Thanks to Brion for his statement at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:AUM
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Qif was up for shooting. It is ugly.
WP:AUM has been used on :en as a motto to replace uses of Qif with other ugliness.
Question: What shall we do now?
Qif is replaced now with a CSS trick (ugly): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Adrian_Buehlmann/work/Conditional_expressi...
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_W._Bush for an example use (look at html source created by Infobox President template).
There is a third ugliness called weeble trick. Example http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Adrian_Buehlmann/work/Infobox_TV_chan...
So which ugliness shall we use until we have conditional functions in MediaWiki ("ifempty", "or", "not", "and". No loops, no gotos, no viruses)?
On 1/21/06, Adrian Buehlmann adrian@cadifra.com wrote:
So which ugliness shall we use until we have conditional functions in MediaWiki ("ifempty", "or", "not", "and". No loops, no gotos, no viruses)?
How about none of them, and play with templates how they were designed to be played with?
-- Sam
On Sat, Jan 21, 2006 at 05:18:39PM +0000, Sam Korn wrote:
On 1/21/06, Adrian Buehlmann adrian@cadifra.com wrote:
So which ugliness shall we use until we have conditional functions in MediaWiki ("ifempty", "or", "not", "and". No loops, no gotos, no viruses)?
How about none of them, and play with templates how they were designed to be played with?
You mean like this? :-)
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Frantik/Winter http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Frantik/Winter/Language_Specification
People can test the language here if they want (you do need a Wikicompany account):
http://wikicompany.org/wiki?title=Wikicompany:Test4
Sure there are performance, security and editorial-complexity considerations when deploying these kind of extensions, but some things are just too funky too ignore.
Jama Poulsen
On 1/21/06, Jama Poulsen jama@debianlinux.net wrote:
You mean like this? :-)
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Frantik/Winter http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Frantik/Winter/Language_Specification
I admire the work you've done there. I think it's very impressive. However, I also think it's far too complex for a site where the accesibility level should be low. The syntax should be *very* simple -- markup rather than programming.
-- Sam
On Sat, Jan 21, 2006 at 07:57:59PM +0000, Sam Korn wrote:
On 1/21/06, Jama Poulsen jama@debianlinux.net wrote:
You mean like this? :-)
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Frantik/Winter http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Frantik/Winter/Language_Specification
I admire the work you've done there. I think it's very impressive. However, I also think it's far too complex for a site where the accesibility level should be low. The syntax should be *very* simple -- markup rather than programming.
I did not create this extension User:Frantik did.
One could also say that the current Wiki syntax is too simple for many editors.
Sure its much more complex than the 'standard' Wiki syntax, but I do see a need for more dynamic page constructions and displays, and this provides a very interesting building block for that.
I see this project as a natural progression of Wiki syntax. You can ignore this development for some time, but as the Wiki editing model grows in popularity, more people will want these more expressive Wiki editing options (like a more advanced templating language, semantical annotations, etc.).
Jama Poulsen
On 1/21/06, Jama Poulsen jama@debianlinux.net wrote:
I did not create this extension User:Frantik did.
Sorry for the misunderstanding.
One could also say that the current Wiki syntax is too simple for many editors.
Sure its much more complex than the 'standard' Wiki syntax, but I do see a need for more dynamic page constructions and displays, and this provides a very interesting building block for that.
Do you see the need? I don't. All I see is people wanting to use one template in all situations, where they could easily use multiple templates.
I see this project as a natural progression of Wiki syntax. You can ignore this development for some time, but as the Wiki editing model grows in popularity, more people will want these more expressive Wiki editing options (like a more advanced templating language, semantical annotations, etc.).
Yes, they will want it. I also want chocolate, but it doesn't mean you must give it to me.
-- Sam
"Sam Korn" smoddy@gmail.com wrote in message news:cbffa3750601211232l4145f438le5ea3d2ef072f74f@mail.gmail.com... On 1/21/06, Jama Poulsen jama@debianlinux.net wrote: [snip]
One could also say that the current Wiki syntax is too simple for many editors. Sure its much more complex than the 'standard' Wiki syntax, but I do see a need for more dynamic page constructions and displays, and this provides a very interesting building block for that.
Do you see the need? I don't. All I see is people wanting to use one template in all situations, where they could easily use multiple templates.
This is known as "template forking" and is regarded as evil.
It generally results in 17 different variants of a given template, with minor differences between them, forcing an editor to work much harder to discern which variant is appropriate for a given occasion.
Take for example the classic {{book reference}}. The simplest possible instance is just the title of the book. This can later be embellished with the name of the author, possibly with a link to an appropriate article. Later additions can include the publisher and ISBN, to distinguish between different editions and to enable a reader to find an actual copy.
If you fork this template (and this was actually done before the advent of condition "tricksiness"), you have to use a different template every time you incrementally improve the accuracy of your citation. Your choice can even be affected by the order in which your embellishments are added!
Since accurate citation of sources is a key requirement for a good Wikipedia article, making this any harder than necessary is not good.
HTH HAND
On 1/23/06, Phil Boswell phil.boswell@gmail.com wrote:
Do you see the need? I don't. All I see is people wanting to use one template in all situations, where they could easily use multiple templates.
This is known as "template forking" and is regarded as evil.
Are taxoboxes evil? No, I think not. Yet they are a good instance of multiple templates cleanly giving an effect that could be achieved by ugly single templates (I have seen attempts, with {{taxobox}} to destroy this good work). I have also seen templates that seek to use one template for programmes, characters and various other pages relating to the same manga series.
Take for example the classic {{book reference}}. The simplest possible instance is just the title of the book. This can later be embellished with the name of the author, possibly with a link to an appropriate article. Later additions can include the publisher and ISBN, to distinguish between different editions and to enable a reader to find an actual copy.
If you fork this template (and this was actually done before the advent of condition "tricksiness"), you have to use a different template every time you incrementally improve the accuracy of your citation. Your choice can even be affected by the order in which your embellishments are added!
Since accurate citation of sources is a key requirement for a good Wikipedia article, making this any harder than necessary is not good.
This is one template that could *really* do with something built into the software. If it was even slightly possible that I could work this myself, I would attempt to do so.
-- Sam
On Monday 23 January 2006 09:51, Phil Boswell wrote:
Take for example the classic {{book reference}}. The simplest possible instance is just the title of the book. This can later be embellished with the name of the author, possibly with a link to an appropriate article. Later additions can include the publisher and ISBN, to distinguish between different editions and to enable a reader to find an actual copy.
If you fork this template (and this was actually done before the advent of condition "tricksiness"), you have to use a different template every time you incrementally improve the accuracy of your citation. Your choice can even be affected by the order in which your embellishments are added!
This is exactly the example I wanted to put forward. I try to cite sources whenever I can, but I haven't used appropriate templates because of this (there exist/have existed multiple book reference templates: with page number, without page number, with ISBN, without ISBN...). With one template, it is much easier and I will likely use it now.
On 1/21/06, Sam Korn smoddy@gmail.com wrote:
On 1/21/06, Jama Poulsen jama@debianlinux.net wrote:
You mean like this? :-)
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Frantik/Winter http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Frantik/Winter/Language_Specification
I admire the work you've done there. I think it's very impressive. However, I also think it's far too complex for a site where the accesibility level should be low. The syntax should be *very* simple -- markup rather than programming.
-- Sam
Just to clarify -- I'm not really opposed to some very simple conditional additions to the MediaWiki code, just against the breadth included there.
-- Sam
"Sam Korn" smoddy@gmail.com wrote in message news:cbffa3750601210918q71a7e501k3499701e319a0a52@mail.gmail.com
On 1/21/06, Adrian Buehlmann adrian@cadifra.com wrote:
So which ugliness shall we use until we have conditional functions in MediaWiki ("ifempty", "or", "not", "and". No loops, no gotos, no viruses)?
How about none of them, and play with templates how they were designed to be played with?
Yes please remove the CSS trick from the following templates on :en
Infobox President Infobox Governor Infobox Person Infobox Senator
and a few hundred others. You can start at [[:Category:Infobox templates]].
The hack conditionals have been beaten with big sticks and they are still alive. Who wonders?
Adrian
On 1/21/06, Adrian Buehlmann adrian@cadifra.com wrote:
The hack conditionals have been beaten with big sticks and they are still alive. Who wonders?
No-one, because every time someone attempts a semantically acceptable and half-way decent looking solution someone reverts because it loses some minor function.
-- Sam
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