Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Linking/Archive 2

message: Depending on settings, some users may not see them clearly.
:I put this earlier, rephrasing "They seem to get buried by the bold type.", but is this really so? Normally links are underlined and/or a different color, so bold links can be distinguished from other bold text. Sometimes the words to be linked are not in the text itself, so links in headers can be convenient, avoiding cumbersome duplication. I agree that links in headers must be avoided if they distract from the meaning of the header as a whole, but I like them in headers like "Transportation in Azerbaijan", where they are the two main generalizations of the subject. - Patrick 11:29 Apr 13, 2003 (UTC)
:: I really dislike links within headers, because I think the bold interferes with the underline and colour change. I prefer to have them as free links in the first sentence. Or, if it's an important link, to use a "Main article" style to really draw attention to it. Martin
::: I agree.  I think really look terrible and should be avoided if at all possible.  --Daniel C. Boyer 19:04 28 Jul 2003 (UTC)
::: My 2c: links in headings are ugly. Avoid where possible, unless all the headings are links in that particular section of the entry. Mixed colour headlines look really amateurish. Tannin
: It should usually be possible to write the first sentence of the section to mention the heading. Eg: "== Foo == \n The  were prominent in the bar region...." -- Tarquin 13:14 Apr 20, 2003 (UTC)
:The only think about links in headers like Transportation in Azerbaijan is that presumably you're in either a transportation or azerbizjan article already, and the two conceptions don't need prelimary explanation and don't need to be exclusively linked in the header--the terms will come up in the body text. Another thing that drives me crazy is linking every state from Alabama to Wyoming in an article that divides stuff up by states. Now, I realize these could by mystifying to someone from Wallingford-on-Tyne or Northwest Billabong, but presumably a link to the United States in the explanatory text could clear that up without uglifying the entire page. jengod 20:58, 31 Dec 2003 (UTC)
thread_title: Links within headers

message: When we have an article which has a lot of years in it ( for example the Erich von Manstein article ), do we have to wikify all the years ( of course, I won't wikify one year twice, but there are at least 15 years in this article ). webkid 17:49 24 Jul 2003 (UTC)
:No, in my opinion years should only be linked if they are really important to the subject in question. In the Erich von Manstein article, currently only the years of birth and death are linked. One could add a few more, but it certainly sounds like a bad idea to link them all. Just like one does not link every word that might be a Wikipedia article. Andre Engels 13:32, 15 Sep 2003 (UTC)
thread_title:  Wikifying (part 2) 

message: :Re: "an article with only links is actively discouraged"
:I'm sure this has been exhaustively discussed but to me the first step in writing an article is to research information available on the web and make a list of links.
:So I did this and put the links on a page.
:Unfortunately it seems "actively discouraged" means "people are encouraged to blow it away".
:Next time I will keep a copy at home (Duh. Well, there weren't that many, I can find them again).
:But supposing I have done a lot of research and collected a lot of relevant links and then I have difficulties actually writing something. Shouldn't I be able to make my collection of links available to others as a starting point? Perhaps I could make a "stub" page which mentions that links are availabe on the "talk" page?
:: But, you must see that an article with just links is not really an article at all and says near to nothing about what the article should be saying. An article about eggs with just links to eggs sites doesn't say what an egg is, how it is important, and so on.
:: If you like, add perhaps a 1 to 2 sentence description to start with (a stub), then the links. This way the page becomes instantly functional, and you can help it grow by adding information later (Of course not by blind copy and pasting! :) Dysprosia 06:34, 25 Nov 2003 (UTC)
thread_title: Articles with only links

message: In the case of albums, especially compilation albums (In this case Echoes, is it considered OK to link out to the same word more than once.
In this case, there are many songs on the album Echoes from identical albums, especially The Wall.
It seems that in this case it would be better because then others won't have to search for another song from that album to get the link, however, another user thinks its better like it currently is (Though notice that on the second disk, for song 9 (Arnold Layne), the album it is from is left as Relics (album)|Relics, and this can be a negatice impact to not linking every song to its appropriate album.
-Fizscy46 18:08, 2 Dec 2003 (UTC)
thread_title:  Multiple Linking for albums 

message: The guidelines currently suggest that more than one link to the same target "may be considered" too much if the links are within 40 lines of each other.  I think we should distinguish between paragraphs of text, and tables.  Paragraphs are usually read from beginning to end, and more than one link to the same target within the same paragraph (or even within the same multi-paragraph section) is unlikely to be useful.  However, in tables such as those in List of asteroids (1-1000) or List of Members of the European Parliament 2004-2009, I think it's useful for every cell to be linked.  Tables are often searched to find a particular entry of interest, and the reader might easily ignore everything outside the one entry of interest, so it's useful if the entry of interest has links for all the relavant terms, whether of not those same terms are also linked elsewhere in the article.  —AlanBarrett 21:05, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree. Maurreen 05:17, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)

text: I agree as well. Matt 04:43, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Multiple links to the same target