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.