[WikiEN-l] Re: Writing with our readers in mind

Tue Jul 12 11:14:21 UTC 2005

"MacGyverMagic/Mgm" <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> 
wrote in message news:fb7fdd9c05071105545dabd943 at mail.gmail.com...
On 7/10/05, Dan Grey <dangrey at gmail.com> 
wrote:
> On 10/07/05, Fred Bauder 
> <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:
> > Take, for example, paracetamol:
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paracetamol#Mechanism_of_Toxicity
> > What the hell does that mean?! It is, frankly, total garbage.
> > Completely correct, no doubt, but meaningless to the vast amjority of
> > people - and a lot of people want to know why paracetamol can kill
> > them so easily.
> Now that's a good example of overusing scientific terms. If someone
> had described the role of the pathways and what they actually were in
> the article (did they?) a simply explaining what oversaturation is
> would do the trick.

That section has, at time of reading, one single wikilink.

This presents a very good case for raising the bar on frequency of linking 
to allow the first instance in any given section to be linked, rather than 
in the whole article: I don't want to have to scroll up an unknown distance 
to find where [[conjugation]] might be linked just so that I can find out 
WTF it means, for example.

I wonder if there is also a problem wherein people are afraid to make short, 
simple articles defining technical terms, which would cut down drastically 
on duplication and allow wider linking, because of the perceived mania for 
"getting rid of stubs" and "moving definitions to wiktionary".

HTH HAND
-- 
Phil
[[en:User:Phil Boswell]] 