 19 May 2016 (UTC)
Why is a link to "Michigan" useful in this context? Michigan will be linked at the very top of the target-link to "Detroit" anyway. It seems very much a secondary issue, and MOSLINK does, rightly, prefer to avoid bunched links unless there's a good reason for them. Also, if a US city is internationally well-known, I tend to remove the state (Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, etc)—saves needless clutter. I do the same for major English cities (who needs to know which county Manchester is in?). Generally, our brilliant wikilinking system is more powerful when rationed, using our skills and knowledge as editors to create the boundaries. Tony (talk) 07:47, 19 May 2016 (UTC)
I agree with Jweiss's opinion. However, it's strange that for person you should use Detroit, Michigan, but for other things Detroit, Michigan should be used. What should we do when the same table includes Kansas City, Missouri and Kansas City, Kansas? We should still list it as Kansas City, Missouri and Kansas City, Kansas? That wouldn't be an improvement as some users would change it for no reason, because they would think it's a mistake of some sort. – Sabbatino (talk) 07:53, 19 May 2016 (UTC)
The problem with Kansas City, Missouri and Kansas City, Kansasis that it looks like a single entity (Kansas City) spread across two states. Which, being quite unlikely, suggests an error. As a general rule I'd say use a complete and unambiguous identifier. If less works, fine. Consistency is also a fine general rule, but should yield to clarity. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 18:31, 19 May 2016 (UTC)
So reading is optional? By extension of your argument, Portland, Maine and Portland, Oregon could look like a single entity (a city called "Portland") spread across two states (and an entire continental mass between it). 208.81.212.224 (talk) 21:57, 19 May 2016 (UTC)
No. "Kansas City" is my example; my argument is to not insist on consistency if clarity suffers. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 23:33, 21 May 2016 (UTC)
  • I'd try to avoid repetitions like "New York, New York", and "Kansas City, Kansas", even if inconsistent in a list. I've just removed "Berlin" from "Berlin International Festival, Berlin". These are otherwise irritating to readers. Tony (talk) 08:23, 19 May 2016 (UTC)
  • If the source admits, I'd try to avoid unnecessary pipelinks. However, if the source only says "Kansas City" but the context clearly makes the case for "Kansas City, Missouri", I'd definitely go by [[Kansas City, Missouri|Kansas City]] Cheers! Jayaguru-Shishya (talk) 00:41, 20 May 2016 (UTC)

Allow me to provide a sample since the context seems to be missing in the discussion.

Image Stadium Team(s) Location First MLS Year Capacity Opened Surface Field Dimensions Ref(s)
Avaya Stadium San Jose Earthquakes San Jose, California 2015 18,000 2015 Grass 8,625 sq yd (7,212 m2) 115 yd × 75 yd (105 m × 69 m) [1]
BC Place ‡ Vancouver Whitecaps FC Vancouver, British Columbia 2011 54,320
(22,500)		 1983 Polytan 8,775 sq yd (7,337 m2) 117 yd × 75 yd (107 m × 69 m) [2][3]
StubHub Center LA Galaxy Carson, California 2003 27,000 2003 Grass 9,000 sq yd (7,500 m2) 120 yd × 75 yd (110 m × 69 m) [4]
Yankee Stadium New York City FC The Bronx, New York 2015 54,251
(30,000)		 2009 Grass 7,700 sq yd (6,400 m2) 110 yd × 70 yd (101 m × 64 m) [5]

The sample here represents 4 of the 20 entries. So the initial question is, with all of the blue links, and alternate background shading, How to link the "locations":

  1. [[San Jose, California|San Jose]], California; [[Vancouver]], British Columbia; [[Carson, California|Carson]], California; [[The Bronx]], New York
  2. [[San Jose, California]]; [[Vancouver|Vancouver, British Columbia]]; [[Carson, California]]; [[The Bronx|The Bronx, New York]]

1. is how it was before the changes happened, and Sabbatino changed it to 2. I would also like point out that more than half of the location articles are located at a "city, state". Only six of the location entries are in mainspace as "city". There are several additional tables on the article that would follow the same formatting. 208.81.212.224 (talk) 01:28, 20 May 2016 (UTC)

Looks fine as it is, doesn't it? And that area column: why use a template that clutters up a tiny space? 120 yd × 75 yd (110 m × 69 m) -> 120 × 75 yd (110 × 69 m) [manually fixed]. Tony (talk) 02:17, 20 May 2016 (UTC)

References

  1. ^ "San Jose Earthquakes: Team makes inroads with fans, plans to 'strive to be best' on field". San Jose Mercury News. Archived from the original on February 7, 2012. Retrieved October 28, 2011. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
  2. ^ "BC Place". Vancouver Whitecaps FC. Retrieved September 30, 2011.
  3. ^ Constantineau, Bruce (September 24, 2011). "Empire falls, Whitecaps hope BC Place provides kick-start". The Province. Retrieved September 24, 2011.
  4. ^ "The Home Depot Center". The Home Depot Center. Archived from the original on May 30, 2011. Retrieved May 30, 2011.
  5. ^ "New York City FC outline plans for Yankee Stadium's baseball-to-soccer conversion". MLSsoccer.com. Major League Socce. Retrieved 21 April 2014.

"One of these things is not like the other"

As of this writing, the guideline says:

A good question to ask yourself is whether reading the article you're about to link to would help someone understand the article you are linking from. Unless a term is particularly relevant to the context in the article, the following are not usually linked:

  • Everyday words understood by most readers in context
  • The names of major geographic features and locations, languages, nationalities and religions
  • Common occupations
  • Common units of measurement, e.g. units relating to currency, time, temperature, length, area, or volume (if both non-metric and metric equivalents are provided, as in 18 °C (64 °F), usually neither unit needs to be linked, because almost all readers will understand at least one or the other unit)
  • Dates (see § Chronological items below)

The line item on geographical features does not fit here. All the other things are knowledge that people absorb by mid-childhood simply from language usage, but geography is something independently studied, and which we know from lots of external data that many adults are very poor at, especially in the US. (More advanced units of measure also need study, but most of us have an automatic sense of the scope of the most common ones by mid-childhood.)

On its face, the item doesn't really stand out as problematic, but as applied it obviously is. I just encountered a change of: 

The sport is also very popular on the eastern side of the [[Adriatic]], especially in [[Croatia]], [[Montenegro]] and [[Herzegovina]], where the sport is known in [[Croatian language|Croatian]] as ... In [[Slovenia]] the sport is ...

to: 

The sport is also very popular on the eastern side of the [[Adriatic]], especially in Croatia, Montenegro and Bosnia and Herzegovina, where the sport is known in [[Serbo-Croatian language|Serbo-Croatian]] as ... In Slovenia the sport is ...

and I partially reverted this to: 

The sport is also very popular on the eastern side of the [[Adriatic]], especially in [[Croatia]], [[Montenegro]] and [[Bosnia and Herzegovina]], where the sport is known in [[Serbo-Croatian language|Serbo-Croatian]] as .... In [[Slovenia]] the sport is ...

since the countries are "particularly relevant to the context". Given the frequency with which borders have changed in that region in living memory, and how often Slovenia and Slovakia are confused by English speakers, and how few of them can find either place on a map, it's a good idea to link them anyway.

The overall problem with the provision in the guideline is that every location is "major" to people who live in or near it, but few of them are to people who don't. A look through our articles suggests that the idea of not linking things like Croatia or Adriatic or Rocky Mountains or Indian Ocean or Beijing is not taken seriously by most of our editors. Failure to comply is often not a good gauge of whether any MoS rule makes sense, when it's a normalizing rule that people writing on the fly may not even be aware of (e.g. using non-breaking spaces between measurements and their units, which are given in a particular standardized form). When people are going out of their way to do something, like insert links, and most of us are doing it, a guideline is on more questionable footing when it suggests to not do so (unless, as with date linking and autoformatting, it was the guideline's own earlier wording that inspired the behavior in the first place).  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  00:48, 13 March 2016 (UTC)

I certainly can follow both the theory and the logic of your argument but I do wonder a bit about its practical effect.
I tend to work a fair bit with Philippines articles and they invariably tend to be WP:OVERLINKED. In our Pia Wurtzbach article, for example, I'm endlessly deleting multiple wikilinks for Philippines and Germany and US... BushelCandle (talk) 09:16, 13 March 2016 (UTC)
This has nothing at all to do with multiple wikilinks to the same thing. We always remove redundant, extra links (unless they're widely separated in a long article, and some even delete them then).  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  22:15, 13 March 2016 (UTC)
I also often remove ¨multiple wikilinka", but this does not mean "duplicate". Jayaguru-Shishya (talk) 23:22, 13 March 2016 (UTC)
Yeah, I think I did mistake BushelCandle's meaning.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  05:12, 14 March 2016 (UTC)
Sorry for my sloppy language. You are, as usual, quite right, SMcCandlish, in pointing out that we should mostly remove multiple links (whether they are to well know geographical entities or not).
It might have been clearer if I had written something on the lines of: surely, in the same way that we ought to assume that readers have a basic knowledge of units such as metres and miles and gallons and litres and kilograms and pounds and hours and days and typically know what truck drivers and plumbers do and where people speak Hebrew and what the basic tenets of Islam are (?!?) - and are able to do a search for the topic of which they are ignorant either in the Wikipedia search box or a search engine if they know their general knowledge is deficient - we should assume a similar geographical general knowledge about Germany and Africa and the Pacific Ocean? I know many US citizens are geographically challenged, but is this on a completely different level to their general ignorance about 'other things' and requiring special tolerance (like their inability to understand times in the 24 hour clock or measurements given only in metres)?
We need to place this specific advice in the context in which it is given - that it may be counter-intuitive that a sea of blue links is necessarily helpful or encourages greater readership of articles.BushelCandle (talk) 03:39, 14 March 2016 (UTC)
It's not really WP's role to make assumptions too sweeping about our readers ; many of them are children, many are people only coming online (usually via mobile) for the first time in their lives. We have a delicate balance between being educational, and linking so much of everything that even children are annoyed. I'm arguing that we need to lean slightly closer to educational, and away from being assumptive. Not so much that we need to link plumber (except on a page in which a plumber is truly central to the topic), but yes enough that we should link Bosnia and Herzegovina (at en.wiki, anyway, if not at bs.wiki, sr.wiki and hr.wiki). We usually need not link US or UK at en.wiki, unless it's very important in the context and something some people are likely to click on for background before returning to the present article. "People can just search if they need to" isn't really a viable answer; it's huge hassle to textually search for things on a lot of mobile devices, and Web users' attention spans are short; if they have to search they often either will not bother, or they will, and they'll be irritated and go somewhere else, e.g. World Fact Book, often the second Google result after WP for geographical topics (at least it is with the adblockers I use. >;-)  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 
I agree with BushelCandle above. Usually I've encountered way overlinked articles all across the scope. Personally, I wouldn't link those countries since the European geography is something we were taught in the primary school in addition to the geography of all the other continents. Cheers! Jayaguru-Shishya (talk) 12:22, 13 March 2016 (UTC)
But BushelCandle did not address what I'm talking about. So, let's start over.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  22:15, 13 March 2016 (UTC)
He said "multiple wikilinka", which you confused to "duplicate wikilinks". Jayaguru-Shishya (talk) 23:22, 13 March 2016 (UTC)
Got it; I think we are communicating more clearly now. :-)  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  05:11, 14 March 2016 (UTC)
With regard to linking, I would tend to make a link to the above-named countries, especially if they were the first indication of locale. If linked, I would not think you would then have to, say, link "Europe" further down.
On a copy-editing note, the linking helps separate the confusing sequence "...Montenegro and Bosnia and Herzegovina...", which could stand a final serial comma in any case. Dhtwiki (talk) 22:01, 13 March 2016 (UTC)
Indeed.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  22:15, 13 March 2016 (UTC)
I also agree with the way you have wikilinked your 'Adriatic' example - but that's why you chose it, SMcCandlish, eh? BushelCandle (talk) 03:48, 14 March 2016 (UTC)
The Adriatic link was in the original; none of that's my text, I just put back some links that were removed (and even the "remover" didn't take the one off "Adriatic", nor off "Croatian language"). I agree above that we need not link "Europe" in the same context (but there are others in which we would, e.g. a discussion of the continents as such). I also would not link Bosnia and Herzegovina if, for some reason, we had a long list of countries, e.g. all those in which a particular strain of influenza has been reported, and it was 50 countries or something; that would produce a rather pointless sea-of-blue effect (then again, if we had relevant articles on epidemiology in some of those countries linking to those might be useful in the article, if it's clear we were linking to those, not to general country info). It's all about context really, and that's what I think this guideline is not getting across very well. Of course it's important to link even major place names, e.g. "Jane Deaux (born 23 July 1989 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, is a singer..." or "...(... in Toronto, Ontario) is a Canadian singer....", or whatever people want at that article; but later on we might just have something like "Her North American tour in 2015 had US stops in California, Nevada, Texas, Tennessee, Pennsylvania, New York, and Ohio; and Canadian dates in Ontario, Quebec, Alberta, and British Columbia" (or more specific, with cities), without linking any of them, because it's not contextually important. No one with any attention span is going to be interested in reading up on New York because a singer did a show there. They might be interested in reading up on Toronto because the singer was born there ("is that in the French-speaking part?" "Is that up near Alaska in the boonies, or is that a big city?" or a more sophisticated question like "what's the cultural diversity level there, and is it a comparatively liberal or conservative social environment?").  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  05:11, 14 March 2016 (UTC)
We should not link major place names per WP:LINK. ''[[Toronto, Ontario]], [[Canada]]'' would constitute a WP:SEAOFBLUE violation; also ''[[Canadian]]'' would be a WP:OVERLINK violation (major nationalities). Jayaguru-Shishya (talk) 16:34, 14 March 2016 (UTC)
Several thingd further: (born 23 July 1989 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada) violates WP:OPENPARA. You don't put birth or death locations in the "born in" parenthetical comment. The way you linked Toronto forced the link to a redirect, which is just stupid and based on the discussion below creates a sea of blue. Walter Görlitz (talk) 05:56, 19 May 2016 (UTC)
I agree with pretty much everything you've written above, but the trick is trying to express those nuanced judgement calls in textual change to our MoS. Is there an alternative form of wording you're proposing short of outright removal (which, unfortunately, I would still mildly oppose) ?
The second caveat is that I completely don't understand why you would want to link Canada (the world's second-largest country by total area and the fourth-largest country by land area on our planet) in your biographical example above. Sure, I get that there are some folks that won't know that Toronto is the largest city in Canada but if we have to wikilink Canada itself then that means that we have to link pretty well every proper noun, don't we? BushelCandle (talk) 06:55, 14 March 2016 (UTC)
The trivial bit: People tend to link the countries to a "people" article, as I showed in 2nd example, but linking the country is actually common; I was not trying to prescribe usage here but describe it. I edit a lot of bios, and I virtually never encounter one without the country linked in the lead one way or another. I.e., there is clearly a site-wide consensus to link it.

The difficult bit: No, I'm not advocating deletion. The problem is that this is not quite a true statement: "Unless a term is particularly relevant to the context in the article the following are not usually linked: ... The names of major geographic features and locations, languages, nationalities and religions". The sentence is correct if you substitute in any of the other line-items. I would suggest breaking it out into its own short (probably one-sentence) paragraph after this list, and treat it differently. It is often not the relevance of the thing (country, language, etc.) to the entire context of the article as a whole, but rather its relevant in the immediate context (infobox, lead, place central to the whole career section, place mentioned only in passing, etc.) Sometimes relevance to the entire article is also factor (language studied in high school, vs. native language; religion of someone the subject got into a public argument with vs. religion of the subject; etc.), but it's a severable factor. Basically, we need to be more nuanced here about what "context" means and that there is more than one kind of context. I'm too tired to draft wording now but will try to pick it up again some time soonish.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  08:35, 14 March 2016 (UTC)

In the Battle of Kaiapit, the TFA on 25 April, an editor linked Australia with the comment "I don't know where australia is". My interpretation of "The names of major geographic features" included countries. Hawkeye7 (talk) 21:51, 26 April 2016 (UTC)
  • I haven't had a comment or objection for years concerning the removal of country-name links. It's an art, not a science, of course, where to draw the boundary between major and non-major. And I also take into account whether a reader would bother travelling to a country article to warrant blueing it (especially where the city or region within it has just been linked). The other issue is the sheer vagueness of most country articles in relation to the specific topics of a potential anchor. Sport in South Africa (not piped to "South Africa", so readers will know what they're getting at sight) in the "See also" section is usually much preferred to simply linking South Africa in a sport-related anchor topic. Tony (talk) 07:42, 19 May 2016 (UTC)

What about this and this? This violates MOS:OVERLINK, but both users think otherwise without even giving any reason for such linking. Both Croatia and Nigeria are known, and to my knowledge existing countries aren't actually linked. Even if the country changes its political system that country isn't linked, for example Polish People's Republic and Poland is the same country with different political system and is usually not linked and just described as Poland in infoboxes. Any thoughts? – Sabbatino (talk) 07:38, 9 June 2016 (UTC)

Well, on top of my more general comments in the section below, there are a couple of issues with the examples cited. First, for Split, Croatia you seem to be arguing about where the linking brackets fall, not about overlinking or linking Croatia per se. Second, I would argue – although this is not explicit in WP:LINK – that application of the guideline should be a little looser in infoboxes, where arguments about cluttering running text with links do not apply (if anything, the arguments about aesthetics run the other way and favour more linking, not less). Third, this flags up the whole question of what things are "well known" or "major", and the absurdity of relying on that as a determining factor for linking or not (although it's not the only factor of course). Why link some countries but not others in this kind of context anyway? Who decides where to draw the line? As for Croatia for example, it may be known, as a basic definition, to a reasonably knowledgeable European, perhaps, but it's stretching the point. N-HH talk/edits 08:35, 9 June 2016 (UTC)
First off, I would understand if a link to, for example, Manchukuo was made, because many people have never heard of it. But Croatia or Nigeria? Those names are common. Every person who has some knowledge in geography heard about those two countries and links are not needed. Secondly, Split and Makurdi are what's relevant. So I see no reason why links such as [[Split, Croatia]] or [[Makurdi|Makurdi, Nigeria]] should be made. – Sabbatino (talk) 12:27, 9 June 2016 (UTC)
No need to link Croatia or Nigeria, I'd say. We are writing the encyclopedia for average readers, and that's just common knowledge which is taught in the primary schools, just like the countries of any other continent. Cheers! Jayaguru-Shishya (talk) 18:11, 9 June 2016 (UTC)
Well, those comments utterly ignore both what I said and the additional points I referred to in a related section here. So let's repeat: it's not as simple as whether people know what Croatia or any other country is – the page in question does much more than simply explain that in one or two lines – it's also about navigation to detailed, and sometimes related, encyclopedia entries in an online resource. If you take your arguments to the extreme, why bother having pages on those topics at all? The linking criteria are not whether random individual editors reckon some undefined (and probably undefinable) threshold of putative "average" readers will have "heard of" X or "know what it is". Anyway, I and others have been round the houses on this in the past, and while there's no consensus for stripping out such potentially useful links when relevant (I agree they don't need to be included in every instance), I've yet to convince the hard core minority who believe they have to be expunged on every occasion, based on their own personal beliefs as to what links other WP users should be allowed to take advantage of. N-HH talk/edits 19:26, 9 June 2016 (UTC)
Would someone go to this article because they have forgotten the name of either country but know that the association was sufficiently great that they would come to this article? If so, link Croatia and Nigeria. If not, don't. Walter Görlitz (talk) 04:45, 10 June 2016 (UTC)
And I'll repeat it again – Split and Makurdi are what's relevant in those examples I showed. I understand this being not broken, but this just uses unnecessary piping. I'm not convinced with the use of [[City, Country]] in biography infoboxes, because it's the city that is relevant and [[City]], Country should be fine. Although, there's an exception when someone was born in a country which doesn't exist anymore, for example, Soviet Union, which linking I understand as it consisted of many now-independent countries. Many good or even featured articles use [[City]], Country in their infoboxes and just their statuses show that [[City]], Country is more acceptable than [[City, Country]]. – Sabbatino (talk) 05:19, 10 June 2016 (UTC)
  • It's not a science, like many of the stylistic decisions we take as article writers. We expect that editors will make informed calls as to what is "common" and what is not, in the context; and that they will use their skill to link to whole-country articles only when it's helpful, which is frankly not very often. There's far, far too much whole-country-article linking on en.WP. If there's a section-link or an offspring article ("Sport in South Africa", for example), that would be more useful, and better still not piped to the plain country-name within the main text, but explicit under "See also". Tony (talk) 05:24, 10 June 2016 (UTC)

Proposed modification

I propose removing this provision from § What generally should not be linked:

"The names of major geographic features and locations, languages, nationalities and religions"

This has resulted recently in the nonsensical delinking of first-mentions of sub-sects of religions, e.g. Anglicanism, Catholic Church, Methodism, etc. It also seems to indicate that religion, language, and geography articles are intended to be orphans, which is clearly not right. If not outright removed, I think the beginning of the sentence should be changed to read:

Unless a term is particularly relevant to the context in the article in context, the following are not usually linked at most only the first time they are mentioned in an article:

Thoughts? Jujutsuan (Please notify with {{re}} | talk | contribs) 18:26, 12 June 2016 (UTC), edited 18:30, 12 June 2016 (UTC)

That causes problems with other articles. It males sense to link countries in-context to a lot of subjects, but offers nothing to enhance the understanding of the subject. I’m opposed to the proposed change. If sub-sects are being unlinked, it’s not valid to do so. Walter Görlitz (talk) 20:46, 12 June 2016 (UTC)
I understand the confusion about whether some people actually want certain articles to be orphaned and never linked to, and wouldn't object to the change, but equally I think the section as worded is OK (despite accusations about wanting a "sea of blue", I actually agree that excessive linking of common words, regardless of context, is unsightly and unnecessary). The problem is that a small number of people – often those the most active in using scripts to make unsighted mass removals – don't follow the guideline, or interpret it very rigidly, eg through how they define "major" and by ignoring the "unless ... relevant" exception. Surely subcategories of major religions are fine to link, especially in religion-related articles. N-HH talk/edits 10:42, 13 June 2016 (UTC)
@Jujutsuan: Please review #"One of these things is not like the other" and possibly provide further comment. --Izno (talk) 12:10, 13 June 2016 (UTC)

Piped plurals

I might not be spotting it here or at Wikipedia:Piped link, but which is preferred: [[Single-stock futures|SSF]]s or [[Single-stock futures|SSFs]] ? Thank you. ɱ (talk) · vbm · coi) 13:57, 13 June 2016 (UTC)

Overlinking of instruments in band/musician articles

I have proposed an addition to the article guidelines for musician and band articles so as to not overlink common instruments. If you would like to weigh-in, feel free to. Walter Görlitz (talk) 16:54, 18 June 2016 (UTC)

Clarification, Lead vs main body

Could I get some clarification on the approach to linking in the main body of the article after terms have been linked in the Lead. Under Principles, we currently say: "Consider including links where readers might want to use them; for example, in article leads, at the openings of new sections, in the cells of tables, and in image captions. But note below that as a rule of thumb editors should only link the term's first occurrence in the text of the article." Am I right in saying that in that last sentence, it means the first occurrence in the main body, separate from the Lead section? That's the approach I follow, having seen it applied in FAs and GAs for some years, but I'd like to confirm that it's supported by the MoS guidelines. JG66 (talk) 04:58, 24 June 2016 (UTC)

No, it means anywhere in the main text. Tony (talk) 06:59, 24 June 2016 (UTC)
In theory, it's once per article. In practice, it's usually once per screen page, and REPEATLINK is generally at the discretion of the editors. I have seen articles where links to a nation or sports team is repeated beside each player, where with others, they're not linked at all. I have seen multi-screen page articles where the terms are linked in each section while in others, they're linked infrequently. It should only be once, but there are several factors. Walter Görlitz (talk) 07:08, 24 June 2016 (UTC)
In fact WP:REPEATLINK explicitly allows for a second link to the same term "at the first occurrence after the lead". As ever, the guideline is not as rigid as many claim, and editor discretion is of course a sensible approach in any event. People aren't always going to read entire articles, nor should we expect them to. Take for example, Albert Einstein. Would it really be for the best if, in that massive entry, we only linked General Theory of Relativity in the lead but not in the section dedicated to it? Or vice versa? N-HH talk/edits 16:30, 24 June 2016 (UTC)
Nothing about a "second" link. Just one after the lead. The lead is the place least likely to attract people who apparently want to go somewhere else, having just arrived at an article. It is the least detailed context for a link, too. Links are more effective in the main text below the lead (with some case-by-case exceptions). Tony (talk) 05:43, 25 June 2016 (UTC)
Well I'm not sure what "but .. may be repeated .. after the lead" means if it doesn't mean a second link, and an assumption that there will be a link in the lead, but never mind. As for others' reading and navigation habits, that's just guesswork and it's not up to any of us to impose restrictions based on our own guesswork – and for what it's worth I will often just read the lead and then often move on to a related topic that seems of interest (even if I know what the basic definition of that thing is). Links are "effective" whereever people might want to make use of them. N-HH talk/edits 09:34, 25 June 2016 (UTC)
Thanks everyone for the replies. I can see how the (many) different approaches have resulted across the encyclopaedia – because several of the approaches offered here make a lot of sense … Cheers, JG66 (talk) 15:27, 2 July 2016 (UTC)

Linking countries

Random observation: Is the seemingly strong preference not to link the name of the relevant country in country-specific articles supported by MOS:OVERLINK? This occurred to me while looking at a few East Asia articles today. To give three random examples, Kyoto, Nagoya don't link to "Japan" in the lede, and hong doesn't link to either China or Canton. I get that these fall under "names of major geographic features [etc.]" and you wouldn't wikilink "U.S." in the article of every American person, for instance, but it seems to me that when you have articles on cities or culture-specific subjects like hong, the name of the relevant country would fall under the exemption of being "particularly relevant to the context in the article". —Nizolan (talk) 17:32, 29 March 2016 (UTC)

Sorry, I just noticed that this is actually being discussed just above! To clarify, though, I'm asking about (a) major features within countries (cities), and (b) articles particular to national cultures (Shinto would be another example). —Nizolan (talk) 17:33, 29 March 2016 (UTC)
I wouldn't link to "Japan"—if a reader has never heard of it, they can type it into the search box. Tony (talk) 07:43, 19 May 2016 (UTC)
Doesn't that apply to all links? Anyone want to render an opinion on this change? Hawkeye7 (talk) 23:45, 24 May 2016 (UTC)
It does not apply to all links. Only to common terms. See the OVERLINK link above. I applied a script—not my own—to that article and it removed links to many common terms. Walter Görlitz (talk) 05:07, 25 May 2016 (UTC)
As WP:OVERLINK says, there's usually not much point in providing endless links to well-known things, but with the qualification: "Unless a term is particularly relevant to the context in the article". Linking to Japan on the page about a Japanese city would seem to fall quite squarely within that relevance qualification. In any event, links are not just there to enable people to find out what thing X is in case they have never heard of it. They are also there of course, as the qualification suggests, for navigation between related pages, so that for example people can easily access details about the related thing, if they wish to. N-HH talk/edits 15:02, 30 May 2016 (UTC)
I'll take it one step further, who here would support a removal the particular guideline? According to numerous surveys,[68] [69] [70] many people are unable to location of major countries on a map, allowing there links on Wikipedia might actually help a bit.--Prisencolin (talk) 21:25, 2 July 2016 (UTC)
No way. It will stay in place. Walter Görlitz (talk) 21:41, 2 July 2016 (UTC)
How are we going to help the geographically uninformed of the world?--Prisencolin (talk) 23:50, 2 July 2016 (UTC)
If someone presents a proposal, it's usual to simply state whether you agree or not, rather than declare that it will not be implemented, as if you own the page. And of course, even if people do know what countries are where, they don't know half of the information contained in those country pages here. For my part, as I've said above and elsewhere, I think it's broadly OK – so long as people actually follow it rather than reading it as mandating en-masse removal of country links and so long as it's interpreted flexibly with an eye for the context in which links appear. Btw, as WG's response indicates, and knowing what the one or two other people who regularly comment here think, I suspect you're not going to get much traction for its removal in a discussion on this page. This is where people who want to strip out as many links as possible congregate, not where a broader cross-section of editors comes to have an open discussion about how best to use links. Just to save you the effort ... N-HH talk/edits 08:57, 3 July 2016 (UTC)
We are writing the encyclopedia for average readers, and that's just common knowledge which is taught in the primary schools, just like the countries of any other continent. The reports seems to be about the United States, and if this is about criticism towards the United States' education system, I think the discussion should be taken to Talk:Education in the United States instead of here. Moreover, any link to an article should be in some way relevant to the article in question. For example, sections about United States#Transportation or United States#Water supply and sanitation hardly help the reader to understand an article about Benjamin Franklin. Jayaguru-Shishya (talk) 20:04, 4 July 2016 (UTC)
To answer the question, "How are we going to help the geographically uninformed of the world". If you're American, you can start by not voting for Trump. If you're not, don't vote for other Xenophobic, isolationists who insist on making their own nation "great". Meanwhile these xenophobes tell the rest of the world that they do not exist and they insist the raping of their land and pillaging of their own natural resources at the hands of unrestrained multinational corporations is either not happening or is perfectly acceptable because they're inferior to others. I for one don't believe that you'll listen to that advice so I'll suggest that if your question wasn't facetious and actually genuine, and thanks to WP:AGF I am bound to that option, try to improve literacy in the nation in which you live, and possibly in other nations where you may have influence. However, if you expect us to remove a perfectly valid guideline because you think one or two uniformed people will arrive at an article for a sports figure, musician, author—no, we're talking about ignorant people, and they won't read—celebrity, or video game and won't know where a major country in the world is, well you're stupider than they are. Seriously. No one is so sufficiently geographically uninformed that they do not know where the G8 nations of the world are. I'll even go out on a limb here and say that if they don't know, even a link with an HTML flash tag and Javascript that will force their mouse to only that link will force them to click on said link, of if they mistakenly do, will they read the content and become more informed. I mean, you clearly haven't become more informed as a part of this discussion, have you?
In short, it's a nice idea, but the data we have is that most links are not clicked on. It's not because they're not present, in that case, our click-through rate would be a higher percentage, if for no other reason that the novelty of a blue link in an article—Oh! What does this thing do?—but because the readers are either uninterested, or as several editors have posited: they are sufficiently aware of the subject and do not need to read an encyclopedic article on the subject.
Finally, in light of the suggestion that I have some sort of ownership of this guideline, rather than appreciating that I am trying to assist two misguided individuals to understand the error of their misguided ways, I will simply say: you just don't get it. Walter Görlitz (talk) 05:12, 5 July 2016 (UTC)

overlinking

This section is poorly written. People are interpreting it to mean don't include links to a -country-. If that were the case, then countries would NEVER be linked! What exactly is a "major geographic location"? Any thoughts? Alaney2k (talk) 20:08, 30 June 2016 (UTC)

I think it's well written and it does mean don't include links to a country. Countries should not be linked unless the subject bears a relevant connections to the linked nation so that the link helps readers understand the article more fully. Alternately, if the country is likely to be unfamiliar to readers. A major geographic locations would be something like "Antarctica", "Asia", "Argentina", "California" or "Paris". In other words, if the location is likely to be familiar to a reader, don't link it. Walter Görlitz (talk) 06:22, 1 July 2016 (UTC)
Ok, then who -decides- if it will be familiar? I thought this was a world-wide encyclopedia. The vast majority of articles that include a birthplace, include a link to the country. To me, this indicates that current practice on Wikipedia -is- to link to the country. I will see if there is anything in the discussion archives about this. Alaney2k (talk) 13:36, 1 July 2016 (UTC)
Like prose, editors are here to bring their intelligence to bear on such matters. For the record, readers don't need links to many countries at all. One of the problems in linking whole country articles is that they usually fail the relevance test: Sport in South Africa might be a better bet than South Africa in a sport-related article. And probably best unpiped, perfectly clear, down the bottom in "See also". Tony (talk) 13:40, 1 July 2016 (UTC)
Absolutely in agreement with this. Alaney2k (talk) 21:26, 1 July 2016 (UTC)
There's a fair bit of discussion on linking countries in the archives, mostly with little agreement. As noted, actual editor practice is often to link them, and the guidelines allow linking even to "major" places where "relevant" to the topic at hand, but equally there are a few editors who deprecate pretty much any such linking and use scripts to strip country links out of articles. I agree it's hard to define "major" or "well known" etc for such a diverse, global readership, who have different knowledge levels and different interests (and of course knowledge doesn't just refer to simply knowing what, say, Germany is, but to all the addition information contained in the actual WP page on Germany). As for what readers "need", that's all pretty opaque and hard to assess too of course. However, this is meant to be an easily navigable online resource, and never linking countries would be as daft as always linking them (indeed it would suggest there's no need to have articles about them at all). Ultimately, it has to be about editor discretion and depend on the context. In the context of geography or politics, it makes sense to link other places, whether "well known" or not (eg to Germany on the France page, and to the United States on the Colorado page etc); when they are mentioned in passing on pages on wholly separate topics, not so much. N-HH talk/edits 16:32, 1 July 2016 (UTC)
Then maybe some discussion about linking to a country in an address. It seems to me that -one- link in an address in an infobox may be overlinking, but I think the focus of reducing overlinking should not be on links that are sort of boilerplate like that. I myself am not convinced there is any real harm in having more links than necessary, within reason. This is the internet, not reading a book. It's a different experience. Alaney2k (talk) 21:26, 1 July 2016 (UTC)
That's what we've been doing. One link in an infobox for 95% of the subjects on Wikipedia is not appropriate. For the other 5%, it may be. Too many links is a problem. I'm sorry you don't understand that. Walter Görlitz (talk) 23:23, 1 July 2016 (UTC)
Well no one has ever explained satisfactorily what the problem is exactly. It's not a problem of a lack of understanding of some objective truth, but a simple disagreement about where to draw an inevitably subjective line. Very few people want every word linked that could be (although that accusation is often thrown around), but some do think that erring slightly on the side of having "too many" (for some) links is not the end of the world and probably better than stripping out links to excess. If you don't want to click on a link you don't have to, and if it offends your aesthetic sensibilities you might just have to deal with that; by contrast, if a link which might be useful to some readers is cut out, that's an actual, substantive disbenefit. N-HH talk/edits 08:47, 2 July 2016 (UTC)
Thanks. I think you've nailed it. Alaney2k (talk) 02:27, 3 July 2016 (UTC)
You've completely missed the point. Please read the actual research. What you have to deal with is that linking common terms results in unnecessary linking. If that offends your aesthetic sensibilities, then you might just have to deal with that. Walter Görlitz (talk) 04:57, 3 July 2016 (UTC)
What is this "research" you refer to? As I said, the problem has never been actually explained, and vague responses like that rather obviously don't add anything. As for missing the point, you clearly have when it comes to mine about aesthetics vs substantive disadvantage. In addition, I offered no opinion anyway about whether links look bad or good in text; those wanting to strip them out to excess often do, hence why I mentioned aesthetics. Your reference to them literally makes no sense. I made reasonable, commonsense observations, and suggested that this can be dealt with flexibly and with moderation, and get a pithy and unhelpful response like that. N-HH talk/edits 08:47, 3 July 2016 (UTC)
The "research" is the content referenced in the guideline that starts "in February 2015".
Not reading wit it states is a good way to argue against it actually being explained. Walter Görlitz (talk) 14:16, 3 July 2016 (UTC)
"If you don't want to click on a link you don't have to, and if it offends your aesthetic sensibilities you might just have to deal with that; by contrast, if a link which might be useful to some readers is cut out, that's an actual, substantive disbenefit."—How about: "If you want to divert to a whole-country article, you might just have to deal with that by typing it into the search box rather than diluting our valuable wikilinking system with a sea of blue that hardly anyone clicks on."� 11:27, 3 July 2016 (UTC)
I think in some ways this guideline represents an elitist viewpoint. I like that it states use links to clarify, etc. But it undercuts it by wanting to exclude things that people are -expected- to understand and already know. Like 'common occupations.' I don't think a simple percentage of log analysis reveals anything. What else would you expect but that most links would not be clicked? Alaney2k (talk) 14:58, 3 July 2016 (UTC)
What it does is state the obvious: no one will ever click on the link, and they're distracting. I'm sorry you don't agree with the numbers presented. I don't buy your tenuous grasp on statistics or design. Walter Görlitz (talk) 15:00, 3 July 2016 (UTC)
I'm sorry you feel insulted. Alaney2k (talk) 15:11, 3 July 2016 (UTC)
It's one thing to want to understand why we have the guideline in-place. It's another thing to offer an honest argument against the current guideline. What I see here is a desire to link everything to anything that has an article because we can even though no one will ever make use of that sort of linking. A return to awful web design of the lat 1990s.
Let me ask you how it benefits a reader of the Bruce Springsteen article to have a link to "United States" in either the infobox or anywhere else in the article. I could see a link to Ghana for Reggie Rockstone or someone like that, so it's not a flat rule that no countries should be linked ever, but judgment must be used, and too often all that is used is patriotism. WP:INFOBOXFLAG prevents the listing of flags in infoboxes for similar reasons, and I have seen musicians and album release dates listed with flags. It's completely unnecessary. When applied correctly, the linking of countries will add information to the reader. When done incorrectly, it's just distracting. Walter Görlitz (talk) 15:32, 3 July 2016 (UTC)
Well, for a start, Bruce Springsteen is from America. For someone reading the wikipedia article in India, it would be perfectly useful to have a link to Springsteen's country in his article. I recall when Keith Richards was convicted of drug possession in Toronto. The judge was completely unaware of Richards' fame. There are people who are unaware of obvious things and they are not stupid. There are people whose English is a second language. There are people who genuinely are interested in the content and do click on links.
On the other side, I do agree with minimizing the "sea of blue". I agree the use of flags is "over the top" and contributes to country vs country feelings that are often negative. Back to the point, my issue is with the wording of the guideline and that it causes editors' behaviour of banning a single link to a country in an article. That is going too far in the opposite direction. And, really is pointless in that 99.9% of biographical articles do have that link. I think the current is too strong to swim against. I would rather the guideline give more concrete direction about overlinking. I believe one link in either the infobox or the prose is not too much. Of course, we are trying to help in good judgment. But a single link to a person's country is not the problem. If the entries in an infobox are all linked, they are all blue. I would ask you to explain the negative to a reader of that. I know that people even debate the usefulness of infoboxes but I don't want to open that can of worms. Alaney2k (talk) 16:57, 3 July 2016 (UTC)
Do you realize that you just equated knowledge of an individual—Keith Richards—with the existence of an entire nation. I defy you to show me someone in India, who has access to the Internet who does not know what the "United States" actually is. I gave up on reading your lame ass argument when you got to Richards though. There's not winning an argument with people like you. Walter Görlitz (talk) 23:50, 3 July 2016 (UTC)
And I feel the same about you. You seem thoroughly miffed that people would question your judgment. But that does not progress the issue. Alas. As it stands, there is a policy with little or no backing. A solution for a non-problem, that only leads to disagreement between editors. Alaney2k (talk) 17:25, 4 July 2016 (UTC)
It might to hurt to try to enunciate the desired (and undesired) results better, but it's not easy. After years, I have my own mental rubric for when to link a country or major city and when not, but it's difficult to just lay it out. And the community's overall expectations about this have also shifted radically. When I first got even, even citations typically had stuff like |location=[[London]], [[England]] (or worse). We were also linking dates back then. There are a lot of factors. Is it someone nationality in the lead of their bio? Is it a place in the same bio but just mentioned in passing? Is it in an article on politics mentioning an international dispute between two countries? Is it in an article about a pop-star mentioning her world tour stops? I can see the difference between these instantly, but noob usually can't.

It's another bit of evidence that we really need some kind of relevance/significance guideline. The lack of one has been pressing, and it's a very frequent source of dispute, about links, about what is and isn't trivia, about whether an a particular image, or how many images, should be included, what goes in an infobox, how much detail is too much in a fictional character's description or a film summary, versus a tv episode summary (at its article vs. in an episode list), etc., etc.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  21:07, 5 July 2016 (UTC)

Overlinking examples

I've just noticed that the list of examples of geographical locations too well known to normally need linking is "United States, London, New York City, Latvia, Berlin". Now, due respect to Latvia, but it could hardly be considered well known; anyone could easily come up with the names of a dozen countries and cities that are better known - what's the justification for including it in the list? Colonies Chris (talk) 17:27, 5 September 2016 (UTC)

Links within quotes

There is an ongoing discussion about wikilinks within quotations at WT:MOS#Proposed revision: links within quotes. I suggest that, should WP:MOS be modified reflecting the discussion, the current "Items within quotations..." under the General points on linking style section of this page be revised accordingly, because otherwise the two pages would be contradicting. Nardog (talk) 16:15, 5 September 2016 (UTC)

This is the right place to discuss the proposals about WP:MOSLINK, not some other forums. Cheers! Jayaguru-Shishya (talk) 18:15, 5 September 2016 (UTC)

Fixing incoming links for dead anchors

I just discovered a dead anchor (#molar r) in the English phonology page - the actual information had moved elsewhere. The anchor had several redirects to it, fortunately the rdcheck tool linked on "What links here" helped me find them.

However, I don't see any way to find non-redirect uses of the anchor, and the English phonology article has far too many incoming links to check which ones use the anchor, so if there are any (admittedly I don't expect it) I cannot fix them. Is there a way to find general internal links which use an anchor? --Ørjan (talk) 18:57, 9 September 2016 (UTC)

Copy editing

I recently cleaned up some of the wording under Piped links and redirects to sections of articles, and realized that it gives two conflicting sets of instructions. Up until I made my initial edit, one part of the instructions read, "For example, to link to the 'Culture' subsection of the Oman article, type [[Oman#Culture|culture of Oman]]", while below it read "It is bad practice to make such links as Article#Section links explicitly [...] Instead, link through redirects". Any thoughts on resolving this apparent conflict? —Coconutporkpie (talk) 14:51, 19 September 2016 (UTC)

I thought most of your copy-editing was pretty good, but it's now been reverted. What do people think of the original edit? Tony (talk) 13:33, 20 September 2016 (UTC) [updated 09:37, 24 September 2016 (UTC)]
I'm trying to see why the changes are improvements. Tony1, why do you think that the changes are better? Since Coconutporkpie and I commonly butt heads over our interpretations of Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or what are improvements regarding such pages (see, for example, Wikipedia talk:Neutral point of view/Archive 52#Biased vs. subjective statements, including Clockchime's commentary), maybe I was too quick to revert. I'd rather be on the safe side, though. Like Clockchime, I've seen Coconutporkpie attempt to change a rule to aid one or more arguments in a dispute. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 13:56, 20 September 2016 (UTC)
I can be okay with changing the one thing that Coconutporkpie cited above, but I'm not sold on all of the changes. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 18:45, 20 September 2016 (UTC)
I'm mainly concerned with the language. Let's take the opening sentence:

"You may want to display a text for a link that is different from the linked article title."

It was edited to:

"You may want a link to display text other than the title of the article being linked to."

I'd go further:

"You may want a link to display text other than the title of the article being linked to (the "target article").

Then ... "For example:" is nicer than the brusque "Example:". Tony (talk) 03:24, 21 September 2016 (UTC)

Okay, Tony1, I've carefully examined the changes and I'm fine with most of them being re-implemented. I'm iffy on two of the changes, though:
"Do not place a link to a name within another name." was changed to "Do not create links to names within names." Isn't the first one clearer since placing a link and creating a link are not necessarily the same thing?
"Use of a piped link here avoids the unsightly Article name#Section name in the display text (alternative methods are to use a redirect or {{Section link}}). The format for a link to a page section is [[Article#Section|name of link]]." was changed to "If you decide not to use a redirect, you have to use a piped link, because the format "Article name#Section name" is inappropriate for display in an article. The format for a subsection link is [[Article#Section|name of link]]." Is the format always inappropriate? Should we state that we "have to use a piped link"? Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 09:53, 21 September 2016 (UTC)
Thank you for suggesting the phrases ”Do not place a link to a name within another name" and "Use of a piped link here avoids the unsightly Article name#Section name..." Those were in fact the exact phrases that I used in my Revision as of 06:12, 19 September 2016. —Coconutporkpie (talk) 16:19, 21 September 2016 (UTC)
LOL, you got me. I read those two pieces backwards. I blame it on lack of sleep. Either way, it seems you're all clear to re-add your changes. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 16:21, 21 September 2016 (UTC)
I appreciate the copy editing by Tony1 (Revision as of 12:49, 19 September 2016). It was helpful. —Coconutporkpie (talk) 16:19, 21 September 2016 (UTC)
Thanks to both of you! Tony (talk) 05:07, 22 September 2016 (UTC)

Since this has become a discussion about changes to the language used on the page, I've renamed this section and re-posted my initial query about the conflicting advice below. —Coconutporkpie (talk) 09:37, 24 September 2016 (UTC)

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