This copied from my post to wikitech-l:
The Table of Contents feature could potentially suffer from the following problems, as it is currently implemented:
1. An article with many short sections would inappropriately get a TOC that would waste space. 2. An article with just two very long sections wouldn't get a TOC but would be appreciably helped by one. 3. Sometimes a TOC would be best located not at the top of an article, but after a short introductory paragraph. I think some dead tree encyclopedias use this method. 4. If displaying TOCs is off by default, most users won't appreciate their utility, as most users won't change preferences. It seems a TOC is most useful to readers of an encyclopedia, and as many readers won't even be logged in, they won't see the potentially helpful TOCs.
I propose that whether and and where a TOC appears should be specified by each article using a wiki tag indicating where the TOC should appear. This would allow articles with many short sections to not have a TOC, long articles with just a few sections have a TOC, and allow article authors/editors to specify the best location for the TOC without relying upon the wiki software to presume the very top of an article is the best place.
I think keeping the option of having automatically-generated TOCs as a user preference is desirable, as at first, most articles won't have a TOC. Maybe they should be a different color, so editors can easily identify articles that would benefit from a TOC and insert the wiki tag for one, and perhaps identify articles that suffer from a TOC and insert a wiki tag to exclude one.
- David Friedland (Nohat)