User:Evkl/Link templates

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Link templates are the lifeblood of Bulbapedia, and one of its unique style quirks. The use of link templates has been in place since shortly after Bulbapedia was established. Since then their use has expanded to save typing time when a page name was disambiguated, as well as to link many things much more easily.

Why they are used

Though initially, many of Bulbapedia's Pokémon pages were at names such as "Bulbasaur" or "Pikachu", the seventeen types were decided from the first day to be at the page titled "type name (type)", such as Grass (type). This was, of course, due to the existence of several other things of the same name for most of them, such as types in the TCG, Egg Groups, and even of course moves. This same logic was applied to Pokémon, as Ash owns a Pikachu, as well as many others, which he calls by their species name.

Advantages

While oftentimes on Wikipedia, one may often find a problem in navigating between articles, such is not the case with Bulbapedia. Unlike the issue with the element mercury followed by the element thallium, and the planet Mercury followed by the planet Venus, Ash's Pikachu followed by Ash's Caterpie, with link templates, has no conflict at all with Pikachu (Pokémon) followed by Raichu (Pokémon).

Disadvantages

As has been mentioned in the past, the ease at which one can find the article they are looking for without coming to a redirect page through the searchbar is somewhat limited, due to the inability to use link templates in a search. Several solutions have been suggested for this, however, none have yet been accepted, and so the status remains.

Image templates

A subclass of link template, these templates can be used to link to an image that is named in a similar manner to others. Many of these images are utilized often for tables and the like.

List of link templates

Main article: Bulbapedia:List of link templates