Ahem.
I'll put up my hand as a completely non-technical editor who reads this
list on a regular basis, and who shares Ryan's "eye-bleeding" feelings
about templates as they are currently developed and utilized, at least on
enwiki. I think I can speak for a very large number of editors who have
been praying for years for "something" to improve the template use
experience, and say thanks to the development team for answering the call
and coming up with what seems like a pretty good solution.
I quite agree that it's important to actively seek out and work with
template creators and curators to get involved in testing out Lua. But it
is also critical to involve those who will be *using* the templates to see
if what has been designed will address any or all of their concerns and
issues. Making the wiki run faster is, I believe, only one objective in
improving the "template experience". If the product that comes out of Lua
is as difficult to use as the current templates, then we have only
completed half the job. (I use "we" as the big-tent community that includes
developers and editors.)
If I may suggest: it's probably not all that hard to identify which
projects use a lot of templates (enwiki will always be one), and then find
a dozen or so template creators/curators from those projects - ask them to
create the most commonly used templates on their project using Lua. Then,
ask a larger group of template *users* come and try them out to get the
end-user experience. This should give some useful feedback to Tim and
anyone working with him. It also has some serious potential to create some
evangelists within the project who can build up the positives and start
moving their respective communities toward embracing Lua. I don't know if
mediawiki is the best place for this - perhaps a test wiki might be easier
to deal with, since the Mediawiki community has a very different ethos than
every other project - but I think it will be worth the investment.
If ever there was a development project that needs a dedicated ambassador
or two, this is the one. It has the potential to significantly affect
multiple facets of the user experience. It has the potential to be a very
big "win" for everyone - developers, editors, and even readers.
Risker/Anne