The Cunctator wrote:
[in objection to table of contents display]
The content of the Wikipedia pages below the title and
above the links at
the bottom has always been entirely user-configurable. To change that
summarily is not something to be taken lightly.
An admirable sentiment, perhaps, but it doesn't make sense here.
1) The TOC is created only by the addition of headings to an article by
human hands. (Even Ram-bot articles are based on a template written by a
human!) If the TOC is unmanageable, it's because a human has gone mad
with the headings, and any human can fix it by refactoring the page.
2) An article long enough for multiple headings to be appropriate would
benefit from a table of contents in usability improvements. While some
people may well like to read every article from beginning to end, many
people are actually searching for specific information, and would be
better able to find it in long articles by getting an overview of
section headings.
Vision-impaired users using text-to-speech software, with less ability
to scroll-n-skim, should certainly benefit from the up-front TOC and
ability to jump directly to relevent sections of the text. (Some
browsers support jumping directly from heading to heading, but I gather
not all. I'd appreciate if any accessibility experts lurking around
might be able to shine more light on this.)
3) Anyone mortally offended by it can disable it in their preferences.
Separately, the present implementation does look dreadful in my opinion.
It takes up too much space and is rather distracting, and I'm offended
by the markup used to render it. ;) However this is an implementation
detail, and does not discredit the concept.
Thoughts:
* It would be fairly trivial to add a JavaScript goodie to hide the
table of contents with a click in most modern browsers. Where JavaScript
is disabled or unavailable, or for the wackos running Netscape 4 or
something ;) well, they'll just have to log in won't they?
* It would be less trivial, but not impossible, to have some support for
display preferences stored in a browser-local cookie instead of a
logged-in user account. I don't know if this is desirable or not.
-- brion vibber (brion @
pobox.com)