Last modified: 2011-07-12 04:31:11 UTC
Allow us to explore the effects of $wgNamespaceProtection[ NS_CATEGORY ] = array( 'sysop' ); Let's say a category has 100 members, but no content. The user will arrive at the page via action=edit, whereas he will encounter a gruff message, and _is denied knowledge of the 100 members_. (And if he arrives not by action=edit, he will be invited to edit, which of course ends up in him getting the above scolding.) (So we take $wgNamespaceProtection back out of LocalSettings.php, whereupon we notice that upon action=edit, one sees the 100 members only if there is no content in the category. If there is any content, the 100 members disappear from the screen.)
It's not clear what should be done about this, if anything. Perhaps links to deleted pages in protected namespaces shouldn't go to the edit page if $wgUser can't edit them, but should instead go to the "this article does not exist" without the edit form. But that would be potentially messy. Probably the default "this article does not exist" message isn't appropriate, anyway, since it refers to creating it yourself IIRC. We haven't really had nonexistent protected pages before on any significant scale, so maybe we should work out a different message for that, for view and/or edit. The category issue I'm not considering because it's not currently intended that categories should have members but no text. That issue is separate.
> The category issue I'm not considering because it's not currently intended that > categories should have members but no text. That issue is separate. But that is the issue I am turning purple about. Please make it a seperate bug then.
