Folks,
when the whole subpage discussion first came up, Larry Sanger wrote: "Subpages would be nice, I suppose, for other namespaces, like the Wikipedia namespace and the User namespace." I have just added namespace-specific subpage support to Wikipedia. This means that we can now enable subpages selectively for only the User & Talk namespaces. I suggest doing so.
Currently users are already creating pages like:
[[User:Eloquence/Wikipedia Manifesto]] (not a real page).
With subpage support enabled, it would be possible to just type
[[/Wikipedia Manifesto]]
on the respective page, and the link would automatically go to the above page. Furthermore, the "Wikipedia Manifesto" page would provide an automatic backlink to [[User:Eloquence]].
Similarly; users are archiving talk pages like this:
[[Talk:Main Page/Archive 1]] [[Talk:Main Page/Archive 2]] [[Talk:Main Page/Archive 3]]
Again, here we can simply type
[[/Archive 1]] [[/Archive 2]] [[/Archive 3]]
and have automatic backlinks on the archive pages.
When the new Wikipedia software was developed, it was decided not to support subpages for the reason that they would disturb the Wikipedia article structure. I agree with this reasoning, but it is not valid for user and talk pages. Since we now have the ability to turn on subpages selectively, I see no reason not to do so. We could also globally enable them on wikis where they might be useful, e.g. Meta.
Regards,
Erik
I'm quite opposed to this. The benefit is negligible, and the cost is substantial.
The benefit, as I see it, is merely to eliminate some typing on user subpages, and to enable automatic backlinking on those same pages. This is a very tiny part of our overall mission, and so the benefit here is quite small.
The cost is that we are adding syntax in one part of wikipedia that new users will discover and come to expect throughout all of wikipedia. Increasing the befuddlement of newcomers is always a bad thing, although it can sometimes be overcome if there is a very very strong and compelling reason.
--Jimbo
Jimbo wrote:
The cost is that we are adding syntax in one part of wikipedia that new users will discover and come to expect throughout all of wikipedia. Increasing the befuddlement of newcomers is always a bad thing, although it can sometimes be overcome if there is a very very strong and compelling reason.
No, it's the other way around. If we only allow subpages without really supporting them (as we *do now* with archive pages and user subpages), new users will see this link style: "User:Eloquence/foo" and create similar pages elsewhere. I have already seen this -- users try to create subpages because they see them in the user & talk namespace. Others then have to rename these pages.
If we explicitly support subpages, users will *still* have to learn that they are not supposed to create them elsewhere, but we can provide an automatic info message that tells them why (not currently implemented, but would be easy to do). This is because with real subpages, you just have to type "/foo", and we don't have any articles that start with a "/", so we can autodetect when people are doing this and provide a warning message.
Using Wikipedia is a learning process; this cannot be avoided. Implementing subpages properly instead of merely tolerating them makes learning where and where not to use them easier.
Regards,
Erik
Using Wikipedia is a learning process; this cannot be avoided. Implementing subpages properly instead of merely tolerating them makes learning where and where not to use them easier.
I don't agree. We aren't talking about the wisdom of subpages, we are talking about the typing shortcut and the linkbacks. Both are not very useful.
If you wanted to add a warning to regular pages, saying "Uh, it is best not to use the slash character '/' in article titles" with a link to a discussion of subpages, while not having the warning in special pages, that'd be fine with me.
It would be fine with me if we put that message everywhere, saying that we discourage the use of subpages generally.
But we really should discourage them generally by not "supporting" them with useless cute features.
--Jimbo
I don't agree. We aren't talking about the wisdom of subpages, we are talking about the typing shortcut and the linkbacks. Both are not very useful.
We have hundreds of archive links and user subpages, often on pages with long names. The benefit of shortcuts and linkbacks is far from negligible as we approach a million pages.
But we really should discourage them generally by not "supporting" them with useless cute features.
The reality is that people are creating them, including yourself: http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Jimbo_Wales/Why_I_oppose_a_cabal http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Jimbo_Wales/Statement_of_principles
Either you ban subpages entirely, or you support them properly depending on context. But choosing not to support them to "discourage" their use is schizophrenic.
Regardless, I primarily added the support for my own use. If you intend to block this feature on Wikipedia by imperial decree, I don't care much.
Regards,
Erik
Erik Moeller wrote:
Regardless, I primarily added the support for my own use. If you intend to block this feature on Wikipedia by imperial decree, I don't care much.
Not by imperial degree, no. I will follow the consensus in the best interests of wikipedia, as always. This doesn't preclude me from having an opinion.
--Jimbo
Erik Moeller wrote:
Currently users are already creating pages like:
[[User:Eloquence/Wikipedia Manifesto]] (not a real page).
With subpage support enabled, it would be possible to just type
[[/Wikipedia Manifesto]]
on the respective page, and the link would automatically go to the above page. Furthermore, the "Wikipedia Manifesto" page would provide an automatic backlink to [[User:Eloquence]].
Maybe I'm missing something, but how would this procedure handle the situation where other users also would have identically named sub-pages. It is certainly reasonable to expect that many of our busier users would have sub-pages named "/archive 1", "/archive 2", "/archive 3", etc. Eclecticology
Maybe I'm missing something, but how would this procedure handle the situation where other users also would have identically named sub-pages. It is certainly reasonable to expect that many of our busier users would have sub-pages named "/archive 1", "/archive 2", "/archive 3", etc.
When you create a subpage by typing [[/archive1]], the actual page created is [[<current page name>/archive1]], e.g. [[Talk:Benevolent dictator/archive1]]. On this page, a backlink automatically points to [[Talk:Benevolent dictator]]. Thus, you do not get duplicate page names.
Regards,
Erik
Can those we've already created be grandfathered as subpages, or would we need to recreate them? Zoe Erik Moeller erik_moeller@gmx.de wrote:Folks,
when the whole subpage discussion first came up, Larry Sanger wrote: "Subpages would be nice, I suppose, for other namespaces, like the Wikipedia namespace and the User namespace." I have just added namespace-specific subpage support to Wikipedia. This means that we can now enable subpages selectively for only the User & Talk namespaces. I suggest doing so.
Currently users are already creating pages like:
[[User:Eloquence/Wikipedia Manifesto]] (not a real page).
With subpage support enabled, it would be possible to just type
[[/Wikipedia Manifesto]]
on the respective page, and the link would automatically go to the above page. Furthermore, the "Wikipedia Manifesto" page would provide an automatic backlink to [[User:Eloquence]].
Similarly; users are archiving talk pages like this:
[[Talk:Main Page/Archive 1]] [[Talk:Main Page/Archive 2]] [[Talk:Main Page/Archive 3]]
Again, here we can simply type
[[/Archive 1]] [[/Archive 2]] [[/Archive 3]]
and have automatic backlinks on the archive pages.
When the new Wikipedia software was developed, it was decided not to support subpages for the reason that they would disturb the Wikipedia article structure. I agree with this reasoning, but it is not valid for user and talk pages. Since we now have the ability to turn on subpages selectively, I see no reason not to do so. We could also globally enable them on wikis where they might be useful, e.g. Meta.
Regards,
Erik
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