On Tue, Sep 2, 2008 at 4:58 PM, Angela beesley@gmail.com wrote:
On Wed, Sep 3, 2008 at 1:07 AM, Philip Sandifer snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
That is, is the decision to turn off subpages just at technical decision because of the problem it causes for articles like [[OS/2]]?
It wasn't just a technical decision. The discussion about why it was done can still be found at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Case_against_subpages and http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Get_rid_of_subpages_entirely and other pages on meta linked from those.
Reading this, it looks like subpages were originally used for categorization. The category system now developed is much more flexible. It allows an article to exist in multiple categories, for instance.
OTOH, there doesn't seem to be an argument against something like [[Thailand/History]] for an article like [[History of Thailand]].
Phil, can you explain what you mean by "areas where we have, essentially, multiple articles on a single topic", or should we wait for your final proposal? Multiple articles on a single topic sounds like a bad thing with a simple solution. Merge and redirect. The ugly merge/redirects come from the "solution" to a different situation - multiple articles on multiple topics.