[Wikipedia-l] Bugs? or Features?

[Lars Aronsson]

Guardian Tor  wrote:

> 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.

I agree with this.  But there is a problem to determine in advance
what is a "major" and what is a minor feature.  Obviously, a feature
or implementation detail that makes the system grind to a halt is a
major issue.  This time, the "talk" links turned out to be one of the
major issues because of the inefficient way they were implemented,
and temporarily removing the talk links made the website run faster.
(Let's hope the improved implementation is up and running soon.)

I think the autowikification button is a most interesting feature, but
perhaps it should be disabled by default, with each user having the
option to enable it from the personal preferences page.  This way, it
wouldn't confuse the beginners.  It could also be turned on
automatically for all logged in users who have pressed "save" more
than 50 times. This would be close to magic (like an adventure game, 
where you gain "experience points" from slaying dragons), but still
require very little explanation.

My granddad's old TV set had a knob at the back for horizontal sync.
That was a major feature to him, because the picture would just roll
around until he adjusted the sync.  However, instead of teaching
everybody about this feature, the TV manufacturers were able to hide
the function in a self-regulating circuit inside all new TV sets.  In
the same way, if the wikitech-l gang is able to keep the website
running nice and smooth, the wikipedia-l crowd can focus on issues
about how to write articles, and nobody will ask for tech updates.


-- 
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  Aronsson Datateknik
  Teknikringen 1e, SE-583 30 Linuxköping, Sweden
  tel +46-70-7891609
  http://aronsson.se/ http://elektrosmog.nu/ http://susning.nu/