New subject: 24's latest statement

12 Apr 2002

Back in January we had some discussion about how difficult it was to 
edit multiple cross-linked pages about subjects within a context now 
that subpages are gone.  There were several suggestions, but none of 
them really clicked and none were ever implemented.  The issue has 
come up again, and there are now more pages with disambiguating 
contexts now, so I think now is a good time to revisit.

I also have a proposal that I like better than all the earlier
ones (including mine).  Rather than add a special tag like Base
or Context, and rather than using a special character, let's
just change our interpretation of links with a missing portion
on either side of the pipe, that is [[ link| ]] and [[ |link]].

Here's the proposal: On pages whose titles end with (context) in
parentheses, [[ |link]] is interpreted as [[link (context)|link]].
On all pages, [[link (context)| ]] is interpreted that way as well.
All other uses of [[|link]] or [[|link]] are simply interpreted
as [[link]].

That will make fixing all the links in the Middle Earth, Poker,
and other pages much easier, and I don't think it will add any
temptation to over-categorize or cause other problems.

It is an open question whether these links are interpreted at
save-time or render-time; the latter makes things easier I think,
but the former has advantages too.
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Middle Earth redux