Talk:William Baker

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[edit] Corrections as of October 7th (UTC)

Let me be clear. The excessive and piped redlinks were a problem. I also changed the template at the bottom of the page to be more exact. The defense of a bad situation by Nihonjoe was bad enough, but the sloppy wholesale revert of my edit went too far. Redlinks exist for the same reason internal links do: to highlight something notible/relavent. However, they can also be overused just like internal links, especially on disambiguation pages. The criteria for redlinking, as I understand, is notiblity and a high probability of an article being created; "Why wait till it's orphaned?" and such. However, few if any of these links met the latter requirement. The assertion that these people are even notible is a dubious one. (The fact that most of them are dead decreases the likelihood of future articles as well.) Now, the piping while well intended, is against dab style policy. I get that the titles would be redundant, and therein lies another reason to remove the link. An existing article title is one thing, but these people are just sort of...there. Besides, on the off chance an article were created, I'm sure it would be linked back here anyway. Finally, the outright removal of a few WBs was simply because I not only doubted their notiblity, but their existence. As far as I am concerned, their listing here was either pointless or violated WP:VAIN. ACS (Wikipedian); Talk to the Ace. See what I've edited. 03:17, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

While I can understand removing the pipes (which I should have done when I reverted your edit), removing all the redlinks is absurd. There are several of those which will likely have articles at some point. WP:MOSDAB certainly allows for redlinks that are likely to have articles at some point. If they are important enough to be listed on this page at all, they are important enough to be redlinked if no article currently exists. ···日本穣^{? · Talk to Nihonjoe} 10:05, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

And I insist that their very listing on this page is suspect. Still, this is disambiguation page. It doesn't have to limit itself to people with articles and it doesn't. The issue is whether or not these people without articles will get them. How, exactly, do you know they will? How's the Kansas politician going to get someone's attention within...say...the next year? A few redlinks in an article in fine. Every name on a dab page wikified when only four have articles is a cleanup issue. Defending such status is the absurdity. ACS (Wikipedian); Talk to the Ace. See what I've edited. 16:20, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

Yes, but you removed all of them, not leaving even those most likely to get articles. That's my main objection. You've gone from one extreme to the other. As I already indicated, the WP:MOSDAB allows for redlinks, and so I'm adding back the ones I think most likely to receive articles. ···日本穣^{? · Talk to Nihonjoe} 09:03, 8 October 2006 (UTC)