Hello,
The recent conversion to the no-subpage policy has created a
problem with editing those pages that describe whole independent
universes. This first came to my mind in relation to
[[Middle Earth]], but it is also relevant to pages such as
[[Star Wars]], [[Star Trek]] and possibly other pages.
Since this involves a policy issue as well as a technical one,
I wanted to discuss it in Wikipedia-L before I (or someone else)
began to write lengthy patches.
The problem is in the following: it is extremely inconvenient
(as a policy) to write "[[Middle Earth/Elrond|Elrond]] was
the lord of [[Middle Earth/Rivendell|Rivendell]]" than it is
to write "[[Elrond]] was the lord of [[Rivendell]]"
I could think of several solutions to this problem:
* Remove the [[Middle Earth/]] part (e.g. [[Elrond]] instead
of [[Middle Earth/Elrond]]. But this would not only
add fictional content to the generally real-world
encyclopedia but also confuse the readers (think about
[[USS Enterprise]]!)
* Creating a new namespace (e.g. [[Middle Earth:Elrond]]).
But that would not automatically solve the linking problem,
and would generally contradict the way namespaces are
used now (the division being functional and not
content-oriented).
* Creating a new Middle Earth wiki. Although it would solve
most of the problems above, that would require too much
effort and make linking with the "main" Wikipedia more difficult.
The solution which I would personally prefer is to add another
addressing mode to the Wiki links.For example, we could add
a #base directive after which all links except escaped ones
would receive a certain prefix. For example:
#base [[Middle Earth/]]
[[!JRR Tolkien]] wrote that [[Elrond]] was the lord of Rivendell.
The link with the prefixing "!" would not be affected. However
after the #base directive, [[Elrond]] will automatically become
[[Middle Earth/Elrond]].
What do you think about it? Could this be implemented or there's
another (easier) solution?
Sincerely yours,
Uri Yanover