[Wikipedia-l] Re: [Wikitech-l] RFC on a few feature requests

[Andre Engels]

> There's a few feature requests that have come up multiple times, and I'd 
> like some comments from other developers and power users before I go 
> trashing the code on my own...
> 
> * "Most wanted" and "Most popular" special pages list the _total_ number 
> of links to a page, regardless of how many links there are _per page_. 
> Some types of lists can hyperinflate the numbers; a list of video games 
> might link [[Playstation]] 389 times (once for each Playstation game 
> listed). The behavior that people seem to expect is a count of _pages_ 
> that link, rather than the raw number of links. I would tend to agree. 
> This can be switched by the simple addition of "DISTINCT" to a couple 
> SQL queries; is there any reason to retain the current behavior?

Being one of those who requested this (after noticing a page got #8 on 'Most
wanted pages' with 13 links of which 12 were from one page), I am all for it.

> * On blocking vandals; there's still no interface for blocking by 
> username, and you can't get the IP address of a logged-in user except by 
> sifting through the server logs. Should we retain and display IP 
> addresses/hostnames of logged-in editors (as on UseMod), and/or allow 
> usernames to be blocked?

No opinion

> * The administrative page rename feature on UseMod could optionally find 
> and change links to point to the new name in addition to just supplying 
> a redirect. We still haven't implemented this. Desirable?

If so, then only on an optional basis. Sometimes one DOES want to keep the
links to the old page. As a precaution for when one might split the two
subjects again in the future.

For example, in the Dutch Wikipedia I recently moved 'Trebizonde' (English
'Trebizond') to 'Trabzon'. Trabzon is a city in northeast Turkey, Trebizond(e)
its old name. It has an important place in history, and it might well be that
in the future one would want to have a separate page about the history, or
perhaps about the independent state in the region around the city in the High
Middle Ages. And 'Trebizond(e)' would be a good name for such an article. If
that ever happens, it would be nice to have the links run right already.

One thing that I _would_ like to have, is to automatically change links _from
redirect pages_. Double redirects simply look extremely ugly and
non-informative, and are among the things we should most like to avoid.

> * While the "Special:" namespace may be localized ("Spezial", "Speciel" 
> etc), the names of special pages are hardwired in English (hence 
> monstrosities like "Spezial:Recentchanges"). While these are mostly 
> hidden in the interface by descriptive names, the links, URLs, and most 
> annoyingly the tooltips on the links all show the raw internal English 
> name of the function which implements the special page. A table of 
> equivalencies could be set up, allowing more easily recognizable 
> localized names to be used. Good idea? Bad idea?

Good idea.

> * For the French wiki, the Wikipedia: namespace is tentatively set up as 
> "Wikipédia" (with acute accent on the "e"). The parser doesn't accept 
> namespaces with non-ASCII chars so this doesn't work, which is a bug I 
> intend to fix, but additionally one tester asked:
> 
>    'For the francophone wikipedians without a French keyboard, would it
>    be possible for the "Wikipedia:*" links to automatically transform
>    into "Wikipédia:*"? Or, more simply, could the system interpret e/é as
>    equal in the namespace portion?'
> 
> In short, allow aliases for namespaces. Good idea? Bad idea?

No opinion.

Andre Engels