It would be really nice if wikipedias Special:random-function could take arguments, making it possible to get a random article from user-specified categories. A suggestion to do this is as follows. When a user click on the "random article" link the random article is loaded with a comment on the top of the page saying something like "you requested a random article. click here to view options" and so the the user can mark which categories the article should come from. The settings can either be stored in a cookie or they can be sent in the URI. Everyone would love this feature!
regards, Manne Tallmarken
On 3/21/07, demute mannet@kth.se wrote:
It would be really nice if wikipedias Special:random-function could take arguments, making it possible to get a random article from user-specified categories. A suggestion to do this is as follows. When a user click on the "random article" link the random article is loaded with a comment on the top of the page saying something like "you requested a random article. click here to view options" and so the the user can mark which categories the article should come from. The settings can either be stored in a cookie or they can be sent in the URI. Everyone would love this feature!
yep, the one I'd like is the random feature article :) and a maybe a random nice developper :D
Plyd
demute wrote:
It would be really nice if wikipedias Special:random-function could take arguments, making it possible to get a random article from user-specified categories. A suggestion to do this is as follows. When a user click on the "random article" link the random article is loaded with a comment on the top of the page saying something like "you requested a random article. click here to view options" and so the the user can mark which categories the article should come from. The settings can either be stored in a cookie or they can be sent in the URI. Everyone would love this feature!
I would perhaps find it useful sometimes, but I doubt I would love it as described. I have [[Special:Random]] set as my browser's homepage and having a pastel-shaded banner appear at the top of the page every time ala [[Clippy]] would become quite annoying.
I'd suggest leaving the default behavior of [[Special:Random]] alone and make this behavior a new option. It might make a good addition to the search page.
How about keeping the default behavior and adding an optional URL param. Vis a vis:
wiki/index.php?title=Special:Random&category=Awesome_Stuff
-- Jim R. Wilson (jimbojw)
On 3/21/07, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
demute wrote:
It would be really nice if wikipedias Special:random-function could take arguments, making it possible to get a random article from
user-specified
categories. A suggestion to do this is as follows. When a user click on the "random article" link the random article is loaded with a comment on the top of
the
page saying something like "you requested a random article. click here
to
view options" and so the the user can mark which categories the article should come from. The settings can either be stored in a cookie or they
can
be sent in the URI. Everyone would love this feature!
I would perhaps find it useful sometimes, but I doubt I would love it as described. I have [[Special:Random]] set as my browser's homepage and having a pastel-shaded banner appear at the top of the page every time ala [[Clippy]] would become quite annoying.
I'd suggest leaving the default behavior of [[Special:Random]] alone and make this behavior a new option. It might make a good addition to the search page.
Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
On 21/03/07, demute mannet@kth.se wrote:
It would be really nice if wikipedias Special:random-function could take arguments, making it possible to get a random article from user-specified categories. A suggestion to do this is as follows. When a user click on the "random article" link the random article is loaded with a comment on the top of the page saying something like "you requested a random article. click here to view options" and so the the user can mark which categories the article should come from. The settings can either be stored in a cookie or they can be sent in the URI. Everyone would love this feature!
regards, Manne Tallmarken
You can request features at http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/ This feature has already been requested: http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2170
demute wrote:
It would be really nice if wikipedias Special:random-function could take arguments, making it possible to get a random article from user-specified categories. A suggestion to do this is as follows. When a user click on the "random article" link the random article is loaded with a comment on the top of the page saying something like "you requested a random article. click here to view options" and so the the user can mark which categories the article should come from. The settings can either be stored in a cookie or they can be sent in the URI. Everyone would love this feature!
This idea should be discussed on the appropriate forum - namely the Wikimedia bugzilla system. This list is for discussion of technical issues relating exclusively to the Wikimedia servers - or notification of software changes which have a significant impact on the operation of a Wikimedia project.
Andrew Garrett (werdna)
On 3/22/07, Andrew Garrett andrew@epstone.net wrote:
This idea should be discussed on the appropriate forum - namely the Wikimedia bugzilla system. This list is for discussion of technical issues relating exclusively to the Wikimedia servers - or notification of software changes which have a significant impact on the operation of a Wikimedia project.
The syntax used, however, is fairly trivial and probably not worth discussing anywhere. The technical hurdles to implementing it are the issue that prevents its adoption, and whoever resolves those at Some Point in the Future will doubtless choose some obvious URL syntax like ?category=whatever. Or /Category:Whatever, if we assume that namespaces can't contain colons (I don't think they can, that would be fairly degenerate). Or, perhaps most likely, both. It hardly matters.
I doubt there's really enough interest in this to get an implementation going, either way, at least for the moment. But who knows, it might catch a dev's fancy some day.
Simetrical wrote:
Or /Category:Whatever, if we assume that namespaces can't contain colons (I don't think they can, that would be fairly degenerate). Or, perhaps most likely, both. It hardly matters.
This raised before. Brion declared that namespaces won't contain colons, so we can happily assume that :-)
there's already an extension (developped by rob I think) which does this it's called AdvancedRandom
On 3/22/07, demute mannet@kth.se wrote:
It would be really nice if wikipedias Special:random-function could take arguments, making it possible to get a random article from user-specified categories. A suggestion to do this is as follows. When a user click on the "random article" link the random article is loaded with a comment on the top of the page saying something like "you requested a random article. click here to view options" and so the the user can mark which categories the article should come from. The settings can either be stored in a cookie or they can be sent in the URI. Everyone would love this feature!
regards, Manne Tallmarken -- View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/Feature-request%3A-Random-article-in-specified-categor... Sent from the Wikipedia Developers mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
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On 3/22/07, demute mannet@kth.se wrote:
It would be really nice if wikipedias Special:random-function could take arguments, making it possible to get a random article from user-specified categories.
It won't really work as expected until we have a way of defining which subcategories are "real" subcategories. You can either select a random article only from that category, which will skew things badly for certain types of categories, or you can select a random article from the hierarchy of all subcategories, which will be useless for some leaky category trees.
Steve
wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org