Talk:Chitral

The 8 November edit by Rzafar has changed the link for Pakistan in the Location Infobox from an internal link to an external Wikipedia link. I understood that the preference is to always make an internal link where possible. The Fibiwiki Pakistan internal link has more information relevant to FIBIS and should have (but doesn't) a link on to Wikipedia. What do the moderators think?--Sy 02:22, 8 November 2009 (PST)

I am the guilty party here because I have asked Rzafar to change the links on the "Present Day Details" section of the Locations Infobox to point to the relevant Wikipedia articles. I have always done this on every Location Infobox I have either initiated or edited on the basis that the content of the FibiWiki articles is never going to be as comprehensive as the corresponding Wikipedia ones, and that much of the FibiWiki content will end circa 1947. It is also unlikely that anyone will get round to creating FibiWiki articles for every Indian, Pakistani, Banlgadeshi, Nepalese or Burnese state or province. At present, when reviewing the Pakistani locations, it looks as if there is redundancy because the External links section will also carry a Wikipedia link but these are generally just to the location article, not the state/province or the country.

HughWilding 16:44, 8 November 2009 (PST)

Forgive me if I disagree with you here Hugh. It must be sensible to have the tightest links in the Fibiwiki. Not to lead our users between associated pages is illogical and a waste of the time of those who have produced those pages. Use Chitral as an example:

The Chitral Campaign article has a link in the Location field to the Chitral location page. It also has an internal link to the Chitral Campaign category page which lists the actions and links internally to the NWF Campaigns. It also has an external link to the Chitral Expedition Wikipedia page. The Chitral location page has an external link in the Place Name field to the Chitral Wikipedia page. (It also has the same link under External Links which is redundant and should be removed.)

The Siege and Relief of Chitral article should follow the same logic. The argument that the Wikipedia article is fuller and goes beyond 1947 is irrelevant as long as the external link is provided on the Location page at the end of the search chain. Otherwise there would be no point in creating Fibiwiki Location pages. They are there because they provide something which the Wikipedia page does not i.e. British India information linked to the Fibiwiki database.

--Sy 01:45, 13 November 2009 (PST)

Oh, I've just caught up with this discussion. This is a bit of a difficult one. I am of the opinion that where we have an inhouse article on a topic it should be linked to. If we farm people straight out to Wikipedia we are not showing them what content we do have or encouraging them to add to it! However, there are a few points relating to external links I hadn't thought of until now.

So, on the battles pages we should almost always have a Fibiwiki article to link to as the places named there are relevant in the British era. I think it makes perfect sense for places in the military infoboxes to link to our articles. The Locations articles are a different matter though. The sections where Hugh is suggesting WP links are those relating to modern day details. What content will we ever have for inhouse articles on, say, Andhra Pradesh or Karnataka, other than a link to WP? Perhaps the Military and Locations projects need different rules for their infoboxes.

Thoughts? Sarah 13:03, 13 November 2009 (PST)

This is the approach which I think logical. On pages dealing with British India subjects (battles, wars, armies) the default should be an internal link to a Fibiwiki page where it exists. Once we get to Locations then the WP link gives the wider modern context.--Sy 10:10, 15 November 2009 (PST)

Good, so we are in agreement!

I wonder if I can touch on another matter? I have no wish to offend, Sy, but you are one who likes to use <br> instead of normal carriage returns in your text. This causes two problems, the first being that this makes review of the text more difficult than it need be for moderators. But I can live with it!

The second is more important. In its auto formatting of text, the wiki software depends on the modern style of block paragraphs. This convention separates paragraphs by a single line, visually making blocks of text much easier to follow. (A double carriage return achives this.) If you look at our exchange of comments above, I hope you will see what I mean.

I fully accept that <br> has its place. It has to be used within an Infobox to force separate lines and it is more space efficient within the long lists that are a feature of the orders of battle, campaign forces etc. But your reading public will appreciate the descriptions being broken up into visually distinctive units. I also think the wiki software generally does a good job in balancing the text with the whitespace.

Apologies for raising this here but I have been meaning to discuss this for some time.

HughWilding 01:39, 16 November 2009 (PST)