As a general rule, I think changes that are optional should default to what is current, not what someone thinks is a better option.
As a general rule, I agree with you - but I'm not convinced this change should be subject to said rule.
If we all agree that having this feature (at least optionally) is a good thing, the question becomes whether there's more benefit to defaulting to 'view' than negative reaction by a portion of the community.
MediaWiki is designed to Just Work right out of the box with minimal configuration. If you make this a configuration setting, how many admins are going to set it? Probably very few compared to the number of new wiki admins that would have found this behavior otherwise useful or intuitive.
Also, as a config setting there's the possibility that this could become another ParserFunctions or "Edit Toolbar" - something we field emails about daily, always with the same predictable response. I can guarantee this would be the case if the default were set to 'edit' but high-profile installs like Wikipedia opt to set the action to 'view' (not sure how likely this is considering it might spark a backlash from a vocal minority).
-- Jim
On 4/3/07, Michael Daly mikedaly@magma.ca wrote:
Jim Wilson wrote:
I agree with making a MW system message or $wg control this - but which should be the default? Edit or view?
In order not to impact the current users, it should default to what happens today - edit.
As a general rule, I think changes that are optional should default to what is current, not what someone thinks is a better option.
Mike
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