[Mediawiki-l] Using multiple parameters on one template parameter

[Chris Riesen]

Hi

I have been using MediaWiki for a couple of years now and have recently gone
more in depth with it for various projects. One of them is gamewiki.net and
there I am currently having a problem.

http://gamewiki.net/Template:Infobox_Game

This little template is giving me a few headaches and I hope some
experienced people can give me a few hints and pointers, as I have searched
and read everything I could find on templates and advanced templates and so
far have not found a solution for this little problem of mine.

Right now, I have a field "platform" that describes if the game is avaialbe
on windows only, on linux, or on Xbox, or on multiple ones. To auto include
categories etc, I chose to create templates like {{Platform Xbox}} and
{{Platform Windows}}. I could make that into a smaller one, like
{{Platform|Windows}} and then have a switch in the platform template, but
that is still not very elegant. What I wanted to achieve is something like
calling the Infobox template with "platform = Windows, Linux, Xbox" and then
extract from that what I need, maybe translate it internally into a
{{Platform|Windows}} template. The goal is to make it easy to use to users.

The same trouble I face with developers and publishers. Sometimes a game has
more than one developer (be it for a porting project or simply cooperation).
I could just make "developer1 = company A" and "developer2 = company B" but
that is again a pretty ugly solution which would be a lot cleaner if the way
mentioned above could be used somehow.

That said, the problems compound here in this box. For one, there are
different release dates for different platforms. Say Assassins Creed was
released last year for the consoles and this year for Windows. Worse even,
the games then get released a few days, or even months apart for different
regions. Anyone has an idea how I could handle that gracefully?

I don't shy away from extensions or even making my own, but I am currently
at a loss how I should attack this problem.

Thanks a lot in advance to anyone giving some insight into this problem.

Greetings,
Chris