Phil Boswell wrote:
I know that at east one solution has been proposed (http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:AzaToth/Logic which I personally think is over-egging the pudding, but is a good first step) but I have heard absolutely nothing as to whether anybody is ever going to actually do anything about it.
What the **** is that? We don't need geek-features but a simple solution.
In the meantime, various users (Netoholic and SnowSpinner chief amongst them) are making vaguely threatening rumblings which imply simply destroying any and all templates which use anything like conditional code: the dreaded "meta-template" term is bandied about with wild abandon. Other users, in a mad attempt to escape from the [[WP:AUM]] bludgeon, are driven to perpetrate atrocities like this: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template:Infobox_TV_channel&ol... (warning: obscene code alert).
You can never prevent authors to write bad code. I'm currently introducing conditional templates in the German Wikipedia for some small and simple templates with up two 3 parameters [1]. Everything else is too complex for authors anyway.
The only response I have heard from anybody on the development side is "we don't want it Turing compliant", which I assume means that they don't want sufficient bells and whistles to make it possible to write nasty little virus thingies.
Well, neither do the users: we simply want something in Mediawiki which will perform the same function as {{qif}} (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Qif ) and {{switch}} (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Switch ) without the strain these templates are said to impose on the servers. Anything else (as I implied earlier) would IMNSHO be overdoing it and unnecessary.
I fully agree. We only need conditional branching with if-then-else, switch and boolean operators. No additional string operations, no counting, no math, no goto...
Greetings, Jakob
[1] See http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vorlage_Diskussion:Zitat http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Zitate#Layout http://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Vorlage:Zitat&action=edit