On 12/12/05, Magnus Manske &lt;magnus.manske(a)web.de&gt; wrote: Yeah, I just realised that since *my* message was almost entirely technical discussion, it might annoy non-technical people if it carried on filling up wikipedia-l with backlog. Hm, maybe. But it still misses the chance to explain to newer users what's going on (linking to deletion policy etc as well as the particular discussion). I was thinking perhaps there could be a "tasks-banner-<foo>" message for each task (e.g. "MediaWiki:tasks-banner-delete") which was shown at the top of the page. Priority could be based on the order of "MediaWiki:tasks task types", to only show one such banner. The default [if the relevant message didn't exist] could be just a small "There are [x] tasks pending for this page", and that could be given as a $x variable to the banners so that it could be added inside, say, the big red box of a 'delete' banner. Well, some people actually *like* it that way, so I think providing the *option* will be important in getting this feature accepted (that was certainly the case in some of the discussions I've seen regarding alternative VfD styles, some time ago). The great thing about having proper software support is that we can have all sorts of *different* views, without anyone having to maintain them. The main problem with *not* transcluding, BTW, is that the "status" is not fine-grained enough to reflect, say, the progress of an AfD debate "at a glance". Perhaps the "initial comment" could be replaced with an editable "summary", with the initial comment becoming the initial content of that and the Task: discussion page? Interface for that is awkward, I know; how about ripping it out of a special <tasksummary>...</tasksummary> section when the Task: page is saved, meaning it'd even have history? Sorry, this wasn't clear; I meant that "Special:Tasks" (or rather, sub-pages like Special:Tasks/Delete) should probably be linked from the status tables, so that people can navigate to other tasks of the same type. [Task page naming:] Hm, that's a good point, and is rather awkward; still, having numeric names strikes me as distinctly ugly. Could page moves and redirects not keep things consistent, either manually or automatically? [Relatedly, what happens when the associated page is deleted - is there still an associated page_id containing the right name? I'm not sure what the database looks like for a deleted page...] Well, they're broken in that part of the name is actually redundant - "Task:Delete (1)" might as well just be called "Task:1", and indeed that name will show the correct status table, as will "Task:FOO(1)" or any number of other variants. The reason this is particularly confusing is that: * using the wrong name will *not* show the actual discussion for that task, only the status table * seemingly valid names such as "Task:Delete (1)" can actually be incorrect [on your test wiki, task 1 is a wikify task, so the discussion is actually at "Task:Wikify (1)"] I'd suggest either: a) use a purely numeric naming scheme (Task:1, Task:2) b) make invalid titles [where the title doesn't match the task type] invalid, so that "Task:Delete (1)" will show an error rather than an unrelated [blank] page with erroneous status info and/or c) make invalid titles automatically "redirect to" the correct titles, so that the status info is shown *but so is the correct discussion*. Yes, that does improve it somewhat. Still, I would prefer larger font and black rather than grey, but then I think the same of the "(Redirected from...)" text that goes in the same place - this is fairly important information that should be prominent enough that people will notice it even when not looking for it. I noticed the CVS commit notifications just after I'd sent my message, and was considering making time to play with it later tonight. [I probably won't get round to it, though] -- Rowan Collins BSc [IMSoP]

Magnus Manske wrote: You know what? Done! :-) Magnus (replying to myself)

Rowan Collins wrote: Glad to be of service :-) I hope this is the /near/ future. *Near* future. Like, before 22C3 would really be nice, for example. Do you hear my pleas, Lords of the Servers? :-) Maybe you should submit this as a feature request at Bugzilla? Oh, wait... Magnus