[Foundation-l] Talk pages Considered Harmful (for references)

Fri Dec 23 02:46:10 UTC 2011

On Thu, Dec 22, 2011 at 7:33 AM, Gwern Branwen <gwern0 at gmail.com> wrote:

So tell me, what failure rate would you find acceptable? You
apparently are not disturbed at a >90% failure rate to use external
links; would you be disturbed at 95%? At 99%? Before trying to put me
onto a slippery slope, explain where on the original topic you would
finally agree, 'yes, this is too bad a failure rate, something must be
done'. Until you present some principled reason or specifics, you read
like a blind defense of the status quo.
--
gwern
http://www.gwern.net
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This rate, without additional context, is meaningless.  As Rob pointed
out, there are many different reasons for moving
references/links/citations from an article to a talk page, and unless you
have more information about why people are moving these to talk pages, the
rate at which they move back doesn't really mean anything. By labeling
this rate a 'failure rate' you are strongly implying that success would be
keeping the link in the article.  I don't believe this is right - I
believe that 'success' is doing what's best for the article.

Even if 99% of things that were moved to talk pages were not subsequently
returned, I would not find this at all disturbing without evidence that a
large portion of the removed things should not have been removed. 
Frankly, I would be surprised if 10% of things that I personally moved to
talk pages were moved back in to the article space.  Generally if I move
something to a talk page it's because it's not fit to be in the article
and I don't see an easy way to make it fit to be in the article but I
think that they may point the way to a resource that should be in the
article.

Your observed facts are interesting, but they do not (sufficiently)
support your conclusion.

----
Kevin Gorman
User:Kgorman-ucb