Wikipedia talk:Write the Article First

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[edit] Agree

I don't have any specific changes to submit right now, but I do want to say I agree with the concept. Especially on lists or articles that attract a high amount of linkspam when people try to use them for advertising--Crossmr (talk) 16:07, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Agreed on both counts, it might be worth working towards consensus on the list policy and guidelines pages to have only blue linked entries or at least more guidance. WLU (talk) 16:47, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

I also agree to the fullest and would like to thank UnitedStatesian for the work he put into writing the essay. I think it will prove valuable i.e. when giving advice to new editors. ~ | twsx | ^talk_cont | ~ 21:42, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Comment

As a result of this evoloution, these days, editors who add to lists often have no intention of writing the redlinked article, ever. This may be simply because writing the article is more time consuming than adding the link to the list or template. "Someone else will do it," the editor reasons. - I hate to say it, but this doesn't seem like such a wrong thing to do. At least a couple times, I've written articles simply to get rid of the glaring redlinks on lists.

One of Wiki's great flaws (IMO) is the equating of Verifiability with Notability, and the idea that anybody who is notable will inevitably have an article created about them. Well, given the number of policies and guidelines and the relatively strict restrictions of what constitutes an acceptable source, creating an article is not trivial. It's really a total pain, actually. For example, when I wrote the stub on Ron Lynch, it took at least a couple hours to find even the meager sources for information I already knew, and in spite of having his IMDB page listed as a source and a dozen other articles already linking to it before it was even created, it was still nominated for speedy delete three hours after its creation. That's not a friendly environment for article creation.

So let's flip that around. One of the articles that included a redlink to Ron Lynch was Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist, where he was listed in the list of guests. If we follow this essay strictly, the choice for the person who (correctly) added Lynch's name to that list would have been: 1) Leave the name off the list since no article exists regardless of its accuracy or verifiability, 2) Add the name unlinked and hope another editor doesn't delete it thinking that it's spam or NN, or 3) Create some sourceless, barren stub article on Ron Lynch in order to make the link turn blue and pray it doesn't get deleted later.

I don't want to sound like I'm bagging on this too much, because the core idea is totally right. But I think it might be worth including some kind of caveat for when an editor is adding factual yet redlinked information to a list. Maybe there could be an alternate course of action, such as being sourcing the addition of the name if no article exists yet, or explaining the reason for the addition on the article Talk page. Torc2 (talk) 08:18, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

Great points, thanks. I'll write up some additional text and put in on in the next couple of days.UnitedStatesian (talk) 17:34, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Disagree

If the world was my playground and I ruled it, I would see to it that you could not create any article without any article namespace redlinks leading to it. I don't think that would make an existing problem (the adding of unencyclopedic links to existing articles) worse, but it would definitely help resolve two other important problems: the creating of most speedyable articles (some recently deleted articles for example: Curtly morris, Samir faruki, Whiteheads RFC), and the creation of walled gardens. Plrk (talk) 11:14, 15 May 2008 (UTC)