[Wikipedia-l] Sidebar change, comments?

Mon Nov 11 14:28:59 UTC 2002

Hi,

a few days ago, I wrote a patch for the navigation sidebar. The patch
changes a few link names and fixes a bug. The current sidebar looks as follows:

Main page
Recent changes
Watch list
Current events
--------------------
Edit this page
Watch this page
Move this page
Talk page | Subject page
History
What links here
Watch links
--------------------
Upload
Bug reports
Special pages

The links are perfectly OK, but I have problems with the words used and
sometimes with the positioning. The modified sidebar looks like this:

Main Page
Recent changes
My watchlist
Random page
Current events
--------------------
Edit this page
Watch this page
Move this page
Discuss this page | View article
Older versions
What links here?
Related changes
--------------------
Upload file
Special pages
Bug reports

Explanations:
- "Watch list" should be "My watchlist" to make clear that this is not a
page that is the same for all users, like the other links in this
section of the sidebar. Perhaps later we will also add a direct link "My
contributions".
- "Talk page" should be "Discuss this page" to use the same imperative
style of the other links above it. Since users don't have to create
"/Talk" links anymore, it's not necessary that we use the actual word
"Talk" anywhere but in the URLs.
- "Subject page" should be "View article" or "Back to article". "Subject
page" is really ambiguous and hard to understand, I searched several
times for a way back to the article because I didn't find an obvious
link.
- "History" should be "Older versions" or "Page history" to be more
obvious. Most people are not familiar with the concept of article
histories.
- "What links here" needs a questionmark.
- "Watch links" should be "Link history", "Related changes" or something
else. "Watch links" suggests that this will add the links to my
watchlist, which it doesn't do.
- Upload should be "Upload file". True, a bit redundant, but more
familiar this way. 
- Bug reports should be at the bottom as this is the least relevant.

If there are no objections, I will apply this change later today or
tomorrow. 

Regards,

Erik Moeller

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