[Wikipedia-l] Please help test new features

[Brion Vibber]

On Wed, 2 Jul 2003, Erik Moeller wrote:
> Brion-
> > It's also mysteriously in a table and there are no line breaks. :)
>
> I think it looks nicer in a table, but that's easy to change in Skin.php.

The table doesn't do anything a styled div wouldn't do. It's not tabular,
it's a list with a caption. :)

> > I notice that duplicate headings (which is not unlikely to occur with
> > subheadings) are marked with a numbered suffix after the first one. Better
> > than nothing, but this is fragile for linking; if the major sections are
> > rearranged in order, the numbers for the minor sections will change.
>
> So what else do you suggest?

One possibility would be to append the name of the upper header(s) to the
lower header:

== Culture ==
=== Blecchistan ===
=== Miscania ===
== Language
=== Blecchistan ===

...
<a name="Culture/Blecchistan">...
<a name="Language/Blecchistan">...
...

These would remain consistent if the order of Culture and Language are
changed, or if another named section with a 3-rd level Blecchistan header
is added before or between them.

> We need to find the right balance between making editing easy and making
> reading Wikipedia unobtrusive. Some work on this is being done in the Skin
> department, for example, where we will probably end up with a Skin
> preferred by editors, and one that is more friendly to non-editing users.

Suppose the edit links are small, unobtrusive, and by default are faded
(so seemingly partially transparent on the solid background) until a
mouseover darkens them up to full visibility?

Just thoughts.

> Perhaps a better long term solution is to show users the preferences
> screen when they sign in for the first time.

That's a good idea in any case.

[snip]
> By having the neat "edit this section" feature only for headings, we
> encourage people to create headings for their own editing benefit. They
> will reorganize talk pages to have them to be able to respond quicker in
> the future. We provide no such incentive if we also implement the feature
> for rules.

Hmm...

Debatable, but I'll let it slide for now. :)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)