User talk:Baapress

Hello, Baapress, and welcome to Wikipedia! I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages you might find helpful:

Introduction
The five pillars of Wikipedia
How to edit a page
How to write a great article
Manual of Style
Also feel free to make test edits in the sandbox.

I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you need help, please see our help pages, and if you can't find what you are looking for there, please feel free to leave me a message or place "{{helpme}}" on your talk page and someone will drop by to help. — Amakuru (talk) 10:48, 27 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Gadarenes

Hi Baapress, and thank you for spotting the Gadarenes redirect issue. When a particular title has no actual article associated with it (as with Gadarenes), sometimes a redirect is set up to a related topic, in this case Legion (demon). So that redirect was probably better than blanking the page (hence why I originally reverted that change). However, on further inspection I see that the page of Umm Qais actually refers to the ancient town of Gadara, so that seems to be a better target for the redirect. Please let me know if you disagree, or find a better target.

Again, welcome and I hope you enjoy being a Wikipedian! — Amakuru (talk) 10:52, 27 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Hello Amakuru. Thanks for the welcome. I feel redirecting to 'related', but not actual, is misleading to many thousands of readers. Gadarenes is in fact a city with history, not Legion (demons). It's unfortunate that Wiki is used so loosely. I think too many people consider it to be reliable information. a Wiki then the wind blows..whoosh. Thanks again for the welcome. baapress (talk)

Mmmm, this is a tricky issue. The debate as I see it is between providing a useful article for readers desiring information not otherwise contained in Wikipedia, and providing something basically inaccurate. For example, Brooklyn Beckham (the son of footballer David Beckham) was deemed not notable enough to merit his own Wikipedia article. Hence the link from Brooklyn Beckham redirects to the "Personal life" section of his dad's article. Not strictly accurate, but probably the most useful link for people who want to know about Brooklyn. In the absence of an article about Gadara (Umm Qais), if there was no other article related to Gadara, the same might apply to the redirect to Legion (demon). The alternative would be to create a stub article which basically has just one or two lines of text, including a link tothe Legion (demon). This would give people the option of expanding it later on if they so desired. thanks — Amakuru (talk) 13:30, 27 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Hello again Amakuru. If page content doesn't exist, there needn't be a page title in the search engine result pages. Securing readers who have used search engine queries to arrive on redirected page(s) is misleading to the researcher. Unfortunately, Wikipedia ranks highly for pages which do not even contain content, as in this particular instance. Ultimately, Wikipedia uses redirects to reinforce pages without content as well as to remove supposed outdated info. Think 1984. The original info should remain as more is added and changes occur. Wikipedia, on the other hand, creates new pages and erases history using redirects. What was, becoming, not anymore. Redirects are playing significant roles on the Wikipedia site. Oppressive use of SEO. Not your fault if you are unaware. But it works that way. :( baapress (talk)