Improvement: avoid punctuation in free-space profile titles

Question

Free-space profiles have a "Title" and a "Page Name".

The Title is used to construct the Space: ID by which the profile can be linked. At present it is set when the free-space profile is created, by entering something in the Title field of the relevant form. After that, it cannot be changed except by recreating or merging the free-space profile.

The Page Name is used to construct the heading which appears on the free-space profile. It can be changed at any time (subject to page privacy) by editing the profile and altering the Page Name field.

There is therefore no need for the Title to contain punctuation or spaces. Only the Page Name is ever displayed, and that can contain whatever punctuation is desired.

There are two problems caused by punctuation in Titles. Firstly, it can become very difficult to add images to a free-space profile whose Title contains punctuation (one example here, but this is quite a frequent issue). Secondly, it can be impossible to enter the Space ID for the profile into the WTID field of a G2G question.

Here is a proposal to avoid both these issues with a fairly easy software change.

The mechanism that creates free-space profiles could be changed as follows.

When the member enters the Title, the original text they enter is saved as the Page Name. Then what they entered has all punctuation and space characters removed; "Space:" is inserted at the front; and that becomes the WikiTree ID of the new free-space profile.

This would mean that members could have whatever they want as the Page Name and therefore the main heading, but complications of punctuation in the Space: ID would not occur in future for the page. No change in user behaviour would be required, except that it would become easy instead of difficult or impossible to use the resulting Space: IDs.

(This improvement proposal would help with pages created from when the software change took place. It is not intended to change already existing pages retrospectively.)

Answer 1

Jim, I think that would be a great improvement, except for one thing - I don't believe it will ever happen because of the magnitude of the programming task in combination with the length of the to-do list and the very low priority an item like this would have on that list (based on the level of effort in combination with the severity of the impact of not changing it).

I have - many, many times - in the past, recommended that people not use any special characters - including spaces - when they name their space pages.  I use capitalization to distinguish words in my space page titles, for example:  DocumentFileStorage and GraphicFileStorage, where I upload files that I use on profiles, either in sources or biography sections, respectively.

Comments

Thank you for the support of the proposal, Gaile. I am more optimistic that it could be done. Jamie has recently confirmed that WikiTree uses an agile software development approach, which should make this sort of quite small change straightforward. Considering how much grief and complication the issue has caused to many people trying to add images or write G2G questions, I do not think the priority should be low.

I agree with you that it would be good if people would use the workaround you suggest in the meantime (it's also exemplified by Melanie's excellent Images for G2G page with the ID Space:Images4G2G ). But there is reluctance, so a technical solution is easier.

Edited to add: Gaile spoke of the "magnitude of the programming task". This one is about three lines of code: one to insert the original Title in the Page Name database field; one to strip out punctuation using a regular expression; and one to insert the result in the Title or ID database field.

Answer 2

I think that’s a good idea.

In the meantime could there be a note added on the page next to where the title is being created to prompt people even if the software change isn’t implemented? For example (and someone else could word it better than me):

     Not displayed - Don’t use punctuation

And next to the displayed name:

     Displayed, can be altered in future.

it could be there already as I’m sure I’ve seen some comments about not using punctuation, but it needs to be next to the actual entry box to prompt people as they are creating it.

Comments

Thanks L. This doesn't quite work, because at present only the Title field appears on the creation form. The Page Name field just turns up later, on the edit form.

It does raise an extra point however. The field name "Title" on the creation form would need to be changed to "Page Name" to be compatible with the edit form. What is now called "Title" would go behind the scenes, and only show itself in the Space: ID.

Answer 3

I feel like this would be a workaround for a technical problem.

LNABs and Category titles can also contain spaces and punctuation. My own surname has a space in it. These titles generate page ids witout problems, so why can't that be true for Space titles?

Comments

It's commas and parentheses that cause the some of the worst problems. Those can't occur in WikiTree IDs of personal profiles, so it's not a good comparison.

What I've suggested is a solution to the problem which is easy to implement in software. There is no reason why Space: IDs of free-space profiles need to contain punctuation, and developing software to handle all the possible cases would be much more complicated than eliminating it—without any effects visible on the pages themselves.

---

Hi Jim, I know that there are issues with commas (because the comma is used when entering multiple profiles), but what problems are there with parenthesis?

---

Thanks for asking, Jamie. I've sent you examples with parentheses and other characters where there does seem to be an issue inserting free-space IDs into a G2G question.

Answer 4

I like this idea.  Here are some additional suggestions:

1) Change the name from 'Title' to 'Space Short Identifier'.  That ought to help newcomers (as I was the first time I created a space page and its title was enormous and included lots of punctuation).

2) Use software filtering to disallow special characters (and spaces if you want) and over-long identifiers.

3) Inform users of the changed rule on the create page and help pages and then warn users when they violate the new rule.

4) Do you allow duplicate Space Identifiers?  Surely not.  So, you need a policy, help instructions, and warnings about that, too.

Comments

Thanks Peggy: useful points and queries.

1) Actually the field name on the creation form would need to change from "Title" to "Page Name". The full name to be used as the page heading will be what is entered.

2) Yes, the shorter Space: identifier will be constructed automatically by stripping out punctuation.

3) There is no need to inform the user. They cannot violate any "rule". They can enter whatever they like as the Page Name, without restriction on what the heading will be.

4) No. Duplicate Space: identifiers are not allowed. But this is not a change and does not require new software, just the same check that is performed already.