[Wikipedia-l] RFC on a few feature requests

[Toby Bartels]

Brion VIBBER wrote in large part:

>* "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?

I know of no such reason; go ahead and change it.

>* 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?

In general, not desirable, for the reasons that Andre gave.
In the case of redirects to the old page, however, desirable
(which Andre also said -- so Andre is just right).

>* 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?

As long as these show up in the user interface,
it seems only reasonable to translate the English.
(It also seems only reasonable to use ordinary capitalisation,
but Lee has some reason why that's a bad 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?

Seems harmless enough.


-- Toby