Tels wrote:
Wikipedia is for content, Mediawiki for the programming logic to make it
happen. Seperation of code and data! I repeat it here for you:
SEPERATE THE CODE AND DATA!
I see no problem here: the code is in the template namespace, the data
is in the main namespace. Problem solved. :-)
Seriously, you seem to be advocating MediaWiki extensions (or patches)
for nontrivial templates. This is all very well, except that it means
anyone who wants to develop such an extension must first figure out how
to set up a local MediaWiki installation, including installing MySQL and
a webserver (usually Apache). And configuring those to be secure, since
the default configuration for webservers tends to expose them to any
hacker or spammer that happens by. And it means they must learn, even
for the simplest of things, a significant subset of the MediaWiki
internals, which are even worse documented than template syntax. And it
means they must be much more careful, since a MediaWiki extension can
screw up the system in lots of ways that a template can't.
And, once they have their fancy new extension developed, they must lobby
a Wikimedia developer into installing it. Not to mention that this has
to be repeated every time any new feature is added or a bug is fixed.
We have probably thousands of editors working on complex templates, such
as infoboxes and the like. Only a few percent of those could develop a
MediaWiki extension if they had to. And any extensions they did develop
would have to be approved by the handful of Wikimedia devs. The process
simply does not scale well. Templates do.
--
Ilmari Karonen