| Revision as of 21:32, 18 January 2001 editScottMoonen (talk | contribs)0 edits continued discussion. . . .← Previous edit | Revision as of 01:29, 19 January 2001 edit undoJimboWales (talk | contribs)129 editsNo edit summaryNext edit → | ||
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| :I submit that there is nothing in the way of convenience or liberation that AfghanistaN can do for you and which AfghanistanCountry can't. And it seems to me there are serious usability deficiencies in AfghanistaN. Consider especially those persons who haven't experienced a wiki before. OTOH, as I suggested above, you might research wikis that allow you to create one-word links that arent UgLy. -- ScottMoonen | :I submit that there is nothing in the way of convenience or liberation that AfghanistaN can do for you and which AfghanistanCountry can't. And it seems to me there are serious usability deficiencies in AfghanistaN. Consider especially those persons who haven't experienced a wiki before. OTOH, as I suggested above, you might research wikis that allow you to create one-word links that arent UgLy. -- ScottMoonen | ||
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| I (JimboWales) am the one who started the bad naming convention. I simply plead total ignorance. I realized when I started that it was a problem, but I didn't know what to do, so I just kept plugging away. | |||
| I think that ScottMoonen''''s suggestion has great merit. Unless someone beats me to it, I will work on making that change over the next few days. | |||
Revision as of 01:29, 19 January 2001
Recommend naming one-word pages like AfghanistanCountry rather than the eminently ugly AfghanistaN.
In this same manner, every noun can have Person, Place, Idea, Invention, etc. tacked on to its end to identify its type. You might even want to hold this convention for words that already meet the wiki naming conventions, like ThomasEdisonPerson. You might name the "letter" pages things like IndexA, which might link to IndexAaAl and IndexAmAz (once you get big enough :-).
For example, say I want to link to a page from my site. I have an InterWiki prefix set up for WikiPedia on my own wiki. Without going through the rigamarole of actually looking up something on WikiPedia, I have no a priori way of knowing whether to link to WikiPedia:AlAska, WikiPedia:AlaSka, WikiPedia:AlasKa, or WikiPedia:AlaskA. Lather, rinse, and repeat for longer names like AfghanistaN. If I knew there was an AlaskaState naming convention, then I wouldn't have to give it a second thought.
The arbitrary naming convention used so far is very inconvenient and doesn't contribute at all to AccidentalLinking. At very minimum, you might investigate other wiki engines that support arbitrary link patterns like and . -- ScottMoonen
There is, however, a search form at the bottom of every page. Isn't it both more convenient and more liberating in the end to let people do whatever they want, and just search for a string of characters whenever you think there might be related page already in existence, to which you might link?
- I respectfully disagree:
- AfghanistanCountry matches every search AfghanistaN matches.
- AfghanistanCountry additionally matches every search for "country".
- AccidentalLinking is vital. When I'm typing an article on the SovietUnion and want to link someplace I don't want to waste the time to go off and search whether it's AfGhanistan, AfgHanistan, AfghAnistan, . . ., AfghanistaN. I want to know right off the bat what it is.
- I submit that there is nothing in the way of convenience or liberation that AfghanistaN can do for you and which AfghanistanCountry can't. And it seems to me there are serious usability deficiencies in AfghanistaN. Consider especially those persons who haven't experienced a wiki before. OTOH, as I suggested above, you might research wikis that allow you to create one-word links that arent UgLy. -- ScottMoonen
I (JimboWales) am the one who started the bad naming convention. I simply plead total ignorance. I realized when I started that it was a problem, but I didn't know what to do, so I just kept plugging away.
I think that ScottMoonen's suggestion has great merit. Unless someone beats me to it, I will work on making that change over the next few days.