I must agree with that. We shouldn't add non-intuitive features to Wikipedia mark-up. In particular, I don't see any substancial difference between [[Elrond (Middle Earth)]] and [[Middle Earth/Elrond]] (The former looks more aesthetical to me, though), and if Wikipedia software itself does not recognize subpages, we shouldn't add subpage-like features.
Unlike most others encyclopedias, Wikipedia is about ease of editing too, and editing is made harder by the abiguity in the convert-links-once solution. What I like in the idea of aliases is the total control of the author over what he links to. This won't be possible if Wiki software is the thing that decides about the conversion.
Uri Yanover
P.S. My appologies if this message reaches the list twice, my mailer drives me crazy :-(
----- Original Message ----- From: lcrocker@nupedia.com To: wikipedia-l@nupedia.com Sent: Thursday, January 31, 2002 9:39 PM Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] yet another modest proposal to address subpage-like behavior
Sorry, Magnus, but your counter-proposal changes the runtime behavior of the system and is /far/ too complicated. Let's not shoot the golden goose here: Wikipedia works because it is SIMPLE. Article title space should be flat (whether or not we add typing conveniences).
Also, disambiguation isn't the problem we're trying to solve here. That can be done easily enough manually. There are already great disambiguating pages like "Java", and we should allow the software to do those automatically because we want human judgment and creativity to apply to making them.
The issue really is just one of typing convenience. When I write about Texas Hold'em strategy, I might say something like "A raise from late position on the flop will often cause an opponent to check to you on the turn, giving you the chance to check behind him and take a free card." In that sentence, I might want to link words like "raise", "position", "flop", "free card" and such, and typing "[[Raise (Poker}|raise]]" for every one of them is a pain. But I /want/ to do the right thing semantically and make sure that the link actually does go to the "Raise (Poker)" page, and not just to a disambiguating "Raise" page that will interrupt and confuse the reader.
Of course, when I /want/ links to be ambiguous to encourage "accidental" discovery, I can still do that too. In my "See also" lines, for example, I'll probably just link to simple titles, hoping that accidental links do interesting things. So there /will/ be an "Elves" page with pointers to other contexts, as well as "Elves (Tolkein)", or whatever. The author should have the choice, and the power. The software should support what theauthor wants to do, not enforce its ideas or structure upon the author. 0
From: "Uri Yanover" uriyan_subscribe@yahoo.com
Unlike most others encyclopedias, Wikipedia is about ease of editing too, and editing is made harder by the abiguity in the convert-links-once solution. What I like in the idea of aliases is the total control of the author over what he links to. This won't be possible if Wiki software is the thing that decides about the conversion.
I would say that it is exactly the other way around. Tim's proposal is not ambiguous and does not require any searching for terms in name spaces. Your's, however, does.
-- Jan Hidders
What I meant is that the _author_ is the one who controls the way links are transformed, not wiki software. That way noone is going to come up saying "Wikipedia made a link for me that I didn't intend to". With aliases, the author could either use the aliased link or make an escape of his own, and it's all under his control.
True, this requires a bit of thinking on behalf of the author, but it also makes up for the defficiency in ordering that was created by the elimination of subpages.
Note finally, that if we don't do subpages, we go all the way, link transformations included.
Uri Yanover
----- Original Message ----- From: "Jan Hidders" hidders@uia.ua.ac.be To: wikipedia-l@nupedia.com Sent: Saturday, February 02, 2002 11:29 AM Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Re: yet another modest proposal to address
From: "Uri Yanover" uriyan_subscribe@yahoo.com
Unlike most others encyclopedias, Wikipedia is about ease of editing too, and editing is made harder by the abiguity in the convert-links-once solution. What I like in the idea of aliases is the total control of the author over what he links to. This won't be possible if Wiki software is the thing that decides about the conversion.
I would say that it is exactly the other way around. Tim's proposal is not ambiguous and does not require any searching for terms in name spaces. Your's, however, does.
-- Jan Hidders
From: "Uri Yanover" uriyan_subscribe@yahoo.com
What I meant is that the _author_ is the one who controls the way links are transformed, not wiki software.
So did I. :-)
That way noone is going to come up saying "Wikipedia made a link for me that I didn't intend to". With aliases, the author could either use the aliased link or make an escape of his own, and it's all under his control.
In some sense, but if you provide a list of #base pragma's you have to know which subject resides in which namespace if you want to determine in advance how it is going to be expanded. In Tim's proposal this is not necessary.
True, this requires a bit of thinking on behalf of the author, but it also makes up for the defficiency in ordering that was created by the elimination of subpages.
That deficiency is a feature, not a bug. What we want to avoid is that writers qualify all terms of a certain knowledge space (fictional universe, scientific field, ...) as belonging to the corrsponding name space. Not all terms in mathematics should be in the name space Mathematics, but only those that have to be because the term has also a different meaning in other fields. The same holds for article subjects from Middle Earth.
Kind regards,
-- Jan Hidders
In some sense, but if you provide a list of #base pragma's you have to
know
which subject resides in which namespace if you want to determine in
advance
how it is going to be expanded. In Tim's proposal this is not necessary.
...
That deficiency is a feature, not a bug. What we want to avoid is that writers qualify all terms of a certain knowledge space (fictional
universe,
scientific field, ...) as belonging to the corrsponding name space. Not
all
terms in mathematics should be in the name space Mathematics, but only
those
that have to be because the term has also a different meaning in other fields. The same holds for article subjects from Middle Earth.
I don't think you understood my idea then. I didn't mean to use aliaes mainly to categorize, but rather to _disambiguate_ (e.g. [[root (botanics)]] vs. [[root (mathematics)]]). Because in most fields there are very few internal disagreement in terms, we should need very few alias pages.
[[Middle Earth]] is one of the few exceptions, where an alias could be used to categorize (and therefore would point at all the articles). The "normal" wiki articles won't need and won't use aliases for anything but disambiguation.
Uri
From: "Uri Yanover" uriyan_subscribe@yahoo.com
...
That deficiency is a feature, not a bug. What we want to avoid is that writers qualify all terms of a certain knowledge space (fictional universe, scientific field, ...) as belonging to the corrsponding name space. Not all terms in mathematics should be in the name space Mathematics, but only those that have to be because the term has also a different meaning in other fields. The same holds for article subjects from Middle Earth.
I don't think you understood my idea then. I didn't mean to use aliaes mainly to categorize, but rather to _disambiguate_ (e.g. [[root (botanics)]] vs. [[root (mathematics)]]).
Oh, I am quite convinced that this is what *you* mean to use them for. But the important question is what the consequences are if many other people are going to use it as well. That depends on some details that you haven't explained yet. You could reduce the risc as follows: - introduce special notation for links that have to be looked up in the name space (so [[blah]] behaves normalla and [[~blah]] is looked up in the name spaces - if a link [[~blah]] is not found in the name spaces then it is treated as the link [[blah]].
Kind regards,
-- Jan Hidders
Oh, I am quite convinced that this is what *you* mean to use them for. But the important question is what the consequences are if many other people
are
going to use it as well. That depends on some details that you haven't explained yet. You could reduce the risc as follows:
- introduce special notation for links that have to be looked up in the
name
space (so [[blah]] behaves normalla and [[~blah]] is looked up in the name spaces
- if a link [[~blah]] is not found in the name spaces then it is treated
as
the link [[blah]].
Kind regards,
-- Jan Hidders
Well, while aliases could be abused (as nearly everything on this planet), I don't really see a reason why people would bother to create new topics with names like [[Mathematics/Analysis/Zeta function]] and then making the aliases for them when they could just do [[Zeta function]]. We could, of course, do explicit alias escaping (~) but frankly I don't think it's necessary. This is particularly so because more than 20,000 topics have been created so far without any categorization and transfering them all would be next to impossible.
Sincerely yours, Uri Yanover
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