Mailing List Archive

Ray Saintonge suggested that I should break up the 'top picks' into
page-related and others. Thanks, Ray.
I've also made some other changes.

OK, how's this for a recommended ordering of commands/options? I've
changed some sublists to alphabetical order, as there is not much
'gradient' in their frequencies, and there should always be some kind of
organising principle.

I have also re-named some of the special page labels to make them
uniform, eliminating the 'show' or 'list' prefixes which have got in the
way of recognition (the special page names themselves can be kept the
same, these are just link text labels).

Overall organising principles:

* Groups are organised by the scope of what they refer to (global, this
user, this page, etc.)
* Groups are organised from top to bottom by frequency.

*Where there are significant differences in frequency, entries within a
group are listed in order of frequency.
*otherwise, entries within groups are ordered alphabetically.

Top picks: (in frequency order: there is a real gradient here)
Main Page <---- bold
Recent changes
Random page
Current events
Special pages
Statistics

This page: (in frequency order: there is a real gradient here)
Edit this page <--- bold
History
What links here

Login area: (in frequency order)
Preferences
User login
Log out

User pages only:
This user's contributions

Special pages in general - these are all global: (and now in
alphabetical order)
All pages
All users
Blocked IP addresses
Images
Long pages
Most wanted pages
New pages
Orphan pages
Popular pages
Short pages
Upload image files
Unused images

Page-related, but less common: (in frequency/alphabetical order)
Print this page
Recent changes in linked pages

Logged-in user page-related features: (in alphabetical order)
Stop watching this page
Watch list
Watch this page

'power user commands':
Move this page
Delete this page

Neil Harris wrote:
> Ray Saintonge suggested that I should break up the 'top picks' into
> page-related and others. Thanks, Ray.
> I've also made some other changes.
>
> OK, how's this for a recommended ordering of commands/options? I've
> changed some sublists to alphabetical order, as there is not much
> 'gradient' in their frequencies, and there should always be some kind of
> organising principle.

Sounds pretty good! A couple random comments:

> This page: (in frequency order: there is a real gradient here)
> Edit this page <--- bold
> History
> What links here

That reminds me: it would be nice if "What links here" were directly
accessible from the edit page (did it used to be? I have a vague
impression). I frequently find myself going to a nonexistent page and
checking to see what else links to it, for instance to check if
disambiguation is going to be needed or just to gauge interest.

History and Talk/Subject links would also be useful for reference while
editing an existing page.

> Logged-in user page-related features: (in alphabetical order)
> Stop watching this page
> Watch list
> Watch this page

I find myself going to the watchlist a lot more the last couple of days,
just because it's much harder to keep track of Recentchanges if I've
been away for a few hours.

For me at least, I'd like to keep the watchlist functions easily accessible.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)