[Wikipedia-l] Bugs? or Features?

[Brion L. VIBBER]

On lun, 2002-05-13 at 18:01, Guardian Tor wrote:
> The first is if a Bomis sysadmin has to take drastic steps to keep
> Wikipedia running (i.e. temporarily removing major functionality),
> could some sort of announcement  made soon afterwards? That way, the
> community doesn't have to guess what's going on.

That would be nice, yes. :)

There's been talk of making the text at the top of Recent Changes
editable again (as on the old software), which would enable this kind of
major news to be placed both on the main page and recent changes, the
two main entry points to the site. A courtesy message to wikipedia-l
would be helpful, too.

> The second is my concern about what the Cunctator calls "featuritis".
> I think that any *major* new software features should be discussed in
> the general Wikipedia assembly. For example, what is the
> "Autowikification" button (no offence intended to whoever implemented
> it!)? What does it do? Why is it useful? How do I use it? Most
> importantly, do we need it? It sounds like it automatically links
> words to existing articles. If so, I would argue against the utility
> of such a creature.

See the thread "Wikification function proposal" in the Wikipedia-l
archives circa February 27. There was discussion; consensus was not
really achieved; Magnus later decided to add it as an experimental
feature (as mentioned on Wikitech-l, 7 April), and it ended up on the
main Wikipedia mainly because no one remembered to take it out before
the software suddenly got upgraded last weekend! In the latest revision
(not yet installed) it's been made optional, the button hidden by
default, until such time as it is working, documented, and desired.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)