[Mediawiki-l] [Foundation-l] Red category link is unhelpful

[Jim Wilson]

> As a general rule, I think changes that are optional should default to
> what is current, not what someone thinks is a better option.

As a general rule, I agree with you - but I'm not convinced this change
should be subject to said rule.

If we all agree that having this feature (at least optionally) is a good
thing, the question becomes whether there's more benefit to defaulting to
'view' than negative reaction by a portion of the community.

MediaWiki is designed to Just Work right out of the box with minimal
configuration.  If you make this a configuration setting, how many admins
are going to set it?  Probably very few compared to the number of new wiki
admins that would have found this behavior otherwise useful or intuitive.

Also, as a config setting there's the possibility that this could become
another ParserFunctions or "Edit Toolbar" - something we field emails about
daily, always with the same predictable response. I can guarantee this would
be the case if the default were set to 'edit' but high-profile installs like
Wikipedia opt to set the action to 'view' (not sure how likely this is
considering it might spark a backlash from a vocal minority).

-- Jim

On 4/3/07, Michael Daly <mikedaly at magma.ca> wrote:
>
> Jim Wilson wrote:
> > I agree with making a MW system message or $wg control this - but which
> > should be the default?  Edit or view?
>
> In order not to impact the current users, it should default to what
> happens today - edit.
>
> As a general rule, I think changes that are optional should default to
> what is current, not what someone thinks is a better option.
>
> Mike
>
>
>
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