[Wikipedia-l] Wikification function proposal

[Jan Hidders]

From: "Magnus Manske" <Magnus.Manske at epost.de>
>
> 1. Replacement of HTML tags by wiki tags (namely, "<b>" and "<i>", maybe
> "<h1>" as well)

To be honest, I'm uncomfortable with the idea of fiddling with the input of
the user, even if it is only an option. In general software that tries to
guess what I *actually* meant usually irritates me endlessly. Adding more
and more options also doesn't make the software more usable and maybe even a
bit scary for novice users.

If we really don't want these tags [don't worry, I know I'm the only one who
feels that way :-)] then we have to be unequivocal about it; we replace them
everywhere with a script and from that moment on the tags we don't want
don't work anymore. But some halfhearted approach that is optional is not
going to work and only makes things more complicated then they have to be.

> 2. Eliminating links to redirect pages by changing the link in question to
> the target of the redirect

I don't see what problem is solved by that. Do you also want the change all
the links on existing pages if a page with real contents becomes redirected?

> 3. Marking [broken links]] and [[more broken links]

I never had problems with finding those now.

> 4. Optimizing external links with too many [] (like
> [[http://www.google.com]])

Who says it has too many brackets? I would say that this is "[<link to
google>]".

> 5. Optimizing [[link|links]] to [[link]]s

Language specific.

> 6. Removing [[Talk:thispage|Talk]] links (at the end of the page)

It's better to do this everywhere in one big fell swoop with a script
instead of waiting until somebody comes along to edit the page and has the
option turned on.

> I am sure you can think of some more details that have always bugged you,
> but that were (be themselves) not important enough to call for a
function;)

Well what does bug me is that the replacement of ~~~ doesn't show up in the
preview. And wouldn't it be nice if we always added the time with a
signature? Sorry for this shameless plug, but you asked. :-)

> We could use this for rather fancy things as well:
>
> 7. In the preview, mark words (or word combinations) that are currently
> plain text, but that do exist as a topic in the database (to find pages
one
> could link to).

Ah, now that is something that I would find very useful, especially when
wikifying imported stuff. Doesn't sound very cheap though so it should
definitly be an option or a special link you can click to do this.

> 8. In the preview, mark all numbers that could be dates (more link
> candidates).

That's overdoing it IMO. If the user wanted to link it he or she only needed
to place brackets around it.

> 9. Automatically put the title phrase in bold if it appears in the first
> paragraph.

Could be useful, but in my opinion not useful enough for adding yet another
option that can be turned on and off.

> Thoughts? Comments? Threats? ;)

What I am a bit missing is a priority list of bugs that is maintained by our
great leader (yes, that's you :-}) and that we should be working on. That
would not only be useful for us, but also give the users an idea of what we
are doing about their problems. Or would that make you feel too much like a
manager? :-P

-- Jan Hidders