On Wed, Oct 24, 2007 at 05:06:31PM +1000, Steve Bennett wrote:
[replies to several messages here] On 10/24/07, GerardM gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
I am afraid that as the number of articles grows, the existence of redirects becomes increasingly problematic because more and more disambiguation will be needed. Existing redirects are not considered when disambiguation is implemented. Redirects ARE problematic and by automagically creating a vast number of more redirects it becomes even more of a nightmare.
I assume you're talking about the possibility of implementing aliases as genuine redirects: yes, that would cause problems. However, if they were "automagically created", presumably they can be "automagically destroyed". I haven't really thought through this idea much - it scares me.
If not, there is no problem, and the existence of aliases will in fact tend to reduce the number of aliases. A given article with 5 redirects will probably be replaced by just the article and 5 aliases, which must be much less expensive to store - a maximum of 6 table entries in my scheme, with no article text to consider.
I'd like to recommend that anyone who thinks aliases are a Pretty Neat Idea go locate some coverage of the Come From statement in the programming language Intercal, and muse upon the potential similarities.
Cheers, -- jra