On Mon, 27 Sep 2004 00:21:14 -0400, Chris Phoenix <cphoenix(a)crnano.org> wrote:
I propose that if a link like [[foo]] is processed for
output, and
article foo doesn't exist but category foo does, then the link should be
treated like [[:Category:foo|foo]]. The former is a lot easier to write.
This will make it hard to create an article foo if category foo already
exists. I'm not sure that's a bad thing. If someone does manage to do
that, then all [[foo]] links will switch from category to article. But
these are the only drawbacks I can see.
I think this would be a *very* bad idea; categories are often named
very similarly to valid articles, and while a policy could be made of
not doing so ([[Category:History topics]] not [[Category:History]];
[[Category:Types of toy]] not [[Category:Toys]]) this seems like a
rather dubious thing to enshrine in the software. Having links that
magically change target (and thus don't show up as non-existent) would
*only* be a good idea if the plain target was *never* going to be a
desired name. I don't think [[Category:Foo]] vs [[Foo]] gives such a
guarantee.
--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]