On Sat, Aug 20, 2011 at 8:35 PM, Max Semenik maxsem.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
On 20.08.2011, 22:23 Martijn wrote:
On wikimedia projects that are not Wikipedia (Wikia in specific comes to mind) I often find myself using templates that have not been defined on that installation. The English Wikipedia (which I am most familiar with) has many very usefull templates, especially the {{citeFoo}} templates, but numerous others as well. Trying to 'import' one is a bit of a pain though. Many templates depend on other templates, and it is not often very clear how (as a fun exercise for the reader, try to import the {{convert}} template to a new wiki, and see how easy it is!). I was wondering if it might be a good idea to include a standard template library to Wikimedia installations, containing a set of utility templates along with the Wikimedia distribution. I'm cross-posting foudation, for possible discussion if this is desirable, and wikitech, for possible discussion if this is feasable.
Don't forget, English is one of 300-something languages we support. And users of other languages typically don't feel comfortable with using English templates, because words like "cite book", "author" and "link" are meaningless to them. So we're speaking about 300+ sets of templates. This is both unmaintainable and burdensome. And don't forget, not every MediaWiki (that's how our software is called, not Wikimedia!) will want them. I would suppport a system that downloads them on-demand, however shipping zillion templates out of the box is simply out of the question.
-- Best regards, Max Semenik ([[User:MaxSem]])
eh, Derp on the MediaWiki/Wikimedia, dunno where that came from. Also I'm not proposing to export all the en.wiki templates, but rather establish a core set of templates that could be exported (and translated!) on demand.
Regards,
Martijn