Board Thread:The Panopticon/@comment-7302713-20130409112511/@comment-7302713-20130411035130

Thanks SmallerOnTheOutside--that's very helpful.

@CzechOut - No, my eyes aren't going to roll out of my head. And no, the problem isn't visual, though on that note, it is insanely difficult to read links that have already been clicked on. In one color theme clicked-through links are the same color as text and therefore they vanish into ordinary text. In another there is no differentiation between links I've clicked on and those I haven't, making it a bit difficult to keep track of things. But back to what I was saying--the issue isn't visual, it's that that level of stuff is information overload, insanely distracting and affects my reading. If that link for holiday wasn't redlinked but blue linked I'd probably go to the article. And there would be nothing at that article that would give me any sense of anything related to the episode. I'm as fond as the next person of clicking through endlessly, until I have a backlog of a 100 tabs (slight exaggeration), but there are some things it just doesn't make sense to link.

And no, I'm not coming to you from anywhere. This isn't about being used to a particular style of editing. I get that links are good, even (perhaps especially) redlinks. I get that articles about little things are ok, and often good.

I guess what I'm really asking about is editorial discretion. If a link fits the basic requirements of not having been linked earlier in the article, and can be an article, MUST it be linked? To be more specific, say that there was a Holiday article, which I think I'd rather like btw. I wouldn't link to it from The Bells of Saint John article because there is no earthly reason to.

Unless I'm completely misunderstanding the editing process (and correct me if I am), it's ok to un-link blue links if they're irrelevant, silly, or in some way not-a-good-link. There's such a thing as editorial discretion right? I assume so, that's kinda what editing is about. Disagreements and discussions take place on the talk page of course, but each editor has their own editorial discretion. I'm wondering if I have the same discretion when it comes to redlinks. There's a clear difference between de-redlinking and de-bluelinking: de-redlinking could remove an entry from Special:WantedPages. Is there any other difference? Is there a higher standard for un-redlinking than there is un-bluelinking? If there is, what is it? Making sure that it's still a wanted page? Something else?