As for me, I think that we should make changes very slowly and only
after we're really sure. :-) And I'm not 100% convinced.
Here's a couple of good examples of good uses of subpages:
[[Villanelle/Example]]
and
[[Saturday_Night_Live/Generalissimo_Francisco_Franco_is_still_dead]]
In the second case, the main page serves to set the context of the subpage
in a really nice way. Anyone stumbling into the subpage would
probably be interested in visiting the main page.
As soon as we move to Magnus' software, the
obvious solution will be
[[Nirvana (rock band)]], etc.
But how, exactly, is this really different from, let's say
[[Nirvana/Rock band]]?
The fact is that having subpages doesn't make
pagenames any easier
to remember. It is just a system, which implies one indeed
reasonably easy way to remember page titles.
I think it makes them easy to *guess*, though. And that's pretty important.
[[History of Baseball]] or [[Baseball History]]? Hard to guess which
it might be. But [[Baseball/History]] -- at least it is a system.
You might suggest: [[Baseball (History)]], but then I would respond --
what's the difference? And shouldn't this page link to the main
[[Baseball]] page, automatically? One would think so.
In other words, we can have the same functionality of
/Talk pages without
subpages.
Yes, and I do agree with this.
One of the ways that I conceptualize namespaces is that it makes it
easier to distinguish what is *in the encyclopedia* versus what is
*about the encyclopedia*. Right now, our personal names [[Jimbo
Wales]] for example, are *in the encyclopedia*, which doesn't really
make sense. (Unless anyone thinks I'm famous enough to deserve an
entry, ha ha!)
Well, I think there are a lot more failings than that.
See the above URL.
I would answer that it's one naming scheme, but it
has no great advantages
over the combination of [[Iwo Jima]] and one of the names just mentioned
(e.g., [[Battle of Iwo Jima]]). It's no harder to "accidentally" link to
from elsewhere. Making battles subpages of wars is more or less a matter
of convention, and other intuitive conventions can be learned if they
indeed make some intuitive sense.
Won't any convention "force" or "direct" us to think in certain
ways?
I hardly see this as an objection against this _particular_ convention.
Well, I disagree with some of those.
For example: "Subpages replace the English meaning of the slash with a
special meaning" -- the "sub" meaning of "slash" is well known
in
English, at least to people who use computers at all, which means all
Wikipedians and all customers. Websites do it!
http://dir.yahoo.com/Arts/Art_History/
http://dir.yahoo.com/Arts/Art_History/Criticism_and_Theory/
People know what this means, instantly. This means that this category
"Criticism and Theory" is not about criticism and theory generally,
but in the context of Art History.
--Jimbo
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