Last modified: 2010-12-31 05:26:24 UTC
Gentlemen, allow me to tell you about a bug you will rarely notice, unless you turn off styles in firefox, or use a text browser. $ f=http://taizhongbus.jidanni.org/index.php?title=Special:Version #(or any other Special: page) $ w3m -dump $f\&uselang=en|grep -i special ‧ Special Page ‧ Special pages The above drives one nuts: two links with almost the same name, but pointing to different things. In Chinese, it is even worse because page/pages translates to the same thing: $ w3m -dump $f|grep 特殊 ‧ 特殊頁面 ‧ 特殊頁面 In Mediawiki 1.10 the English is now a little better: ‧ Special ‧ Special pages But why the first link back to the page we are on anyway, when there is already a "Retrieved from" link, and why only for when one does not use stylesheets? We examine these two links again, on a different Special page: This is the link that should be thrown into the trash can pronto: <li id="ca-nstab-special" class="selected"><a href="/taizhongbus.jidanni.org/index.php?title=Special:Listusers&uselang=en" title="This is a special page, you can't edit the page itself">Special</a></li> along with its "Views" header, which now becomes empty. And this is the reasonable link that should stay: <li id="t-specialpages"><a href="/taizhongbus.jidanni.org/index.php/Special:Specialpages" title="List of all special pages [q]" accesskey="q">Special pages</a></li> http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20031110.html says never have a link that points to the current page. Compromise: one link OK, two too much.
Same link as on every other page.
Note that the link pointing to the current page might not always point to the current URL. In particular, it always points to the canonical URL of the page, so if you followed a redirect or have funny query strings tacked on the end it will always point back to the default URL for the original page. And of course it still appears when you're viewing the talk page, history page, etc. (obviously not in the case of special pages), so you should be used to its positioning. It should be clear from context which link goes where. The "special page" link is in the place where it would normally be accompanied by "talk page", "history", etc. The "Special pages" link is with links to other external pages. If you're going to try grepping for the link rather than viewing the entire page, expect to be confused occasionally by the lack of context.
All I know is currently we are now back to the state where on http://transgender-taiwan.org/index.php?title=%E7%89%B9%E6%AE%8A:%E7%89%B9%E6%AE%8A%E9%A0%81%E9%9D%A2 the Chinese just has the same words, where on http://transgender-taiwan.org/index.php?title=%E7%89%B9%E6%AE%8A:%E7%89%B9%E6%AE%8A%E9%A0%81%E9%9D%A2&uselang=en at least one can differentiate Special Page vs. Special Pages. They had differentiated the Chinese for a time, but now they are apparently counting on a tooltip that one has to mouseover to see.
