2011/8/20 Martijn Hoekstra martijnhoekstra@gmail.com:
On wikimedia projects that are not Wikipedia (Wikia in specific comes to mind) I often find myself using templates that have not been defined on that installation. The English Wikipedia (which I am most familiar with) has many very usefull templates, especially the {{citeFoo}} templates, but numerous others as well. Trying to 'import' one is a bit of a pain though. Many templates depend on other templates, and it is not often very clear how (as a fun exercise for the reader, try to import the {{convert}} template to a new wiki, and see how easy it is!).
It is being rewritten as an extension now. The Babel extension already exists to replace {{babel}}. For some templates that's probably the right way.
It would also be much, much easier to translate them.
I was wondering if it might be a good idea to include a standard template library to Wikimedia installations, containing a set of utility templates along with the Wikimedia distribution.
Just today i thought about having a little standard template library for wikis in RTL languages. A template that produces stuff like <span dir="ltr">{{{1}}}</span>. It should be easy.
-- Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי http://aharoni.wordpress.com “We're living in pieces, I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore