Those tabs at the top of a page in default MediaWiki installations interfere
with my design goals. In general, I want pages to focus on the content of
pages, not on the function of a site or of a "community." I nixed the "view
source" tab which appears for the vast majority of users who will not have edit
access, though that control of access is still dependent on page protection
instead of on granular permissions. Eventually I will move most article
development into protected namespaces, or use another approach to regulation
editorial access.
The glitch now is that pesky "history" tab. The vast majority of readers who
see a tab that says "history" over an article about baseball, for example,
will expect that tab to lead to information about the history of baseball, not
to a page of unfathomable links to "cur" and "Talk" and
"contribs".
Now, it's not that I don't need version control. That's why I selected
MediaWiki -- it provides for version control and for shared editorial access. I
just don't need to wear my choice in software on my sleeve.
My question is, has anyone developed other schema for rendering these tabs?
A left column placement would be an easy way to reduce the visibility of the
tags, but that doesn't settle ambiguity about what they mean, and it doesn't
negate the implication that version control (history) is relevant to the
average user. My first best option would be to have the history tab appear only
for those with edit privileges on that page. If I go that route, I'll probably
find a way to revise it as I plod along through revising the "edit" tab
logic.
I query here because I doubt I am the only one to have used MediaWiki for
other purposes than to promote the idea that "anybody can edit." Are there other
working schemas in circulation for rendering these tabs?