[Wikipedia-l] RFC on a few feature requests

[Daniel Mayer]

Brion wrote:
>.....
>This can be switched by the simple 
>addition of "DISTINCT" to a couple 
>SQL queries; is there any reason to 
>retain the current behavior?

Yes, please do this. The current set-up doesn't make
sense. In longish, technical articles with large
tables (like the element articles) I will often link a
single term in the introduction/definition paragraph,
in the table and in the body text under an appropriate
heading (one link each). The reason I do this is
because each of these areas are often used by readers
to the exclusion of other areas; most people will only
read the introduction/definition paragraph and quickly
glance at the table to get a good idea about what the
subject is and why it is important (thus if an
important topic is included in the intro then it
should be linked). Others will dive right into one of
the sections, such as Isotopes, to get info on only
that part (therefore it is important to have a topic
linked that directly relates to that section). Yet
other people will mostly focus on the technical
information in the table (links there act as a key for
the table, for example; DM -> [[decay mode]], iso ->
[[isotope]], or even van der Waals radius -> [[van der
Waals radius]] - which may be linked in the body text
but not noticeable, etc.). So for an element like
strontium which has the notable isotope Sr-90, the
term "isotope" may be linked in the first paragraph,
in the isotope section of the body text and in the
isotope section of the table. Each link is important
for the article but I don't think it should be counted
three times. 

>* 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?

I really like Anthere's idea of blocking by IP
/without/ giving away the IP address in the interface.
If this isn't easy to implement, then the next best
thing would be to limit the exposure of IPs to admins.


>* 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?

Since all logged-in users can now move pages I think
that even having this option would be more trouble
than it is worth (maybe this should be an option
available only to Admins for at least the time being).
But I was wrong on my prediction of calamity that
would result from allowing green newbies to have the
ability to move pages, so I might also be wrong here.
What would be /very/ useful is the ability to
automatically fix redirects so that they don't become
double redirects. 

>* 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?

The user interface if far more important for
localization purposes than the internal stuff and
URLs. I would keep it as-is since this doesn't seem
very important while it sounds like it might be a lot
of work. There is also the fact that you have people
like me who just can't keep their hands off of wikis
in languages they don't speak. I would be lost if I
didn't have some ability to find out what the most
important links were. I do this by placing my mouse
pointer over a link I suspect is the correct one and
then I look at what the URL says. But what I think is
secondary to what the heavy users of the non-English
Wikipedias think.

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

This seems like a good idea to me. 

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

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