[Wikipedia-l] Preferences

[Brion Vibber]

(CC'd to wikitech-l)

Guillaume Blanchard wrote:
> Can we have a [[Wikipedia:Preferences]] page that will be the header of the
> [[Special:Preferences]] page ? (like [[Wikipedia:RecentChanges]] and
> [[Special:RecentChanges]]).
> In fact it may be very cool if all [[Special:xxx]] started with an include
> of [[Wikipedia:xxx]].
> It may be very useful especially for localize (no-english Wikipedia)
> specification to add explication and links.
> How?

Tim Starling's been working on some experimental code whereby various 
additional things can be made like this.

Another possibility is to make [[Special:xxx]] just appear a little more 
like a normal page; that is, there would be an "edit this page" link by 
which you can edit the header text.

So instead of a separate [[Wikipedia:Recentchanges]] to find and 
maintain, you'd just go to [[Special:Recentchanges]] and hit edit in the 
usual fashion. A [[Special talk:xxx]] namespace to go with it would be 
useful too.

(Technical note: currently Special: is given numeric code -1; if we were 
storing such pages in the database this would interfere with some code 
that deals with non-talk vs talk pages as being even/odd-numbered. 
Reassigning it to the next available positive integer (8?) shouldn't 
interfere with anything.)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)