User talk:Colonies Chris/Archive/2009/Jan
Appearance
This page is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Thanks for your superb contribution
The Special Barnstar | ||
Chris, your highly skilled, sustained work in improving articles during 2008 is a significant but under-recognised achievement. I believe the project is in your debt. We look forward to more of your excellent editing and expert advice in 2009. Tony (talk) 10:54, 31 December 2008 (UTC) |
Canyon Diablo
I often use "standard" in the sense of "the way it's done", not necessarily "the way it's required to be done". Sorry to be confusing; I've confused people plenty of times this way, so I know I need to be more careful. We need this link to help give context: if we link the other parts of where it is, we need to link the country, as it's part of the [forgive me for not being able to think of the right word] "explanation" or "definition" or whatever we want to call the first sentence. Most people know what
6 January is, but we don't remove them from articles on dates because it's relevant to the context. In the same way, we need to link to United States, as it's a major part of the context. Nyttend (talk
) 13:12, 6 January 2009 (UTC)
- Oh, by the way, there is somewhat of a "standard" — see ) 13:14, 6 January 2009 (UTC)
- Nyttend, I'm curious as to how the reader's diversion to the article United States would help their understanding of almost all topics to do with the nation. Perhaps one might link to a section in that article occasionally, say, from the article Economy of the United States; but such a link does need to be geniunely, demonstrably useful. Likewise for "6 January" and "2009". Can you provide examples? Tony (talk) 15:03, 6 January 2009 (UTC)
City-State
What is your reasoning for removing this that links to both the city and state and replacing it with one that just links to the city? 72.159.71.131 (talk) 03:50, 8 January 2009 (UTC)
- You don't say which article you're talking about. But in general, where an article links to a city, it doesn't need to link to the state too; the state is just there either to disambiguate the city (e.g. Portland, Maine vs Portland, Oregon) or to provide context for a reader who might otherwise have no idea at all where the city is (e.g. Elko, Nevada). If a reader wants to know more about the state the city lies in, they can use the link in the city's article. The sort of convoluted construction that you see sometimes, along the lines of [[Des Moines, Iowa|Des Moines]], [[Iowa]] just adds complication without providing any significant benefit. Colonies Chris (talk) 10:53, 8 January 2009 (UTC)
- I'm talking about the thing that is like {{city-state then the city and state. Why does this thing exist then? 72.159.71.131 (talk) 18:55, 8 January 2009 (UTC)
- You must be thinking of the {{city-state}} template. It generates separate city & state links, in the way I described above, but as linking that way isn't good practice, I converted to straightforward [[city, state]] links.Colonies Chris (talk) 10:10, 9 January 2009 (UTC)
- I'm talking about the thing that is like {{city-state then the city and state. Why does this thing exist then? 72.159.71.131 (talk) 18:55, 8 January 2009 (UTC)
- Yeah thats it. What do you mean it isn't good practice? It makes both links, thats not better? Why was it created in the first place? 69.136.60.6 (talk) 20:41, 9 January 2009 (UTC)
- Anyone can create a template; some of them are a good idea, some not. When an article links to a city, that's what the link should do, link to the city. If you want to know more about the city, you can click on the link. If you then want to know about the state the city's in, you can use the link in the city article. The state's only there because most US city articles are named that way. Other cities around the world usually just have the city name alone e.g. if an article mentioned the English town of Cheltenham, it wouldn't usually mention that it's in the county of Gloucestershire, because English towns aren't usually identified that way. But the Cheltenham article would have a link to Gloucestershire. It's not necessarily better to have more links - what's important is to have links that people are likely to use. And if an article mentions a city, it's very unlikely that anyone would click on the link to the state that city's in - especially as you can't easily tell from the appearance of the link whether it's linking to [[city, state]] or [[city, state|city]], [[state]]. Compare Des Moines, Iowa and Des Moines, Iowa for example - the only (barely) visible difference is the black or blue comma. Colonies Chris (talk) 22:17, 9 January 2009 (UTC)
- Yeah thats it. What do you mean it isn't good practice? It makes both links, thats not better? Why was it created in the first place? 69.136.60.6 (talk) 20:41, 9 January 2009 (UTC)