On Wed, Jul 2, 2008 at 1:30 AM, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
The number and the distribution of localisations of the extension is better ensured by having an extension.
Possibly, yes, but I don't think such a special-purpose extension is the right way to do this. There are really only three benefits I see here:
1) Extensions can use Betawiki for localization.
2) Extensions can be easily installed and maintained on all Wikimedia projects at once.
3) Extensions can be easily installed by third parties.
Now, these are real benefits. But there's no reason to restrict them only to Babel. What if you achieved the following instead:
1) Collections of templates can use Betawiki for localization.
2) Collections of templates can be easily installed and maintained on all Wikimedia projects at once.
3) Collections of templates can be easily installed by third parties.
This would have been as easy to do as writing the Babel extension, I suspect, and a lot more useful.
One of the reasons for the extension is NOT to have to maintain a long list of templates. Templates are nice for local usage. When they are to be used on all our wikis they are a pest. When they are also to be used by projects outside of the WMF they are clearly inferior.
Templates that are to be used on multiple projects suck big time.
And this is the problem that should have been addressed to begin with. You should not write software to solve a narrow problem when you could solve a much bigger problem just as easily.