Wikipedia talk:Avoid imitating MediaWiki user interface elements

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It seems like there is already consensus against such elements, but not consensus for enforcing prohibiting them. See also this and this thread.

Feel free to expand or add reasons for both sides of the issue in the page, and clarify on the issue itself in prose. It's a bit rougher than I'd like, but I thought that I wanted merely to create a central page, and to channel discussion into this, its talk page. This is a policy and not a guideline, for reasons discussed at the Village Pump. Feel free to change the title if you don't like it, but I purposefully picked "Avoid" instead of "Do not". Gracenotes^T § 20:40, 14 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion

Before I could comment on this, can a link to a category or list of actual MediaWiki user interface elements be provided on the project page? I would like to know the expected reach since this seems to be abstracted from the "new messages" practical joke to a broader purview. Thanks. ju66l3r 21:32, 14 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Special:Allmessages. Picaroon 00:16, 15 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

See User:Gracenotes/GUI for another example. Other example include fake new message boxes, preview messages, and the like. Some are more harmful than others, obviously. Instead of delineating what specific elements are harmful, perhaps it might be best to give a definition for what is generally a bad idea. Gracenotes^T § 01:58, 15 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Bots

Why do bots get confused by joke "new messages" banners? It should be trivial to check whether the new message box has a link to the bot's own talk page (if it doesn't, it is not a real new message banner). Kusma (討論) 22:29, 14 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

That's just extra work for bots that check for messages (which serve as a temporary off-button for them) via "screen-scraping," as I believe its called. Sure, the operators could go reprogram them. Or, people could stop doing things which have no purpose save confusing fellow users, living and mechanical. Now which of those two choices sounds like a better idea? Picaroon 00:16, 15 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

If a bots can't even bother checking that the link in the box goes to their talk page before shutting off, it's not well-written. It's not even like that requires an additional transfer - just a different pattern to match. --Random832(t c) 04:13, 15 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]