Rowan Collins rowan.collins@gmail.com wrote:
- Discussion Tab - template?
I notice wikipedia (and many other wikis) have a tab for the discussion area- is this simply a template within mediawiki, or a whole different thing? I couldnt find it in out of the box "skins" setting...
The discussion tab appears on every single article, right out of the box. There's no way of *removing* it without carefully hacking up the source code! All it does is link to a separate wiki page for holding discussions on - it evolved out of the desire of Wikipedians to keep the articles looking like articles, and have discussion associated with but visually separate from each one. (More traditional wikis consider discussion to be simply content that hasn't been fully refactored yet, and treat the whole site as more of a collective brainstorm than a collaborative development project.)
Perhaps if a separate Talk namespace is deemed superfluous, it could be reappropriated for another purpose?
For example you could possibly: * Rename the "Talk:" namespace to "Archive:", retitle the "discussion" tab "archive" also, etc., * Encourage all activity on the ordinary article page, * Then use the associated formerly-talk-but-now-archive page to store old "thread-mode" discussions.
Just an idea. Not sure how well it'd work. (At the very least, it might confuse people familiar with Wikipedia or other mediawiki wikis that retain the original behavior.)
*Muke!