On 8 July 2015 at 13:32, Magnus Manske <magnusmanske@googlemail.com> wrote:

> Silly question: Why not leave the system as it is (allowing for non-unique
> aliases), but do some (reasonable) cleanup, then warn Wikipedia editors when
> they use a non-unique alias? Like using references without the {{reflist}}?

I like this approach a lot - presumably we already have such errors if you use an alias that doesn't exist, or try to invoke a non-existent P number?

However, there's one possible problem that I can see - someone creating duplicate aliases at a later date on Wikidata, and causing errors to pop up across Wikipedia as a result. (When added they were fine, but now they're ambiguous.) The editor might not realise this, and the first anyone knows is when the client wikis complain...

A.

--
- Andrew Gray
andrew.gray@dunelm.org.uk