Puck This

I am always a little baffled at the apparent randomness of Wikipedia's cross-reference web links. I know some articles are simply more thorough like the one on Chicago (good job Chicagoianians). Others very sparse, must be works in progress. I was reading the article on the NeverEnding Story film and its crumby sequels, and the links are to super random crap. Did you know there was a NeverEnding Story cartoon (well you wouldn't from reading the Wikipedia articles on the movie or the book and the song and the Dutch band)? In the book's article the entire six paragraph plot only links to Will'o'the Wisp. There is no link to the Nothing, but there are links to a couple characters, Ivory Tower (not the same thing at all from the book/film), and Library Journal. In the article on the book it says ". . .a reader of the novel with the same title." When you follow the link, you may wonder what the dumb does self-reliance have to do with a novel with the same title? Nothing! Who did this!?

It is all so, well arbitrary. I can deal with the fact that Wikipedia is written by just anyone with free time and the nerve to act as an expert on something, but half of these links are super MRF. A lot of the time they make no sense at all.

Before you start criticizing my criticism, I am just pointing out there is a desperate need for some consistency on Wikipedia. They do good work, but they need a system that explains what should be linked when and where. So "writers" can keep a certain level of standard. As is, there is neither rhyme and/nor reason for the words chosen to add web links to. It's crazy I tell you.

Sometimes you get redirected or the article doesn't exist yet but offers an invite to write one. One time on Wikipedia I followed a link to an article on horse pucky that didn't exist. I wrote the article as simply "Puck this." I was banned the next day. The system works, let's just add some more guidelines, yeah? Maybe I'll just go in and write in new guidelines myself: 1) Don't puck this up by adding links to things that everyone knows like family. 2) Don't puck this article up by writing simply puck this. What else is there to know?