On Wednesday 21 August 2002 04:41 pm, Enchanter wrote:
I don't think [using history and the top of talk pages] is enough. If others were using wikipedia articles, we would want a prominent clickable link back to our article, not something buried in the edit history or the talk page. Simple fairness and courtesy would require that we do the same and link prominently to others, as we do with FOLDOC.
Most sites simply have a link to their copyrights page and/or to a bibliography, that's all we should have (see below). Do we really want to have all the source info contained at http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Magnesium in the main part of the article?
As more and more info is added the article will begin to look more and more messy. Having this type of info in the article will also only encourage newbies to sign articles they create. This stuff needs to go somplace else that is obvious and doesn't clutter the article.
On Wednesday 21 August 2002 04:41 pm, --April wrote:
Would it be possible to add a Credits: namespace that, like the Talk: namespace would track a given article? That way we could put credits, links-back, links to any invariant texts, et cetera ad nauseum. We could even put in hardcopy references, which would be useful and keep 'em from cluttering a document. Best of all, it's unobtrusive but easily accessible.
Yes, I think this would be a great idea. Having attiribs at the top of a page called talk is non-obvious while having them in a credits:, sources: or better yet bibliography: namespace would be very initiative. This should be linked from the article's page in the same way as talk is and should have special features available only to sources (or whatever) namespaces.
Some features might be; some text explanation in the non-editable part of each page briefly explaining what that page is, how it augments the standard history for large external adds and how to use it with a link to a longer explanation and to wikipedia:copyrights. Another thing worth considering is somehow using Lee's jump-to feature along with clickable footnote numbers -- clicking on footnote 5 takes you to that footnote on the bibliography: page for that article (and/or mouse over text of that footnote is displayed).
-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)