On Wed, Nov 27, 2013 at 1:53 PM, Jon Robson jrobson@wikimedia.org wrote:
Articles Vs Pages Vs <insert word here> #################################### Recently all instances of the word 'article(s)' was switched with 'content pages' / 'pages'. This problem keeps recurring in our design and is starting to become a nuisance. I see both sides here - 3rd parties and even our own projects use our software in a different way
- sometimes pages are articles, sometimes they are definitions,
sometimes destinations etc etc.
However the word 'content page' and page is extremely ambiguous and can be confusing.
One good example is the watchlist view on mobile - it provides the ability to filter feeds by namespace:
This i18n change changed the word 'article' to 'content pages'. In this context it makes no sense. Programmatically what it actually means is show me only pages from the 'Main namespace' but to a reader the word 'articles' is arguably more understandable than 'content pages'. I would actually like us to continue using 'articles' but explore ways other instances can customise this - e.g. switch the word 'articles' to other words based on what their project is about. It would be nice for wikibooks to use the word 'books' for instance, and wikitionary 'words' or 'definitions'. Is this feasible and worth exploring? I feel like using the word pages at the benefit of generalisation seriously damages the benefit of clear and easy to understand language.
This is a thorny problem that isn't just relegated to mobile. We've run in to the same on desktop with GettingStarted and so on. See discussions such as https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=47841
I don't know what the solution is to be honest. This is one of those areas where developing primarily for Wikipedia runs in to use cases for non-encyclopedia wikis Wikimedia hosts, as well as third party instances.