"Rolf Lampa" rolf.lampa@rilnet.com wrote in message news:fftcic$ebu$1@ger.gmane.org...
Jay R. Ashworth skrev:
On Fri, Oct 26, 2007 at 01:29:45PM +0200, Rolf Lampa wrote:
We really are talking about aliases: also known as --
"Also known as" is a Synonym (in the context of an article title).
Other uses of a broad alias concept would NOT add value, which is my point.
different spellings (usually) for the same words.
Different spellings should not, in general, be dealt with manually (like it is dealt with now, using Redirects), since it can be automated.
At least, in the pattern-driven examples I've seen mentioned upthread.
Yes, more ideas exist about what kind of information to define as Aliases, but some of those ideas really isn't a good idea at all, in that they'd intend to manually define what's already in the text - namely the text. That part, presenting keywords from the text, should be handled by smart indexers and stemmers. As usual.
Let's be honest here. To users of Wikipedia, the name you choose will not make any difference. If there is a percieved problem and a feature exists that solves that problem, then it will be used to solve that problem - even if it is not what the feature was intended for.
For example, I very much doubt that redirect pages would exist if page transclusion had been invented first.
If our search indexing is good enough to deal with sound-alikes then great, but if not (as is currently the case), then redirects/synonyms/aliases/whatever you call it, will be used to make these redirects manually (as is currently the case, and as will continue to be the case if the new feature is added first, whichever name you choose).
- Mark Clements (HappyDog)