I love emergent complexity in all things, and wiki-walks are certainly that. It seems like nearly everything I have done here has direct or indirect references to other articles:
- In SCP-2323 one of the authors of the referenced papers, Dr. Ryan, was taken from Retirement Policy. This was suggested by me needing a Foundation biologist from the 80s, and I had recently read that story and remembered Ryan.
- SCP-2890 is one of the two SCPs I have written without any obvious cross references (the other is SCP-2523). Originally there were more, in particular an overt link to SCP-701 — the magician that is in the hat also edited the 1813 edition of The Hanged King's Tragedy, but these were cut when I was salvaging the article from its initial downward trajectory. I consider them to be author canon though, and will probably return if I use the hat in any future work (including an On Mount Golgotha story that I am currently working on).
- SCP-2673 has the reference to SCP-2264, which was suggested by the theme of the piece and the historical death of Marlowe.
- SCP-2631 has the hotlinked direct reference to SCP-2004, which is the only crossslink that I have done by setting out to crossslink something and looking for an article that fits, rather than it emerging from the writing process. I did this because I wanted to show that the array was expirementing on humanity, but I didn't have any specific ideas about the expirement.
- SCP-2140 is derived from a Daevite artifact, one of the redactions is "SCP-140"; the specific details of the dig site were meant as hints to this connection and taken directly from SCP-140.
- SCP-2111 is absolutely loaded with cross-references:
- Counterconceptual and MTF Epsilon-7 "Forget Me Nots" are from SCP-2358
- References to each of qntm's There is No Antimemetics Division tales up to Unforgettable, That's What You Are. qntm then referenced SCP-2111 in Your Last First Day.
- There is a direct, hotlinked, reference to SCP-055, which seems to defy some of the conventional wisdom about crossslinks by directly crossslinking to a super popular Series I Heritage Collection article.
- Operation AZURE PEREGRINE was written as an supplement to SCP-2970, so that's probably a gimme, but it also references demonics from SCP-2167 and MTF Sigma-3 ("Bibliographers").
Certainly the complaint that I have seen about Series III articles being too unconnected doesn't apply to my work, and I wonder if it really is all that valid as a whole (both Metaphysician and Fantem have developed their respective expansive mythoi as largely Series III articles, for example).
I think that a blanket "avoid cross-references" is genuinely terrible advice, and even "cross-referencing is okay but don't reference really popular articles and/or Series I articles" is also missing the point. Really you should just avoid bad cross references, good crosss-links improve the wiki as a coherent body of work as a whole and are a good thing.
I can't recall an article that was otherwise good but was sank solely by a bad crosss-link, either; invariably bad crosslinks are found with a host of other issues common to poor quality coldposts. So I suspect that bad crosss-links are a symptom of weak writing, and not a cause of it. If you know why you are cross-linking something as a result of consistent logic, then you shouldn't need to worry about it, even if the link is to SCP-173. If it isn't the result of solid internal logic then the problem is not actually with the link, but with the failure of the underlying narrative to support it.
One thing that is somewhat related to this that seems to show up a lot in low quality coldposts with bad crosss-links is the idea that "SCP" is somehow a descriptive quality that other anomalies can detect or interact with. It isn't but rather is merely prescriptive in-universe as the result of the filing system used by the Foundation, and is no more a quality of the anomaly than political district of origin is a measurable quality of a pot of soil or grocery store aisle a measurable quality of a bag of rice.
