[Wikipedia-l] please don't allow subhead links

[Kurt Jansson]

> > BUT PLEASE: No anchors adressable from outside! There is nearly no
> difference to subpages.
>
> I think I understand your point,

That's good :-)

> but I don't follow your argument.
> Accessibility from outside was never an important problem with
subpages.
> The key problem with subpages is that they created a "hardcoded" link
> hierarchy, and that they create ambigous and overlaping logical
> namespaces.   Should Chess be it's own article, or should it be
> Boardgames/Chess, or Strategy games/Chess?  It's not at all obvious
that
> allowing HTML anchors would create these problems.

Okay, that another (maybe even more important) argument against
subpages. But we could have kept all the Articlename/History pages then
(an others where the subpage is _only_ related to the subjetpage).


> Perhaps I'm missing something, but I'd like to be able to see how
> --exactly-- anchors are "nearly indistinguishable" from subpages.  If
> you see this more clearly than I, could you please explain it to me.

I'll try :-)
First I just had a bad feeling then I heard of the idea, because in most
suggestions they even looked like subpages. Than I started thinking why.
My main point is: They make the Wikipedia-web more static. You don't
know if there are links from outside to a certain anchor word, so you'll
think twice before changing the text. But if you do so you need a "which
pages link to this anchor word" function to correct all pages that point
to the word. Maybe it's a bit easier if only heading can be anchors, but
you might want to change them, too - or even restructure the whole
article.
Maybe we'll need anchors that redirect to other anchors. And a "most
wanted anchor" function. Okay, maybe I'm exaggerating now, but I hope
this was a bit clearer.

Could someone with better English write an article on meta: "Why anchors
are evil"? - Of course after we have discussed this out.

But maybe I'm too pesimistic and it would be a great feature. But I have
a really bad feeling about it.

Kurt