On Sat, 13 Jan 2018, at 2:34 PM, Amir E. Aharoni wrote:
I'd further argue that many templates could be converted to real extensions or even core features. For example, there's the Capiunto extension, which attempts to do it for infoboxes. It would be an even more robust solution, but perhaps a global templates repository is a good intermediate step.
Yes! Definitely. I reckon there's lots to be said for widely-used templates actually being parser functions or lua modules (or whatever is appropriate) in extensions. It feels to me like once a template is useful enough and of enough of a general nature to be used on multiple sites, then it makes sense to move it into an extension. This means that modifications to it are more carefully made (i.e. can follow normal code review processes) and surprises are fewer for all the wikis using the feature.
It's similar with gadgets, I think. For example, HotCat is used all over the place, including with non-Wikimedia sites dynamically loading it from Commons, and would be great as an extension.
The downside of course is that extension-ified templates become much less easy for normal wiki-editors to modify, but I guess if a template is used on lots of sites that could also be seen as a reasonable thing.
I don't think a global template repository is an intermediate step, though. It sounds like it's much more complicated than piecemeal extensionification.