Disambiguation features: Do they belong in core or in an extension?

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Ryan Kaldari

15 Jan 2013 15 Jan '13

11:58 p.m.

Back in December, there was discussion about needing a better method of identifying disambiguation pages programmatically (bug 6754). I wrote some core code to accomplish this, but was informed that disambiguation functions should reside in extensions rather than in core, per bug 35981. I abandoned the core code and wrote an extension instead (https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/41043/). Now, however, it has been suggested that this code needs to reside in core after all (https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Suggestions_for_extensions_to_be_integrated#…). Personally, I don't mind implementing it either way, but would like to have consensus on where this code should reside. The code is pretty clean and lightweight, so it wouldn't increase the footprint of core MediaWiki (it would actually decrease the existing footprint slightly since it replaces more hacky existing core code). So core bloat isn't really an issue. The issue is: Where does it most make sense for disambiguation features to reside? Should disambiguation pages be supported out of the box or require an extension to fully support? The specific disambiguation features I'm talking about are: 1. Make it easy to identify disambiguation pages via a page property in the database (set by a templated magic word) 2. Provide a special page (and corresponding API) for seeing what pages are linking to disambiguation pages 3. Assign a unique class to disambiguation links so that gadgets can allow them to be uniquely colored or have special UI (not yet implemented) Ryan Kaldari

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Jon Robson

16 Jan 16 Jan

12:11 a.m.

New subject: Disambiguation features: Do they belong in core or in an extension?

To me disambiguation seems like a common problem of wikis and thus should be a core feature. On a wiki about people, people share the same name On a wiki about cities, cities share the same name etc etc you get the idea. On Tue, Jan 15, 2013 at 5:58 PM, Ryan Kaldari <rkaldari(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:

...

-- Jon Robson http://jonrobson.me.uk @rakugojon

Waldir Pimenta

1:04 p.m.

New subject: Disambiguation features: Do they belong in core or in an extension?

On Wed, Jan 16, 2013 at 2:11 AM, Jon Robson <jdlrobson(a)gmail.com> wrote:

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Agreed. Also, it only makes sense for mediawiki to natively provide proper support for disambiguations, the same way there is support for redirects. Furthermore, I'd like to underline what Ryan said in his original message, since several people seem to be ignoring it, and using "code bloat" as an argument for using an extension:

...

"The code is pretty clean and lightweight, so it wouldn't increase the footprint of core MediaWiki (it would actually decrease the existing footprint slightly since it replaces more hacky existing core code). So * core bloat isn't really an issue*."

Chad

12:38 a.m.

New subject: Disambiguation features: Do they belong in core or in an extension?

On Tue, Jan 15, 2013 at 8:58 PM, Ryan Kaldari <rkaldari(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:

...

Personally, I don't mind implementing it either way, but would like to have consensus on where this code should reside. The code is pretty clean and lightweight, so it wouldn't increase the footprint of core MediaWiki (it would actually decrease the existing footprint slightly since it replaces more hacky existing core code). So core bloat isn't really an issue. The issue is: Where does it most make sense for disambiguation features to reside? Should disambiguation pages be supported out of the box or require an extension to fully support?

I'd say extension. I can think of lots of wikis that don't use disambiguation pages. If we really want, we can stash it in the default tarball along with the other bundled extensions. -Chad

Tyler Romeo

1:10 a.m.

New subject: Disambiguation features: Do they belong in core or in an extension?

I agree with extension. For example, my school's IT department uses a wiki to collect information about common computer problems, and on a wiki about computer problems, none of the issues share the same name. *--* *Tyler Romeo* Stevens Institute of Technology, Class of 2015 Major in Computer Science www.whizkidztech.com | tylerromeo(a)gmail.com On Tue, Jan 15, 2013 at 9:38 PM, Chad <innocentkiller(a)gmail.com> wrote:

...

On Tue, Jan 15, 2013 at 8:58 PM, Ryan Kaldari <rkaldari(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:

Personally, I don't mind implementing it either way, but would like to

have

consensus on where this code should reside. The code is pretty clean and lightweight, so it wouldn't increase the footprint of core MediaWiki (it would actually decrease the existing footprint slightly since it replaces more hacky existing core code). So core bloat isn't really an issue. The issue is: Where does it most make sense for disambiguation features to reside? Should disambiguation pages be supported out of the box or

require

an extension to fully support?

I'd say extension. I can think of lots of wikis that don't use disambiguation pages. If we really want, we can stash it in the default tarball along with the other bundled extensions. -Chad _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

Nicolas Vervelle

6:44 a.m.

New subject: Disambiguation features: Do they belong in core or in an extension?

Hello, My own preference would be to have this in the core for several reasons. It seems that it makes some existing core code simpler. There's already some code dealing with disambiguation in the core (Special:Disambiguation, ...). Several external tools, including my own WPCleaner [1], are dealing with fixing disambiguation links on several wikis. In my opinion, it will be easier for tools developers to have one standard method for finding if a page is a disambiguation page or not. Currently, I'm already managing two methods depending on the wiki : based on Mediawiki:Disambiguationpages, or based on categories (for enwiki and frwiki) which is faster and requires less API requests. If it's in an extension, I think less wikis (outside wikimedia) will use this new method than if it's in the core. Because extension requires the wiki owner to first add it, whereas only contributors are needed if it's in the core. If a wiki doesn't need disambiguation pages, there's nothing to setup specifically for not using it. It's just an unused feature, as it is currently with Mediawiki:Disambiguationpages ;) Nico [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WPCleaner On 1/16/13, Tyler Romeo <tylerromeo(a)gmail.com> wrote:

...

On Tue, Jan 15, 2013 at 8:58 PM, Ryan Kaldari <rkaldari(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:

Personally, I don't mind implementing it either way, but would like to

have

require

an extension to fully support?

_______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

Richardguk

3:10 p.m.

New subject: Disambiguation features: Do they belong in core or in an extension?

Nicolas Vervelle <nvervelle <at> gmail.com> writes:

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My own preference would be to have this in the core for several reasons.

[...] Yes, the core code already handles disambiguation pages specially in some ways (Special:Disambiguations, MediaWiki:Disambiguationspage). But it treats them as exceptional cases - a bit of a hack. Proposal: A fundamentally more robust and flexible way to handle disambiguation pages would be to move them all into their own namespace. For example, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bow and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bow_(disambiguation) could both redirect to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disambiguation:Bow This would make it much more consistent with the ordinary wikipage functions and internationalization, as well as making it easy to programmatically identify disambiguation pages without affecting the database schema. Though there would initially be some upheaval as pages were moved in bulk, the result would be stabler. One drawback is that dab pages from all namespaces would end up in the new "Disambiguation" namespace. So, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Football would redirect to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disambiguation:Portal:Football That is not a major problem, as it is easy to identify pages beginning with "Disabiguation:Portal:" etc, though it makes it harder to list mainspace dabpages (they would have to be identified by eliminating valid namespace prefixes from the pagename). A similar cross-namespace shadow hierarchy already exists at Template:Editnotices/Page/ for edit notices. After the initial bulk creation, a bot would need to check for new dab pages that needed moving into the dab namespace, and for new pages in the dab namespace that lacked a redirect in the relevant non-dab namespace. Alternatively, the need for separate redirect pages could be obviated if MediaWiki automatically redirected browsers when a corresponding dab-namespace exists (but this would be a departure from the existing practice of having all redirects as editable wikipages). Individual wikis would be free to opt out of the new approach.

Nischay Nahata

6 Feb 6 Feb

4:46 p.m.

New subject: Disambiguation features: Do they belong in core or in an extension?

Hey, Just wanted to bring in few points. If its in core it would be easy tackle bug [1] (note the votes it has) and more that may come up. Somewhat related, I think MediaWiki should automatically create disambiguation pages [2]. [1] https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=3483 [2] https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=44704 On Wed, Jan 16, 2013 at 10:40 PM, Richardguk <richardg_uk(a)yahoo.com> wrote:

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Nicolas Vervelle <nvervelle <at> gmail.com> writes:

My own preference would be to have this in the core for several reasons.

-- Cheers, Nischay Nahata nischayn22.in

Jeroen De Dauw

16 Jan 16 Jan

11:01 a.m.

New subject: Disambiguation features: Do they belong in core or in an extension?

Hey,

...

From a technical point of view it's nicer to have it as an extension as it

prevents feature bloat in core. OTOH the lack of extension distribution mechanism is an argument against. Cheers -- Jeroen De Dauw http://www.bn2vs.com Don't panic. Don't be evil. --

Antoine Musso

11:50 a.m.

New subject: Disambiguation features: Do they belong in core or in an extension?

Le 16/01/13 02:58, Ryan Kaldari wrote:

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Hello Ryan, So at first, thanks a ton for implementing a feature that let us mark the disambiguation pages. IIRC we used to track then by finding article pages having a template which in turns link to another page. That is a bit crazy :-] Since you did the work to make it an extension, I would keep it an extension. The less stuff we have in core, the happier I will be! As someone else says, we can ship the extension in the MediaWiki tarballs just like we do for other important extensions :-] -- Antoine "hashar" Musso

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participants (10)

Antoine Musso
Chad
Jeroen De Dauw
Jon Robson
Nicolas Vervelle
Nischay Nahata
Richardguk
Ryan Kaldari
Tyler Romeo
Waldir Pimenta