On Sat, Aug 20, 2011 at 11:23 AM, Martijn Hoekstra
<martijnhoeks...@gmail.com> 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.Since Wikia was mentioned in this post, I thought I'd outline how we've tackled this problem, as it might be interesting to the discussion. When a new wiki is created at Wikia, we don't start with an empty database. Instead, we copy the contents of what we've called a "starter wiki" into the newly created database. Apart from the special role they play in the creation of new wikis, starter wikis are pretty much normal wiki sites (with the exception of tighter edit permissions to prevent vandalism). Have a look at the English starter wiki: http://starter.wikia.com/index.php?title=Special%3AAllPages&from=&to=&namespace=10 As you can see it has a ton of different templates. All of these exist at every new wiki when it's created. Martijn: if your Wikia wiki doesn't have some (or all) of those, that might be because it was created before the starter system or because it's in a language other than English and that language's starter wiki doesn't have the template(s) you want (yes, we have per language starters, too). Mail me off-list, I'm sure I can help include the needed templates in future wikis. :) -- Lucas 'TOR' Garczewski Community Engineer t...@wikia-inc.com _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
