[WikiEN-l] MediaWiki is getting a new programming language

[Sheldon Rampton]

Stevertigo wrote:

> Hm. That "crap" seems to have worked quite well for a few years now.

Hardly. The templating system has been a source of complaints and  
frustrations for a very long time. I remember hearing Aaron Swartz get  
a lot of laughter when he gave a talk at Wikimania 2006 and showed a  
Powerpoint slide with a screenful of templating gibberish that  
consisted of an huge, nested series of squiggly brackets, numerals and  
odd symbols. The line that drew the big laugh was when he asked if  
people thought that syntax was user-friendly.

The current system of parser functions is actually an improvement over  
what existed previously, because at least it provides for an if-then  
statement and some rudimentary calculations and logical branching.  
Before parser functions existed, people used an even uglier workaround  
in which they achieved the RESULT of an if-then statement through a  
process so complicated and counter-intuitive that it would take  
several labored paragraphs for me to even describe it . It was because  
that system DIDN'T "work quite well" that parser functions were  
developed. They're not very easy to use either, which is why the  
developers are now trying to come up with a better alternative.

I should mention too that a number of Mediawiki extensions have been  
written over the years -- Semantic Mediawiki, for example -- which are  
also basically attempts to overcome the limitations of Mediawiki  
syntax and the templating system in particular. There are also oodles  
of extensions that people have written in attempts to add some widget  
or transclusion feature to Mediawiki such as Google maps or RSS feeds.  
If the current system "worked quite well," a lot of those add-on  
extensions would be unnecessary.

The fact that the current template system works poorly is no one's  
fault. It's a consequence of the ad hoc way that Mediawiki and  
Wikipedia have evolved, and of course that ad hoc evolution is no  
one's fault either. If everyone had waited until they had a perfect  
wiki platform before launching Wikipedia, the project would never have  
gotten off the ground. The tech people have generally performed  
admirably at building and maintaining the software that runs  
Wikipedia, and I think it's great that they're talking about ways to  
further improve the templating system, which could certainly use it. I  
think they understand all too well that it's not a good system, and  
they also understand how difficult it will be to come up with a better  
alternative.

-------------------------------------------

SHELDON RAMPTON
Research director, Center for Media & Democracy
Center for Media & Democracy
520 University Avenue, Suite 227
Madison, WI 53703
phone: 608-260-9713

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