Hi.
I understand that we now have the MediaWiki namespace and that we can insert the contents of MediaWiki:XYZ into an article by inserting either {{subst:XYZ}} or {{msg:XYZ}} (and yes, I know their difference).
Are there any plans to start using this functionality wide-spreadedly?
For example, all the articles on Greek letters have a list of links to all the other Greek letters at the bottom. I had recently moved some of the pages (e.g. [[Omega (letter)]] to [[Omega]]), and so I had to modify all of the articles correspondingly. Then I had to change them all *again* because I forgot one of them.
All of this would have been easier if this short list of links were a page in the MediaWiki namespace and were included in the Greek letter articles using {{msg:}}.
So, my question basically is: Should I do this?
One shortcoming I see with this is that each of the Greek-letter articles would then have a link to itself. I guess one could resolve that with coding; perhaps {{msg:}} should automatically change [[XYZ]] and [[XYZ|.*]] to '''XYZ''' if it's used in [[XYZ]]. Or something.
Boxes like those on the right of articles like http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Franks could also benefit from this.
Timwi
Timwi wrote:
Hi.
I understand that we now have the MediaWiki namespace and that we can insert the contents of MediaWiki:XYZ into an article by inserting either {{subst:XYZ}} or {{msg:XYZ}} (and yes, I know their difference).
Are there any plans to start using this functionality wide-spreadedly?
For example, all the articles on Greek letters have a list of links to all the other Greek letters at the bottom. I had recently moved some of the pages (e.g. [[Omega (letter)]] to [[Omega]]), and so I had to modify all of the articles correspondingly. Then I had to change them all *again* because I forgot one of them.
There is a known bug with MSG in that changing the links in a message will break the link table of the articles which include it. So in your example, the "what links here" for [[Omega (letter)]] would have listed all the greek letter articles, despite the fact that they were all updated to point to [[Omega]] instead.
If such a change needs to be made, the link table can be refreshed by making some trivial change to each of the affected articles.
The moral to this story is: don't change messages unless you really need to. And don't use MSG in places where you're expecting changes to the links.
-- Tim Starling
Tim Starling wrote:
Timwi wrote:
I understand that we now have the MediaWiki namespace and that we can insert the contents of MediaWiki:XYZ into an article by inserting either {{subst:XYZ}} or {{msg:XYZ}} (and yes, I know their difference).
Are there any plans to start using this functionality wide-spreadedly?
For example, all the articles on Greek letters have a list of links to all the other Greek letters at the bottom. I had recently moved some of the pages (e.g. [[Omega (letter)]] to [[Omega]]), and so I had to modify all of the articles correspondingly. Then I had to change them all *again* because I forgot one of them.
There is a known bug with MSG in that changing the links in a message will break the link table of the articles which include it. So in your example, the "what links here" for [[Omega (letter)]] would have listed all the greek letter articles, despite the fact that they were all updated to point to [[Omega]] instead.
Then I suppose that bug should be fixed?...
The moral to this story is: don't change messages unless you really need to. And don't use MSG in places where you're expecting changes to the links.
In light of that bug, I agree, but once it's fixed, then I suppose we can start using this?
Timwi
Timwi wrote:
Tim Starling wrote:
There is a known bug with MSG in that changing the links in a message will break the link table of the articles which include it. So in your example, the "what links here" for [[Omega (letter)]] would have listed all the greek letter articles, despite the fact that they were all updated to point to [[Omega]] instead.
Then I suppose that bug should be fixed?...
The moral to this story is: don't change messages unless you really need to. And don't use MSG in places where you're expecting changes to the links.
In light of that bug, I agree, but once it's fixed, then I suppose we can start using this?
Yes. In fact with a few simple extra features, it could be used for many templates. The most important suggested feature is "parameterised inclusion". For example, if [[MediaWiki:Hello]] contains "Hello $1, welcome to $2", then {{msg:hello|Timwi|Wikipedia}} would generate "Hello Timwi, welcome to Wikipedia".
-- Tim Starling