Hi all, A half-serious feature request. Would it be possible to extend Wikimedia to allow templates that have effects in other namespaces? The most obvious application would be for adding text to another user's talk page without actually having to edit it. It would certainly make talk discussions easier than the current situation...
Alfred writes on Bertie's talk page: Hello, your latest addition sucks
Bertie replies on her talk page: {{usertalk|Alfred|No it doesn't. You're mean.}}
This template makes the text appear on the talk page, but also somehow makes an elegant link to the discussion appear on Alfred's talk page.
There may be other ways of solving this particularly awkward situation, in which either you have to monitor other users' talk pages, copy the entire conversation back and forth, or create two separate conversation halves at different locations.
Steve
Steve Bennett <stevage@...> writes:
Hi all, A half-serious feature request. Would it be possible to extend Wikimedia to allow templates that have effects in other namespaces? The most obvious application would be for adding text to another user's talk page without actually having to edit it. It would certainly make talk discussions easier than the current situation...
Alfred writes on Bertie's talk page: Hello, your latest addition sucks
Bertie replies on her talk page: {{usertalk|Alfred|No it doesn't. You're mean.}}
This template makes the text appear on the talk page, but also somehow makes an elegant link to the discussion appear on Alfred's talk page.
There may be other ways of solving this particularly awkward situation, in which either you have to monitor other users' talk pages, copy the entire conversation back and forth, or create two separate conversation halves at different locations.
Steve
I think the other namespaces can be included as a template, for example to include a Wikipedia namespace page, use {{Wikipedia:includepagename}}, and for the main namespace, use {{:includepagename}}. The only thing that using {{}} without any namespace will point to Template namespace in default.
But using this method on the main namespace, user talk namespace, it will include the whole discussion onto the page that used.
regards Man
On 18/04/06, Shinjiman shinjiman@gmail.com wrote:
I think the other namespaces can be included as a template, for example to include a Wikipedia namespace page, use {{Wikipedia:includepagename}}, and for the main namespace, use {{:includepagename}}. The only thing that using {{}} without any namespace will point to Template namespace in default.
But using this method on the main namespace, user talk namespace, it will include the whole discussion onto the page that used.
Hmm, it might be interesting even to have a way of including *part* of another page, specified with the #anchor notation. Then at the very least you could have code that looked like this:
==Topic== {{otheruser:Topic}} :reply 1 :::reply 3
That would be interesting...especially if each time the other user replied on their own talk page, the {{otheruser:topic}} template detected the change, and triggered a "you have new messages" banner.
Once that was set up, the last missing piece of the puzzle would be a way to automatically insert the ==Topic== {{otheruser:topic}} template on your own page when messaging other users. That could even be done with javascript if necessary.
Well! Seems feasible to me as a user. Any opnions from developers?
Steve
I think that if you get the new messages message (don't really know if changing a template triggers it) you would get it whenever the other page changes. No matter if you only want a piece. I think it'd be easier to extend the meassage alert for more pages so you'd have normal watchlist plus warning watched pages that triggers it. On the other hand there are people who asks to answer on the original page to mantain the discussion joined. They add it to watchlist and (I guess) don't work too bad for them or would go on with it :P Maybe some of them can point something here?
"Steve Bennett" stevage@gmail.com escribió en el mensaje news:f1c3529e0604172319q730e6c5dy3dbcebbf03f75936@mail.gmail.com...
On 18/04/06, Shinjiman shinjiman@gmail.com wrote:
I think the other namespaces can be included as a template, for example to include a Wikipedia namespace page, use {{Wikipedia:includepagename}}, and for the main namespace, use {{:includepagename}}. The only thing that using {{}} without any namespace will point to Template namespace in default.
But using this method on the main namespace, user talk namespace, it will include the whole discussion onto the page that used.
Hmm, it might be interesting even to have a way of including *part* of another page, specified with the #anchor notation. Then at the very least you could have code that looked like this:
==Topic== {{otheruser:Topic}} :reply 1 :::reply 3
That would be interesting...especially if each time the other user replied on their own talk page, the {{otheruser:topic}} template detected the change, and triggered a "you have new messages" banner.
Once that was set up, the last missing piece of the puzzle would be a way to automatically insert the ==Topic== {{otheruser:topic}} template on your own page when messaging other users. That could even be done with javascript if necessary.
Well! Seems feasible to me as a user. Any opnions from developers?
Steve
On 18/04/06, Platonides Platonides@gmail.com wrote:
On the other hand there are people who asks to answer on the original page to mantain the discussion joined. They add it to watchlist and (I guess) don't work too bad for them or would go on with it :P
Right - those people are taking definitely a suboptimal solution (monitoring someone else's talk page??), for the sake of cohesion. It would be good if you don't have to make that trade-off.
Incidentally, that strategy works really badly for users who receive a lot of messages, such as vandals or Jimbo. Ever tried leaving Jimbo a message and waiting to see if he replies to it? :) (not a slur on Jimbo, just everyone uses his talk page as a general discussion forum...)
Steve
On 18/04/06, Steve Bennett stevage@gmail.com wrote:
Hmm, it might be interesting even to have a way of including *part* of another page, specified with the #anchor notation. Then at the very least you could have code that looked like this:
==Topic== {{otheruser:Topic}} :reply 1 :::reply 3
To continue to reply to myself, some other uses this kind of thing would have:
Reporting copyvios: simply place the {{copyvio}} template on the page, and it would add it to the list of copyvios automatically Good article nominees: add the name of the page to the [[WP:GAN]] and it would add {{GAnominee}} to the page itself ...and lots of similar ideas: {{prod}}, vandal templates (eg, {{test4}} could automatically add text to [[WP:AN/I]]), ...
All these situations would basically reduce the amount of work involved in fairly menial tasks, by requiring you to only edit one page instead of two. In many of them, a similar effect could be achieved by expanding either the category or "what links here" functionality to allow text comments. For example, perhaps you could somehow link to another user's page with the text "I have replied [[user:foo|here]]", with that link being self-destroying. Or, if you could add a page to a copyright violation category with a little bit more information, then the need to manually report the copyvio to [[WP:copyvio]] is eliminated.
Opinions welcome, even if they're "no, it's useless", "no, it's a bad idea", or "no, it can't be done". :)
Steve
On Tue, Apr 18, 2006 at 10:09:32PM +0200, Steve Bennett wrote:
To continue to reply to myself, some other uses this kind of thing would have:
Reporting copyvios: simply place the {{copyvio}} template on the page, and it would add it to the list of copyvios automatically Good article nominees: add the name of the page to the [[WP:GAN]] and it would add {{GAnominee}} to the page itself ...and lots of similar ideas: {{prod}}, vandal templates (eg, {{test4}} could automatically add text to [[WP:AN/I]]), ...
If I correctly understand both a) what you mean, and b) how it works, the new INCLUDEONLY/NOINCLUDE stuff will permit that (you can create a template which causes the page into which you include it to be placed in a category, that is).
Cheers, -- jra
On 19/04/06, Jay R. Ashworth jra@baylink.com wrote:
If I correctly understand both a) what you mean, and b) how it works, the new INCLUDEONLY/NOINCLUDE stuff will permit that (you can create a template which causes the page into which you include it to be placed in a category, that is).
Yep, and that works to an exent. But all it can really store is membership, and the title of the page as it should appear on the category page. That's apparently insufficient, because pages like wp:copyvio still exist. To replace pages like that, it would need at a minimum the date that the template was added, and a text comment.
INCLUDEONLY/NOINCLUDE is definitely very cool, and I can't believe we got by without it before ;) It's only a pity that they NOINCLUDE's cant actually be included...some cute template documentation templates could be produced otherwise.
And to make this email about three separate things at once, it would be really nice if MediaWiki could be changed so that special variables displayed differently on template pages than on the page where the template is included. For example, if PAGENAME actually rendered as PAGENAME, rather than fa or welcome or whatever. Similarly, {{{1}}} could rendered as PARAMETER1... that might make templates a little easier to use and understand for novices.
Steve
Steve
Well, on some wikis we use the syntax {{template|day|month}} to include the template. Then it autocategorizes itself by date at the violations category.
"Steve Bennett" stevage@gmail.com escribió en el mensaje news:f1c3529e0604190045w468bdeaehcf89e50436cfdd5a@mail.gmail.com...
On 19/04/06, Jay R. Ashworth jra@baylink.com wrote:
If I correctly understand both a) what you mean, and b) how it works, the new INCLUDEONLY/NOINCLUDE stuff will permit that (you can create a template which causes the page into which you include it to be placed in a category, that is).
Yep, and that works to an exent. But all it can really store is membership, and the title of the page as it should appear on the category page. That's apparently insufficient, because pages like wp:copyvio still exist. To replace pages like that, it would need at a minimum the date that the template was added, and a text comment.
INCLUDEONLY/NOINCLUDE is definitely very cool, and I can't believe we got by without it before ;) It's only a pity that they NOINCLUDE's cant actually be included...some cute template documentation templates could be produced otherwise.
And to make this email about three separate things at once, it would be really nice if MediaWiki could be changed so that special variables displayed differently on template pages than on the page where the template is included. For example, if PAGENAME actually rendered as PAGENAME, rather than fa or welcome or whatever. Similarly, {{{1}}} could rendered as PARAMETER1... that might make templates a little easier to use and understand for novices.
Steve
Steve
On Wed, Apr 19, 2006 at 09:45:20AM +0200, Steve Bennett wrote:
And to make this email about three separate things at once, it would be really nice if MediaWiki could be changed so that special variables displayed differently on template pages than on the page where the template is included. For example, if PAGENAME actually rendered as PAGENAME, rather than fa or welcome or whatever. Similarly, {{{1}}} could rendered as PARAMETER1... that might make templates a little easier to use and understand for novices.
I do want to toss my oar in on this one: would it be possible -- and what would the pitfalls be -- to make the rendered version of the page for a template's definition *not* render the template?
I can see that you'd have to put it on another page to see how it rendered: perhaps the parser could special case it and show both the code and the render?
Cheers, -- jra
Jay R. Ashworth wrote:
On Wed, Apr 19, 2006 at 09:45:20AM +0200, Steve Bennett wrote:
And to make this email about three separate things at once, it would be really nice if MediaWiki could be changed so that special variables displayed differently on template pages than on the page where the template is included. For example, if PAGENAME actually rendered as PAGENAME, rather than fa or welcome or whatever. Similarly, {{{1}}} could rendered as PARAMETER1... that might make templates a little easier to use and understand for novices.
I do want to toss my oar in on this one: would it be possible -- and what would the pitfalls be -- to make the rendered version of the page for a template's definition *not* render the template?
I can see that you'd have to put it on another page to see how it rendered: perhaps the parser could special case it and show both the code and the render?
For most templates, this would be counterproductive. For those few that would benefit from it, there's <includeonly>.
In fact, you can even do something like this:
<includeonly> (ACTUAL TEMPLATE CODE HERE) </includeonly><noinclude> {{{{PAGENAME}}|PARAMETER1|PARAMETER2}} </noinclude>
to show the parameters as Steve suggests above.
On 19/04/06, Ilmari Karonen nospam@vyznev.net wrote:
For most templates, this would be counterproductive. For those few that would benefit from it, there's <includeonly>.
In fact, you can even do something like this:
<includeonly> (ACTUAL TEMPLATE CODE HERE) </includeonly><noinclude> {{{{PAGENAME}}|PARAMETER1|PARAMETER2}} </noinclude>
to show the parameters as Steve suggests above.
Ah-ha: I didn't realise a template could legally include itself. That's actually quite nice. Logically you would want to then wrap all that code in a nice template called {{showtemplate}} or something, but I'm almost certain that's not possible :)
Also, that actual code didn't work for my test in the user namespace, presumably something to do with {{PAGENAME}} not returning the namespace. But that's ok.
Though I must say, the edit preview you get when using code like that is extremely confusing ;) Since it shows you the previous incarnation of the code...then you save it, and you think you're seeing the current version, but when you press edit, it changes again. Eep. A nice, minor brainf*ck.
Steve
Use {{FULLPAGENAME}} instead of {{PAGENAME}} in the namespace User.
Steve Bennett wrote:
On 19/04/06, Ilmari Karonen nospam@vyznev.net wrote:
For most templates, this would be counterproductive. For those few that would benefit from it, there's <includeonly>.
In fact, you can even do something like this:
<includeonly> (ACTUAL TEMPLATE CODE HERE) </includeonly><noinclude> {{{{PAGENAME}}|PARAMETER1|PARAMETER2}} </noinclude>
to show the parameters as Steve suggests above.
Ah-ha: I didn't realise a template could legally include itself. That's actually quite nice. Logically you would want to then wrap all that code in a nice template called {{showtemplate}} or something, but I'm almost certain that's not possible :)
Also, that actual code didn't work for my test in the user namespace, presumably something to do with {{PAGENAME}} not returning the namespace. But that's ok.
Though I must say, the edit preview you get when using code like that is extremely confusing ;) Since it shows you the previous incarnation of the code...then you save it, and you think you're seeing the current version, but when you press edit, it changes again. Eep. A nice, minor brainf*ck.
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