Ray Saintonge wrote:
But Joe User still needs to plug information into the template.
Yes, the ability to type is still required. We haven't simplified things THAT much. :]
Or in the course of ordinary editing he runs into a template which is not suitable to his subject, but it's beyond his technical capacity to trace the problem.
In which case they ALSO wouldn't have been able to figure out the markup which the template has replaced/simplified. No, we can't anticipate everything that every user might want to do and have a nice simple pre-packaged way of making that happen all ready for them.... but that strikes me as an illogical reason for not setting up utility templates at all.
I'll never understand the 'it might be too complex so let's not do it' argument... setting aside that this just ISN'T complicated stuff, even if it WERE it doesn't TAKE AWAY anything. All the older methods of doing things are still there. Just now there are additional ways of getting things done - and if not everyone understands those, so what? It isn't hurting the people who don't. Indeed, it helps even those who don't understand the logic because all they need to know is the name of the template to call... not how it works. You don't need to know how to build an automobile in order to drive one.
The 'we are building an encyclopedia not programming' argument is equally unmoving to me. Ok then... get rid of all HTML font settings, colors, tables, CSS, templates, et cetera. Oh, those are USEFUL for building an encyclopedia? Hmmm.... imagine that. I wonder if automatic distance conversions in articles would be useful... given that some of our readers (and editors) use imperial and some use metric? Temperature scales? Weights? The idea that people will turn this into an excuse to write full fledged programs having nothing to do with an encyclopedia seems to me silly on it's face... but suppose they would... for some unknowable reason... how many nanoseconds do you suppose something like that would last on 'templates for deletion'?