Obligatory Wikipedia links

[mikm]

While reading most blogs (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog) is painful enough as it is, I absolutley cannot stand it when people (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People) feel the need to post links (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperlink) to Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia) for almost a third of the nouns (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/noun) in the post, even if it has little to do with the subject (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/subject). For fuck's sake, it makes it impossible to read and it makes links to relevant sites seem less important. (http://www.gaypony.com/)

You're not being helpful (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/helpful). I know what Google (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google) is, for fuck's sake - I haven't lived under a rock for the last 8 years (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year). Even if I DIDN'T, it's not as if I can't look it up myself.

[Cheezychops]

http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=banish

:P

[mikm]

Heh. That's great.

[skryingbreath]

Originally posted by Cheezychops
http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=banish

:P

You beat me to it! :blah:

[Mattress]

I think some of those links to nouns on wikipedia or whatever is a new ad-link scheme, the links are created by javascript I believe.
I've seen this on some tech-help forums. The page loads and I look at the text and suddenly the text gets populated by links a second after the page loads, few of the links are relavent but I bet the site gets some money if you click on them.

[LuigiHann]

That's a completely seperate phenomenon (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/630471193X/qid=1139841544/sr=8-2/ref=pd_bbs_2/103-4747809-0807048?%5Fencoding=UTF8&v=glance&n=130). Regular links that go to wikipedia articles were put there by the blogger, presumably inspired by wikipedia's habit of cross-referencing. It's actually extremely useful within wikipedia, but I agree it can be pretty pointless outside of that. (Although I must admit to linking to wikipedia articles that no one will probably read).

The ad-link things are much more annoying. Usually in my experience they're green links, that have ads pop up when you hover over them, and are trying to sell you crap. Planetgamecube (http://planetgamecube.com/main.cfm) has them now and eventually you get used to them. It was annoying at first because it's intended to look like it's going to take you to a wiki page, or the site's relevent page (for instance, in the PGC example, I'd see "Mario Tennis" (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B000641ZC2/sr=8-1/qid=1139842125/ref=pd_bbs_1/103-4747809-0807048?%5Fencoding=UTF8&v=glance) underlined in a review of something else and go to click it thinking it'll take me to PGC's Mario Tennis page, but it's actually a freaking ad for some game store site trying to get me to buy Mario Tennis.) This also leads to phrases like "no doubt" (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0000DZDYN/sr=8-1/qid=1139842184/ref=pd_bbs_1/103-4747809-0807048?%5Fencoding=UTF8) being linked to CD's when someone was just using the expression. (http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=no+doubt)
blogs generally don't have that sort of ad, to my knowlege.
/note: Either PGC stopped doing that, or my adblock stops me from seeing it now.

[Jay]

well I have come to expect new forms of advertising, it's just undoubtedly going to happen. However I completely agree with the assessment that more links on a page, in effect, devalue every other valid link on your site.

On my sites I value links and try to keep them fairly relevant to the content and under my control.

[Mattress]

hmm, well I guess I've never visited a blog where the person has linked every other random noun to wikipedia. I guess I just don't visit retarded blogs?

[rockouthippie]

Originally posted by mikm
While reading most blogs (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog) is painful enough as it is, I absolutley cannot stand it when people (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People) feel the need to post links (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperlink) to Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia) for almost a third of the nouns (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/noun) in the post, even if it has little to do with the subject (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/subject). For fuck's sake, it makes it impossible to read and it makes links to relevant sites seem less important. (http://www.gaypony.com/)

You're not being helpful (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/helpful). I know what Google (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google) is, for fuck's sake - I haven't lived under a rock for the last 8 years (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year). Even if I DIDN'T, it's not as if I can't look it up myself.

Wikipedia is an open source encyclopedia that is competent. You could even tell wiki what you know about anything. The license is that of you find things in the massive amount of wiki data, that you credit wiki if you use it.

Sounds like a bargain to me.

Why do you think wiki is cool!?.

Wiki is beyond cool.

[JFASI]

Originally posted by LuigiHann
That's a completely seperate phenomenon (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/630471193X/qid=1139841544/sr=8-2/ref=pd_bbs_2/103-4747809-0807048?%5Fencoding=UTF8&v=glance&n=130). Regular links that go to wikipedia articles were put there by the blogger, presumably inspired by wikipedia's habit of cross-referencing. It's actually extremely useful within wikipedia, but I agree it can be pretty pointless outside of that. (Although I must admit to linking to wikipedia articles that no one will probably read).

The ad-link things are much more annoying. Usually in my experience they're green links, that have ads pop up when you hover over them, and are trying to sell you crap. Planetgamecube (http://planetgamecube.com/main.cfm) has them now and eventually you get used to them. It was annoying at first because it's intended to look like it's going to take you to a wiki page, or the site's relevent page (for instance, in the PGC example, I'd see "Mario Tennis" (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B000641ZC2/sr=8-1/qid=1139842125/ref=pd_bbs_1/103-4747809-0807048?%5Fencoding=UTF8&v=glance) underlined in a review of something else and go to click it thinking it'll take me to PGC's Mario Tennis page, but it's actually a freaking ad for some game store site trying to get me to buy Mario Tennis.) This also leads to phrases like "no doubt" (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0000DZDYN/sr=8-1/qid=1139842184/ref=pd_bbs_1/103-4747809-0807048?%5Fencoding=UTF8) being linked to CD's when someone was just using the expression. (http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=no+doubt)
blogs generally don't have that sort of ad, to my knowlege.
/note: Either PGC stopped doing that, or my adblock stops me from seeing it now.



The sad thing is all the suckers who already see that because of adware on their computers.