Wikipedia talk:Only make links that are relevant to the context/Archive of support and opposition

Supporters

 * Bmills (linked articles should enrich the reader's understanding of the original article without seriously impacting readability)
 * Muriel Gottrop (because good sense is not universal - see example below)
 * Noldoaran (Talk) (unusual words that most readers wouldn't understand shoul be linked to wiktionary)
 * Zocky
 * Daniel Quinlan: good style, I might suggest a rephrase to "the most relevant" along with a guideline that a moderate number of links should be used, but the intent is the same. Daniel Quinlan 05:15, Dec 15, 2003 (UTC)
 * mydogategodshat - Links are overused. Not too long ago I found one of my articles glowing with red and blue links; almost half the text. Why would anyone reading an article on strategic management theory want links to "flash light", "sound", "1981" etc.
 * Peak: The selection of appropriate hyperlinks is as important to good writing as the selection of appropriate words. Selective linking actually allows an author to convey additional information: "this link contains (or ought to contain) information that I, the author, judge to be relevant and maybe worth your attention." A good hyperlink is like a good guide.  The concerns of those who seem to want as many links as possible are best addressed in other ways, e.g.:
 * Google and similar excellent tools can be used for comprehensive searches for words and phrases;
 * the "Go" box is just a mouse click away if a reader wants to check on anything that is not linked;
 * if the effort of copy/paste/GO is the issue, then I'm sure the Wiki software developers could give us RIGHT-MOUSE-CLICK or some such to transport us instantly from ignorance to bliss. It would however be good to have a better title for this page. Perhaps something along the lines of one of the following?
 * "Fewer hyperlinks convey more information."
 * "Select your wikilinks as carefully as your words."
 * "A good wikilink is worth ten thousand mindless hyperlinks."
 * "You can judge an article by its wikilinks."
 * Peak 07:49, 22 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Opponents

 * Optim the reader wants links
 * Secretlondon hyperlinks are good and are one of ways that wikipedia is superior to an paper encyclopedia. I think that linking to dates is a bit much, but places etc should stay.
 * User:Steeev Without links the world wide web would be nothing, and the same goes for Wikipedia. The more links there are to articles the better. From network theory, if we take the Wikipedia as a network of nodes (articles), the value of the network equals the number of available node interactions (hyperlinks between nodes). A "mesh" (many-to-many) network has more intrinsic value to its members (more information per cost of connection) than a "hub-and-spoke" network.

User:Steeev raises an interesting point in the voting above. Without any links, Wikipedia would lose a lot. But I'm not sure that I can agree with his logical extension that more is automatically better. His application of network theory assumes that each node interaction adds positive value to the network. That is not always the case. Irrelevant or inappriopriate node connections can have zero or even negative value. They consume time, frustrate the user and erode confidence in the network as a whole. Granted, you may not consider those costs high, but to pretend that there are no negative consequences is unfair. I don't think anyone was advocating not linking - merely that we link where the link has positive value. Rossami 04:08, 16 Dec 2003 (UTC)

IMO, it should be possible to click on any word and get a dicdef or a link to a corresponding article. Inclusionists argue that no one has to read an article; by the same token, no one has to click on a link, but if one is available, at least the reader has the choice. Unless there is a hardware or software cost, there should be no limitation to where one can go from an article, except where linking each word would produce irrelevant red links. It's too bad Wikipedia has chosen underlined text as the default to display links; non-underlined links are readily identifiable yet far less obtrusive. It is a basketload of underlined links that makes a page look amateurish, even if they are all legitimate. Denni ☯ 03:33, 2005 Feb 9 (UTC)