Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Dates and numbers/Archive 82

message: A silly and unhelpful rule; sometimes a direct quote, like
:"Whether a little farmer from South Carolina named Tillman is going to rule the Democrat Party in America - yet it is this, and not output, on which the proximate value of silver depends."
 
contains a proper name which should be linked to so the reader can tell who we're talking about without looking up our source. Please tell me where we put that piece of unhelpful nitpicking so I can go object to it. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 23:49, 25 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I strongly agree with the principle; if you link something in a quote you may be changing the intended context or interpretation.  WP:MOSLINK#Quotation Altering this guidelie is a slippery slope, and you never know what garbage may be written into the article you link and how that will reflect on the original quote.  SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:56, 25 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Both of Sandy's arguments work  against linking at all; they have no greater force against links in quotations than elsewhere. She may wish to rephrase the second: this is a piped link to Ben Tillman, who is certainly the primary use of that name. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:19, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

text: Thanks; that's in my first green example above. Tony 07:45, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

text: I think that the general rule that links should be avoided in quotations is a good and important one.  Sometimes there is need for clarification, and links perhaps should be used at such times, but very sparingly.  If the surrounding context can make the meaning clear there should be no linking in the quote. Otherwise, it may be the least evil. CRGreathouse (t | c) 12:21, 27 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree with this too; linking in quotes should be done with extreme  caution; but it is one solution to a difficult if minor problem. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 15:07, 27 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I think the rule should stay - but occasionally be ignored. The few times I have done this it tends to survive later edits. I would only do so if the alternative is a new sentence after the quote to allow insertion of a link.Johnbod 15:32, 27 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: A reasonable test. Perhaps it should be added to WP:MOS (links), as guidance. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 15:57, 27 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: So, CRGreathouse, do you have an example up your sleeve of a rare instance where a link within a quotation is necessary or desirable? Tony 11:27, 28 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  I'm not really a good one to ask -- I always remove links from quotes, and have never added one.  I only concede the possibility. CRGreathouse (t | c) 16:36, 28 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Without an example, it's hard to conceive why the existing policy text needs to be changed. Tony 00:54, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  Of course I don't mind leaving it -- I just didn't want the more extreme version suggested by PMAnderson. CRGreathouse (t | c) 19:17, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Direct quotes aren't linked?

message: Please look at the use of Template:Unit of length. Somebody apparently believed it was necessary to have a template showing all units of length in terms of ångströms, astronomical units, light years, inches etc. It seems a bit silly to me. From a metric readers point of view, it is just weird. It may derive from the no-longer-amusing joke about furlongs-per-fortnight but Wikipedia articles are not supposed to be internet jokes. The template assumes readers of the kilometre article need to know how many ångströms it contains. Similarly the reader of the millimetre is supposed to be interested in how many light years it is. I would not mind if this silly template were confined to one or two articles, but it has been put on lots. 
Please comment at Wikipedia:Templates_for_deletion#Template:Unit_of_length
Lightmouse 15:59, 28 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, but the template also tells you how many feet are in a kilometer.  It's blatantly obvious that this is useful information. --JayHenry 21:06, 28 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Blatently obvious information like that is already in the articles. A fixed template that includes obscure or unlikely conversions makes it not useful. Lightmouse 21:21, 28 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Yep, I'd like examples of where some of these obscure unit conversions are useful to justify their retention. Tony 00:55, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  Oh I agree with that.  I'm not arguing to keep the conversion to ångströms, that's a matter for template talk though.  Anyways, it's all a discussion at TFD for now, sorry for cluttering things here with it. Cheers! --JayHenry 01:20, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I've been working on it and have removed the most absurd conversions.  There's still a lot of room for improvement though. Jɪmp 08:28, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Really necessary to have a template showing all units of length? 

message: First of all, I fail to see how using links, with pipes to make sure it shows what is in fact displayed, is bad. There are several problems with the previous markup - for one thing, it doesn't look like a link even in the default theme (real link color is much brighter blue), and the whole point of having it in any color at all is to simulate a link. Second, it won't change if someone has different CSS, say, in the worst case, what if they have a dark blue background and white text? the "links" will be invisible then. But even if they simply have a different color (gray, green, whatever) for links, it won't match. Also,  is a bad tag regardless - and whoever made this seems to think the closing tag is . These are the reasons I made this change, and I think it should stand. --Random832 23:52, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I changed the color from "darkblue" to "blue".  I suppose a cleaner version would be to set the style so that it would display as if it were a link, but I don't think we want real links.  As for </font color>, in some HTML versions, </font color> doesn't end a , but only a .  I don't know if that's correct HTML, but it seems to work.  — Arthur Rubin |  (talk) 13:57, 31 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: That's not how HTML works. There is no, and there has never been any, html version where there are separate "font size" and "font color" tags. Can you explain why we don't want real links? They don't do any harm, and they're the only thing guaranteed to display the same as links on everyone's system (what if I have links underlined? what if I have a stylesheet that makes "blue links" red and "red links" orange?) - can you explain your objection to my change in the first place, and why you reverted it? Regardless of whether a font color tag is an adequate solution, I don't see what's wrong with having them as links. Why don't you think we want real links? It's possible that whoever made the markup that way didn't realize pipe links were a solution so thought he/she needed to make fake links w/ font color tags to get around the autoformatting (since, obviously, we _don't_ want autoformatting here) --Random832 17:17, 31 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I would favour the use of links, so that they appear exactly as they would under the relevant preferences. SamBC(talk) 19:01, 31 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Are you sure that the pipe links won't be autoformatted in future versions of the Wikimedia software, or automatically removed by reformatting bots?  Thinking it over, the real links don't hurt, other than those problems.  — Arthur Rubin |  (talk) 19:42, 31 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, I'm sure that if that happens it'll be noticed pretty quickly and worked around again. If there's no problem now (as in the case of autoformatting) or only a worry that there might be a problem (as in the case of bots), then I'd say it makes sense to go ahead, rather than worrying about hypotheticals. SamBC(talk) 19:49, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

text: The correct closing tag to both is </font>.  And the best way to implement such a thing is with an inline CSS style, not the deprecated (read: valid but bad)  tag.  Now, what exactly are we talking about?  — Aluvus t/c 05:13, 2 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Yeah, I'm not following this either (other than your accurate corrections of the HTML issues).  The idea of creating fake links strikes me as very "user-hateful", but maybe I'm missing something here... — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont]  ‹(-¿-)› 10:58, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Links vs. <nowiki><font color=darkblue></nowiki>