Last modified: 2014-11-18 18:07:11 UTC
Transcluding subpages like votes/discussions, todo lists and article rating comments would be a good way to improve usability by separating content from formatting. At the moment however this practice has a serious usability problem: after editing such a subpage through a link on the base page and saving it, one is left on the subpage. Apart from being annoying and requiring an extra click, this can be quite disorienting for somone who isn't familiar with MediaWiki (and possibly doesn't even know what a subpage is). There would be no obvious indication why he ended up on a different page, and the small link below the title leading back to the base page is far from obvious. A simple solution would be a "returnto" parameter: when such a parameter is present, saving the text would leave the user on the page contained in the parameter.
This can be acheived with JavaScript and cookies quite simply, but yes, having a returnto parameter would be incredibly useful.
That would be rather unreliable when someone is using multiple windows/tabs (not to mention the extra page load).