[Foundation-l] Template Overkill

[ViswaPrabha (വിശ്വപ്രഭ)]

As a universal law, if something is both good and bad then it should be used
wisely, suitably and selectively.

IMHO, the same applies to templates. They are most efficient when the
patterns are clear, efficiently recursive, polymorphic and inheriting.

A possible direction will be to go back and start looking at each /set of
templates and examine whether they could be completely revised with better
structures/styles.

Though not very well-versed with the db internals of mediawiki, I feel that
there is a case for re-engineering the whole wiki towards a Web 2.0
interactive framework (if not already to the sufficient). If properly
implemented / interlinked, this can make templates much simpler in addition
to bringing up possibilities for a better WYSIWIG editing experience. It can
also facilitate several new usability layers for editing depending upon a
user's proficiency and choice making the tough parts transparent to the
lesser user.


Just my 2 cents.
Thanks



On Thu, Dec 30, 2010 at 10:24, teun spaans <teun.spaans at gmail.com> wrote:

> Both are true. Yes, templates are very useful, and yes, imho they do scare
> away newbies.
> Templates are useful not for navigation (that could be done without
> templates) but for sparing human and bot effort.
> Unfortunately many templates are at the top of our articles, so its the
> first thing that new volunteers see.
>
> I see some overlap with the discussion started by David on WYSIWYG editing.
> WYSIWYG editors can not deal with our templates.
> A WYSIWYG editor with 2 modes (WYSIWYG and old fashioned wiki markup) would
> do a good job. The WYSIWYG modus should support standard wiki markup like
> * lists (#, *)
> * bold, underline, italic (')
> * headers (=)
> * tables (preferably, but not necessarily))
> I think this covers the bulk of what we have in our articles as far as
> normal editing goes. The templates can be hidden/ignored for editing
> purposes in WYSIWYG editing mode.
>
> With a two mode editor, such as blogger supports, we can have a best of
> both
> worlds: Newbies have an easy start, while old hands can still have all the
> templates the want.
>
> Teun Spaans
> On Thu, Dec 30, 2010 at 5:59 AM, Birgitte SB <birgitte_sb at yahoo.com>
> wrote:
>
> > What  project are you speaking of?  At en.WS the entire navigation
> > structure of
> > how to move between Chapters within a book is encoded in templates.  I
> > can't
> > imagine how they could be scapped.
> >
> > Birgitte SB
> >
> >
> > ----- Original Message ----
> > > From: "WJhonson at aol.com" <WJhonson at aol.com>
> > > To: foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > > Sent: Tue, December 28, 2010 9:46:56 PM
> > > Subject: [Foundation-l] Template Overkill
> > >
> > > Most of the templates in our project, imho are just more clutter.
> > >
> > > The number of people who know how to use any particular template, can
> > > probably be counted with a box of marbles.  However when others see the
> > > templates, they just shy away, they don't bother to try to learn them.
> > >
> > > If we want to make things easier for editors, we should scrape
> templates
> > > entirely.  What they add to the project is not worth, what they
> detract.
> > >
> > > W
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> >
> >
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