[Wikipedia-l] Template system

[Daniel Mayer]

Till Westermayer wrote:
>Keep wikipedia simple!

Ahem - Erik was talking about extending the template system he is working on 
for use in /Wikibooks/ in order to create wiki books. I agree that such a 
mechanism /should not/ be allowed in Wikipedia since having books within 
Wikipedia is counter to the non-linear hyperlinked nature of the project. 
Having things in a specified sequence /is/ the whole point of Wikibooks, 
though. Again, we need a Wikimedia mailing list to discuss these things.

I would like to see how Erik's idea could be used to reuse modules. For 
example, different instructors will want to organize our textbooks in 
different ways - we should let them do that on Wikibooks without having to 
fork modules - only TOC's should be forked as a general rule (we should 
maintain one reference TOC edition though ; alternate TOC's can be part of 
the instructor's user page). 

>Of course a template mechanism could be useful for 
>many things -- but it also moves Wikipedias markup 
>language further in the direction of a programming 
>language, i.e. something most non-techs see as 
>complicated.

So,

<table border=0 width="200">
 <th><td colspan=2>== %%Name%% ==</td></th>
 <tr><td>Population</td><td>%%Population%%</td></tr>
 </table>

is less complicated than;

|Country table
|Name => Germany
|Population => 83 million
|____

Sorry, but I don't buy your slippery slope argument.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)