Actually since the word typed in is [[ox]]en, we won't need a database or anything, we just use the section inside the double brackets to define the page reference, and the whole word (defined by the area between spaces) as the link. The feminism, feminine issue is a red herring, because we wouldn't link to part of either of these words. Sophistry and Sophism, would still require the [[xxx|yyy]] format, as it does now. The only benefit of this software change would be to pretty up partially linked words.

Frankly partially linked words don't particularly bother me, so it seems like time better spent on other things, but I don't really care one way or the other. The downside of the suggested modification is that someone could link to postmodern[[ism]], leading an unsuspecting person to click on a link to --postmodernism--, and get our page on --ism--. So, I do think it essential to provide a way to override this behavior if you really, really want make a partial word a link.

-----Original Message----- From: Manning Bartlett [mailto:manning@bartlett.net] Sent: Friday, November 09, 2001 4:06 PM To: wikipedia-l@nupedia.com Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] a quick feature request...

hmmmm... I could see how this would work with systematic suffixes such as "cow/cows", but how would it convert"oxen" to "ox", "sophistry" to "sophism" or "misanthropic" to "misanthropy"?

I think we'd need either a consistent language (which is not likely in our lifetimes), or else a huge database of how terms link to one another. Even then we'd run the risk of words like"feminine" being linked to "feminism" which is not accurate.

Manning

----- Original Message ----- From: Gareth Owen To: wikipedia-l@nupedia.com Sent: Friday, November 09, 2001 8:55 PM Subject: [Wikipedia-l] a quick feature request...

I'm very lazy, so I like typing things like [[algebra]]ic to create the word "Algebraic" with a link to algebra. This is convenient but ugly looking.

Are ther compelling reasons why software shouldn't convert the whole word into a link, exactly like [[algebra|algebraic]] would?