Right now, the Manual of Style for both wikis includes the clause:
There shouldn’t exist multiple links to the same page in a single article. Exceptions are:
** when two or more links are linking to a different section of the same page
** when one of the links is in the infobox/navbox and the other in the actual content
This seems a little too restrictive to me. What should we do about it?
While the poll is provided for gauging interest, it would help to post your choice and reasoning as a reply.
Take no action, it’s fine
Allow duplicates between each main section but not within sections
Allow duplicates between paragraphs but not within paragraphs
Not Discussions posts, wiki pages. I think people are fairly likely to read a section of a page, do it makes sense to link everything relevant within that section even if it’s already linked in an earlier section they may have skimmed over.
Oh, pages? Then no, it disrupts the flow of reading if you have every name become a link. HOWEVER, if you have a duplicate every main section, it allows users to click the link if they gain an interest in what the link links to while reading the page without scrolling all the way back to the first instance of that word.
I think this is the status quo for most wikis, isn’t it? I don’t really see the need to change it. If you went with a condition such as “It has to be on different sections,” editors who don’t read the MOS are more likely to be confused and just wikilink every instance of the term.
Wikipedia does it once per major section, but that’s kind of silly because it equally applies to character pages (with large sections such as Main Story) and item pages (which are generally shorter than Main Story sections of major characters). I think links to the same article per section are fine on character or location pages because users who skip sections to land on the section they needed won’t have as easy navigation when links are only once per article.
I think it’s worth noting we’ve had more unwritten exceptions to the above rule, such as the leitmotifsarticles where we linked to the same tracks multiple times in the same page because it made sense. It looks weird to look at a leitmotif section and see some tracks linked and some other tracks not linked. So it’s probably worth changing the rule, but I don’t really know what’s the best way to do it.
Based on Kocka’s reply, I think maybe a MoS update on repeat links may be needed anyways. A lot of what Kocka has described sounds great on that, it just needs to be concise.