At Mon, 31 Mar 2003 22:27:19 +1000, Tim Starling (ts4294967296@hotmail.com) wrote:
- The original page is moved to a disambiguated name. This
name is
selected
by the user who creates the second page.
- All existing links are updated via the pipe trick to point
to the
newly-disambiguated primary article.
Sounds like a bad idea - any pages that previously referred to
the old
page _wrongly_ would now be even more wrong. There will be rare
cases where
one disambiguation subject would be the only one that had links,
but more
commonly there are a few links that go to other disambiguation
subjects. So
I would very much prefer to have disambiguation done by hand, or
at least
under human control.
I did have another idea for what to do in this case. Perhaps all the links to the old page could remain pointing to what is now an automated disambiguation page. Readers (not necessarily editors) could be prompted to select the right link. Their choice is reflected by updating the referring page. Of course the link could be manually fixed later, if something goes wrong.
-- Tim Starling.
I understand what you are getting at here Tim, but I don't think it is reasonable to push an editting task on a reader. Now, if they show any editting interest in the page that is a different matter. Then you could (perhaps) ask them to fix a few links while they are there. You would have to give them a means to chicken out though.
The optimum would go a little like this...
1. Reader clicks on some link 2. Oops, what am I doing at this disambig page 3. Correct destination is radio button 1, or 2, or 17 4. Wiki software fixes calling link AND... 5 Reader transparently moves to desired destination. 6. Gaz wins Lotto next day and retires ;-)
But then what do you do if THAT reader got it all wrong?
Gaz
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