David Friedland wrote:
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 seems like the obvious thing to do, and was suggested on one of these mailing lists before Erik's code was ever implemented on [[test:]]. The obvious code would be <TOC> (or <toc>, or either).
Despite David's arguments, I see one big problem with /requiring/ a <TOC> tag on any article with a TOC. The problem is that articles all start out without TOCs. My solution: Let Erik devise the best system that he can for estimating when an article needs a TOC and when it doesn't. (The current estimate is the number of headers; that's fine.) And let him estimate the best place (before the first header). Then run a conversion script to put "<TOC>" in all of those articles.
At this point, the situation is exactly what Erik would have it be always. Yet humans can now go through and make adjustments, if necessary.
-- Toby