Mailing List Archive

Hi Daniel,

I already replied to your previous request to change "View subject page".
Why are
you ignoring my reply? "View subject page" is unnecessarily ambiguous --
what is a "subject" page? Imagine you're a new user and you're on a user talk
page and then try to get to the user page. Where would you expect that link --
"subject page"? This is not user-friendly. It is not a term people are
familiar with. It annoyed me from day one.

If you can think of a better general terminology, I'm for it, otherwise I've
put changing the text depending on the context in my to do list. I think
that's important for user pages; I consider it fair to call a Wikipedia: page
"article" even though it doesn't meet the strict definition -- we're not trying
to get a Certificate of Semantics. But if you can think of a nice naming for
"View Wikipedia: page", I can add that, too.

As for "Watch this article"->"Watch this page", I have no problem with that.
I'll change it.

Regards,

Erik

--
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NEU: Mit GMX ins Internet. Rund um die Uhr für 1 ct/ Min. surfen!

OK, here you go Erik,

I wrote:
>> Could somebody change the displayed name for links to subject pages from
>> "View Article" to "View Subject Page" (or something similar). Per our own
>> definition, my user page is not an article and neither are any
>> Wikipedia:namespaced pages.
>
>Hi,
>
>"subject page" is not a good name because it's not really clear what it
>means in any context. It's not a term we use anywhere else. Let's either
>try to come up with something less ambiguous or change the text depending
>on the namespace (e.g. "View user page" from User: pages).
>
>Regards,
>
>Erik

Not clear? The subject is well, the subject of the page that you are
discussing on the talk page. This is very clear to me.

But context-based wording is even better: "View user page", "View Wikipedia
page", "View image page". If I remember, an early version of Phase II had
context-based wording for these links (green links that stated "User",
"Wikipedia" etc)

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

> But context-based wording is even better: "View user page", "View
> Wikipedia
> page", "View image page". If I remember, an early version of Phase II had
> context-based wording for these links (green links that stated "User",
> "Wikipedia" etc)

OK, I'll try to do that. Is there anything else the old version of the
software had that the current lacks?

Regards,

Erik

--
+++ GMX - Mail, Messaging & more http://www.gmx.net +++
NEU: Mit GMX ins Internet. Rund um die Uhr für 1 ct/ Min. surfen!

mav wrote:
>>But context-based wording is even better: "View user page", "View
>>Wikipedia
>>page", "View image page". If I remember, an early version of Phase II had
>>context-based wording for these links (green links that stated "User",
>>"Wikipedia" etc)

I was never a fan of the green coloring in the namespace: links in the
sidebar. It was confusing in that it didn't behave like other links;
some people reported this as a bug.

Erik Moeller wrote:
> OK, I'll try to do that. Is there anything else the old version of the
> software had that the current lacks?

Off the top of my head:
* 'view changes since <time list was generated>' link on Recentchanges

* http://foo/bar.html. etc didn't add the final punctuation to the link,
since 99% of the time it's just punctuation, not intended as part of the
link.

* I had the Esperanto X-system editing stuff working fine on phase II.
Sigh. Have to finish hacking that back in the right way...

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

Brion VIBBER wrote:

>> OK, I'll try to do that. Is there anything else the old version of the
>> software had that the current lacks?
>
>
> Off the top of my head:
> * 'view changes since <time list was generated>' link on Recentchanges

Recent changes also had "(X changes)" summaries.

Oh, the sentimental value alone... ;-)

Magnus

On Don, 2002-11-21 at 07:28, Brion VIBBER wrote:

> Off the top of my head:
> * 'view changes since <time list was generated>' link on Recentchanges

Sounds like a good idea. Do we want this as a separate link from Recent
Changes in the sidebar, so you would click "New Changes" to get only new
ones? Or just as an option in RC, or as the default view? If we
implement this, it should be in a way where it actually saves us
bandwidth.

Magnus suggested summarizing changes, this also would be helpful, but
I'm still wondering what the most user-friendly way to build this would
be. My personal preference would be something based on JavaScript, but
I'd probably run into fierce opposition there. (Kuro5hin has a "dynamic
comment mode" where you can expand threads without reloading the entire
page, just the comment you want to look at is fetched from the server
and inserted. The same could be done to view details about a change.)
The current non-table based layout loads fast in old browsers, but
doesn't allow good design.


> * http://foo/bar.html. etc didn't add the final punctuation to the link,
> since 99% of the time it's just punctuation, not intended as part of the
> link.

Ah, I just tested that. Yeah, URL parsing is hard. I'll fix this.

> * I had the Esperanto X-system editing stuff working fine on phase II.
> Sigh. Have to finish hacking that back in the right way...

That's your area :-)

Regards,

Erik
--
FOKUS - Fraunhofer Insitute for Open Communication Systems
Project BerliOS - http://www.berlios.de

On Thu, 2002-11-21 at 01:49, Erik Moeller wrote:
> On Don, 2002-11-21 at 07:28, Brion VIBBER wrote:
> > Off the top of my head:
> > * 'view changes since <time list was generated>' link on Recentchanges
>
> Sounds like a good idea. Do we want this as a separate link from Recent
> Changes in the sidebar, so you would click "New Changes" to get only new
> ones? Or just as an option in RC, or as the default view? If we
> implement this, it should be in a way where it actually saves us
> bandwidth.

I hacked it back in, more or less replicating the old behavior. (I only
put in translations for English and Esperanto.) Enjoy!

Note: it won't show more than your default number of changes to show,
nor will it cover a period of time longer than the default time cutoff.

> Magnus suggested summarizing changes, this also would be helpful, but
> I'm still wondering what the most user-friendly way to build this would
> be. My personal preference would be something based on JavaScript, but
> I'd probably run into fierce opposition there.

Actually, that might be kinda fun. Code something up and see how it
goes!

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

On Don, 2002-11-21 at 07:28, Brion VIBBER wrote:
> * http://foo/bar.html. etc didn't add the final punctuation to the link,
> since 99% of the time it's just punctuation, not intended as part of the
> link.

OK, after playing with the regex for an hour or so, I think I got this
to work properly. The following characters are no longer included in
URLs (those without brackets around them) if they occur at the end:

,;.:

It's committed to CVS.

Regards,

Erik

--
FOKUS - Fraunhofer Insitute for Open Communication Systems
Project BerliOS - http://www.berlios.de

On Don, 2002-11-21 at 12:54, Brion Vibber wrote:

> I hacked it back in, more or less replicating the old behavior. (I only
> put in translations for English and Esperanto.) Enjoy!

Neat! Of course with the current implementation you have to keep an RC
window open. Hmm, I wonder if it would make sense to have

Recent Changes (*)

where the * would show only changes made after the last view, stored in
the user table. It's not very user friendly, but possibly better than
yet another sidebar link, and we already use the * syntax for Talk.

Should we have a page on meta for logging the translations we still
need?

Regards,

Erik
--
FOKUS - Fraunhofer Insitute for Open Communication Systems
Project BerliOS - http://www.berlios.de

Erik Moeller wrote:

>>But context-based wording is even better: "View user page", "View
>>Wikipedia
>>page", "View image page". If I remember, an early version of Phase II had
>>context-based wording for these links (green links that stated "User",
>>"Wikipedia" etc)
>>
>OK, I'll try to do that. Is there anything else the old version of the
>software had that the current lacks?
>
As long as you put it that way....Yes.

It used to be that when you used the search function the answer would
show the number of articles that fit the search criterion. This is very
useful when the results suggest a large number of articles.

Since we are on the search function, it would also help if

1. articles could come out in some kind of sorted order (perhaps
with various options available to the user),
2. simple Boolean search options could be incorporated in the search
function, and
3. a system were developed to treat accented characters and their
unaccented counterparts as equivalent for search purposes


There are a few others that have crossed my mind from time to time but I
can mention them as I think about them

Eclecticology

> Since we are on the search function, it would also help if
>
> 1. articles could come out in some kind of sorted order (perhaps
> with various options available to the user),

The problem is - what order should that be? And would it not cost too much
too check it?

> 2. simple Boolean search options could be incorporated in the search
> function, and

they can; I already use them (I'm going through years looking for events,
and to avoid getting all the RanMan demography data in between, I make
searches like "819 and not households".

Andre Engels

Andre Engels wrote:

>>Since we are on the search function, it would also help if
>>
>> 1. articles could come out in some kind of sorted order (perhaps
>> with various options available to the user),
>>
>The problem is - what order should that be? And would it not cost too much
>too check it?
>
Alphabetical would be a good start. Even reverse alphabetical. Other
options are conceivable with a check box.

>> 2. simple Boolean search options could be incorporated in the search
>> function, and
>>
>they can; I already use them (I'm going through years looking for events,
>and to avoid getting all the RanMan demography data in between, I make
>searches like "819 and not households".
>
Forgive me if I'm missing something. It could be that all we need
somewhere is an explanation of just what can be done using the Wikipedia
search function.

Thanks for your reply,
Eclecticology