Yes, similar to Scary Transclusions... But Scary Transclusions really
don't work like people wish they would:
* They are evilly cached and you won't get proper updates often.
* Stuff is parsed remotely so links and magic words all point to stuff
on that wiki.
* And you can't pass parameters to the template.
That's the reason for the extension. I probably missed some explanation
again.
But rather than ugly http requests, the extension grabs wikitext through
the database, unlike the http request method this reliably gets us data
(without needing to cache it), because running the query has little
overhead over top of what we already have for parsing the page and the
parser cache itself deals with the caching on it's own. Not to mention,
that we can actually access the memcached data that the other wiki is
saving, and therefore share caching with the wiki that the data comes from.
Then of course, because we're inserting WikiText instead of HTML,
everything is parsed locally, and we are also able to use parameters.
The point of the extension actually isn't directly transcluding
something, it's sharing the content in a way where you don't have to
sync it, but it's as if it came from the wiki itself.
So for a bit of a better example:
If Wiki A had a Template:Stub, and Wiki B TransWikied it over.
Then a page using {{Stub}} on Wiki B would have links in the stub area
which point to the page's discussion, edit, etc... And text like:
This page is a Stub. You can help Wiki B by contributing to
discussion[link to page's talkpage on Wiki B], or by editing it[link to
page's edit page on Wiki B].
But if a page was using Scary Transclusions {{A:Stub}} on Wiki B, then
the links would point to the Stub Template's discussion and edit pages
on Wiki A and have text like:
This page is a Stub. You can help Wiki A by contributing to
discussion[link to Template talk:Stub on Wiki A], or by editing it[link
to Templage:Stub's edit page on Wiki A].
So the primary purpose of this extension, is basically to be able to put
a template such as a Stub template at one wiki, and then just tag a page
on a number of other wiki and make it look as if the template actually
existed there when it's really transcluded. That way editors don't need
to mess with interwiki links inside their articles just to get templates
to work.
This feature is aimed more at Wiki Farms which need some data which they
want to avoid duplication of, not wiki wanting to grab a bit of stuff
from another wiki from a completely different place.
~Daniel Friesen(Dantman) of:
-The Gaiapedia (http://gaia.wikia.com)
-Wikia ACG on Wikia.com (http://wikia.com/wiki/Wikia_ACG)
-and Wiki-Tools.com (http://wiki-tools.com)
Lucas Garczewski wrote:
DanTMan wrote:
I've been making plans for the extension for awhile now, though most
people haven't noticed my asking for feedback. ^_^ Plus the extension
won't go to far without that db table structure.
The idea is a way to setup templates on a wiki, which use WikiText from
a template on another Wikia wiki.
If you need an example:
Say we had [[Template:Stub]] at Wiki A. And then there was another wiki,
Wiki B.
At Wiki B, we could place this inside of the [[Template:Stub]] there:
<transwiki name="a" page="Template:Stub" />
Then when on Wiki B, if someone used {{Stub}}, it would be as if the
same WikiText saved inside of [[Template:Stub]] at Wiki A, was also
saved in the same page at Wiki B, except instead we have TransWiki
syntax which allows them to share stuff instead.
I'll spoil the fun a bit, sorry. ;)
This (apart from the images you mention later in the post) seems very
similar to an existing MediaWiki feature, shared templates aka
ScaryTranscluding.
Have you looked into that existing structure? If so, how is this
approach better, than the one we've already got? Since right now I'm
seeing a downside -- the need to actually create a page first on the
target wiki.
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