New subject: Mediawiki and a standard template library

20 Aug 2011

...
  On Sat, Aug 20, 2011 at 8:35 PM, Max Semenik
&lt;maxsem.wiki(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:
  On 20.08.2011, 22:23 Martijn wrote:

  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!). 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. I'm cross-posting foudation, for possible discussion if
 this is desirable, and wikitech, for possible discussion if this is
 feasable. 
 Don't forget, English is one of 300-something languages we support.
 And users of other languages typically don't feel comfortable with
 using English templates, because words like "cite book", "author"
and
 "link" are meaningless to them. So we're speaking about 300+ sets of
 templates. This is both unmaintainable and burdensome. And don't
 forget, not every MediaWiki (that's how our software is called, not
 Wikimedia!) will want them. I would suppport a system that downloads
 them on-demand, however shipping zillion templates out of the box is
 simply out of the question.

 --
 Best regards,
 ?Max Semenik ([[User:MaxSem]])

 eh, Derp on the MediaWiki/Wikimedia, dunno where that came from. Also
 I'm not proposing to export all the en.wiki templates, but rather
 establish a core set of templates that could be exported (and
 translated!) on demand.

 Regards,

 Martijn 
The English Wikipedia has useful templates for an encyclopedia.
MediaWiki-software is useful for making an encyclopedia, but doesn't
have to be forced to be one. If someone wants a template from en.wp,
they will export it and import it at their own MediaWiki-install. If
that takes two hours, it says more about the total mess of the en.wp
template structure, then about the 'lack of standard templates' in a
MediaWiki-install. It will still take a considerable amount of time to
import a template with standard templates in place.

Then there will be a discussion what will be useful templates for a
new MediaWiki install. If you decide to ship a MediaWiki install with
a set of templates, the best case is that they will use all templates.
Every worse case is that they will end up with a few templates they
can use/want to use and lots and lots of junk.

Furthermore I am wondering who wants to maintain such an arbitrary
bunch of templates for 200 languages? It's not only the name of the
templates that need to be translated. The contents of every template,
including transclusions of other templates and language-specific
outcome of 'magic words' (for example in {{#ifeq: }}-statements) need
to be translated. If one wants to import a template from en.wp, he/she
has to import templates and templates where that template is depending
on like before. Now they have to translate the inclusion of standard
templates too, because on their wiki these standard templates now have
names in their custom language.

Sumurai8

Re: [Wikitech-l] Mediawiki and a standard template library