We must be vigilant, though, that people won't
misuse them. I.e.
Currently (in {{{CURRENTYEAR}}}) ...
and
Currently (in 2001) ...
can't be distinguished by looking at the HTML output, only at the
source; and the first usage is probably always in error -- we /don't/
want articles to change behind our backs.
Which reminds me, which articles (except the homepage) do we actually
want to contain a moving date?
Probably none. These variables could, of course, be restricted to the
HomePage. But, Wikipedia is based on trust, and so I guess we should trust
people not to abuse variables, as we trust them not to abuse the rest of the
system.
That system
could be expanded with things like
- {{{CATEGORY:Biology}}} in an article that could be seen as
belonging to
biology
Am I right with my guess that this is for easy back-linking from a
"Biology" page? If not, what is it for, as opposed to a simple
[[Biology]] link.
A link is but a link. A category variable could be used for building trees,
subwebs, all kinds of stuff, including of course links:)
But not all pages that link to "biology" are actually part of that
*category*, for example, the HomePage isn't!
- {{{GERMAN:Haus}}} in the "house"
article
These "variables" could be replaced for display with, say, a
little
German
flag linked to the German version of the
"house" article, named
"Haus".
I like the idea to tie different languages together. But (you know
this was coming, eh?) I have two beefs:
Putting links to all other versions into the English (main?)
Wikipedia, or even into every instance, does not scale well. Why not
let the international Wikipedians do this work in *one* place, and let
programs do the rest? And this one place should be where these
Wikipedians are anyway, that is their "home" Wikipedia. So, the author
of the "Haus" article can put {{{ENGLISH:house}}} in there; some other
contributor inserts the same tag into the "maison" page, etc. This is
enough to convey the relation to a program, so that links from any
version to any other version are possible.
Well, I thought it might be easier is everyone can do his little piece, and
the programs stitch it together to a big interlinked system. Isn't that what
the wiki idea is for? ;)
Flags are *evil*. They are symbols representing nations, not
languages. I for one, would not feel compelled to click on a German
flag, and I imagine a USian <g> would be even less comfortable with a
Union Jack, either. Flags are sometimes misused in this way by web
sites who are concerned that their visitors would not take the time to
read the corresponding "[German]", but I think we can assume that our
average visitor has no problem with reading an additional word.
Flags were just an example for the flexibility of the system.
Furthermore,
all international
wikipedias could be checked once a day (or once a week), crosslinking
languages. If the English article links to the German one, the
German one
will automatically link back to the English
version. Also, if the German
article links to the Swedish, but the English does not, both English and
Swedish will be automatically updated.
Yeah exactly, only that I'd say that this process would not change the
article itself, but some metadata. I don't think it is much use to
French speakers to see all translations of "maison" on that page.
They'd not be able to check or make use of most of them. The one that
they'd most likely be able to evaluate would be the English one.
The idea was to, say, append new "variables" to the article text. As I said,
these won't have to actually show in the HTML output within the text, but
could be cut out for display and instead shown in the header (with or
without flags:)
No real need for metadata here. That would only complicate the access, I
think.
Magnus