Wikipedia talk:Red link

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[edit] POV text

I moved the following POV text posted by Information-Ecologist from the article to here. It presents one person's viewpoint and does not belong in the actual article. -- Cyrius 04:21, Mar 26, 2004 (UTC)

Clicking on a "red" link - in truth, more of an orange red, not to be confused with a bluish red followed link - leads the Wikipedian to an Edit page for a new definition of the word or phrase in red. This provides little of value to the person who reaches the page, and contributors are generally discouraged from making use of red links.

[edit] Value of alternative construction

The lack of value of red links - combined with the value of exploring definitions that have not yet been created in Wikipedia - has led to an ad hoc implementation at collective intelligence agency and information ecology of a proposed alternative construction of the red link as a search link, as in the following example: information habitat - created with the following code:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?search=information+habitat&go=Go information habitat]

The code has the effect of directing one to Wikipedia's search page for the words contained in the link, arguably the optimal place within Wikipedia from which to explore the use or meaning of the words.

This would appear to offer substantially more of value both to those who are browsing Wikipedia and to contributors to Wikipedian definitions. The value of this alternative construction is that it leads to a search of Wikipedia's body of knowledge rather than to a relatively worthless ghost page.

But red links allow the _creation_ of new knowledge - it is through a red link that a new page is made. Your proposal would cause the encyclopedia to stagnate as no new pages could be made. Secretlondon 20:26, 26 Mar 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Red links invite contribution

MediaWiki by default ships with the behaviour that a Go search on a term that does not exist simply says "There is no such article" and returns a list of search results. Note that this is different than the behaviour of WikiMedia projects, as a result of changing MediaWiki:Nogomatch to include a red link to a page with the same name as the search terms. This seems to have been done to increase, rather than decrease, the ability of people to create new articles.

But if so why does MW ship without this useful feature? Well, according to MW developer Brion, (as quoted at m:Create_page_after_search_not_found), this is because:

...[T]raditionally wikis are an exploratory medium; you find pages through links from other pages or RecentChanges. creation of new pages is something that's to be done in context, by editing a page to create a link.

Clearly Wikism (and MW's model) is pro-redlink. Anti-redlink policy and practice is unWikian. The whole notion of Wikism is to empower and encourage the user to contribute. Bringing a user to a dead page via the advance warning of a redlink can encourage contribution. Eliminating redlinks reduces ability and tendency for new contribution.

It would be very easy for Wiki software to simply not activate dead links (i.e. don't link red links at all). But on the contrary, it does, for this very reason.

- Keith D. Tyler 20:06, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Discussions from Wikipedia:Only make links that are relevant to the context

Discussions moved from Wikipedia talk:Only make links that are relevant to the context.

[edit] Red links

I filed myself as an opponent of this guideline above, but only because the guideline for some reason discourages the creation of red links.

1. Red links shouldn't be part of this guideline. This guideline is about "Only make links that are relevant to the context". If someone thinks there's a problem with creating red links, make it a separate guideline.

2. Red links are great. They are a hook that new Wikipedians often use to start their very first article. The "Most requested articles" list serves the same purpose. They remind us this is a work in progress.

Also, the example about the link to "United States" isn't a good one; I'll try improving it now.

Tempshill 20:07, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

I have the opposite opinion to Tempshill other than perhaps agreeing that redlinks could be it's own separate guideline. For me ...
  • 1. Redlinks make any article look clumsy and unfinished.
  • 2. Editors and contributors who are interested in a primary article monitor that article and go back and forth into the original to link and pipelink to relevant subsidiary articles that they either write or find.
  • 3. This back and forth step can not be understated because it (a) seeks constant monitoring of the primary article and (b) removes the compulsion for contributors especially new contributors to write small stub like responses to redlinks that are often either poorly named (through lack of research) or previously written under another name - thus disjointing the encyclopaedia. For example if I link this paragraph: Sydney; Australia was favoured to be the host of the 2000, Olympic Games during the last year of the second millenium or if you prefer the first year of the first millenium - I set up a number of valid and invalid links that confuse poor punction (let's face it there is plenty of that through wiki, through commonwealth versus non-commonwealth spelling, and topic conjuction in one form versus another form somewhere on wiki.
  • 4. Timing is the issue - redlinks are okay for a week or two - maybe a month - but many contributors start an article add redlinks and then for months never come back - nor will they.
  • 5. For those of us that remove what otherwise appear to be valid future links - but are currently redlinks we should (and do in my case) check to see when the redlinks were created and if they are older than a few weeks then remove, or if they are trivial then remove them at any time.VirtualSteve 04:44, 10 February 2006 (UTC)
This is your opinion. This is not policy. There is a fundamental difference. Ambi 05:22, 10 February 2006 (UTC)
  • What in heavens name is wrong now Ambi. Did I say it was policy? This Wikitalk page is an opinion page. Have a look at the top of the page it says exactly that it is a collection of opinions. Can you please stop pointing your gun at every one that has a different opinion than you - better still seeing you nominate yourself as an administrator can you please tell me who I complain to about your fair policing and the steps for formulating that complaint - by return message please? VirtualSteve 06:45, 10 February 2006 (UTC)
  • I agree with Tempshill. Redlinks are great for encouraging creation of useful articles. ··gracefool |☺ 07:17, 10 February 2006 (UTC)
  • Redlinks that have been created through a genuine inability to find an already existing article are a sign that a redirect should probably be created (and the red link pointed to the correct place), not that the term should not be linked. --Martyman-(talk) 07:23, 10 February 2006 (UTC)
    • Unless there's no article on the subject... ··gracefool |☺ 07:36, 10 February 2006 (UTC)
  • I agree that red links are largely tangential to this guideline. I think we need a guideline that talks about not creating spurious and stupid links - let's talk about how we can make this guideline into that, not get rid of it. Oh, and Nandesuka, Ambi is female. Deco 08:24, 10 February 2006 (UTC)
    • Oh, and if anyone wants my opinion on red links: in an encyclopedia of this size they're often a sign that you screwed up a link (not so in smaller pedias). My advice: if you see a red link, double and triple check for an article on the topic using search. This may lead to the creation of a redirect. If you don't find it, go ahead and leave the red link as long as it satisfies Only make links that are relevant to the context. Deco 08:28, 10 February 2006 (UTC)
  • Some well-targeted redlinks are good for the encyclopedia. Spam-like lists of redlinks to trivial topics that will never develop into acceptable articles are bad. When in doubt, I prefer the conservative approach - leave your list on your userpage until you're ready to actually write the article. I think the existing paragraph does a good job of guiding new users through the thinking about what is and is not generally considered to be appropriate. Rossami (talk) 15:49, 10 February 2006 (UTC)
  • Per Deco—whichever way this goes, the revert-warring on this page is not productive; I agree the current wording is not optimal, and open to misinterpretation, but a compromise version of this could work. Mindspillage (spill yours?) 22:57, 10 February 2006 (UTC)
    • Clearly there is no consensus on it, so it should not be included with the rest of the page which is agreed on. ··gracefool |☺ 03:10, 13 February 2006 (UTC)
      • A point of procedure - we are discussing a long-established clause which has had wide acceptance in the past. It has been part of this page since the second edit. (Personally, I thought the bullet was stronger with the Heinlein example but that's a minor point.) In such a long-standing case, it is not the responsibility of the defenders of the status quo to show that consensus still exists. Rather, it is incumbent on those attempting to change the page to show that consensus has changed. Rossami (talk) 04:54, 13 February 2006 (UTC)
  • I concur with Rossami; a red link or two is not going to bring the world to an end, but a metric ton of them generally is a leading indicator of a poorly structured article. Nandesuka 03:50, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

I propose a rephrasing of the paragraph on red links.

Like the guideline says, if a term is relevant to the article context, it should be defined as a link. In my opinion, that guideline should be followed regardless of whether the link becomes red or not, or we'll be generating a lot of extra work of retroactively linking necessary terms. I also believe that correctly placed red links encourages people to expand and improve Wikipedia, which to me is more important than the negative impact they have on the reading experience, which can be solved later (a future feature of Wikipedia could be a user setting that converts all red links into ordinary text, for example).

I agree, however, that extra care should be taken when you notice that one of your links becomes red, and that you perform additional checks - there might be a reason why the term has no article, or the article might go under a different name. This is what I'd like the paragraph on red links to explain.

Wintran 22:04, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

We clearly disagree about the importance of the reading experience. But reasonable people can disagree. I'd ask you to reconsider your thought about "a future feature of Wikipedia [that would] convert all redlinks into ordinary text". Such a setting would defeat the statement immediately before it that redlinks encourage people to expand Wikipedia. If we ever allow redlinks to not show, it will be far more difficult for people to find and expand the desired article. I do not see us ever enabling such a function. Rossami (talk) 02:16, 30 April 2006 (UTC)
Regarding the future feature, my thought was that it would be a user preference that each registered user can change on their own. Per default it would display red links as it does today. This option would allow people who find red links distracting, or who only use Wikipedia for reading, to hide them when they're logged in. I haven't really thought about this feature in detail but I don't think such optional individual preferences would cause any harm, as long as the default value remains the same.
Btw, I just noticed that there already exists a similar preference under the Misc tab called Format broken links, that allows you to display red links like this: red link? instead of red link. I can't say I'm certain that my feature is needed now that I found that.
I still wish to see the red links paragraph rephrased to encourage people to create correct links even if they become red (just be more careful and recheck that they are correct). Otherwise, like I said, I'm afraid it'll generate too much extra work and slow down the growth of Wikipedia. Wintran 11:33, 30 April 2006 (UTC)
  • As far as I'm concerned, red links shouldn't be part of this guideline, per the first reason given by Tempshill above. It has nothing to do with the scope of this guideline (the relation between "links" and "context"). Whether, after putting a link, it colours "red" or "blue" has nothing to do with context. --Francis Schonken 22:32, 29 April 2006 (UTC)
I've added a brief addendum to this section. I do think there is a pretty strong consensus that red links to topics that clearly deserve articles are desirable, but that massive numbers of links or those to topics unlikely to ever have articles are not bery helpful. I do also agree that this isn't really a context issue, and that this rule might be better incorporated into Wikipedia:Manual of Style (links), which at the moment is completely missing a discussion of red links. - SimonP 22:15, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
I agree. Let's get this out of this article - I doubt even the supporters of this clause would be upset to see it move from one guideline page to another. Also see my brief discussion above of "in a Wikipedia of this size..." Deco 23:37, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
Forgive me for not reading through all of the opinions, but let me just tell you mine: I am generally pro-redlink, as long as they aren't to overdone in an article (a few redlinks are okay, they are rather positive, as Tempshill states in his point #2). I want to add, however, that in lists, for example lists of languages or language families or presidents of certain states, redlinks should be kept a) to remind the reader that there is some work that could be done and b) to become blue in future, when someone creates that article, who does not know of the redlink in the original list. — N-true 16:44, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Redlinks useful?

The recent edits to this guidance by SimonP are a result of a disagreement he had with me, where I citied WP:CONTEXT as a reason to remove redlinks from multiple articles on 5/31. We had a discussion about this on my talk page, but now that his changes here to this article have been reverted, I'm wondering how valid his points are. While I know that this is not the way it is currently stated in the guidance, is the following considered a valid and supportable point of view here at Wikipedia?

What should not be linked - Redlinks (links that go nowhere), unless you're prepared to promptly turn those links into real ones yourself by writing the articles. It's usually better to resist linking these items until you get around to writing an article on each one.

Thanks, -- Argon233 T C @ ∉  20:17, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Absolutely not. There are many legitimate and immediately relevant topics that don't have articles. One that often comes up for me is well-known researchers in a narrow field. It's far better to leave in a link that encourages useful expansion than to delete them unilaterally. There was some discussion about redlinks farther up the page that shows a clear lack of consensus. Deco 20:24, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
And I think the quoted section is very supportable. It is not, however, an absolute rule. That's why the line says "usually better" and why it clearly says at the top of the page that this guideline is in dynamic tension with the Build the web guideline. Some redlinks are good for the project. Carefully targetted redlinks on specialized topics can be a way to entice the specialists to fill in a blank space in our coverage. On the other hand, lots of redlinks that have little chance of being filled in anytime soon are a distraction to our readers. They can actually get in the way of understanding and usability. Striking the right balance requires editorial judgment and discretion. Cooperative editing and consensus-seeking will generally lead us to the right balance. Rossami (talk) 20:57, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
Well said. Deco 00:29, 3 June 2006 (UTC)
I don't agree. I think all relevant links should be created and encouraged, regardless of if they become red or not. If a reader finds them disturbing this could be solved with a simple user preference, as opposed to retroactively having to add links that were previously red once they're turned into real links, which means a lot of extra work. Red links also inspires expansion of Wikipedia. See my comments at Red links above for more. Wintran 09:26, 3 June 2006 (UTC)
Unfortunately, under the current mediawiki software, it can not be solved through our existing user preferences. You can either turn them all on or all off. And I don't foresee us ever putting such a user preference in place because if we did, it would defeat your stated purpose. Readers who can't see the red link can't be inspired by them to expand Wikipedia.
No one is arguing against the addition of "relevant links". The challenge is how to define "relevant" in the context of the particular article. Rossami (talk) 13:19, 3 June 2006 (UTC)
True, and I agree that extra care should be taken to ensure that links that become red really are relevant, such a checking that other articles don't already cover the subject. The reason I don't like the quote in Argon233's message is because I find it misleading - If the red link really is relevant, and don't overlap with an existing article, it shouldn't matter whether the current user is planning to start the article or if someone else eventuelly starts it a few years later, the link should be created in either case.
If registered users are disturbed by the visuals of red links, they can switch link format to questionmarks instead of whole red words (found at My preferences/Misc), but I agree that a feature to completely hide them might be bad. Wintran 13:19, 5 June 2006 (UTC)
Redlinks are a signal that articles need to be created, especially when you come across a redlink to a TV show, movie, or book (as examples I most frequently encounter). If the redlink is to something so obscure that it's doubtful an article will be created ... well to be honest that's a POV judgement call and deleting the redlink, to be honest, would violate WP:NPOV. I think redlinks are fine, so long as articles don't become overlinked, for which there is already another rule in place. 23skidoo 23:44, 7 June 2006 (UTC)
I largely agree with you, except that that's a misapplication of NPOV. It's possible to use links in a POV way - for example, refusing to link articles that contradict your viewpoint - but edits that aim to remove information that isn't notable in the opinion of that editor are not POV edits, no more than removing a diatribe on George Bush's cat from George Bush is. Deco 02:50, 8 June 2006 (UTC)
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