Wikipedia:Build the web

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✔ This page documents an English Wikipedia editing guideline. It is a generally accepted standard that editors should follow, though it should be treated with common sense and the occasional exception. When editing this page, please ensure that your revision reflects consensus. When in doubt, discuss first on the talk page.
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Build the Web is the idea of connecting relevant topics throughout an article since all articles in the encyclopedia are nodes in a hypertext system. Do not just write the article, but also consider its place in the link Web. Make upward links to categories and contexts (Charles Darwin was a biologist; Sahara is a desert in Africa; the Enlightenment happened in the 18th century). Make sideways links to neighboring articles (for proton see also electron, Oregon borders on California). Introduce links from related articles to avoid orphaning the article (George Washington should be linked to from President of the United States). Do not build category trees too deep and narrow, or too flat. Writing category directories first (top-down) will help ensure that subcategory articles get useful names.

Only in rare cases is it better to remove the link altogether (apart from the case of a duplicate link). Remember that a linked article does not automatically pop up, it only appears if you click on it, so it does not do any harm. If you want to give selected links more emphasis, there are better ways to do that than deleting the less important ones.

Don't be afraid to create links to articles which don't exist yet. If you think there should be an article with that title, then be bold and make the link. Of course, the best way to build the web is to then go ahead and write that article.

Remember that a link can also be useful when applying the "What links here" feature from the target page.

[edit] Don't overdo it

It should be noted that this guideline is in dynamic tension with the Make only links relevant to the context guideline. This means that Wikipedia does not use Allwiki. Allwiki is the idea that all the words, phrases or expressions are links to Wikipedia or Wiktionary articles. The Wikipedia community considered and rejected the Allwiki concept, settling instead on a balance between building the web and only making links which are relevant to the context.

An example of Allwiki:

We want to build the web, but we don't want it to collapse under its own weight!

[edit] See also