On 7/17/06, Danny B. <Wikipedia.Danny.B(a)email.cz> wrote:
Rick, did you read the list of reasons why it should
not be there?
Yes, I did, and I read the bug report as well.
It's not the question of _my feeling_. It's a
question about _approach to
users_ of MW.
Brion's response is completely in line with an open source project
like mediawiki.
While there are a lot of installations using mediawiki, and those
users are happy with the software to whatever extent, keep in mind
that the major user is the wikimedia foundation, and that major user
foots the bill for the development of the software.
We users can try to influence the development team, but we have to
keep in mind that our voice is proportional to how much we pay for it.
So the needs of wikimedia outweigh whatever individual users might
want.
For whatever reason, the mediawiki developers (most likely meeting the
desires of wikimedia) explicitly chose to lowercase the items in the
stylebar, and don't want to change it. But since it's open source any
individual installer of mediawiki is free to make local changes.
Keeping it there is same like you'd said to
whoever "Don't you worry, you
can have unsafe sex, because there are ways how to cure veneral
diseases." Isn't better to prevent the cure?
I'll skip responding to this rather lurid question.
Isn't better to prevent superfluous overriding (=
wasting the time to solve > something which did not have to be solved if there was no
limitation)?
It's not a limitation, it's a choice. The choice for the default was
made by the developers, probably to ensure a consistent style for
wikipedia and it's siblings.
To change the choice for yourself, change the stylesheet or make a new
one, that's what stylesheets are for.
It's always better to remove the cause than to
solve consequences. And > on the other hand - if you said you are willing to make
tweaks, so if you
prefer lowercase, tweak it yourself, but don't push it to others.
You can turn this argument around and see it as an attempt to push
another style on wikipedia.
As I said, I'd bet that lowercase override would
be used by significant
minority. Default style should be in what-you-wrote-is-what-you-get
manner - that's a basic principle of being user friendly. Please check the
reasons I wrote before and tell me if you have any objection against them > or if you
have any rational reason of same weight to keep that property
assignment.
If a majority of users want the lowercase styling removed, they are
deafeningly silent. Yours is the only voice clamoring for this
change either in bugzilla, or here.
I'd say that the vast majority of users of the mediawiki software are
happy with it as it is.
Yes, there are quite a few who frequent this group who make changes,
and much more significant ones than you are asking for. But the vast
majority of those folks simply live with keeping their extensions and
tweaks under local control, and adapting them to new releases if they
can't get them accepted into the main line of development. That's what
tools like diff are for.
And in general, that's how open source projects work.
--
Rick DeNatale
IPMS/USA Region 12 Coordinator
http://ipmsr12.denhaven2.com/
Visit the Project Mercury Wiki Site
http://www.mercuryspacecraft.com/