I know you can use the 'quick links' to do this, but it breaks work flow just a bit. I'd rather be able to just create a 'stub' character and fill it in later.
I just ran into this problem recently while trying to set up the timeline of a city for one of my players. Having to jump between it made it take a fair bit longer than it needed to due to a slow internet connection.
While the green button does exist, it’s always much more intuitive for me to use the “create and link character” thing so the new article is automatically attached and you don’t have to refresh the page. I’d probably go wild creating timelines and have a little too much fun if this feature existed lol.
While I'm pretty sure, the green button is the answer here, I have to say that it is a bit counter-intuitive to suddenly use it. You have the option to set up related articles directly from the button above the dropdown in pretty much all article types. Using the green button is not something you are taught while starting your worldbuilding-journey. It's understandable, that people might not think of it as the solution in timeline events. The timeline events would be more in line with all the other articles, if you could create related articles directly without the green button.
Or maybe those options need to be taken off the other articles so people learn to use and appreciate the green button. (honestly, I would not have thought of it myself, before it was mentioned here)
Isn't that exactly what the green button in the lower right corner is for? To quickly create articles and characters so that you can link them?