Talk:Gideon's Trumpet (disambiguation)

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Revision as of 22:31, 4 November 2007 by imported>Robert W King
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Re the "Gideon's Trumpet" blog: it's unlikely we will have articles about every blog; that's simply unmaintainable, and it's highly questionable it ever will be. --Larry Sanger 05:58, 4 November 2007 (CST)

Then I suppose my mistake was not making the article "List of things named Gideon's Trumpet," because I certainly don't expect there ever to be an article about the blog, but I am still of the opinion that someone who looks up "Gideon's Trumpet" in this encyclopedia should find something about the blog, because that may be what they're looking for. Frankly, I doubt there will ever be articles about several of these items, but I did expect someone to put in links to articles on the Bible, Gideon, and maybe Christianity, Abiezer, and/or Midianites. After having so many brackets removed from what I wrote because the articles they linked to didn't exist yet, I've recognized that I'm never going to understand the philosophy controlling this matter (and that I don't care that I don't get it), so I'm now concentrating on what I do well, which is research and writing, and whatever y'all do to fit my work into the framework is fine with me. So please consider this an explanation, not an argument or protest. -- k. kay 21:16, 4 November 2007 (CST)

Kay, it really isn't that hard to understand. You say: "someone who looks up "Gideon's Trumpet" in this encyclopedia should find something about the blog, because that may be what they're looking for." Maybe, but--mind you, I know nothing about the blog in question except a very brief visit--as far as I can tell, it has only been around for a few months. If you wanted to list everything called "Gideon's Trumpet" that someone might use a search engine to find, the list would probably include high school garage bands, out-of-print extremely minor novels, other blogs, other websites, church newsletters, and other things. We have no hope of exhaustively listing all such things. Hence we limit the list
Disambiguation articles are not meant to list senses of a word. That's doubtless a useful thing to have, but it isn't the function of these pages. Their function is to direct people to content on the wiki that goes under similar titles.
"After having so many brackets removed from what I wrote because the articles they linked to didn't exist yet..." I'm sorry to hear this--it shouldn't be, because this is not our policy. No one should remove a link to a nonexistent article simply because it is nonexistent. --Larry Sanger 22:27, 4 November 2007 (CST)
Just weighing in as an outside observer, I want to make notice of two things:
  • 1. Making an article that references a blog would at most probably be a stub and never a full fledged article, because probably keeping up with every single instance and history of a blog would be a blog in itself, so I can see it from that point
  • 2. Having an external reference to the blog might (albeit very minutely) allow one to construe that we are a link-repository, although arguments can be made for and against that seeing as we do make referencial links to outside sites in the context of an article and what the line is can be hard to define.
Although I don't see anything wrong with creating links to articles that didn't exist yet--is that a CZ policy I don't know of? --Robert W King 21:21, 4 November 2007 (CST)

But we are a link repository (among other things). See CZ:External Links.  :-) It's just that disambiguation pages aren't meant to serve that purpose, link pages are. --Larry Sanger 22:27, 4 November 2007 (CST)

Well, I mean a link repository in the sense that the only thing provided are links and summaries as opposed to real information, but what you said makes sense to me anyway. --Robert W King 22:31, 4 November 2007 (CST)