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This is an essay, a page containing the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. Essays may represent widespread norms or minority viewpoints, and they may be heeded or not based upon your judgement and discretion. |
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This page in a nutshell: Editors are encouraged to write the article on a given subject BEFORE adding a link to the article to list pages, disambiguation pages, or templates. |
Frequently editors add entries to lists, to templates or to disambiguation pages, Wikilinking those entries to articles that do not exist; the result is a red link like this one. Where the editor goes on and creates the new article, the redlink turns blue, and assuming the article follows Wikipedia's policy on verifiability, and other relevant policies, there is no problem.
In the early days of Wikipedia, this approach was an important part of growing the encyclopedia. Long "Lists of topics" (also called "Index lists"), sometimes with all red links, were some of the first articles created, and the red link guideline reflects this:
"In topic lists, it is useful to include every topic on the subject you can possibly find or think of that could plausibly sustain an article. When they are turned into links, the list immediately shows where the gaps in Wikipedia's coverage for that subject are, since all of the topics missing articles will show up in red. Such lists are useful tools in developing subject areas on Wikipedia, as they show where work is needed most."
Now, however, with the English encyclopedia at 2,627,657 articles, this process is far less important. Instead of using stand-alone "Lists of topics" articles as guides for new articles, this function has largely moved to WikiProject Pages that cover specific areas of interest.
As a result of this evolution, these days, editors who add these links often have no intention of writing the redlinked article, ever. This may be simply because writing the article is more time consuming than adding the link to the list or template. "Someone else will do it," the editor reasons. Or the editor may be choosing to contribute anonymously, which means that editor cannot create any article. Lastly, it may be because the editor is aware of Wikipedia's new pages patrol, and knows that newly created articles that do not follow Wikipedia policies can be deleted, under the speedy deletion process or another deletion process.
It is this last reason that is the most problematic: adding to lists (and to a lesser extent dab pages and templates) becomes the easiest outlet for spam. Look at the edit history for List of social networking websites, here. Essentially half of the edits are adding, for spammy reasons, redlinked sites to the list. The other half of the edits are removing them, which, while critical to maintaining the quality of the page, is a tremendous waste of WP editor resources. Ask any editor who watches an alumni page - they will likely have had the same experience. Far too many lists are full of this spam, with no end in sight, often more redlinks than blue. Look at List of demoparties for an example.
Because of this, editors are encouraged to Write the Article First. Don't be afraid to subject the article to the new pages patrol, which, after all, is much more focused on article improvement than on article deletion. Expose it to the improvement that will be gained from other editors. Through these processes, you can be sure it is list-worthy, and can add it to the appropriate other pages, confident the link will be blue from the beginning.
Other examples of articles where red link spam has been an issue
- One-click hosting
- List of project management software
- List of video sharing websites
- List of Microsoft Visual Studio add-ins
- List of digital library projects
