User talk:Dinoguy1000/Featured templates

Export version

I appreciate the idea behind this criterion but I'm not sure how realistic it would be to insist on keeping a separate version of a template. It would be quite a lot of work to create and it is even sure that it would ever be used. It would also get out-of-date fairly quickly unless there was a highly conscientious editor maintaining it. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 15:36, 1 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The intention behind this was not that all templates would have an export version, just those where it could be reasonably assumed that other (non-Wikimedia) wikis might want to use it - templates such as {{Navbox}}, {{Infobox}}, and the {{Mbox}} series are the most obvious cases, but there are easily hundreds of others.

In addition, this criterion has a second, less-obvious purpose: changes made to a template or its documentation to create an export version of that template/documentation may well point to changes that should instead be made to the template/documentation itself; removing superfluous (for the purposes of use on other wikis) code and trimming/rewriting documentation to be more appropriate to use on other wikis could easily reveal various ways in which the template or documentation here could be simplified or clarified. Ideally, the ultimate goal would be for the local version and the transwiki version to be as identical as possible, within reason and keeping in mind that we don't live in an ideal world.

I also understand the maintainability concerns, but currently the situation is far worse, given that there is very little advertising for any current transwiki versions of templates, and as a result, reuse is usually the last thing template programmers here consider, if they think about it at all. It may be better to instead work with Wikia Templates and maintain the transwiki versions there, where there is a somewhat higher chance of a dedicated community forming and shouldering at least some of the maintenance. In addition, an out-of-date transwiki version with no one willing to update it would be a criterion for demotion from featured template status. 「ダイノガイ千？！」^{? · Talk⇒Dinoguy1000} 17:56, 1 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I think the intention is good, and have no problem for it to be recommended practice, but I don't think it should be part of the criteria of a "featured template". — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 21:13, 1 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Looking over the criteria for other featured content, I only see a section of recommendations for featured topics (not that I'm arguing against it, I was merely trying to get a sense of whether this was done elsewhere, and if so, how). I would be fine making the export version a recommendation rather than a requirement, and it may be possible to make other recommendations as well - for instance, it could be a recommendation that a nominated template already be deployed, ~~and there may be a (somewhat weak) argument for making the metatemplate requirement a suggestion as well~~. 「ダイノガイ千？！」^{? · Talk⇒Dinoguy1000} 21:42, 1 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

On further thought, it makes more sense to roll the metatemplate requirement in with the statement on using subtemplates under the "clean and efficient" requirement, which I went ahead and did. 「ダイノガイ千？！」^{? · Talk⇒Dinoguy1000} 22:00, 1 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Rather than maintain an independant export version, why not just document the requirements that are external to the template such as entries in common.css & common.js that would need copying over as well to mkae the template work. -- WOSlinker (talk) 22:32, 1 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Because a really major obstacle to reusing Wikipedia templates is that most of them require a maze of metatemplates (this may not seem like such a big deal, but a lot of people on Wikia have trouble with it and as a result, using Wikipedia's templates isn't generally recommended there), and a lot of the ones with really complicated output require Tidy, which many non-Wikimedia/non-Wikia wikis may not have installed. Even if you only target Wikia, though, they are currently a release behind us (we use MediaWiki 1.16, whereas Wikia is still on 1.15.5 or so), meaning - at the least - any templates using safesubst: have to be reworked (since safesubst: was added in 1.16). 「ダイノガイ千？！」^{? · Talk⇒Dinoguy1000} 00:38, 2 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

If a template relies on HTML tidy then I don't think it is fulfilling requirement #4 which is to be robust. Templates would only need to be tidied if they are not closing all their tags properly. For example

bold
italic
normal

{| class="wikitable"
|'''bold'''
|-
|''italic''
|-
|normal
|}

The table cells are not switching off the bold & italics and tidy is doing it for them. -- WOSlinker (talk) 10:30, 2 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

While this is true, if it isn't specifically spelled out, *someone* will argue it. In addition, it is my understanding that, for all the benefits it offers, Tidy still has certain quirks which occasionally have to be worked around, and some of these workarounds could break the template when Tidy isn't present. 「ダイノガイ千？！」^{? · Talk⇒Dinoguy1000} 01:03, 3 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The template must already be deployed?

I assume that in this edit, you were referring to criterion 1; specifically, the text "deployable at the time of nomination". It was never my intention that featured templates would be limited to already-deployed templates (indeed, that's why I used the word "deployable" instead of "deployed"), since it can take some time for a template to reach a state of deployment (and it can be very hard to determine when a substituted template could be considered "deployed"). The featured templates process could, in fact, be used as a sort of pre-deployment review process for complicated templates, to get more eyes looking at the code and hopefully catch any overlooked edge cases or less-efficient-than-desirable code. 「ダイノガイ千？！」^{? · Talk⇒Dinoguy1000} 18:05, 1 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry I think I misread "deployable" as "deployed". Feel free to add it back. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 21:10, 1 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

All right, that's fine. I'm thinking of adding it back as a footnote, but am not sure on the best wording. 「ダイノガイ千？！」^{? · Talk⇒Dinoguy1000} 21:43, 1 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Shortcut?

For the rough draft, I simply chose the shortcut "WP:FTEMP" at random, since the more-desirable and -obvious choice of "WP:FT" is already in use. I have to admit, though, I'm not terribly partial to "FTEMP"; are there any suggestions for other shortcuts? 「ダイノガイ千？！」^{? · Talk⇒Dinoguy1000} 22:02, 1 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]