7
$\begingroup$

Inspired by the recent streak of edits in the queue, I would like to reach a community consensus.

I have seen several edits (10+, from the same user) that do not make anything else than adding wikipedia links for every aircraft model/object/anything (even for AT&T).

Do we want to promote this as a community? Do we need everything to be referenced?

$\endgroup$
2

6 Answers 6

Reset to default
9
$\begingroup$

Personally I am against it if it is done just for reputation farming, as it seems it is done now.

I am not totally against it if now and then a user suggests or makes one such edit, but 10+ such edits from the same user in the span of a couple hours I feel it is excessive, especially if these are edits that grant reputation and do not add anything of value to the post being edited.

$\endgroup$
9
  • 5
    $\begingroup$ Agreed. I generally only edit to add links for things I had to look up myself. $\endgroup$
    – fooot
    Commented Jul 19, 2017 at 19:54
  • 4
    $\begingroup$ I have respectfully downvoted this answer (not the question though). I'm saddened to think my edits are being evaluated as an attempt to farm reputation. If links added are accurate and point to the best explanation of a specific artifact available on the web, I say, "the more the merrier". Update: I was not able to reverse my downvote on the question, my apologies. $\endgroup$
    – bclarkreston
    Commented Jul 20, 2017 at 2:11
  • 2
    $\begingroup$ @bclarkreston In italian we call this "straw tail": I was not speaking about you, why are you so quick to think that it was about you? anyway, meta posts are made for the generality of future cases, if the community agree that this is not something that we want, then that's it, future suggestions to include only a wikipedia link will be rejected. $\endgroup$
    – Federico
    Commented Jul 20, 2017 at 5:05
  • 2
    $\begingroup$ Done, I have removed the down vote of the question because after thinking about it, it is only this answer I disagree with. I did not mean to imply that you specifically were referring to my edits. I meant that I believe you (and the other folks who are evaluating edits) should, IMHO, give people the benifit of the doubt and assume they are not "reputation farming". OTH, I can see how too many edits can create too much work for the edit approvers and that could be a valid reason for such edits to be discouraged. $\endgroup$
    – bclarkreston
    Commented Jul 20, 2017 at 16:26
  • $\begingroup$ @bclarkreston I'm the culprit here regarding editing question and answers to link to Wikipedia in this thread aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/39327/… . I edited the answers to link plane models, events and plane categories to Wikipedia. I pushed edits to link even English Channel, WW2, AT&T to increase linkability thinking If in case neural network is run to extract information from aviation.SE, it should be able to extract as much information as it can from the page. $\endgroup$
    – GypsyCosmonaut
    Commented Jul 20, 2017 at 20:13
  • $\begingroup$ I am sorry if it went against what community does usually, but I was also inspired for linking plane models on that thread by the third comment on this answer aviation.stackexchange.com/a/41062/22926 . and also AT&T is not famous in my country. So, that is also the reason, I thought of linking it for people who are unaware of what AT&T is (an acronym or some typing mistake) $\endgroup$
    – GypsyCosmonaut
    Commented Jul 20, 2017 at 20:17
  • 1
    $\begingroup$ @GypsyCosmonaut image attribution/crediting sources does not mean "link every word to wikipedia" $\endgroup$
    – Federico
    Commented Jul 20, 2017 at 20:38
  • $\begingroup$ Okay... got it.. $\endgroup$
    – GypsyCosmonaut
    Commented Jul 20, 2017 at 20:44
  • 3
    $\begingroup$ Adding references should be discussed on its own merits. If it is found to be desirable, it should not matter how many edits a person makes in a short time. $\endgroup$
    – Koyovis
    Commented Jul 21, 2017 at 3:32
5
$\begingroup$

I think adding references to everything ruins the flow of a post - I dislike it anywhere it is done. In general I'm okay with esoteric acronyms or terms being linked to a reference page, but other than that I wouldn't expect anyone to edit them in unless a commenter asks for clarification.

I would reject any edit that didn't improve the post, and it's hard to argue that these edits are improving the posts.

$\endgroup$
0
5
$\begingroup$

I guess since I dug myself into this commenting on @Federico's answer, I should state my position on this. I don't feel that linked text "ruin the flow of a post". Indeed, I feel like they improve posts. I like the edits @GypsyCosmonaut made to this post (not to mention his/her cool moniker), which seems to be the one in question.

That said, I think this is really just a matter of personal preference and likely as controversial as brace position in C, C++, Java style programming languages. People read differently, and I'm sure to some, linked text is a distraction. Further, I can see this becoming onerous for moderators as the number of participants (and thus edits) increases. Lastly, I will certainly respect the consensus if and when I'm one of those entrusted with the edit approval responsibility.

$\endgroup$
4
  • 1
    $\begingroup$ Hey, just curious, how do you know I'm "him" not "her" ? $\endgroup$
    – GypsyCosmonaut
    Commented Jul 20, 2017 at 23:34
  • 1
    $\begingroup$ My bad...I would hear about it for days if my 23 year old daughter caught me making that kind of assumption. I've fixed my answer ;-) $\endgroup$
    – bclarkreston
    Commented Jul 21, 2017 at 1:38
  • 1
    $\begingroup$ @GypsyCosmonaut your facebook profile might be an indication :P $\endgroup$
    – Federico
    Commented Jul 24, 2017 at 7:14
  • 2
    $\begingroup$ Having links for everything including the obvious stuff can be a bad thing. If the answer includes some interesting links that the answerer thought were worth linking, they don't stand out nearly as much if there are lots of other links that are uninteresting for most people. $\endgroup$
    – Peter Cordes
    Commented Jul 26, 2017 at 23:52
3
$\begingroup$

Selecting the right links is serious task, and such edit may or may not be a good quality edit. If just done quickly over lots of questions with the goal of reputation farming, unlikely to be.

If the question is about some airplane I do not know, usually the first thing for me to do is to look for description on the web (not necessarily from Wikipedia but the web search usually ends up there). Having such link directly on the question/answer is a valuable part, as it is possible to place a good link, not a link to some useless content farm.

Aviation topics also have really many abbreviations that require explanations for somebody who is enthusiast but not professional. However it is often sufficient to have these explanations short and maybe the tag wiki could be used for them.

$\endgroup$
1
$\begingroup$

Personally, my preference is to normally to leave it up to the author of the post for whether or not something should be linked. I might add a link to the wiki for some relatively obscure aviation jargon that was used without much further explanation in an answer, but, beyond that, I'd generally recommend not editing someone else's posts to add Wiki links. It's pretty trivial to Google aircraft types and things of that nature if one is mentioned that a reader isn't familiar with.

For terms that were used without explanation, another option is to ask the author for clarification in the comments instead of editing their post.

$\endgroup$
0
$\begingroup$

You ask 2 questions which are not the same:

  1. should we reference everything via Wiki?
  2. is it proper behavior to go fishing for badges by editing other people's posts with inane references to Wiki?

IMO, the 1st question requires answers that are too opinion based to be objectively useful. My general opinion is that WIKI is not a trustworthy source of information and rarely constitutes good quality in answering.

The 2nd question is objective and the answer is "NO". SE is reaching a maturity level at which it should review its badging and point-awarding systems to inhibit this unconstructive behavior.

$\endgroup$

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .