[Wikipedia-l] Re: Simple XML ideas

[Mark Christensen]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Magnus Manske [mailto:Magnus.Manske at epost.de]
> Sent: Wednesday, February 13, 2002 10:26 AM
> To: wikipedia-l at nupedia.com
> Subject: RE: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Simple XML ideas
> 
> I agree that the special namespaces should be distinguished 
> more from the encyclopedia pages. Again, this is more a 
> layout problem than anything else. How about marking the 
> namespace part of the title in red, of italics?

I agree that changing the layout of the special
pages will go a long way to solving this problem.  
But I also think we may want to add some text 
near the links to other namespaces, explaining 
things.  

That said, I don't think just changing the color 
of the title is enough to make it immediately 
visually apparent that you are looking at a different 
kind of page.  I think we need something visually 
bigger -- a slight change in the background color, 
or the addition of a subtle background image, 
or re-arranging the layout of special pages in a more 
obvious way. 

Beyond that, I do think the text for the link to a 
Talk: namespace should be more descriptive. But, I 
also don't believe users need a longwinded description 
of the _concept_ of namespaces, to be able to grasp 
them, this is because people use namespaces intuitively
all the time.  ("Bob" means something different for me 
at work than it does at a family picnic.)  What they
need is visual cues which will help them to make use 
of this intuitive knowledge.
 
Yours
Mark