[Wikipedia-l] The wiki software is written for wikipedia

Wed Jun 9 16:58:35 UTC 2004

LS,
When I follow what has happened the last few days, I can not help but come to the conclusion that things are done with wikipedia in mind.

Take for instance those lines that are "gratis" when you use headings. They make excellent sense when in Wikipedia but they look _horrible_ in wiktionary. Have a look at http://nl.wiktionary.org/wiki/Breton for instance. It does not look good.

Take a look at the restriction on the number of messages (5) per page. This is "reasonable" in wikipedia, but when you want to internationalise a page and use messages to indicate things that differ from language to language, like the gender of a word, you can have dozens words that are masculine and you get garbage as a result.

When there are problems, they seem to be relatively quickly fixed for the wikipedia's but, for the wiktionaries the consistency  is lacking. 

When you have an environment like wiktionary/wikipedia they _need_ to be the same in order to be able to fix things and understand the behaviour of the software. The wiktionaries do not behave in a same way. You can create an article with a Chinese (characters) name in English but not on the nl:wiktionary (and others).

We have just had a major disaster. What I expected in the aftermath was some consolidation. However, now the "Enhanced recent changes (not for all browsers)" in preferences is up the creek!!

What concerns me is that for us "simple" users there is no idea what problems are being tacled. What the priorities are and if things still get tested prior to production. 

*Is the idea that we have stabilized??
*Do we still have database problems? (anecdotal evidence says we do)
*Is there a moratorium on minor stuff so that there is the peace and quiet to fix the major stuff?

Sorry for being difficult,
  GerardM