[Foundation-l] Why is the software out of reach of thecommunity?

[Phil Nash]

David Gerard wrote:
>> 2009/1/13 Tim Starling <tstarling at wikimedia.org>:
>>
>>> The template equivalent to refactoring is the introduction of
>>> meta-templates, such as {{infobox}}.

Nothing wrong with that; C++ has abstract classes which aren't intended to 
be instantiated directly, but form useful models for hiding commonality 
among derived classes within a common framework.

>> The other useful thing that can be done with templates is to
>> standardise the field names in them as much as possible per wiki.

Which makes their derivations all the more familiar as editors use a wider 
range of templates.

>> The reason? To enhance machine readability of data in them. People
>> are SERIOUSLY INTERESTED in this.
>>
>> The user interface for templates is not entirely horrible -
>> {{templatename|field1=value|field2=value}} etc. As long as that stays
>> reasonably assumable, the plumbing behind it can be as esoteric as is
>> needed - no-one really cares as long as it works reliably.

And at the page-edit level, can be more easily parsed by relatively simple 
tools.