Talk:Salmon chaos

Taiwan/name change removals
@Drmies recently edited the lead sentence to remove links to Taiwan and name change. I undid this, stating in my edit summary that removing these links did not seem helpful, and they reverted my undo, directing me to MOS:OL and saying that "there is nothing about "name change" that should be puzzling to a reader of English".

This is true but I do not think this removal is helpful. The article is about name changes in Taiwan; a reader might reasonably want to look at those pages next, per MOS:BTW. Name change points out that the chaos was not about nicknames or married names but a relatively unusual bureaucratic procedure, heightening the page's notability. The fact that a word or phrase is common does not mean that it should not be linked if relevant; otherwise "marriage" (36,537 incoming links), "English language" (198,745) or "human" (13,932) would scarcely ever be linked to.

Do any other editors have opinions? CohenTheBohemian (talk) 15:45, 18 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Yes. WP:OVERLINK applies, as Drmies noted in the edit summary. Examples of other overlinking do not justify it in this case. OhNo itsJamie Talk 17:14, 18 March 2023 (UTC)
 * OVERLINK applies. Drmies (talk) 00:40, 19 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Thanks for your replies. I'm now confused about how WP:OL works. If there's a better place to ask these questions, could you point me to it? Thank you.
 * 1. The page reads "Unless a term is particularly relevant to the context in the article, the following are usually not linked: [...] major examples of: countries". Isn't this saying that particularly relevant countries should be linked? In this case, why remove the link to Taiwan?
 * 2. Is the page currently overlinked? The lead section includes links to "salmon", "Chinese", "pinyin", and "sushi" - none of which should puzzle a reader of English (in context, pinyin is clearly a kind of romanization). The fact that readers could learn more about them at the linked pages is irrelevant, correct?
 * 3. @Drmies - apologies, I don't understand your reply on your talk page; could you explain? CohenTheBohemian (talk) 02:24, 19 March 2023 (UTC)
 * The idea behind OVERLINK is that we should not link to commonly used words and names, including the names of (current) countries. If a particular article points, in a particular situation, to something that is related to Taiwan between 1895 and 1952, one could expect a link to Taiwan under Japanese rule, because of politics and history, for instance, but here that does not apply. Everyone should understand that Taiwan is a country in Asia, and linking there serves no purpose. In addition, overlinking leads to reader's confusion: it is distracting. Click on me! No, click on me! Sushi is possibly a more complicated term, and personally I have no idea what "pinyin" is, and "Chinese" is linked because it points to the language. If it were up to me those links to commonly known languages would go too. Drmies (talk) 16:03, 19 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Thank you for your reply. I hope you can see my confusion: what you are saying is not what OVERLINK says. Compare your first sentence with my point 1 above. As there is no point in having a guideline so different to the intent, let’s edit that page, something like:
 * 1.    Changing OL to read "We should not link to commonly used words and names, including the names of (current) countries". ("Taiwan under Japanese rule" is self-explanatory, but it's not current, so the link is OK.)
 * 2.    Deleting "Ask yourself, "How likely is it that the reader will also want to read that other article?"" from WP:BUILD. (I would have thought that readers of an article about Taiwanese people changing their names to “salmon” to get free sushi would very likely want to read about Taiwan, name changes, salmon, and sushi.)
 * 3.    Emphasizing that we should link to things about which readers are unlikely to know, such as Sushiro or Huang Hong-cheng on this page, regardless of whether or not they help readers understand the page in general. (The description "the Japanese conveyor belt sushi chain" explains everything.)
 * In short, the MOS page says that pages should be linked if they are relevant, but you are saying that they should only be linked if they explain, so let’s fit guidelines to principles. Any thoughts before I add this to the MOS talk page?
 * By the way, any reply to my third question? CohenTheBohemian (talk) 02:33, 20 March 2023 (UTC)
 * By the way, any reply to my third question? CohenTheBohemian (talk) 02:33, 20 March 2023 (UTC)