User:HarryAlffa/knowledge-link set

Knowledge-link set, or kn-link set, or knowbars (combining knowledge-crowbar), is the Set of wikilinks within an article which link to knowledge the article is familiar with, or uses, but is not explicit in the article. The threshold level of, familiar with, and use of, knowledge for admission to the kn-link set can be assessed by the wikilinks in this article.

The purpose of knowbars is self-evidently to support the text in explaining the subject of the article. Knowbars should be as thoughtfully used as the vocabulary of the article.

The kn-link set does not include every wikilink in an article; members of the See also list for this article are not included.

The terms have been coined to help debate about the use of wikilinks, by distinguishing wikilinks which surpass a threshold of meaning for an article as described here, and wikilinks which don't.

=Knowledge threshold= The pre-requisite knowledge to understand this article is the concept of the Set and the concept of wikilinks. No attempt is made by this article to explain these terms, but the author realises their importance to the article, and although he expects most readers to be familiar with both areas of knowledge, he wikilinks them to indicate their importance, and to ensure that he and the reader agree on the basis of the article. Pre-requisite knowledge could be described as familiar or used knowledge, for this article.

Other pre-requisite knowledge is English grammar, spelling, and the definition of every word used. Why aren't they wikilinked? A tightly sealed, nailed, wooden box was delivered with instructions to open the box by using the crowbar provided, inside the box. If every article is a box of knowledge, it does not supply the knowledge-crowbar the reader used to open the article. In Russian Doll style, an article may be familiar with or use other boxes of knowledge, and the article author decides if the readers own knowledge-toolbox is enough, or if a knowledge-crowbar wikilink, or knowbar, is to be supplied because of importance, necessity or convenience.

Over the threshold
Sometimes context is enough to give the meaning of a word with several common, and obscure, meanings; "He was dogging our footsteps", does not need a knowbar; "He was dogging school again", may be deduced from context, but a wikilink would be helpful for clarity and could be considered a knowbar. "The park-keeper was dogging it", may be referring to his avoiding work at the park, or it may be referring to an out of hours interest in activity in semi-public places, so a more precise wikilink is demanded and this would be a knowbar.

Wikilinks of any other words or terms in this section would not be included in the knowbar set for this article, as they would not meet the knowledge threshold set in the mind of the article author, and would be considered wikilink-noise.

=Signal to noise ratio= Using a Reductio ad absurdum with Signal to noise ratio, if we take the ordinary vocabulary composing an article as the signal, and the knowbars as noise, then the noise of the knowbars should not swamp the article signal. The absurd conclusion would mean that no knowbars is best. So we conclude that knowbars are good, so reverse the absurd reduction and say the article is the noise, then the equally absurd conclusion is that there should be no article except knowbars.

Article signal & kn-link signal
You might conclude that using a Signal to noise ratio analogy is useless, but it leads us to the attractive idea of an article carrying two signals; the article signal & the kn-link signal. If we now take these two signals and regard the noise as wikilinks outside the kn-link set, then we arrive at the not so absurd conclusion that the article is better without wikilinks not in the kn-link set.

Wikilink-noise
Even rejecting the notion of wikilinks outside the kn-link set being noise, and regarding them as another signal, they are very much a minor signal, and at best there should be very few of them.

Synthesizing the signals
A simple synthesizer can combine sine waves to produce various notes, and notes with differing timbres. Depending on the combination this can produce an inoffensive, even pleasant, musical tone, or a horrible pharping-farting cacophony. The kn-link set is there to modulate with the article text in a way which helps the article text to convey it's meaning. The challenge then is to combine the article text with the kn-link set to produce a harmonious whole, rather than a cacophonous hole.

Wikilink density
The wikilink density of an article is the number of wikilinks per article word. The Signal to noise ratio Reductio ad absurdum argues against an article of nothing but wikilinks, and this paragraph shows that locally high wikilink density, whether they are knowbars or not, can be a problem even when the overall density is not high, although contiguous wikilinks are always considered problematic.

Knowbar density
As I'm writing this section I happen to be listening to Deep Purple, Concerto for Group and Orchestra, and it occurs to me that the concerto style of competition between instruments provides a useful insight to this part. A section of high density knowbars may be exactly what a particular section requires, so for a short time at least the text may be usefully dominated by the kn-link set - a drum solo if you will.

Article knowledge-link set & wikilinks
Red links are included in the kn-link set as they indicate knowledge the article uses or is familiar with, and may lead to the creation of a new page describing it explicitly, even if it's only a redirect.

=See also=
 * Essays
 * WP:MoS
 * WP:Link