[Wikimedia-l] On the gentrification of Wikipedia, by Superbass (was: Visual Editor)

[Martijn Hoekstra]

On Tue, Jul 30, 2013 at 1:01 PM, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 30 July 2013 09:06, Martijn Hoekstra <martijnhoekstra at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > 6. Announce a date from where on saving a page with a transcluded legacy
> > template will be blocked. Expect public outcry.
> > An important consideration that all developers must keep in mind is that
> > though the current syntax is quite horrible, it also serves a purpose,
> and
> > though its existence in itself is quite horrible, the fact that it is
> > widely used is completely reasonable.
>
>
> The question then will be how to keep parsing old versions reasonably.
> I suppose we could keep an old wikitext parser around. *shudder*
>
> (Or just punt the question into the long grass. Do old page versions
> pull in contemporary versions of the page's templates or use the
> current versions? If the latter, then heh, too bad.)
>

This *sounds* horrible, but is exactly what happens now. If a template
changes, old revisions break. I suppose that if MediaWiki would go for a
change in template semantics, an option besides letting them break, is to
substitute all 'legacy' templates into their parents last revision before
the changeover. How many revisions back one would want to do this and in
what timeframe sounds like a discussion point, but I don't see this as a
far more broken process than template changes cause right now.


> [These are technical questions, but I think they have sufficient
> impact to discuss more widely, e.g. on this list. Assuming enough
> relevant devs are around to comment.]
>
>
> - d.
>
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