On Mon, 28 Feb 2005 19:30:14 -0500, Fastfission <fastfission(a)gmail.com> wrote:
I'm not sure where the most effective place to
post recommendations
is, but here are two I have:
The best place to post both software and website configuration
problems/suggestions is at the bug tracker:
http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org You have to set up an account, but only
so there's a confirmed e-mail address, to make sure people don't leave
a report and then "run away". Of the mailing lists, wikitech-l is the
most appropriate:
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l
1. If you currently click the "Search" or
"Go" button without typing
in a query, you get an ugly MySQL error.
There are various open "bugs" and previous discussions about the
search behaviour; you might want to search in the bug tracker and the
mailing list archives (add "site:mail.wikimedia.org" to a Google
search). But yes, that certainly seems like a bug, so if you don't
find one, it would be worth opening a bug report about it.
2. If you put in a Wiki URL without the /wiki/ you get
an ugly Error
404 and then a 5 sec. redirect.
That was recently changed because the code that previously dealt with
it had a rather major bug. The main reason to encourage people to use
the extra "/wiki/" is that there are URLs that *don't* refer to wiki
pages, such as those that are part of the software (the graphics used
in the interface, for instance). So if people start thinking of
en.wikipedia.org/<page> as being a correct alternative to
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/<page>ge>, they are going to be confused when it
*doesn't* work like that - especially since there is no way of
predicting what URLs of that form will be needed for something else in
the future. That's Brion's justification anyway: see
http://mail.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2005-February/027873.html
Of course, some people already *have* used URLs like that as though
they were correct, and certainly it's handy to be able to type them,
but I think it makes sense that as long as not all URLs of that form
can be used that way (and guaranteed to always work that way) it's
worth making people aware that they did the "wrong" thing.
--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]