Brion wrote:
..... This can be switched by the simple addition of "DISTINCT" to a couple SQL queries; is there any reason to retain the current behavior?
Yes, please do this. The current set-up doesn't make sense. In longish, technical articles with large tables (like the element articles) I will often link a single term in the introduction/definition paragraph, in the table and in the body text under an appropriate heading (one link each). The reason I do this is because each of these areas are often used by readers to the exclusion of other areas; most people will only read the introduction/definition paragraph and quickly glance at the table to get a good idea about what the subject is and why it is important (thus if an important topic is included in the intro then it should be linked). Others will dive right into one of the sections, such as Isotopes, to get info on only that part (therefore it is important to have a topic linked that directly relates to that section). Yet other people will mostly focus on the technical information in the table (links there act as a key for the table, for example; DM -> [[decay mode]], iso -> [[isotope]], or even van der Waals radius -> [[van der Waals radius]] - which may be linked in the body text but not noticeable, etc.). So for an element like strontium which has the notable isotope Sr-90, the term "isotope" may be linked in the first paragraph, in the isotope section of the body text and in the isotope section of the table. Each link is important for the article but I don't think it should be counted three times.
- On blocking vandals; there's still
no interface for blocking by username, and you can't get the IP address of a logged-in user except by sifting through the server logs. Should we retain and display IP addresses/hostnames of logged-in editors (as on UseMod), and/or allow usernames to be blocked?
I really like Anthere's idea of blocking by IP /without/ giving away the IP address in the interface. If this isn't easy to implement, then the next best thing would be to limit the exposure of IPs to admins.
- The administrative page rename feature
on UseMod could optionally find and change links to point to the new name in addition to just supplying a redirect. We still haven't implemented this. Desirable?
Since all logged-in users can now move pages I think that even having this option would be more trouble than it is worth (maybe this should be an option available only to Admins for at least the time being). But I was wrong on my prediction of calamity that would result from allowing green newbies to have the ability to move pages, so I might also be wrong here. What would be /very/ useful is the ability to automatically fix redirects so that they don't become double redirects.
- While the "Special:" namespace may be
localized ("Spezial", "Speciel" etc), the names of special pages are hardwired in English (hence monstrosities like "Spezial: Recentchanges"). While these are mostly hidden in the interface by descriptive names, the links, URLs, and most annoyingly the tooltips on the links all show the raw internal English name of the function which implements the special page. A table of equivalencies could be set up, allowing more easily recognizable localized names to be used. Good idea? Bad idea?
The user interface if far more important for localization purposes than the internal stuff and URLs. I would keep it as-is since this doesn't seem very important while it sounds like it might be a lot of work. There is also the fact that you have people like me who just can't keep their hands off of wikis in languages they don't speak. I would be lost if I didn't have some ability to find out what the most important links were. I do this by placing my mouse pointer over a link I suspect is the correct one and then I look at what the URL says. But what I think is secondary to what the heavy users of the non-English Wikipedias think.
- For the French wiki, the Wikipedia: namespace
is tentatively set up as "Wikip�dia" (with acute accent on the "e"). The parser doesn't accept namespaces with non-ASCII chars so this doesn't work, which is a bug I intend to fix, but additionally one tester asked: ... In short, allow aliases for namespaces. Good idea? Bad idea?
This seems like a good idea to me.
-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
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