Hi,
support for subpages was not added to the new software because subpages
were considered detrimental to Wikipedia's structure. I agree with this:
For an encyclopedia, you want to avoid too many "hidden areas". However,
users are creating pseudo-subpages on their user pages and on talk pages
to archive them. In these instances, having subpage support may be
useful -- it makes link creation easier and provides automatic
backlinks.
DefaultSettings.php now has an array which defines namespaces that allow
subpages. Subpages are pages of the form [[/bar]], which, when created
on page [[foo]], lead to a page [[foo/bar]].
When creating links in a namespace that does not support subpages, the
link [[/bar]] simply points to "bar". When doing so in a namespace that
*does* support subpages, the link points to [[foo/bar]]. Thus, it is
possible to have talk page archives, subpages in userland etc., without
having subpages within Wikipedia.
On a page within a namespace that supports subpages, backlinks are shown
if the page title contains the "/" character. So "User
talk:Eloquence/Archive" shows a backlink to "User talk:Eloquence" at the
top (using the new subpage stylesheet). Backlinks are not shown to
non-existent parent pages.
Currently you have to do
[[/foo]]
[[/bar]]
[[/baz]]
to create multiple subpages. I plan to add support for a <subpages> tag
which should simplify the creation of multiple subpages (e.g. archive
links):
<subpages>
[[foo]]
[[bar]]
[[baz]]
</subpages>
I have committed a modified DefaultSettings.php which allows subpages
for Talk/User pages, which may be a reasonable default. I suggest that
this default be used for all Wikipedias, but this is a policy matter
which I will bring up on wikipedia-l. If subpages are not supposed to be
supported at all, the $wgNamespacesWithSubpages array fields can simply
be set to 0.
Regards,
Erik
--
FOKUS - Fraunhofer Insitute for Open Communication Systems
Project BerliOS -
http://www.berlios.de