User:Tony1/International survey of overlinking
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Work in progress: should be completed and transferred to project space within a few days; please feel free to join below.
Internal linking is one of the most important features of all of the Wikipedias (WPs). It binds each project into an interconnected whole and provides instant pathways to locations within the project that are likely to increase our readers' understanding of the topic at hand. This hyperlinking feature is an important advantage of an online encyclopedia.
As the project emerges from the exponential growth phase of its life cycle, the priorities are expected to change. The first eight years of the grand WP project paid little emphasis to the skill that is required for optimal wikilinking. Only recently, and very unevenly, has there begun to develop a sense that while the internal linking is a great strength, the decision of whether to link an item should involve a weighing up of its 'costs' against its advantages. Three potential disadvantages to excessive linking are its potential to (i) dilute other links in the vicinity, (ii) reduce the ease of reading, and (iii) reduce the professional look of the text. When these costs are out of balance with the relevance and utility of a link to the readership (and the likelihood that the link will be clicked on), the result is overlinking. We believe that now, striking a correct balance between overlinking and underlinking across all languages would be essential to retaining the project's leadership as the Internet's number-one information site.
This MetaProject aims to provide the information all WPs need, so each can take stock of its wikilinking practices and decide, for the benefit of its readers, whether and how it needs to act to get the balance right. This is a significant step in the history of WikiMedia that requires inter-wiki, cross-language collaboration on a basic matter of content and formatting. A primary principle of ISOL is that our readers' interests are the primary concern of all WPs, and should be given greater weight than the desires of individual editors and groups of editors.