Re: [Wikipedia-l] Bugs? or Features?

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