Talk:Million Dollar Baby

This article was preserved after a vote for its deletion. See its archived VfD entry for details.

Links in section titles

I have questions (I am not a frequent reader of movie quotes on this project):

• Is this a common formatting to create a link [[w:Actor|Role]] as section title?
• Do editors who are interested in movies agree on that this is a good way? Or is it a sort of experiments (clarification: I love all experimental, even it seems a bit faul. We are anyway a young project and need many experiments).

As for the first question, if it is a good way, it would be better to be an internal link like [[Actor|Role]] in my first im[ression to encourage readers to browse this website itself. --Aphaia 14:04, 27 July 2005 (UTC)

• A good question -- I saw it in an entry when I was starting out and liked it. I never realized that it is not standard (e.g. part of the standard template). If it is felt that this is not the way to do it, I won't continue. As to the linking to the wikipedia entry rather than a wikiquote entry, I am also flexible. I assumed that if people wanted to click on the link, it was to learn more about the actor, but I can see where it would also be nice to see what other quotes that actor has. Of course, this also leads to a problem I've seen talked about here as well -- too many stubs that are created simply becasue someone links to a person that has not previously been captured here. I'm open to suggestions. UDScott 14:18, 27 July 2005 (UTC)

It is a semi-standard — one I, personally, am not in favour of but it is popular enough that I'm willing to let there be several "nice enough" movie styles going around before we settle -- only now are we finally solidifying the styles for TV, which I am more interested in. In other words, please feel free to continue doing this -- it is an interesting experiment, and currently we need more expirementation in the area of formatting movie quotes.

~ MosheZadka (Talk) 14:31, 27 July 2005 (UTC)

Although there is utility to linked section headings, Wiki practice (not just Wikiquote) recommends against using links inside section headings. Some of this comes, I believe, from a feeling that such links should be provided in the text, which isn't always convenient for Wikiquote's use of section headings. (That's one important reason to include a "Major cast" section — to provide Wikipedia and/or Wikiquote links to actors and occasionally to their characters as well.) Another reason to avoid links in headings is that section edits, where one clicks on the [edit] link across from the heading, automatically insert the heading text into the Edit summary. Linked titles can crowd out the text and help people to ignore a very important expectation to add to the summary a brief but meaningful description of what was changed.

There are exceptions. Wikiquote:Votes for deletion uses link headings to help reviewers, but it pays for that convenience in troublesome edit summaries. For general article headings, it tends to be a Bad Thing. One of several reasons we switched our people entry template from a linked section heading using the person's name to a more Wikipedia-like structure was to avoid link summary-cramming consequences.

Also, linking to the actor instead of the character is, in general, not a good idea. Although there are many quotes whose memorability lies in what celebrity says them (e.g., "I'll be back"), film articles should be about the characters, not the stars. (Even Ah-nold's quote was famous before he really was; he merely capitalized on the Terminator's line.) The actors can have their own Wikiquote articles that include their famous lines as well, and actors should be listed at the bottom of film articles to provide WQ and/or WP links, but the focus should remain on the story and its characters. (IMHO, it's overattention to celebrity that degrades the value of many films. Actors are supposed to be pretending to be someone else — that's the very definition of their job.) ~ Jeff Q (talk) 15:03, 27 July 2005 (UTC)

Your philosophical concerns are exactly what I had in mind when I said I dislike the format -- my intuitive expectations are to have a character link to go to a page about the character. My reservations stem mostly from my experience with TV, however, where many characters (all Buffy characters, most Veronica Mars characters, lots of Firefly characrers) have wikipedia pages which make a much nicer target to link to. Nobody, sadly, made an "Inigo Montoya" page. ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 15:39, 27 July 2005 (UTC)

The issue becomes moot if there are no such links boldly displayed in the heading. With the links in the "cast" section, it can be made clear whether you are jumping to the actor or the character. As can be seen in many robust film articles, few if any characters listed in the cast have WP links, but many or even all of the actors do. (TV is different, because there is often sufficient material — 100s of hours versus 2 hours — to make some character articles useful. That's why TV dialog segments benefit from character links inside episode segments, but again, not in section headings.) ~ Jeff Q (talk) 16:55, 27 July 2005 (UTC)