Automatic slug generation in ModelAdmin via prepopulated_fields <https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/3.0/ref/contrib/admin/#django.contrib.admin.ModelAdmin.prepopulated_fields> uses a urlify.js <https://github.com/django/django/blob/b2bd08bb7a912a1504f5fb5018f5317e6b5423cd/django/contrib/admin/static/admin/js/urlify.js> file which, among other behaviors, removes certain stop words <https://github.com/django/django/blob/b2bd08bb7a912a1504f5fb5018f5317e6b5423cd/django/contrib/admin/static/admin/js/urlify.js#L168-L176> from the slug. For example, a string like "To be or not to be, that is the question" will generate a slug "be-or-not-be-question", not "to-be-or-not-to-be-that-is-the-question" as one might expect. I’d like to solicit feedback on the idea of removing this logic so that slugs can contain these words.
For reference, the current list is: a, an, as, at, before, but, by, for, from, is, in, into, like, of, off, on, onto, per, since, than, the, this, that, to, up, via, with. Django ticket #30538 <https://code.djangoproject.com/ticket/30538> mentions this behavior as part of a more general comparison between urlify.js and Python slugify <https://github.com/django/django/blob/b2bd08bb7a912a1504f5fb5018f5317e6b5423cd/django/utils/text.py#L394>. It was closed as wontfix due to reasons of backwards compatibility. Per the triaging guidelines <https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/3.0/internals/contributing/triaging-tickets/#closing-tickets>, I’m making this post to solicit feedback on the more specific question of addressing stopword removal in the JS code only -- not to try to address any other differences in behavior between these two methods. There’s been quite a bit of discussion on generating slugs for non-English languages (for example #2282 <https://code.djangoproject.com/ticket/2282>), and this post is not intended to reopen that discussion. The current list of stopwords being removed seems to have been the same since at least 2005 <https://github.com/django/django/blob/dd5320d1d56ca7603747dd68871e72eee99d9e67/media/js/urlify.js> (the earliest code I can find including this logic). Some of these words feel a little unexpected, for example “before” and “since”. After 15 years it seems reasonable to revisit the list and consider whether it still makes sense. Was removal of these words introduced for SEO reasons? If so, is this still a recommended default behavior? In 2020, search engines like Google seem smart enough to interpret them properly. Here's <https://cseo.com/blog/google-stop-words/> an arbitrary page that discusses this and includes a much longer list of what might be considered stopwords. As another datapoint, the popular WordPress Yoast SEO plugin used to remove stopwords, but stopped doing so <https://yoast.com/yoast-seo-7-0/> a few years back. Potentially outdated SEO concerns aside, does this behavior still align well with the needs and desires of Django users? Is this something this community would be open to revisiting? Thanks for your consideration. (One minor point on language support: allowing these words would help to resolve at least some of the unequal treatment given to English over other languages, for example #12905 <https://code.djangoproject.com/ticket/12905>. See also wagtail#4899 <https://github.com/wagtail/wagtail/issues/4899>, from which much of this post has been copied, for an example of how this logic impacts a Django-based CMS.) -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Django developers (Contributions to Django itself)" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to django-developers+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/django-developers/fb6c9596-951d-4102-91b5-b5fd9c8c6340%40googlegroups.com.
