Wikipedia talk:Piped link

message: I'm wondering if formating links to be different colors or use small or bold instructions should be here or on a "see also" page linked from here.  There are legitimate reasons for modifying links as such for example if a background color on the page makes links invisible or in signatures or something... Technical 13 (talk) 15:36, 14 June 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Formatting... 

message: The last sentence of Intuitiveness section reads, "If the interpretation is purely that of the editor, it is original research and should be moved someplace else entirely."
While some may find it amusing, the last link may confuse the reader (at least myself, initially). A style guide should be concise and unambiguous, e.g. "it is original research and should not be included."
cmɢʟee⎆τaʟκ 12:00, 17 July 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: Ugh, cryptic.  I've changed to "and should be removed", which preserves the original meaning and encourages fixing of this problem.  Adrian J. Hunter(talk•contribs) 14:24, 17 July 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ironic example 

message: Wikipedia is ever more plagued by 'easter egg' links, as described in this article's section, 'Wikipedia:Piped_link#Intuitiveness'.  This isn't a lack of intuitiveness even - it's a lack of clarity.   Avoiding these should be a matter of policy.  However, looking at Wikipedia:List of policies, it's not clear that there is even an appropriate section for a policy on the use of piping.   If such a policy were introduced, a suitably clear title would be the 'clear links policy'. - Crosbie 15:50, 30 December 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: In my experience, I've found the opposite. I've read several plot summaries for works of fiction that are over-detailed. An example is The Fast and the Furious (2001 film). Almost every vehicle is over-detailed. Whereas Jaws (film) simply uses a generic term for vehicles in that film. Even if the contributors to former film are more knowledgeable about the vehicles in that film, than contributors of the latter's film are, this is a very small group that doesn't represent the average Wikipedia reader. For the most part, the average Wikipedia reader doesn't have as great of an interest in the exact make/model/year/type/subtype/sub-subtype of vehicle appearing in either film. And in the case of TFATF, piping could help cut down the word count (as indicated in its current template message of "excessively detailed plot summary"). Ivansevil (talk) 02:08, 19 September 2018 (UTC)
thread_title: Clear links policy

message: Is it better to link like Pensacola, Florida or like Pensacola, Florida? Siuenti (talk) 11:29, 22 June 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: The first one. See WP:SPECIFICLINK --Redrose64 (talk) 12:34, 22 June 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Pensacola, Florida]] or [[Pensacola, Florida|Pensacola]], Florida 

message: So "[ Citation Needed ]"   ("[ Citation Needed ]")  is right off? :)  (:))  --Guy Macon (talk) 23:46, 7 June 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  WP:EASTEREGG 

message: Yesterday I edited the examples in the "Transparency" section to change "Bombay Explosion (1944)" to "1944 Bombay explosion": .
This edit was reverted by User:Redrose64 with the edit summary, "this defeats the point of the examples."
I'm afraid I don't understand the reasoning here. In what way is the text "Bombay Explosion (1944)" preferable to the text "1944 Bombay explosion"? The second option makes the example sentences read more naturally:
* "After an earlier disaster, the 1944 Bombay explosion, ..." is better than "After an earlier disaster, the Bombay Explosion (1944), ..."
* "After the 1944 Bombay explosion, ..." is better than "After the Bombay Explosion (1944), ..."
So it can't be for readability or naturalness of language. And it can't be to match the title of the linked article, because that title is 1944 Bombay explosion, not Bombay Explosion (1944), which is a redirect.
Why is "Bombay Explosion (1944)" preferable to "1944 Bombay explosion"? —Bkell (talk) 03:20, 30 November 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: The page is about piped links. The section describes a particular type of piped link. A section not much earlier covers the WP:NOTBROKEN situation. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 23:35, 30 November 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: What? The section under discussion is about transparency of piped links and suggests ways to reword a sentence in order to improve that transparency. The reason for my edit was to improve that rewording to use the more natural "1944 Bombay explosion" instead of the clumsy "Bombay Explosion (1944)". My edit was changing the visible text of the examples. WP:NOTBROKEN specifically says: "However, it is perfectly acceptable to change it to Franklin D. Roosevelt if for some reason it is preferred that 'Franklin D. Roosevelt' actually appear in the visible text." The edit I made was to change the visible text from "Bombay Explosion (1944)" to "1944 Bombay explosion", because the text "1944 Bombay explosion" is clearer and more natural language. In none of the three cases was I adding a piped link or changing the link target purely to "fix a redirect," which is what WP:NOTBROKEN is about. The fact that this improvement in the link text also bypassed the redirect is a nice side effect, but it was not the main point of my edit. —Bkell (talk) 23:50, 30 November 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Bombay Explosion (1944)" vs. "1944 Bombay explosion" in transparency examples 

message: After explaining why piping a link to avoid a redirect is poor practice, the guide makes the following rather obscure statement: 
Well, this guidance is not very helpful;  why on earth would target be helpful? (does anyone know, by the way?) Assuming there is a good reason to use target, such reason should be stated, or the whole sentence should go; as it currently stands, it's a pretty useless piece of advice. --Deeday-UK (talk) 23:09, 30 August 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: It does seem not so obvious.  There are some cases where a page doesn't have the proper name, as it is otherwise used. When more than one page has an obvious name, and they turn out the same, only one gets it.  The other will then have a different name, and maybe the redirect is a better name.  Only one I can think of. Gah4 (talk) 04:34, 1 January 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: It's unclear what you mean: what's a page's "proper name"? If "more than one page has an obvious name, and they turn out the same" then those pages require disambiguation, not messing about with redirects and piped links. --Deeday-UK (talk) 12:44, 1 January 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  [ [redirect|target] ] may be helpful? 

message: Can anybody tell the user not to make  as Sun.?  know no ready-to-link piece of wisdom discouraging exactly this kind of misleading markup scrabble. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 10:56, 4 September 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  VisualEditor trash 

message: Can we add a new shortcut to the "Transparency" section? I'm thinking WP:TRANSPARENT or WP:TRANSPARENCY, as I was not expecting to be redirected to that section with WP:EASTEREGG. —Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 )  20:53, 10 November 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  New shortcut for "Transparency"? 

message: When using piped links, should the left part (that isn't displayed) have underscores or blanks?  Seems to me that underscores are fine, and I usually do cut/paste to be sure it is spelled right.  Obviously you need blanks for not piped links. Gah4 (talk) 04:32, 1 January 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Underscore 

message: I think a piped link of the type "numerology" should be OK.  Here "Isopsephy" is the specifically-relevant article, but few people reading the article containing the link would know what this obscure word means.  Therefore, the link is explicated by using the word "numerology" (since isopsephy is a form of numerology), but not linking to the general "numerology" article (most of which would be irrelevant)... AnonMoos (talk) 03:31, 31 May 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Obscure terms 

message: After another editor complained to me about the rendering of navbox "Template:US Mil. Support Rides; WW II–1990", I had some trouble replicating any rendering issues, but I was able to get some funky rendering of the box on my late 2019 "smart" TV-set...
Turned out, my TV-set wasn't able to line-break very long piped texts... – which then influenced the rendering of the entire navbox in an adverse way.
I've asked the other editor whether my alteration, version 15:51 of 14 October 2021, versus the previous version, (oldid=1049889600) 13:10 of 14 October 2021, has also fixed the rendering issue that he complained about.
I then found out that Long piped texts turn out to be a general issue ! — Taking my browser windows out of maxed, and making them narrow, showed that All my regular browsers (Chrome, FFox, Edge / OS=Win10) are unable to line-break long piped-texts, resulting in some very peculiar template rendering... --GeeTeeBee (talk) 16:54, 14 October 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: This is nothing to do with the fact that the links are piped - it would happen just the same for ordinary unpiped links in the same navbox, so strictly speaking, the problem is outside the scope of this page. Anyway, the non-breaking of links is because Template:US Mil. Support Rides; WW II–1990 is built around  which is a specialised form of a navbox. Module:Navbox has this code: 	local tbl = mw.html.create('table')
		:addClass('nowraplinks')
		:addClass(args.bodyclass) and MediaWiki:Common.css has this CSS rule: /* Prevent line breaks in silly places where desired (nowrap)
   and links when we don't want them to (nowraplinks a) */
.nowrap,
.nowraplinks a {
	white-space: nowrap;
} This rule, therefore, is applied to all links inside a navbox, and so, by default, links inside navboxes don't wrap. I don't know why that is done, you'd need to ask at Template talk:Navbox. But this behaviour can be suppressed by adding the  parameter to the  that is inside Template:US Mil. Support Rides; WW II–1990. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:14, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

text: OK, thank you for the quick response & sleuthing efforts! This is far beyond my scope as a bread-and-butter Wikipidian... Love, GeeTeeBee (talk) 08:38, 15 October 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Long piped texts cause template rendering issues on several standard browsers; devices !? 

message: The hatnote currently shows as this:
However, my edit was supposed to show like this:
For the pipe trick in links (such as Wikipedia:Example), see Help:Pipe trick.
Can someone fix this? I don't know how to fix the template turning into a mess when I try to add nowiki tags like I did. 172.112.210.32 (talk) 19:19, 5 December 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: Fixed. You just needed the nowiki tags to be around the entire example, with a literal pipe symbol instead of the . Perryprog (talk) 20:26, 5 December 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Accidentally broke a template in article, don't know how to fix 

message: Please see Wikipedia talk:Redirect#NOTBROKEN needs to be moderated – I've raised some concerns about how stridently opinionated that section has become, and how out-of-step with actual practice; it involves some language here at WP:NOPIPE also.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:40, 26 August 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Moderating some of the language 

message: "At a minimum, link something that, obviously, wouldn't be the title of an article under our article title conventions:
: a war launched in 1763 by a loose confederation of elements of Native American tribes"
Wouldn't the sentence be parsed as "(a war launched in 1763) by (a loose confederation of (elements of Native American tribes))"? The current link separates "elements" from the noun it describes ("Native American tribes").
So I think the correct linking would be "a loose confederation"  AltoStev (talk) 16:26, 29 August 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Example in section #transparency is wrong? +suggested change 

message: Maybe something should be added about languages. Is WP:EASTEREGG to use Daniel J. Alpert (hidden redirect to German Wikipedia) instead of ? Example coming from WP:PHYSICS. ReyHahn (talk) 17:09, 11 October 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Language Wikipedia