Preview mode.

Since I suggested it in the whitelist thread, I'll re-suggest it here.

I think it would be beneficial to revamp the preview page somewhat. One of the proposed ideas was to make it so that anyone on the "grey list", rather than simply being able to edit, would have to view the preview page first in order to catch errors. After thinking on it, I thought up a few more things.

1. ) Highlight changes made. A simple box around the parts changed would help scroll to them easier.

2. ) A "go through previews automatically" option for whitelisted users who want to double check the page.

3. ) Alerts for things such as:

• a) Making the folders too large.
• b) Spelling mistakes with underline.
• c) Making Redlinks, but with a "this is an undocumented work" option.
• d) Adding a YMMV trope to the page.
• e) Adding a third level bullet would bring up a link to Natter and Repair Dont Respond.
• f) Visible brackets (as this is almost always a formatting error).
• g) Grammar mistakes.
• h) Using This Troper or other Things Not To Be Linked.
• i) Changing images would have a link to How To Pick A Good Image and the Image Pickin' forum.
• j) Cursing excessively or Bowlderizing.

All good ideas. The question is how difficult it'd be for Eddie to actually implement them.

Also, how could it know if someone's being a Bowdleriser?

edited 3rd May '11 9:39:00 PM by Unknownlight

It would, theoretically, flag any change of a sentence that only had a curse word modified. Then again, I am not a programmer and only vaguely understand how that stuff works.

I think we can throw out grammar checking. Spell checking and curse word / bowdleriser checking are possible, but I don't think the admins have nearly enough time to consider those. But you never know, they might fit somewhere on Eddie's to do list.

I like the other features. Nice list.

Well, if you do get a bunch of spelling checks and don't fix them, it could alert the mods for a future banning.

That could be problematic if it take account on every mistake in the page you are editing, not only the ones you make yourself. It is cool to fix other mistakes, but forcing people to do so is annoying. Furthermore, I don't think it is possible to take account of series, character names, acronyms and other 'non-words'.

Hence one that highlights changes. So it only highlights the area you've got.

If that spell checker is smart enough to use Wiki Words as necessary that would be nice.

It doesn't have to use Wiki Words, it just had to check for a redlink. Which, if anything, would be better since you don't have to worry about alternative spellings.

What about intentional redlinks?

Then presumably you would know those are correct and not change them. They'd just be highlighted and you'd ignore them just like I ignore the fact that my spellcheck on Firefox doesn't think Firefox is spelled right.

I was more joining in contesting the idea that any such flagging in the preview mode should ever be used to alert mods. It's nice in theory, but seems too open to problems in practice.

Although admittedly a spellchecker doesn't seem all that feasible anyway, in a place where all sorts of fictional names and terms abound. My browser's custom dictionary is rather lengthy by this point. Everything else seems potentially useful, though.

Yes. I suppose something that pops up and says "There is no Main.Work Title Here, click [here] for works of that name." would be too much server load.

This needs to be split in separate Query Wishlist tasks to be actionable.

Although the whitelisting/greylisting stuff should probably be discarded, the warnings stuff has merit.

A person could click the save button, and if some problems are found, warnings appear. The person could click save again afterward to ignore the warning.

As a test, I would create a text replacement plugin detector. It should be easy to detect if the same word is edited multiple times to the same new word. If that happened a banner would appear: "Warning: Do you have a text replacement plugin installed? Please disable it before editing this wiki."