Wikipedia:WikiProject template sharing

Overview

The projects aim is simple:

1. Enhance productivity of wiki-editors whatever they call their home project by organizing and providing the same basic time saving template tools to do tasks.
2. Provide commonly available stable template tools maintained in similar or equivalent categories on the participating Wikpedia:Wikimedia Sister Projects.
3. Using templates developed on Meta-wiki and Wikipedia, the two sister's initially with "seed stocks of utility templates" for administrative, discussion, documentation, interwiki connection and analysis tools or utility templates and providing them to other sister sites where they might find use and save someone time is the prime thrust of this effort.

Goals

1. Mount an education effort explaining and demonstrating how macros are productivity multipliers and not magic boxes, as some lay people seem to think. Macro's have existed since at least the late sixties and much of today's software technology would be lost without such in its various computer languages.
   1. Meta:Help:Template almost makes that case in its first few lines, but does not discuss the human cost in time and lost and wasted opportunity costs of doing things in harder ways than need be. Demo: Is it easier to type: {{Wd|noun}} or [[Wikt:noun|noun]]?. Can one more easily look at Xfd decisions by having a simple link to Page, Links, Hist, etcetera, or must one be required to navigate to each page, then a second link then backspace, then the other, then eventually back to register a vote? Much more convenient and courteous of each others time to have all that one link away, so one has only to backspace one link to the business and discussion at hand when making an informed decision.
        
2. Survey, re-categorize as needed, and hammer good documentation together for each tool or utility template using the Meta/Wikipedia doc page pattern technique to minimize server loading and provide a clear set of usage and instruction aimed at the novice and lay person.
   1. This means de-fang Computer Jargon and assumptions that the viewer knows anything at all about templates.
   2. This means provide a clear purpose statement of what the template is used for, how it is used, the named and numbered parameters it will take or tolerate, and a few good examples.
   3. In general, templates should be grouped by general function, and where possible write usage 'see also lists' so that an interwiki capable template is used to provide the link. (Note all sisters will want any or many tools templates, however, when they do import one, the usage should not show redlinks to others in a see also list. This means the various interwiki versions based on Ltsany and Tlx, or Tlw/Tlm should be written in versus Lts, and Tl.
   4. The initial primary mission, is therefore, good documentation, followed by making such portable documentation.
        
3. Copy template tools to sister projects, with a firm understanding that each sister has its own unique and sometimes quirky culture. In general, an announcement on the local Village pump using {{Template list}} that documentation has been updated and prepared for the tools templates list of that week should draw some interested parties.
   1. Just dropping a new template onto a sister is contra-indicated. Preferably, this project can attract some editors interested in saving their personal time to import the tools into their home wiki's, and use them as well as talk about them.
   2. Writing good documentation is again key to having a template used. If people can envision how it will help their daily grind, they'll use it.
   3. Be prepared to overcome certain types of objections. Some sites have obsolescent tagging like 'esoteric' and worry about Parserfunctions, both of which are likely about to disappear as part of the survey and recategorization undertaken on wikipedia during early February 2007.
4. Aid interlingual porting of templates as much as possible. The big tool for that will be {{ltsany}} with its ability to select both sister projects by type and by language.
5. Last but not least, this project will strive to put together a utility template handbook.
   1. An early approach is to excerpt the /doc page to about 12-15 lines into another subpage. The handbook sucks in those small pages to assemble the handbook in alphabetical order.
   2. An alternative approach would be to 'box display' template help similar to those displayed via Wikipedia:Wikipedia template and its sub-pages.
   3. A similar modular approach may lead to a handbook with several pages of templates by group and type.

Template:Interwikitmp-grp

Scope

• ?

Guidelines

1. As much as possible templates on all sisters, and categories used on all sister projects should be kept the same, in particular for templates and their '/doc' documentation pages.
   1. Any rationale for deviating from that standard should be discussed only after seeking advice. Many 'hinky' issues with templates may in fact be script issues with a sister projects Mediawiki:Common.css page. (One tell tale touchstone-- square boxes or weird symbols.)
   2. A careful survey of various category naming practices across the sisters projects was made, and the set of sub-categories used or defined was done with great care and an eye on commonly recurring names.
        
   3. The prototype testing effort conducted in late August and early September of 2006 identified both naming collisions, and common categorizations and established several methods of working needed categorizations into templates or into a sister projects category system inobtrusively so as to interfere locally as little as possible.
        
   4. 'Name Case Variations' was the method chosen to handle most naming collisions with a template on a sister project that has a different behavior. That is the common name was generally converted to all uppercase ('cat' by default is 'Cat' save for on Wiktionary, Name case equivalent is 'CAT' — giving visiting editors a commonly named and behaving tool. This causes some redundant templates, but it is a small handful.
        In most cases, the redundancy is made in name only--the name case equivalent is created as a redirect template, not a full coded stand-alone page, and this is the preferred method.
        This method has proven satisfactory for most system templates except for on Wiktionary, where both uppercase anything and redirects of any sort are aggressively discouraged.
        
2. An 'enhanced intensity' informal survey of templates was begun by several editors as February arrived in 2007, part of this project will be to lend aid to this effort, upgrade documentation on the sourcing sister project, and discuss on WT:TSP whether such templates should be recommended to sister projects as potentially useful tools.
     
3. Any template that has been around Meta or Wikipedia for a long while is likely suffering from the former practice of "hiding" usage information on template talk pages and the fact that this was not infrequently written at an inappropriately high technical level, quite frequently above the heads of a lay editor without template knowledge.
     
   1. Convert usage of candidate templates into Wikipedia:Template doc page pattern compliant documentation pages, unless it is a tool which is rarely used.
      These should successively be:
   2. ...edited to a level comprehensible to a newcomer editor without much computing knowledge,
   3. ...formatted and configured to limit editing so that a copy on any sister project's pages will display identically.
   4. In particular, some sisters do not have an abbreviation such as 'w:', 'b:', 'q:' and the like, most notably the commons. Longform names do not work within a sister project's pages in most cases. For these, macro templates must be used, which tests the magic word {{SITENAME}} and using an if-then-else test branching to a local version (no prefix) or common form (off sister).
        
4. When a category (generally one which includes a sitename 'Wikipedia templates', 'Wikiquote templates' is utilized within a template, or one of the common categories interwiki connected using this project, appropriate #ifeq:-then-else tests of SITENAME should be used to step around the category. In some cases, a switch maybe a better choice.
     
5. Templates should not be dropped willy-nilly on a sister project, no matter how good. The different sister projects have their own unique society and cultures. (some garbled sentences follow) In general, the template should be fully prepared interwiki message compatibility and proper auto-categorization within the categories maintained by this project. A notification of suggested importation, or for such sister's as choose to implement a 30 day trial and speedy-delete criteria, a delivery then such a post should be made on the communities general discussion page (Many use Village Pump, some few have different names making it hard to not check their Help pages to know where to go.)
     
6. This project hopes to recruit and maintain three to six ombudsmen to monitor key talk discussions and advocate the WikiProject's position on each sister, patrolling in turn and turn about or on some regular schedule. These parties, steeped in the guidelines of both projects, hopefully will include some admin level volunteers from the given sister acting in an advisory capacity and smoothing any disjoint practices.

Open tasks

To-do list for Wikipedia:WikiProject template sharing: edit · history · watch · refresh · Updated 2008-12-01 This page is currently inactive and is retained for historical reference. Either the page is no longer relevant or consensus on its purpose has become unclear. To revive discussion, seek broader input via a forum such as the village pump. Here are some tasks awaiting attention: Article requests : see section 1-- CC of post on WP:AN#Server Loading vaccinations need Cleanup : {{Template list}}-- nesting problem(s) with /doc page Copyedit : {{tlw}} -- double extra noinclude terminations

CC of post on WP:AN#Server loading vaccinations need

Mission

(Quick and dirty) proto-project description currently available.

Participants

Please feel free to add yourself here, and to indicate any areas of particular interest.

    Name (talk · contribs) (everything to know about WikiProject template sharing)

1. Fabartus (talk · contribs)
2. Ezhiki (talk · contribs) (will help when I can)
3. imz (talk · contribs)
4. Willscrlt (talk · contribs) (limited availability; already do this sort of stuff on meta, commons, en.books, de.wiki, es.wiki, fr.wiki, it.wiki, pt.wiki, etc.)
5.  Buaidh  — I've created over 2700 templates.

Articles

Templates

1. Template:Interwikitmp-grp (edit talk links history)
2. Template:Interwikitmp-grp/doc (edit talk links history)
3. Template:Interwikitmp-grpNN usage (edit talk links history)

• The exact number of kernel templates is in the process of being determined by the prototype interaction and needs on the various sister projects, as usage material is upgraded and interwikified (made portable so will display exactly the same on all sister projects). This is in part complicated by templates of short name lengths being used on different sister projects for differing uses. Unfortunately, many of these are the most commonly used tool templates, like {{tl}}.
    Example: {{cat}} has at least three major variants— two that list the category as a link, with and without the word 'category' as part of the link, and a third where it is actually used to categorize a page. A template {{w}} is used on many sisters as a macro template to make the link [[W:pagename | pipe-tricked name]] . 'W' however does very different things on several sister's, as does the two letter '{{Wc}}', a natural mnemonic for Wikimedia Commons|Wikimedia Commons. Hence work around macros 'W2' and 'W2c' were found to be unencumbered, and are used extensively in category pages linked between sister projects and documentation of templates expected to be shared respectively.

Categories

• Category:WikiProject template sharing -- List/tracking category for elements of the system, including other categories used, borrowed and shared.
• Category:Interwiki utility templates
• Category:Redirects from alternative spellings -- implemented on sisters for redirects of NameCase Equivalents.
• W:Category:Interwiki template sharing categories -- Work around common node category to tie into sister projects category schema, with as little disruption as possible to their way of doing administrative business. Connects to all projects used by the common categorization of templates by type.
• W:Category:Interwiki templates on all sisterprojects -- tracking category of the minimal templates needed to make interwiki portable annotation and usage notes.
     4. Category: Interwiki templates on all sisterprojects  ??? Found in IWTG3 on commons.

0. Category:WikiProject Interwiki equalization -- sourced in {{I5}} -- (?) implementation pending more study.

Resources

Sister projects may have a local page

Since staffing is from en.wikipedia for English projects, the below are direct links to source/master pages there.

1. {{interwikitmp-grp}} tagging utility, Master copy: W:template:interwikitmp-grp
        Questions, concerns, talk, requests W:Wikipedia:WikiProject template sharing
     
2. {{interwikitmp-grp/doc }} auto-categorization tagging guideline
     
3. interwikitmp-grpNN usage }} notes utility
     
4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Template_doc_page_pattern
     
5. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Template_doc_page_pattern/doc