[WikiEN-l] Tool announcement: Alternative names redirect

[Charlotte Webb]

On 10/22/07, William Pietri <william at scissor.com> wrote:
> Steve Bennett wrote:
> > #ALIASES [Dr] Grace [Smith|Jones]
> >
> > A beginner user might simply write:
> >
> > #ALIASES [Dr Grace Smith|Dr Grace Jones|Grace Smith|Grace Jones]
> >
> > or even:
> > #ALIASES Dr Grace Smith
> > #ALIASES Dr Grace Jones
> > #ALIASES Grace Smith
> > #ALIASES Grace Jones
> >
>
> That's a great point.
>
> Would we need a little more in the syntax to suggest whether blocks
> could be optional?
>
> > A UI tool would obviously help, but that would be a slight departure for
> > MediaWiki. There's nothing else like that atm (afaik), so it's hard to
> > picture how it would fit in exactly.
>
> Yeah, it would be a departure for sure. On the other Wiki-driven project
> I've been working on, which we coded from scratch, we've been adding
> more JavaScript UI for metadata and it has been a big hit, especially
> for things that have complicated structure.

I agree with Mr. Dalton that the database load of scanning for
"reverse redirects"/"aliases"/whatever would be outlandish.

A partial solution, to eliminate the need for a large percentage of
existing and potential redirects, is quite simple. Make wikilinks
case-insensitive by default. Except in cases where two titles exist
with the same spelling (but different capitalization).

This way if somebody links to "[[least weasel]]" mid-sentence (because
they don't realize it is our convention to capitalize the species
name), the link would automatically point to [[Least Weasel]], whether
a redirect existed or not. For lesser known species where no redirect
exists yet, this would eliminate the duplicate effort associated with
accidentally creating a redundant article. Icing on the cake? Have the
link automatically capitalize itself when the page is saved, to ensure
correct typography in article space.

—C.W.