On Tue, 2003-04-01 at 19:21, Tim Starling wrote:

...

After a discussion on wikitech-l titled "bot approval request", we

decided

...

that perhaps it would be better if my bot were implemented on the server side, so that everyone could use it, and so that it would be relatively efficient. I offered to do the coding, on the condition that someone

will

...

block me if I try to make any ordinary edits -- I don't want Wikipedia totally taking over my life :)

Anyway, here's my proposal. I originally posted it on wikitech-l, but it drew no responses. What I'm suggesting is a significant extension to Special:Movepage capabilities.

Another good question is how to change the links...

say you are moving page "A" to "B".

Is the wikitext on a page that has

See also [[A]]

changed to

See also [[B]]

or is it changed to

See also [[B|A]]

?

It is indeed a good question, and the best answer is almost certainly [[B|A]]. In the application I'm interested in, almost all the links were already "see also [[A|B]]" and I want them changed to "see also [[B]]". In both cases, the visible text is unchanged. In Tarquin's application, the links would have to be changed from [[Image:A]] to [[Image:B]].

Specifically, I want to change [[Brisbane, Queensland|Brisbane]] to [[Brisbane]]. But someone might disagree with me, so later they use the same feature to change my [[Brisbane]] to [[Brisbane, Australia|Brisbane]]. Another link might have gone [[Brisbane, Queensland]] -> [[Brisbane|Brisbane, Queensland]] -> [[Brisbane, Australia|Brisbane, Queensland]].

Note that if there was already a link saying "for other uses of 'Brisbane' see [[Brisbane]]", such links would have to be first changed to [[Brisbane (disambiguation)|Brisbane]], again using the new feature. If a someone forgot to do this, an annoyed old hand could easily revert the naive changes.

-- Tim Starling.

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