Template talk:IMDb-name

From Vfd
Recently, MstrControl created Template:IMDb-company and Template:IMDb-name, both of which I see as mostly useless. The first one, which is a template to link production companies to IMDb, is only used 3 times, one of which is Memory Alpha:Message templates, explaining it. We don't need a template for only two real pages. I'm sure that we can manually use external links for those instead of a template.

The second one is a bit trickier. It "is used to create an inline link to an IMDb page for a movie or a TV show." There are more links for this one, but most of these links should not be external IMDb links, but Wikipedia links. If there isn't a Wikipedia page available, then either it should not have a link, or it should be a manual external link (again, because a template for such a small number would be asinine). I don't see the point in either of these two templates. Delete both. -Platypus Man | Talk 23:15, 16 Dec 2005 (UTC)


 * Is it MA's policy to only include links to Wiki pages? If not, why should we not link to an IMDb page if there's not a Wikipedia page.  I agree that the Wiki links are preferrable, but I think you'll find that there are a lot of movies and TV shows that are on IMDb but not on Wikipedia (especially older ones).  Why not, then, have a template for those links?  It saves a bit of typing, and also, ultimately, disk storage.  I vote to keep Template:IMDb-name.  I agree, though, that Template:IMDb-company is unnecessary, and can be deleted. Renegade54 00:47, 17 Dec 2005 (UTC)


 * The IMDb-link template serves our purposes just fine. Delete both. --From Andoria with Love 00:56, 17 Dec 2005 (UTC)


 * Delete company --Alan del Beccio 07:19, 24 Dec 2005 (UTC)


 * My question still wasn't answered, though... do we NOT want inline links to IMDb when there's no equivalent Wiki page? If not, why not?  Renegade54 01:11, 17 Dec 2005 (UTC)


 * I don't think there's any policy that states there should not be any inline links to non-wiki pages, which means the IMDb-name template might come in handy. The main problem is all the arrows all over the place indicating a link to be external. Those are a bit annoying, at least to me. --From Andoria with Love 02:02, 17 Dec 2005 (UTC)


 * If IMDb-company is used too rarely, we can delete it. Originally I thought about nominating IMDb-name for immediate deletion because it duplicated IMDb-link, but then I noticed that IMDb-link has this "at the Internet Movie Database"-tail, so it can't be used within the text. That's why I changed it to a supplement for the in-text WP links. Ok, the arrows are a bit odd, but that's only relevant if there is a greater number of them, what is rarely the case. So keep it. --Memory 18:27, 17 Dec 2005 (UTC)


 * I think inline links to external sources should be used only sparingly, if possible avoided. How often do we really want to link to an article at the IMDb if it is about an person/film etc. that we do not want to have an own article about? Delete. -- Cid Highwind 20:06, 26 Dec 2005 (UTC)


 * Let's explain it this way: if you look at James Cromwell you can see it works well because you don't have to scroll down and click through IMDb to "L.A. Confidential" if you want to know something about this movie. And I doubt that L.A. Confidential is referenced in Trek, so we don't need an article. Btw: if we delete this, the inline links via blabla must be removed for the same reasons... --Memory 20:55, 27 Dec 2005 (UTC)


 * The Wikipedia links are different, in that they link to another Wiki. However, even those should be used at a minimum. The excessive IMDb links in an article are just annoying, at least in my opinion. By the way, the IMDb links on Cromwell (and some other pages, but not all) have been replaced with the (likely) preferred Wikipedia links, where applicable. :) --From Andoria with Love 05:22, 3 Jan 2006 (UTC)


 * And this is supposed to be a substitution for all the cases that no WP article exists ;-) --Memory 19:41, 3 Jan 2006 (UTC)


 * There already is an interwiki link to titles at IMDb. If you put in Imdb:L.A. Confidential, it will bring you to a search page which contains a link at the top, here. I have trouble trying to get it to go straight to the page, because the interwiki link automatically replaces the spacing with an underscore ( _ ), which the IMDb search engine doesn't seem to understand. Anyway, I vote delete both.--Tim Thomason 08:33, 9 Jan 2006 (UTC)


 * Since everyone has at least agreed to delete the company template, that has been deleted. However, the name template might have to be kept, as we have three votes to keep it (Renegade, Alan, Memory) and four votes to delete it (Platypus, Cid, Tim, myself). This I do not believe constitutes a 2/3 majority needed to delete the template. --From Andoria with Love 03:27, 13 Jan 2006 (UTC)


 * Regarding the outcome, Alan didn't cast any vote on the remaining template. Still, let me address some of the above again:
 * When I said that, in my opinion, inline links to external sources should be used sparingly, this referred not only to non-Wikipedia links, and not only to actor pages, but to all of them. This site is about Star Trek - inline, off-site links should by definition only appear if the subject (actor, movie, item, concept) clearly has no Trek connection. In all other cases, we'd prefer an internal link. Before an external link is added, this decision has to be made. Second, is the loss of not inline-linking to completely unrelated movies and actors really that big? Someone reading MA is not necessarily interested in everything this actor did - in that case, he probably would have visited Wikipedia or IMDb instead - and in fact, he still can if we add both links in an "External links" section at the bottom of an article. Third, and this hasn't been brought up in this discussion, there even are guidelines that might apply in this case: Memory Alpha:External links. -- Cid Highwind 11:43, 13 Jan 2006 (UTC)


 * I agree, and good catch with Alan -- you're right, he never voted on the remaining page. We'll need to remove the template from the articles before deleting it, though; I think I can handle that when I get through with my "rounds". ;) --From Andoria with Love 20:51, 13 Jan 2006 (UTC)


 * If we take an example, Elisha Cook, Jr., it is clear that it wouldn't be really logical to remove it, because nearly every other film on that page is linked with a WP-link, so why not "Terror at Alcatraz" with an IMDB-link (as long as no WP-link is possible)? --Memory 21:04, 13 Jan 2006 (UTC)


 * As I said above, remove "not only [...] non-Wikipedia links, but [...] all of them" from the main text. Of course it would be strange to have all but one film or series linked from a page, but still: This is a Star Trek encyclopedia. Do we need a direct link to Magnum, P.I.? Gunsmoke? Perry Mason? After all, we don't link to all possibly existing articles on Wikipedia from other articles, just because the phrase in question has no Trek relation...
 * BTW, the next off-site link in that row would be Wagon Train, which might even be a case of an external link where we'll want a Memory Alpha link. After all, wasn't Star Trek specifically called "Wagon Train to the stars" by Roddenberry? -- Cid Highwind 02:00, 14 Jan 2006 (UTC)


 * MA might not need this, but it makes it easier for the readers to get more informations about something specific from the work of the actors without the detour via a link at the bottom. If it does no harm, why not offer such a possibility? --Memory 22:00, 15 Jan 2006 (UTC)


 * This is becoming less of a discussion about this specific template to be deleted and more of a discussion about external links in general. We might want to move (or split) this somewhere else soon, but anyway... The question is: Do we really want to link each and every occurence of something, even if it has no relation to Trek? I feel that it threatens the idea of Memory Alpha as an independent, special-purpose encyclopedia if we start to interweave it too much with other encyclopedias and similar sites. Since I don't know why actor pages should be a special case regarding this, let's take another example: Australia, and assume that every possible internal link has already been created. Then, why don't we link externally to Melbourne, Sydney, Jenolan, Botany Bay and probably about half a dozen other pages? Answer: Because we concentrate on Trek content here. Someone reading the Australia article here either wants to read about Sydney in a Trek context (and apparently, that context doesn't exist), or is surely able to follow the link to Australia at the bottom of the page, from where he can find his way to all the information about Sydney he'll ever need. -- Cid Highwind 15:06, 16 Jan 2006 (UTC)

Would anybody be against me moving this discussion to Ten Forward or Template talk:IMDb-name? --From Andoria with Love 20:29, 27 January 2006 (UTC)