Tim Starling wrote:
Don't blame me. I've always been against turning wikitext into a programming language. I'm just weaker than the other developers. How can I stand by and watch this sort of thing be inflicted on our articles:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Ed_Poor/subtract&action=e...
Oh my god! Is there no common sense in the English Wikipedia? Don't you have no community procedures to stop people from doing this?
I must admit that I am guilty of introducing the if-template into the German Wikipedia. There are some useful applications but the number of complex applications that don't improve the quality of Wikipedia content nor the the readability (and writability!) of Wikimarkup a tiny bit is growing. At least you can (more or less) catch the weed with Special:Whatlinkshere. In most cases someone just translates a cool-looking template from the English Wikipedia and you have to remove it afterwards. I don't complain about this "pollution" but *please* don't encourage people to create complex templates. I know they do it with good intent but that does not make it better. If there is a feature, solutions will be created for problems we actually don't have.
My comments/wishes if you activate ParserFunctions:
* Make it usable in the template namespace only
* Give a way to get a list of templates using ParserFunctions so you can tidy up brain-dead-templates
* Only activate the if-construct. You can use it for optional parameters in templates. This is the only useful application that I can think of. We don't have calculating Templates in German Wikipedia and we don't need it. Of course you /could/ find an application but It does not balance out the growth in complexity.
* pray that your local wiki community will establish rules where to use templates and where not to use them. Quick suggestion:
"Templates should be easy to understand and easy to use. They should make creation of qualitative content easier. If you use a template just to get a smart design or a amazing logic then something is wrong. Not everything possible makes sense. If you cannot describe the purpose and usage of your template in three sentences then something ist wrong. In doubt just don't create the template. Wikipedia is not a playground for template-designers."
Greetings, Jakob