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)