Forum:Links in Songs page

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Links in Songs page

I've made a minor edit turning a plain text music name in the Songs page into a link to the song's page. It was promptly reverted by another user, who argued the song had already been linked to in a previous section.

IMHO this is a usability issue. I went to that page to look for the songs of the Rainbow Rocks movie. All of them except one were properly linked to their respective pages. I wasn't interested in reading the full page, only that very specific subsection. Requiring me to move up the page to try and find the link to that single music's page because of a requirement that there's only one link per referred article makes that page simply harder to use, for no advantage.

I suggest relaxing this rule, if it's indeed a rule, in pages that are, for all intents and purposes, directories. A reader doesn't go there to read them in full, he goes there to move as soon as possible into what he's actually interested in reading. This should be facilitated as much as possible, never made harder, particularly if there's no objective advantage.

Alexgieg (talk) 01:34, November 14, 2014 (UTC)

Agreed. It seems pretty weird to link to every other song except that one. ~Bobogoobo (talk) 03:29, November 14, 2014 (UTC)

Also agreed. Personally, I would go as far as allowing even one link per second-level section. In many articles I suppose the reader might be potentially interested just in specific second-level section and it still shouldn't cause too much link clutter to relax the rule to this degree. In this specific case, certainly the link would be helpful. Vengir (talk) 00:10, November 19, 2014 (UTC)

I'm assuming we are talking about "Shake Your Tail". I am against wikilinking that song a second time because it is redundant. - Jasonbres (talk) 00:35, November 19, 2014 (UTC)

In my original post above I explicitly stated that this link being redundant wouldn't be a problem in this specific case and offered reasons for this. Simply restating it's redundant doesn't add to the discussion, as that's the whole reason for this discussion. Can you please explain why then my original point is wrong, and why forcing readers to move up and down attempting to find that link is the best, most user-friendly, and optimal approach usability-wise?

Let me add that the first impression I had when I first looked at that page was that the wiki didn't have a page for that song. I wondered why, and used Google to search. Then I found the page and thought "Weird! Why isn't it linked if the page exists!?", and went to add the clearly missing (from any sane point of view) link.

Is that what the editors here want readers to think? Because that's what they think, as I myself thought. The whole thing has a strong "We don't care about readers, go away!" vibe to it. -- Alexgieg (talk) 12:27, November 20, 2014 (UTC)

Jason, I don't find repeating links redundant. They only really become a problem, when the text becomes "too blue" to be read comfortably. Adding a link in a table cell shouldn't cause that effect, and, as Alexgieg pointed out, it should improve reader experience. Vengir (talk) 14:17, November 29, 2014 (UTC)