Hi All,
Today I have a cautionary tale. As some of you might recall, I looked into subgroups as part of our coming migration, hoping to solve some issues with hot topics and other things in our neighborhood group. Alas they aren't in a state where they help with that for us, because we can't move messages (and threads) between groups easily and keep replies from showing up in the wrong place. So, unless that changes, subgroups are a no go for us.
Then I discussed an issue about deleting a subgroup, where Mark told me that deleting a subgroup does not free up the subgroup name for reuse unless you specifically ask for them to free it for you. OK. Such is life.
Then we decided to delete the subgroup I'd created as a test. It was confusing our beta testers about what address to send to, among other things.
It turns out that subgroup deletion has impacts, let me tell you.
I'd created a bunch of pages in the wiki - our group FAQ - and crosslinked them in quite a few places. Imagine my surprise when all those links broke.
Looking at them, I discovered that the URLs in use for the links were all invalid because they'd been created while the subgroup existed, but now that it didn't exist anymore the URLs I needed are different. Example:
- ?- a URL created when the subgroup existed. (This doesn't work anymore.)
- /g/95033talk/wiki/95033talk-FAQ?- the corrected URL needed after the subgroup was deleted (or before any subgroups are created).
I suggest everyone think LONG and HARD about creating any subgroups if you have links anywhere in your system - in messages or the wiki, at least - because if you do, your first subgroup will break all those links. And if you delete all the subgroups you create, you'll have to fix all those links again. I learned this the hard way. Only about 20 links to fix in my case, that I know of, so far. YMMV.
I suggest to the developers that there is something wrong with the existing subgroup scheme in this regard. No one should expect the links in their wiki pages to break if they create their first subgroup, or delete their last one. Similarly with links between messages in the message archive. There has to be a better way for subgroups to work.
And while I am on this rant - sorry! - this wiki is very limiting. No images? Real URLs for internal links rather than the much simpler page name schemes used by most wikis? Without wanting to make even more work for myself, is there anything that can be done about that?
--jeffp
