[Wikipedia-l] Re: [Intlwiki-l] RFC on a few feature requests

[Stephen Gilbert]

--- Brion VIBBER <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> * "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?

I'm all for a page count rather than an individual
link count. I can't think of any reason to retain the
current behaviour.
 
> * 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?

Blocking a user name without a corresponding IP block
is useless. The vandal can just sign up for another
ID. I'm in favour of the UseMod-style behaviour.

> * 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?

Unsure. My first instinct was to say, "Oh, yeah!", but
I thought about it a little more. Imagine a
hypothetical article named [[English]] that is
entirely about the language. I think it should be
moved to [[English language]], so I do so. The
software "corrects" all the [[English]] links. The
problem is, many of those links were not refering to
to the language, but the nationality. we're left with
a big mess of incorrect links, with no way to correct
them other than examining each one.

> * 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?

It doesn't seem like a pressing matter to me. All of
the PHP source code is in a form of English too. As
long as the interface is localized, I can't see this
being a problem. Note: I am an English speaker. :)

> * 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?

Sounds good to me. Any downsides?

Stephen G.

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