Talk:Community Wishlist/W269

Previous attempts

They tried this before, but IMHO the mistake was to still treat the section link as part of the summary instead of switching all section link generation to server-side/asynchronous (which admittedly would be a big change). Nardog (talk) 12:48, 21 August 2024 (UTC)

I think automatic edit summaries can and probably should be used more extensively, e.g. in addition to the normal ones displayable on demand with a click. How could it detect if a section header was added instead of just an existing one changed? Prototyperspective (talk) 13:12, 3 November 2024 (UTC)

It doesn't have to. This wish is solely concerned about the section link and not about edit summaries (in fact it advocates for divorcing the former from the latter). Accurately showing the name of the modified section is possible by looking at the first and last modified lines, the preceding unmodified lines, and the parsed result. Nardog (talk) 22:40, 3 November 2024 (UTC)

I just think this would be very difficult to implement and would not be super useful. If section links were automatically/asynchronously generated based on which lines were modified after the page was saved and parsed this would be super difficult. If you also want the section links to work after the heading was changed, sections would need some unique identifiers and how would you generate or use them people add sections just by writing == wikisyntax...if section links are broken one can check the diff or see the sections which is likely the new name of it. Moreover, if for every change a section link is added automatically it could make the summary way to long; I often could not fit a very brief summary of all changes I made into the edit summary even without section headers. Prototyperspective (talk) 11:22, 11 October 2025 (UTC)

Not difficult at all. In fact my script is halfway there (and I could make it all the way relatively easily, I just haven't done that because it seems overkill for a frontend script). I think you've misunderstood that a section link for an old revision should work even after the section has been renamed in a later revision; that's not what I'm proposing. I'm fine with it not working after renaming. But it should work at least until it is renamed, including when it was renamed in the relevant revision the section link is attached to. Nardog (talk) 15:31, 11 October 2025 (UTC)

if for every change a section link is added automatically it could make the summary way to long too seems to be based on a misunderstanding of my proposal. If multiple top-level sections were edited in a single revision, no section link should be provided, and if multiple subsections of a single section were edited, only a section link for the lowest common section. Nardog (talk) 15:34, 11 October 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for explaining. If you have a script that partially implements this, I think this should definitely be mentioned in the wish somewhere and linked (for example because maybe the approach and code could be reused and also as a demo). If I understood you correctly, this is just for edits where the user clicked on the edit button of a section, in specific the automatically added section header link at the beginning of the edit summary. Maybe the wish could be edited too to make these two things clearer or maybe I didn't read it well. Prototyperspective (talk) 22:52, 13 October 2025 (UTC)

You have indeed not understood the wish still. I'm arguing any edit of a section should be accompanied with a link to the section whether the user clicked on the edit button of a section or not (and that link should be one that works even if the section name was changed in the edit, contains a template, is the same as an earlier section, etc., which is not the case right now where the user clicked on the edit button of a section). Nardog (talk) 12:49, 14 October 2025 (UTC)