Till Westermayer wrote:
Keep wikipedia simple!
Ahem - Erik was talking about extending the template system he is working on
for use in /Wikibooks/ in order to create wiki books. I agree that such a
mechanism /should not/ be allowed in Wikipedia since having books within
Wikipedia is counter to the non-linear hyperlinked nature of the project.
Having things in a specified sequence /is/ the whole point of Wikibooks,
though. Again, we need a Wikimedia mailing list to discuss these things.
I would like to see how Erik's idea could be used to reuse modules. For
example, different instructors will want to organize our textbooks in
different ways - we should let them do that on Wikibooks without having to
fork modules - only TOC's should be forked as a general rule (we should
maintain one reference TOC edition though ; alternate TOC's can be part of
the instructor's user page).
Of course a template mechanism could be useful for
many things -- but it also moves Wikipedias markup
language further in the direction of a programming
language, i.e. something most non-techs see as
complicated.
So,
<table border=0 width="200">
<th><td colspan=2>== %%Name%% ==</td></th>
<tr><td>Population</td><td>%%Population%%</td></tr>
</table>
is less complicated than;
|Country table
|Name => Germany
|Population => 83 million
|____
Sorry, but I don't buy your slippery slope argument.
-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)