bad wiki timeline link

[Derek Atkins]

John Ralls <jralls at ceridwen.us> writes:

> My preference in most cases to to make the first ref to a webpage a
> link with [http://foo.bar/baz name] and then just use name everywhere
> else. I can envision exceptions but have never actually encountered
> any when writing.

I'm not sure I like that for a web page or wiki, especially if it's a
long page (c.f. the FAQ).

Certainly multiple references in a single paragraph can limit the link
to the first reference.  But if the reference is in multiple paragraphs
or, more importantly, multiple sections, then I think the link should be
repeated.

When I'm reading a page I want to easily click the link -- I don't want
to have to search the page to find it.

> For the Documents Update page someone in the dark past decided to do
> it differently, perhaps envisioning that someone might go to a
> particular part of the procedure and not want to look back for the
> first instance of a reference. IIUC the Cite extension allows you to
> create a footnote with regular wiki text so that you can embed the URL
> in the footnote. Following it becomes a two-step process, but there’s
> only one instance of the URL to maintain. But perhaps I don’t
> understand correctly…
>
> Regards,
> John Ralls

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-derek
-- 
       Derek Atkins, SB '93 MIT EE, SM '95 MIT Media Laboratory
       Member, MIT Student Information Processing Board  (SIPB)
       URL: http://web.mit.edu/warlord/    PP-ASEL-IA     N1NWH
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