Help talk:Editing

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Latest comment: 20 February by Erus Iluvatar in topic Big code blocks

Hypertext metaphor

How can we find out what - if anything - links to a specific heading in the article? These links (e.g. [1] will be broken when we edit the heading. If many articles link to the one I'm editing, going through them all is not feasible. Should I run a search for (going back to the example) "detailed_usage_example" and "detailed usage example" or are there any other ways to do it? -- Karol (talk) 20:48, 23 October 2012 (UTC)Reply[reply]

It seems your link is already broken :). One strategy I try to use to avoid this sort of issue is to link to redirects instead of directly to the section headings. Then you can limit “What links here” to just redirects and the list is a bit more manageable. For example at https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php?title=Special:WhatLinksHere/Udev&hidelinks=1&hidetrans=1&hideimages=1 the redirect Udisks points at Udev#Udisks. But this strategy would only really be appropriate for high profile sections that deserve a redirect. Of course the other thing is to try and put a bit of context in when making a link so that it is still useful even if it gets broken. Vadmium (talk) 01:34, 24 October 2012 (UTC).Reply[reply]
Just some quick references: MetaWikiPedia:Help:What_links_here#Limitations and workarounds, MetaWikiPedia:Help:What_links_here#Finding external links to a page, Wikipedia:Help:What_links_here#Limitations, Wikipedia:Help:What_links_here#Finding_external_links_to_a_page. -- Kynikos (talk) 10:38, 12 November 2012 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Editor assistants: userscripts, external editors...

Currently there is only a note about wikEd in Help:Editing#Editing, but we could make a whole section about this. I'm not sure where to put all this...

We could also mention some tips for using external editors. For example, when using Pentadactyl, it is enough to press Ctrl+i in insert mode to open the current text field in external editor. The external editor command can be configured on per-site basis, which is useful to set the filetype for syntax highlighting when editing a text field from wiki.archlinux.org: [2]. Edit: Actually, we could just link to wikipedia:Wikipedia:Text editor support for this one...

-- Lahwaacz (talk) 11:36, 2 September 2014 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Yeah I like the idea, it could be a 2nd-level section (at the bottom I guess) called "Reading and editing aid tools" (should be enough catchall).
In Wikipedia:Wikipedia:User_scripts (which you had already linked in your post below) there are also other editing tools, but I think those 3 would be a good start.
We may overlook the fact that this page is only about "editing" and for the "reading" part there would be a separate page... Or maybe we could indeed create a similar section in Help:Reading for the reading aid tools.
-- Kynikos (talk) 14:11, 4 September 2014 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Big code blocks

[Moved from Help talk:Style#Big code blocks. -- Erus Iluvatar (talk) 07:54, 20 February 2024 (UTC)]Reply[reply]

A recent exchange made me remember pages (e.g. Self-encrypting drives#Setup mkinitcpio) where we've flagged content that would be better as a simple link to the resource. I see we don't explicitly point out we're not a code/content hosting platform: IMO this roughly fits into Help:Style#Hypertext metaphor, but I don't have a good wording to add it right now, thoughts? Erus Iluvatar (talk) 17:17, 13 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

This is about content though, not style. We would need something like Help:Discussion#What does not belong but for "normal" pages. There is already something in Help:Editing#Creating pages and ArchWiki:Contributing#Creating (but it mentions the scope only "as mentioned"). — Lahwaacz (talk) 21:15, 13 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Yeah, the two are linked, but you're probably right that it's less a matter of form and more about content.
So, a new section (between Help:Editing#Creating pages and Help:Editing#Formatting? But with what title?) with something like:
Large code blocks, long scripts or user configuration examples should be linked from a code hosting platform (e.g. our GitLab instance) to facilitate their usage by the readers and maintenance by their author, while improving the readability of pages.
Seems like I have the start of something, but it feels too short to warrant a dedicated section.
-- Erus Iluvatar (talk) 22:16, 13 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]
I agree Help:Editing#Creating pages is the right starting point to address it. It also has Help:Editing#Code to give style-related suggestions.
I'm actually sure there were discussions about it in the past, but have not looked back much to find them: While the aur gitlab migration helps a lot to suggest it, the conundrum that has to be addressed is it can still only be a suggestion. I think "should be linked" in your initial draft needs to be "can be linked" for starters. Let's also remind ourselves, anonymous github gists were often recommended for a long time, until github removed them with 30-day notice. That's more under control with aur gitlab, but (as a thought) no-one will check if an aur package removal request breaks wiki content.
I suggest you move this to Help talk:Editing to flesh it out.
--Indigo (talk) 11:07, 14 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Your GitHub example explains that only the creation of new anonymous gists was disabled, not that older ones got removed?
Also, this is not specific to content that could be packaged in the AUR.
-- Erus Iluvatar (talk) 07:48, 20 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]
IMO this will have a negative impact on readability. An issue with external links is that they may eventually die which will needlessly complicate locating the content. I recall this happening with Zsh#Key bindings where the zshwiki regularly died and came back to life again (its last resurrection is an unreadable mess). -- nl6720 (talk) 12:14, 14 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Linkrot is a problem unrelated to readability, content just does not die as long as it is maintained and when it is not, its relevance decays down to the point where broken references can be simply removed. Keeping the content on this wiki will not ensure that it is properly maintained. — Lahwaacz (talk) 10:54, 17 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Keeping it in the wiki allows for it to be maintained, unlike with external sites. -- nl6720 (talk) 09:28, 18 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]