Oliver-
- Linking with the use of anchors is a Bad Thing, as previously
discussed,
Actually, the result of the discussion on wikitech-l is that we would keep the option enabled (as it was always been; the anchors have just not been generated and had to for the TOC) and to set the rules for when to use anchors as policies.
- The size of the article titles was fine as it was,
Several people complained about it, and I agree with them. Headlines are not supposed to dominate the entire page, they are supposed to give the viewer a quick overview of the different sections. The important thing is not to use the same font size/style for totally different things.
- There seem to be faint horizontal rules below the headings.
Wikipedia allows users to insert other types of large font text into pages besides headings, such as <font..> formatted text, CSS formatted text etc. These lines help to distinguish between the two, which is important for seeing why certain lines don't show up in the TOC, for knowing which sections can be edited with the new right click feature etc. Of all the ways to separate headlines from other large font text I've tried, I like this one the best. Feel free to make alternative suggestions.
- I don't get the point of the "Post a comment" feature. It seems an
unnecessary complication, providing no more functionality than normal editing.
It appends text directly to the page instead of requiring you to load and save the whole page, which can be very large.
Because only your comment appears in the preview, the preview is much faster and it is easier to see the effect of formatting, links etc. because you don't have to scroll to your comment every time you preview it. Having users not always unnecessarily load and save text that they don't need anyway should also help server performance. Also, newbies often are confused by the concept of editing a page to comment it, and they will likely expect such a link. Furthermore, as you know, some browsers have problems editing large pages; this feature allows users of such browsers to post comments without loading the content of the entire page into the edit window. This is also convenient for normal users.
This feature could also be the first stage of a more sophisticated discussion system, where the next stage would be auto-appending signatures and providing a "Reply to this" link after each comment.
As for the headings, we should make it a convention that each discussion thread should have a heading, as this makes it much easier to participate in discussions using the "Edit section" feature, providing many of the same above advantages.
Regards,
Erik