Wiki143:Avoid using wikilinks
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Wikilinks allows an article to be pointed to by enclosing the article's title in square brackets. This allows the editor to link to another article without having to type in the URL of the article or enclose it in HTML anchor tags.
This article is an attempt to gather information supporting the assertion that wikilinks are harmful to Wikipedia. Convenience is often cited as the reason for using wikilinks. Certainly, it offers a useful shortcut to creating links and allows the links to point to the same article regardless of article moves. This helps to tie many articles of similar interest together.
Why wikilinks are considered harmful
- All those blue words are confusing. It makes the reader think, "What should I do with this? Click? Or just view and appreciate the simplicity of this tranquil blue text floating in a sea of black?" Many users think this is potentially harmful to readers and may cause overheating. The color blue has also been linked to depression and reduced fertility.
- Heavily wikilinked texts resemble spaghetti code. Doubly so if you have "Display links to disambiguation pages in orange" activated in your preferences, because half of these pages are.
- If a link points to a page that does not exist yet, the link appears as red (also called a "redlink"), which looks bad. The color red has also been linked to fire and feelings of anger. ARRGHH!
- Every time a page is moved, all the wikilinks that incorrectly point to the old site will now point to a redirect, making the servers pull up two pages in a row.
- All of these actions waste valuable server resources.
- True Wikipedians never need links anyway. That is what the search bar was invented for.
- Wikilinks create many problems for readers using smartphones or other touch screen devices, as they make it difficult to scroll through an article without accidentally clicking on a link. This can be frustrating if pages load slowly on readers' devices.
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