[Wikipedia-l] Modest proposals

[Tim Chambers]

I haven't seen a need to write again since making my proposal, but today Uri
Yanover <uriyan_subscribe at yahoo.com> wrote:

>What I don't like about Tim's idea is the fact that it converts
>the link automatically basing on parsing of the article title.

My proposal is archived at
http://www.nupedia.com/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2002-January/001230.html

There it can be seen that in addition to the simple solution that does
convert links based on the article title, I did include Uri's idea. To
summarize:

#base [[Fantasy Fiction]]

[[/elves]]

could be translated into this:

See also: [[Fantasy Fiction]].

[[elves (Fantasy Fiction)|elves]]

The system could remove the #base line completely instead of translating it,
but I think it's useful to reflect by default that there's a relationship
between the content of a given page and some other related page. After all,
if the author doesn't like that behavior, he or she can simply type the
links manually instead of using #base. Or the author can edit twice: the
first is a major edit, and the second is a minor edit to remove the See
also: line.

Uri's original #base idea is archived at
http://www.nupedia.com/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2002-January/001220.html. He
also proposed an Alias: namespace
(http://www.nupedia.com/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2002-January/001218.html), but
the features are very similar.

The key differences between my proposal and his are:

1. I propose a solution that converts text during save, while Uri proposed
adding to the wikipedia's source syntax.
2. I propose the disambiguating syntax -- [[title (context)]] -- while Uri
proposed subpage syntax -- [[context/title]].

However, Uri also said yesterday in
http://www.nupedia.com/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2002-February/001288.html that
he "didn't mean to use aliaes mainly to categorize, but rather to
_disambiguate_ (e.g. [[root (botanics)]] vs. [[root (mathematics)]])." So I
assume he's flexible on #2.

I take it that there's consensus on the part that deals with link
conversion.

So what about the #base idea?

<>< Tim