On Wed, Jul 2, 2008 at 11:05 AM, mike.lifeguard mike.lifeguard@gmail.com wrote:
I don't see how "there are few other templates which could possibly benefit from this" - isn't that a major issue with license/warning/information templates and help pages? Indeed, this is a key complaint from third-party reusers. "Where are the welcome templates? Why isn't there any help documentation in the wiki?..." As well, for those working cross-wiki, learning the set of local templates is next to impossible - a standardized set of translated warnings and informational templates would be golden.
But those templates you name aren't standard, they are radically different on different projects. Think about the differences in warning users between en.wp, en.wb, en.wv, etc. Think about the different information that must be conveyed to new users on each project with {{welcome}}. There is no way to standardize this information in any meaningful way, without asking all our projects to just be more like wikipedia.
Now, I won't disparage the idea that standardized user-welcome and user-warning templates would be nice for under-populated small wikis, and I'm sure the SWMT would love these. However, there are going to be a lot of exceptions for larger and more-established wikis that do not want to share message templates with meta/en.wikipedia.
In contrast to these special exceptions (which could easily be implemented in a separate extension), the babel templates are universal and do not need to make "special exceptions".
There is a fairly easy solution if we want to have a consistent set of babel templates across all wikis: Special:Export on the templates at meta, Special:Import on each wiki, and create the appropriate categories. Granted, there are >700 wikis, but this can be scripted. I would argue that babel templates, license templates, certain warning templates and a good set of help pages should all be translated and synced in this way.
This whole idea seems so unfeasible in comparison to the proposed extension. Basically, you're saying it would be easier to: 1) Write a script to perform the necessary exports and import them to
700 wikis *(for varying technical definitions of the word "export"
and "import") 2) Run said script at least once, plus additional times to account for new languages that need to be added later 3) Use the same script, or a new version of it, to update template translations on all 700 wikis, if the text of a template is updated, retranslated, improved, or otherwise modified.
If the problem is sharing templates cross-wiki, then this is not the solution. People like the SWMT may have needs which are sufficiently specialized that they should have customized extensions or technical solutions (and I support this 100%, the SWMT should be given anything they ask for). The babel templates problem is separate and distinct, however, and should not be lumped into the same solution as all our other needs and desires.
--Andrew Whitworth
--Andrew Whitworth