[Wikipedia-l] RFC on a few feature requests

[Brion VIBBER]

There's a few feature requests that have come up multiple times, and I'd 
like some comments from other developers and power users before I go 
trashing the code on my own...

* "Most wanted" and "Most popular" special pages list the _total_ number 
of links to a page, regardless of how many links there are _per page_. 
Some types of lists can hyperinflate the numbers; a list of video games 
might link [[Playstation]] 389 times (once for each Playstation game 
listed). The behavior that people seem to expect is a count of _pages_ 
that link, rather than the raw number of links. I would tend to agree. 
This can be switched by the simple addition of "DISTINCT" to a couple 
SQL queries; is there any reason to retain the current behavior?

* On blocking vandals; there's still no interface for blocking by 
username, and you can't get the IP address of a logged-in user except by 
sifting through the server logs. Should we retain and display IP 
addresses/hostnames of logged-in editors (as on UseMod), and/or allow 
usernames to be blocked?

* The administrative page rename feature on UseMod could optionally find 
and change links to point to the new name in addition to just supplying 
a redirect. We still haven't implemented this. Desirable?

* While the "Special:" namespace may be localized ("Spezial", "Speciel" 
etc), the names of special pages are hardwired in English (hence 
monstrosities like "Spezial:Recentchanges"). While these are mostly 
hidden in the interface by descriptive names, the links, URLs, and most 
annoyingly the tooltips on the links all show the raw internal English 
name of the function which implements the special page. A table of 
equivalencies could be set up, allowing more easily recognizable 
localized names to be used. Good idea? Bad idea?

* For the French wiki, the Wikipedia: namespace is tentatively set up as 
"Wikipédia" (with acute accent on the "e"). The parser doesn't accept 
namespaces with non-ASCII chars so this doesn't work, which is a bug I 
intend to fix, but additionally one tester asked:

   'For the francophone wikipedians without a French keyboard, would it
   be possible for the "Wikipedia:*" links to automatically transform
   into "Wikipédia:*"? Or, more simply, could the system interpret e/é as
   equal in the namespace portion?'

In short, allow aliases for namespaces. Good idea? Bad idea?

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)