Talk:Request for Comment -- (Item property) template design / structure / naming policy


 * I'm not sold at all on having more templates. Let's start with this question: what templates exactly do you think need to be broken down?

I want you to think about this carefully. Keep in mind, of the editors that know anything about creating templates, "most" do not want to work on templates.

Understanding how to successfully build templates is a looong slow learning curve. Take for example inclusion tags... There is a fine line difference between an onlyinclude and an includeonly, and requires a bit of time to sit and learn the difference. Then there are parser functions, string functions, variables, loops, magic words, substitution, number formating, and the list goes on...

At this time on this wiki, the people that are currently active that I know have tried creating templates (of which most of I had to fix or do most of the building for them) are;, , , , , and you. I know that has also made some very basic templates back in the beginning but is not fond of the process at all and that was before I had  add three more template logic adding extensions.

The rules for template protection that I have been trying to set into place are: ShoeMaker (Contributions &bull; ) 08:16, March 1, 2013 (EST)
 * 1) If the template is in  - it is fully protected.
 * 2) If the template is more than two edit windows long (using the system default, which I have set my personal to 2x) - it is fully protected.
 * 3) If the template uses more than two extensions, or uses the loops extension - it is fully protected.
 * 4) ALL other templates - semi-protected.


 * What you seem to be forgetting, is the average editor has less than 100 edits. So, expecting them to know or remember over 500 templates when we only need less than 100 is excessive. By breaking it down and requiring people to use hundreds of new templates, you scare away the occasional editor.  I don't consider this desired behavior.  Templates are intended to be full of logic and it's not an issue for them to be extremely complex, as long as they are end user friendly.  I agree that there are still some templates that need some more user friendly modifications, and Turbine-DDO's instance on changing the way everything works is putting most of my focus on the high end templates and the lesser ones are being neglected.  As I said before, the average editor doesn't want to edit templates, so there is no reason to dumb them down.  I would prefer you didn't break down any more templates at this time, and start a discussion for all of the administrators to consider your proposal.

ShoeMaker (Contributions &bull; ) 18:45, March 2, 2013 (EST)


 * Go to Help desk, type in a topic title, and click "Start new topic" button.

I also am thinking it is going to be allot harder to maintain 500-1,000 templates on MediaWiki:Edittools than it is the 100 or so we have now... Are you going to work on that as well? ShoeMaker (Contributions &bull; ) 15:52, March 4, 2013 (EST)


 * Okay, I'm glad this is moved off of my talk page into the open for all to discuss. For those of you interested in how this topic began, I recommend checking out the Few BIG Templates or Hundreds of little templates. section of my talk page.

We currently have  (including 17 that have been deprecated); this leaves  active item description templates. Your proposal of one template for every item effect as listed on items to make it easier for a casual to use and edit the template would increase this template count to about 987 (there were a couple that I couldn't calculate what it would break down into).

I don't see how that makes it any easier on the casual editor to use. If anything, I would think it would be more difficult.

Now, there are some templates that I have not had the time to work on yet, and have been around longer than I have. Those templates most certainly need some work to make them easier to use, and I have attempted to mark most of them with or. I encourage anyone that finds a template that is hard to use to add this category to the template if they want to draw my attention to it for fixing. I will either fix the currently template, or scrap it and build it from scratch (as I have done with T:Stat and T:Skills). My current goal in that aspect is to get the new templates built for the new effects being introduced and making all of the current templates uniform in layout (which in of itself will make them easier to edit).

Furthermore on the aspect of casual editors being able to edit the templates. My personal policy (which I would be happy to make formal) is as such: This means that "most" people wouldn't have access to edit the templates anyways, as I feel they shouldn't. Templates cascade across many pages and could easily be manipulated to cause undesired results. Say, for example, an intrusive bot was to come to our wiki. It could very easily find the most used templates and replace them with an advertisement or even worse an endless loop or a broken parser hook causing the whole wiki to go down. It is for reasons like this that all used templates should have at least "some" level of protection and not be able to be edited by those who have not demonstrated good intent for the wiki. ShoeMaker (Contributions &bull; ) 10:11, March 7, 2013 (EST)
 * 1) If the template is in  - it is fully protected.
 * 2) If the template is more than two edit windows long (using the system default (25px), which I have set my personal to 50px) - it is fully protected.
 * 3) If the template uses more than two extensions, or uses the loops extension - it is fully protected.
 * 4) ALL other templates - semi-protected.