Board Thread:The Panopticon/@comment-7302713-20130409112511/@comment-188432-20130410122504

Note that T:RED says, in bold,
 * If there should be an article about something, it is better to create a redline for it than not to link it at all.

So, what do we mean by should?


 * Nouns only. Thus, no one would reasonably wikify picks and marked, as you suggest above.
 * Proper nouns always. Sometimes people on story pages, particularly non-televised story pages, don't wikify minor characters for reasons that are maddeningly obscure to me.  Places that are only briefly mentioned are also often un-linked.  Every character, every place deserves a page.
 * When you can think of clear instances where an ordinary noun has been used, you should redlink the noun. A good example is helicopter.  Off the top of my head, I can think of Fury from the Deep, The Dæmons, The Mind of Evil and *Sub-Zero where helicopters played an integral role to the plot.
 * When you can do a search for a term and find references to it, it should be redlinked. As SOTO demonstrated with IQ, it's relatively easy to demonstrate when a term might be worthy of a redlink.

That said, the last of these guidelines is the trickiest. I'm personally opposed to redlinking very common nouns unless you personally intend to write the article. I know I never redlinked hospital until I was prepared to write hospital. I never would have linked hat or book unless there were actually an article present. There are, it seems to me, some words so ubiquitous that putting in a request for an article may be a bit of a fool's errand. It's not wrong to do so, but I personally wouldn't do it unless, again, I was prepared to actually start the article personally.

To me, it comes down to the word should. Should there be an article about the word belt? Belts exist in the DWU, and thus are nominally allowed an article. But eligibility is not the same thing as destiny. I can't reasonably imagine an article about belts being written because belts have never been integral to a televised plot, and have been rarely remarked upon in other media. Conversely, back before we had an article on hypnosis, I did redlink the word, because that was something that I could immediately see had enough clear instances in DWU narratives that someone could easily write an article about it.

Articles about very common nouns are comparatively difficult to write, as you have to find some sort of organisation to them that makes them easy to read and doesn't convert them into simply a list of appearances. So you have to assess the likelihood of the article being created by someone other than you.