Steve Bennett wrote:
Here's the deal. I created this ISBN template {{ISBN}} which does nothing very exciting. It simply substitutes the text "ISBN {{{1}}}". However, my reasoning for creating it seemed sound: to provide an abstraction layer so users don't have to learn the rather arbitrary syntax that Wikipedia uses to deal with ISBN codes. Instead, they can use the same syntax they use everywhere: {{template name|argument}}.
Sounds sensible to me. "Magic" syntax where seemingly normal-looking text gets transformed is evil, because it's unclear what's going on, and prone to breakage. MediaWiki took a great leap forward by moving from magical CamelCase links to [[marked-up links]], for example. Just about the only necessary evil I can think of is the auto-date-formatting; dates are too common to really be done any other way, although it too is slightly evil and sometimes kicks in or doesn't kick in in unexpected ways.
-Mark