Example of how TOC labels could appear.

I propose the creation of a new parser function to allow the labelling of entries in tables of contents.

Rationale: there are are many occasions when on large project pages - for example, those of various deletion processes on the English Wikipedia - when it would be advantageous to be able to get an at-a-glimpse overview of the status of everything on the entire page. At present, there's no way to do that; to assess a long page the reader needs to move all the way down it, either in one continuous scroll or by clicking TOC entries then going back. Neither is a particularly good use of time. This time-consuming process could be avoided if it were possible to attach short labels to TOC entries.

Example: On a discussion process page these labels might be "open", "closed" and "reopened". The following potential syntax could create a TOC whose appearance is demonstrated in the image attached to this ticket.

== First thing {{toclabel:closed}} ==

Text

== Second thing {{toclabel:open}} ==

Text

== Third thing {{toclabel:reopened}} ==

Text

Advantage over status quo: It is already possible to kludge this by putting a label in a section heading, but doing so will produce a section anchor that includes the label. If/when the item's status and label are changed, the resulting anchor will be different and break incoming links. This is obviously suboptimal.

Example of necessity: The technique just described is currently being used at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:AN3 . That page would benefit from this suggestion.

Considerations:

• Labels should have a relatively short maximum length to avoid abuse of the filter.
• Labels should be plain text (no processing of wiki markup).
• Labels should not be included in the hyperlink in a TOC item. Keeping the metadata visually distinct will make an annotated TOC easier to read.

Version: 1.23.0
Severity: enhancement
URL: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:AN3

Attached: