On Wed, 29 Sep 2004 23:25:24 -0600, Hunter Peress <hunterp(a)gmail.com> wrote:
My idea:
http://bugzilla.wikipedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=607 was denied
because its similar to a fix thats in 1.4 CVS:
http://bugzilla.wikipedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=143
This 143 fix is not sufficient because it makes links to templates
available from the editing screen. My proposal is for a backlink (to
the template itself or its edit page) to be rendered in directly in a
standard article (not only on its edit page).
I've marked 607 as a dupe of 229, and 229 as WONTFIX, not dupe. This
is clearly a distinct feature, even if its one we don't want to code.
I write this argument to the list now because if we
have a link in the
actual page for editing sections, then we should surely have a link
helping us quickly get back to a template.
I think the counter-arguments are:
1) people currently use templates to *hide* parts of a page [e.g.
en.wikipedia's Main_Page is split into templated sections which are
unprotected, but you have to find them first, giving a "speed bump"
effect] Not the strongest argument, but worth bearing in mind
2) unlike sections, templates have no defined structural extent, by
which I mean they're not always the same shape: some are tables, some
are paragraphs, some just a fragment of text that could be included in
another paragraph. It's not clear how an automatic mechanism could
position an edit link so that it was clear what it referred to without
limiting the usefulness of the templates themselves (by having an
automatic frame around them or somesuch).
Perhaps a simple keyword could be added that inserted such a link on
demand, to be used at will by template editors. As mentioned in
comments on bug 229, there is already a workaround in use at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Ed; perhaps something like this
could be incorporated into the software?
--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]