On 11/15/07, Jim Hu <jimhu(a)tamu.edu> wrote:
And PMIDs. The RFC bit me and I had to disable it. In E. coli we
have a gene named rfc, which caused all sorts of interesting
problems when we tried to make wiki pages about it. It would be nice
if these were less Easter-egg like and more configurable for us non
WMF sites.
Yep. There's all sorts of reasons it's a bad idea. Take a look at this
page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_network
Here the RFC magic link is working to its full exent. But notice:
- Every RFC is linked, even the ones that are used more than once
- The RFC's are automatically linked like this: [http:... RFC
1234], rather than RFC 1234[http:...] or even RFC 1234<ref>http...</ref>
Having a piece of hardcoded parser magic dictate style and presentation over
the Manula of Style is crappy. And that's in a best-case scenario. We have
lots of other templates that do a similar job ({{imdb}} for instance), so it
makes very little sense to me to give ISBN's, RFC's and PMID's (whatever
they are) this special treatment.
</rant>
Our new parser will dutifully recognise them, of course. :)
Steve