Global templates/Discuss

This is a page for collecting opinions about the Global templates proposal.

If you read the proposal and just agree to it, please sign below. If you disagree with something, write it here or on the proposal's talk page.

This is not a vote. The decision about this proposal will not be made just by counting how many people are for it or against it. It is not a part of Community Wishlist Survey or any other outreach or planning process. If this project is implemented, it will be a significant change in how the software on Wikimedia projects works, so it's important to see that there is wide community consensus before going forward with it.

Tell your wiki friends about this page and invite them to express their opinion, too. This proposal shouldn't be "owned" by just one person or a small group, but by the whole Wikimedia community.

I read the proposal and I think that it is a good idea

Please sign below if you think that this is an important problem to solve, and if you think that the proposed solution (short version, long version) is good. If you think that the direction is generally good, but you have some minor corrections, please indicate this, too. You can write in any language.

support the proposal (visual editor)
support the proposal (source editor)

Support, as the author of most of the proposal :) --Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 19:46, 25 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Support solves the most common challenge in new and small wikis – Susannaanas (talk) 13:39, 30 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Support Robin van der Vliet (talk) 13:54, 30 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Support Readers do expect some kind of standarization among Wikipedias. This is a clear step on the right way. B25es (talk) 16:02, 30 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Support Ainali (talk) 16:43, 30 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Support --Frhdkazan (talk) 06:50, 5 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Support This is an important change that would make life a lot easier both for people writing templates, and those using them. It's long overdue! Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 10:38, 5 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Support As a person who met this problem on several occasions in different Wikimedia projects, I think it would be quite useful, especially for smaller Wikipedia editions. Drbug (talk) 14:30, 5 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Support Of course. Templates on meta-wiki global userpages does work globally. And templates in file pages on Commons too. Masumrezarock100 (talk) 14:32, 5 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Support --Kaganer (talk) 17:29, 5 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Support Shai-WMIL (talk) 09:54, 7 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Support Ruti-WMIL (talk) 08:09, 10 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Support WikiLester (talk) 09:18, 10 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Support Bekmaw (talk) 11:59, 11 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
STRONG support --Sannita (talk) 09:43, 28 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Support--Ferdi2005 (talk) 15:42, 28 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Support Excellent proposal. -- Dave Braunschweig (talk) 15:44, 28 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Support as an admin of a small Wiki. That may be helpful --Sciking (talk) 16:17, 28 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Support as I would develop a Wiki which currently is devoid of any template or infobox. Taking some of the most developed ones could be very great. Sandrino 14 (talk) 16:28, 28 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Support--Dome (talk) 17:16, 28 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Support --GC85 (talk) 20:20, 29 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Support strongly. I think this would be really helpful for every small wiki. Also it will make the cross wiki collaboration much simpler.--Lemure Saltante (talk) 21:12, 29 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
+ Support Mi subtenas la ideon de transvikigigo de ŝablonoj - Alfono (talk), la 16-an de decembro 2020
STRONG support Without templates the MediaWiki software is incomplete and for third parties to implement a featureful wiki can be extremely challenging. --Rob Kam (talk) 15:34, 2 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
STRONG support This would be a vital tool to the growth of underresourced wikis and repairing global knowledge equity.--Pharos (talk) 20:27, 2 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Support Importing all the needed stuff in a newly created project is a pain in the ass, and something fundamental is always missing. --Ruthven (talk) 09:50, 4 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
STRONG support I've wondered about this for years. Outstanding idea and explication of the idea in the proposed specification! Libcub (talk) 06:18, 13 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Support --94rain ^Talk 07:41, 13 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Support أدعم هذا المقترح بشدة. Dyolf77 (talk) 15:29, 24 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Support Would really be useful and most especially to new and emerging wikis. Ammarpad (talk) 16:52, 24 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Support. This would be really helpful for every mall wiki. Mahuton Mah3110 (talk) 00:00, 25 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Support. Особенно понравилось второе предложение о том, что для локальных вики ничего не изменится. На самом деле, улучшение при оставлении прежних полных прав - очень правильный шаг. Спасибо разработчикам! HalanTul (talk) 00:24, 26 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Support. Uziel302 (talk) 15:57, 2 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support. Actually, in cawiki we're working in this line. --Amadalvarez (talk) 07:30, 3 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support Obviously. There shouldn't be any opposition, especially for those who go to multiple wikis with multiple languages. —Eihel (talk) 18:55, 3 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support Complete support. I was actually working on auto template translations for a while, and this should be the way to go.--Khutuck (talk) 15:27, 19 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support of course, since this would make life easier for template maintainers and make things more consistent across the wikis. — AfroThundr ^{(u · t · c)} 18:07, 24 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Especially when communities have a choice of participating or not this seems like a great feature. 2001:984:F34D:1:29CC:DBF4:7704:4F57 16:56, 27 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support with appreciation for ironing out technicalities to address concerns, and making it very flexible, which means powerful, without changing our current local setups. PC-XT (talk) 00:08, 29 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support Shinaimm (talk) 16:23, 11 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
STRONG support And my point of view coppied from here.--Krzysiek 123456789 (talk) 11:36, 19 April 2020 (UTC):[reply]
Hello, I have an idea to unify some templates on all wikis such as infoboxes. And each wikis would only create a linguistically relevant content for the article. This would make the translation easier. The names of the template parameters could also be translated to make it easier for editors who don't know other languages and they would work like [[file:]]. It doesn't matter what wiki we put the translation of this syntax in anyway, the file will be inserted correctly. Krzysiek 123456789 (talk) 23:02, 5 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
STRONG support Urgently needed. Currently, transposing a Lua-based infoboxes that source Wikidata to other projects is a nightmare, and, on practice, impossible. For COVID 19, this is a clear issue, outbreak pages numbers do not agree across projects, and commmunities with less editors lag behind. A global version of [[1]] would help many wikis. Maybe it would be superflual for en.wikipedia, but it is something that Wikipedia as a whole needs a lot. TiagoLubiana (talk) 13:20, 27 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support to reduce duplication of effort and unnecessarily clunky maintenance procedures. —Goldenshimmer (they/them)｜Talk｜Contributions 23:37, 9 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
STRONG support. We need it now. Nothing to lose, a lot to gain.BoldLuis (talk) 15:05, 12 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support - for small wikies work of users from translatewiki and such global technical project will help a lot. I hope it will include repository with normal git (so that one will be able to make a fork of module/template, test it and apply changes with one click) and Scribunto step-by-step debugging with table of used arguments, like in Visual Studio Code (I wasn't able to make even mw.ustring work in standalone version). Now many wikies copy templates from enwiki, translate it and leave unupdated - this is not good. We have many slightly different templates in different lang-sections with slightly different code which is double (triple, ... N times) heavier to update. Global templates will be good for Wikipedia identity too - some new users or users with a specific sense of aesthetic perception use colors that do not meet the recommendations of the Wikimedia Foundation (colors that do not have sufficient contrast with the color of text and links, therefore make Wikipedia poorly accessible). Global templates will allow the Wikimedia Foundation to monitor such things better. Thus, since the amount of work that will have to be done if you work not with N templates is bigger than amount of work with one template and N translations, such a global project will free up the resources of community for improvement, and just supporting existing templates. Carn (talk) 08:01, 19 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the support, Carn

Some comments:

First, I'll assume that when you say "section", you refer to the Russian word "раздел", for which the usual English word is "an edition of a wiki in a certain language" :)

About Git repository: I mention this briefly in the long proposal, although I say "Gerrit" and not "Git". Templates and modules are code, so it makes sense to story them in a Git repository or something similar. However, the easiness with which templates and modules can be easily modified on wiki pages is one of their greatest strengths: a template maintainer doesn't have to learn Git commands and wait for a long review process to get something deployed. This can, and occasionally does cause problems, but it's mostly a good thing. Therefore, while having a more robust way to manage versions of templates would be nice, it must absolutely not become harder to get them deployed than it is now, and the current proposal doesn't suggest, by itself, to change this.

"Now many wikies copy templates from enwiki, translate it and leave unupdated - this is not good. We have many slightly different templates in different lang-sections with slightly different code which is double (triple, ... N times) heavier to update." — Yes! This is one of the main things that this proposal is trying to fix.

"Global templates will be good for Wikipedia identity too - some new users or users with a specific sense of aesthetic perception use colors that do not meet the recommendations of the Wikimedia Foundation (colors that do not have sufficient contrast with the color of text and links, therefore make Wikipedia poorly accessible). Global templates will allow the Wikimedia Foundation to monitor such things better." - It's true, but it's important to note that it's not supposed to be forced. It will only happen if the wiki editors communities actually want it, and they will be able to override it. --Amir E. Aharoni {{🌎🌍🌏}} 13:16, 24 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support by all means. Past time for this, one of the longest standing feature request families for the wikis :) Sj (talk) 19:41, 31 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support Nataev ^talk 11:50, 4 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support--evrifaessa ❯❯❯ talk 07:34, 18 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Strong support --ToprakM ^✉ 07:58, 18 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
There's nothing I can oppose, so why not support? The original meaning of "wiki" is just let global peoples to contribute coordinately, so why still independent? --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 11:18, 23 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support I've also checked the "oppose" section for any convincing arguments against the proposal, and reaffirmed my positive opinion about this proposal (See Amire80's response to the criticism below for details). Will actually minimize code bloat and save the cost of cross-wiki compatibility.--Nahum (talk) 11:20, 10 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support. This would be super-helpful for many wikis. Not every community can maintain all the numerous things that are needed to maintain complicated templates, gadgets, modules etc. whose functionalities are taken for granted on big wikis like enwiki or dewiki, but unavailable without much stress elsewhere. --MF-W 13:05, 12 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support - this would help so much with the huge amount of mess on smaller language wikipedias -- Zblace (talk) 10:03, 27 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support This will be a great benefit for Wikipedias with small communities. Serchia (talk) 15:33, 12 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support This will be a massive help with any cross-wiki projects. Quotes on wikipedia that just transclude a quote from Wikiquote or wikisource, etc. Information across the wikimedia projects should all seek to have a "Single Source of Truth" and not be repeated in multiple places. Global templates will help with this. Supertrinko (talk) 00:17, 15 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the support and the comment! Although I do have an important thing to say about this. Implementing a Global templates repository as the current proposal suggests will probably make cross-wiki transclusion of this kind technically possible, but whether it's a good idea to actually use it this way is up to the communities. Many people thinks that it's not great to display prose stored on another wiki. The current proposal is more targeted at templates that implement features, such as "citation needed", infoboxes, citation templates, chess chart*s, etc. These features include text strings, but they are short and tightly organized, and they are more similar to software user interface or structured data than to manually-written page content. --Amir E. Aharoni {{🌎🌍🌏}} 11:46, 18 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support Templates are cumbersome and adding functionality to them is not something the average editor is comfortable doing. I have been editing for the last 14 years, I am fairly technical minded and still have a hard time with templates. Anything that makes Template development, deployment and editing easier has my full support. GoEThe (talk) 14:14, 9 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support --沈澄心 (talk) 13:52, 17 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Strong support I personally love this idea, it would be incredibly efficient and convenient for the Wikimedia Community. Arepticous (talk) 14:45, 17 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support This is logical. I read the the back and forth below in the oppose section; and I believe the concern raised there was adequately addressed by the counterarguments presented. 𝒬 𝔔 00:00, 22 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Strong support of everything able to globalize templates/modules. It has been shown time after time that templates are needed to be globalized. Everything that makes internationalization easier, is a big present that can be given to the technical community. - Klein Muçi (talk) 11:21, 27 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support Kpjas (talk) 10:58, 9 December 2020 (UTC) Coming from Wikipedia PL (the Polish language Wikipedia) I have always wished to be able to have translated templates/modules from other Wikipedias.[reply]
Support I am working in couple of small wikis. Importing, updating and developing templates and modules is a constant pain with no end (until global templates). --KuboF Hromoslav (talk) 19:03, 14 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
STRONG support — Aleks Andre (talk) 10:21, 15 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
STRONG support — JabieroKubo (talk) 16:41, 15 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
STRONG support — I work on wikis like the asturian or Esperanto, this would make the work a lot easier. --Sahaquiel9102 (talk) 12:56, 18 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
jes, ankaŭ mi sutenas tion, kompreneble. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.16.127.223 (talk • contribs) 22:47, 25 dec. 2020
Strong support NMaia (talk) 02:40, 26 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Strong support Should be useful to show data from Wikidata and show it localwiki with a single template, best for maintenance. A better approach than {{LangSwitch}} ? --Bouzinac (talk) 11:10, 11 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Strong support global templates will boost productivity of many smaller wikis. Ad Huikeshoven (talk) 12:33, 12 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support Long overdue. David Wadie Fisher-Freberg (talk) 13:47, 16 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
STRONG support Reinvent the wheel umpteen times or more is not of the 21st century, ladies, gentlemen and others... Klaas `Z4␟` V: 11:40, 23 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support I am the admin on a couple of small'ish wikis. Maintaining templates and the underlying modules that we have imported and/or copied from Wikipedia (and others) is a major maintenance headache. An initiative like this is long overdue and will benefit many wikis. I recognize it will not be easy, but the benefits will be significant. --Peculiar Investor (talk) 14:49, 23 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
STRONG support. Especially helpful for smaller projects! --Dick Bos (talk) 16:29, 28 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Strong support Mi apogas la proponon por informkestoj pli facilaj kaj centraj, tiel ankaŭ en la Esperanto-vikipedio estos progresaj ŝablonoj, kiuj nun mankas. Ĉar informkestoj aspektas malsame en malsamaj Vikipedioj, prilaboradi tiujn informkestojn kaj aliajn ŝablonojn estas sufiĉe malfacila tasko. I think that global templates will help very much in all wikiprojects and languages - especially in the most little. A way to create and choose local templates must absolutely remain, but as long as they are missing or if they are not complete enough it is very useful to have the global ones. Eo: Mi kredas ke mallokaj ŝablonoj multe helpos en ĉiuj vikiprojektoj kaj en ĉiuj lingvoj - precipe en la plej malgrandaj. La eblo krei kaj elekti lokajn ŝablonojn devas nepre resti, sed dum ili mankas aŭ se ili ne estas sufiĉe kompletaj estas tre utile havi la mallokajn. Alifono (talk) 20:11, 29 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The point above is made out of two comments written by the same user, and merged by myself. --Amir E. Aharoni {{🌎🌍🌏}} 14:37, 3 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
STRONG support Psychoslave (talk) 23:26, 20 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Unmeasurably strong support. Rarely has the next big leap been more obvious. On many occasions, I have willfully navigated the dependency hell of having to sloppily copy dozens of interdependent templates from a larger wiki just to get an infobox to display on a small new wiki. Template management is a huge overhead for small communities. I believe that most new editors expect templates to work alike across wikis, and that menial work in this area contributes to editor discouragement. —Iketsi (talk) 15:06, 25 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support Mi kredas ke mallokaj ŝablonoj multe helpos en ĉiuj vikiprojektoj kaj en ĉiuj lingvoj - precipe en la plej malgrandaj. La eblo krei kaj elekti lokajn ŝablonojn devas nepre resti, sed dum ili mankas aŭ se ili ne estas sufiĉe kompletaj estas tre utile havi la mallokajn. --- I think that global templates will help very much in all wikiprojects and languages - especially in the most little. A way to create and choose local templates must absolutely remain, but as long as they are missing or if they are not complete enough it is very useful to have the global ones.--Rdelre (talk) 19:28, 28 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support--So9q (talk) 21:04, 1 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Strong support In running Not Wikilambda, I’ve become acutely aware of how painful it is to use a wiki without the comfort of templates we often take for granted. --Lucas Werkmeister (talk) 16:43, 10 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support ✍️ Dušan Kreheľ (talk) 19:53, 11 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Strong support Mi tre ŝatus tion. Eine solche Template-Standard-Library hätte ich auf verschiedenen kleinen Wikis schon gut gebrauchen können, um nicht von Null beginnen oder sinnvolle Templates (samt aller Dependencies) händisch kopieren zu müssen. Having a global collection of widely applicable templates (and being able to use those templates right away) would have been so useful in these cases. -- Das-g (talk) 20:57, 16 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support it will hurt ... --Frettie (talk) 06:52, 20 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support this will be great --Dominikmatus (talk) 08:13, 22 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support Would deliver a new tool on the size of Wikimedia Commons. Would be quite useful.--Paracel63 (talk) 10:47, 23 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support --Sabelöga (talk) 11:20, 23 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support Giridhar (talk) 13:50, 29 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support יונה בנדלאק (talk) 06:08, 6 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support TheDesertboy (talk) 10:56, 6 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support Standardisation is good and this can only help smaller wikipedias — OwenBlacker | Discussion 11:39, 24 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
STRONG support DarwIn (talk) 11:40, 24 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support Tiputini (talk) 15:28, 24 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support Iñaki LL (talk) 15:34, 26 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support שי אבידן (talk) 05:32, 5 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
STRONG support Varlin (talk) 16:18, 13 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support Deror avi (talk) 10:09, 23 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support Danny-w (talk) 12:00, 1 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support גופיקו (talk) 12:01, 1 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support Arielinson (talk) 12:08, 1 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support איתמראשפר (talk) 12:12, 1 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support Ovedc (talk) 12:38, 1 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support La Nave Partirà (talk) 12:42, 1 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support שמיה רבה (talk) 14:15, 1 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support העיתונאי המנטר (talk) 14:22, 1 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support ויקי4800 (talk) 14:59, 1 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Strong support דגש (talk) 15:02, 1 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support. Geagea (talk) 21:54, 1 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Strong support Barak a (talk) 22:44, 1 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support Ldorfman (talk) 23:15, 1 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support much needed בורה בורה (talk) 23:16, 2 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support מושך בשבט (talk) 19:49, 3 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support -- Would be nice to store them on Commons because there is an infrastructure for other enterprise wikis, not run by the Foundation, to use images from Commons near-automatically, and it would be good to get that for templates. -- Econterms (talk) 15:36, 14 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support -- This is a much needed feature not just from a tech standpoint but for the very question of optimizing volunteer labor. --Psubhashish (talk) 11:38, 22 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support --Kanzat (talk) 16:48, 14 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support -- Robertjamal12 (talk) 13:39, 28 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support Yes please! Abuluntu (talk) 16:50, 14 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Strong support I'm setting up a MediaWiki-based wiki for the first time. Made a page in which I tried to use the "small" tag, and, much to my surprise, that caused hours and hours of my life to be fruitlessly sucked into this rabbithole. Rwv37 (talk) 08:27, 15 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Support Kotwys (talk) 10:46, 6 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Support Dnshitobu (talk) 08:30, 30 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Support Syunsyunminmin (talk) 07:18, 26 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Support Kitanago (talk) 11:09, 19 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
STRONG support Yes! Please help us at small wiktionaries! Recruit programmers from&for each project. We are drowning in copies from en.projects. In the meantime, why not create a 'bank' of proposed basic datapages, templates and modules, for each project, to copypaste from at Commons? Create a bureau of transwiki-Lua-first-aid. (Keep it simple! User:Sarri.greek/Global modules) Let's start in 2023! Thank you, From el.wikt, Sarri.greek (talk) 12:56, 25 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
STRONG support Evidente! --Agloforto (talk) 15:34, 23 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
STRONGEST support Clearly needed, a wonder it still does not exist. AdrianoRutz (talk) 04:44, 10 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support Very sensible --Kristbaum (talk) 05:02, 10 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support -Masssly (talk) 09:22, 10 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support conditionally: I think that this is a good idea, as long as all of our wikis support Lua, and that the templates can be easily translated into other languages.
I think that this wiki would also benefit from more extensive template documentation --QuickQuokka ^{[⁠talk • contribs]} 19:48, 12 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Hi @QuickQuokka! Thanks for the response. All your concerns are already addressed in the proposal. All our wikis already support Lua, and as the "Development and deployment" section in the full proposal says, it is likely that Lua modules will become global even before templates. Translation (localization) and documentation are covered in detail, too, and both must be part of the project. If you have any more questions, I'm happy to answer. Amir E. Aharoni {{🌎🌍🌏}} 05:01, 15 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Strong support It is a global project, we need global templates!ס.ג'יבלי (talk) 06:32, 15 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support Neriah (talk) 21:39, 19 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support MBH (talk) 22:15, 6 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support That's good!--LBRteam (talk) 03:39, 18 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Support We need something like Fandom Dev Wiki where we have a centralized repository of templates, CSS, JS, modules, and other kinds of scripts. This would greatly improve portability. A a s i m 17:32, 17 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

support the proposal (visual editor)
support the proposal (source editor)

I read the proposal. Let me explain why it is a bad idea

It's totally fine to disagree with this proposal. It should only be implemented if there is a wide consensus for it. Before signing below, please make sure that you've read at least the short version of the solution proposal, and please explain what is the problem with it. You can write in any language.

oppose the proposal (visual editor)
oppose the proposal (source editor)

I read Global templates/Proposed specification, short version and I think that it's a bad idea because... --(your signature)

Extended content

Global templates will inevitable include code that does nothing on some wikis, which, on those wikis, amounts to code bloat. * Pppery * _{it has begun} 17:41, 6 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
In any case, the user in one Wikimedia sister project could ask a bot to include a global template in the project. The important thing: it can be Wikimeda wide easily / nearly automatically / automatically disposable --BoldLuis (talk) 14:59, 12 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@BoldLuis: I don't understand what you're trying to say. * Pppery * _{it has begun} 21:11, 12 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@Pppery: You can put in one template Template:Noupdate and can continue using the same template locally. But if in one place want the template globally update, can deciede do so. The choice is in your hand. And in the hand of others for their templates. (I'm sorry if I answer quite a bit later, but it has caught me a very busy time). --BoldLuis (talk) 21:41, 16 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@BoldLuis: This doesn't address the problem; I believe the entire infrastructure is a bad idea because it perpetuates code bloat. The result of this system will be, regardless of the efforts of any individual editor or the presence or absence of opt-out templates, is that the template and module namespaces of every wiki will get polluted with pages not relevant to them. I've already seen this happen on the English Wikipedia with en:Module:Complex date/en:Module:LangSwitch/en:Module:DateI18n/en:Module:i18n/*/en:Module:Roman-cd/en:Module:Ordinal-cd/..., all of which are useless except on multi-lingual wikis but exist anyway because of pre-existing ad-hoc template and module globalizations. Implementing this as a well-established bot is doomed to make this problem even worse. * Pppery * _{it has begun} 21:09, 17 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
So,in your modules en:Module:Complex date/en:Module:LangSwitch/en:Module:DateI18n/en:Module:i18n/*/en:Module:Roman-cd/en:Module:Ordinal-cd (you can include a list), you can add nogupdate. The problem is worse, when you use a text from Wikipedia in non-English to another Wikipedia. Templates are in this other language. If there is a common infrastructure for some templates, you can use in the other language. An idea can be, without translation, because you could use a wizard to see the code template in your own language. What now: copying and pasting a lot of copy from one Wikipedia to the other one and compatibility zero. Babel zero. It is more easy exclude template (also exclude all, excepting XXX ) that have nothing when you need it. BoldLuis (talk) 23:28, 17 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
You're still misunderstanding me. I'm not complaining about the content of those module pages, I'm complaining that they exist. I would instead have to add the "don't update" magic word to every module that uses them. I think that that effort is large enough that the entire proposal is a bad idea. In short, the "global templates" proposal is saying "every wiki should have every template", whereas I instead feel strongly that "wikis should only have templates that are relevant to them". I believe this difference in ideology to be irreconcilable, and therefore oppose this proposal. * Pppery * _{it has begun} 23:39, 17 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
The "noupdate" template, which BoldLuis suggests, is not in the proposal, and it won't be necessary.

More importantly, the "global templates" proposal is absolutely not saying that "every wiki should have every template". It very, very explicitly says the opposite: It must become possible to share templates across wiki sites. Possible, not required. As it is with images: images that must be reusable on all wikis are on Commons, but some images can also be local, for any reason.

The proposal also explicitly says that it must be possible to make some templates non-global.

Currently we have forked copies of templates with similar functionality in dozens or even hundreds of wikis. This is a much worse code bloat than having access to a template or a function and not using it. --Amir E. Aharoni {{🌎🌍🌏}} 17:01, 18 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I'm collapsing this four-year-old discussion since I think it no longer reflects my current views on the matter. That was what I said as a kind of knee-jerk reaction to this coming up when I was in the middle of or had just finished a project to clean up lots of unused templates on MediaWiki.org (no, let's not pull in more templates from other wikis). I'm no longer formally opposed to this, and now take no position. * Pppery * _{it has begun} 05:28, 18 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Question: Will there be left room for local variations, thinking of e.g. infoboxes, navigation templates, layout of them, own initiatives to make templates, etc.? Ymnes (talk) 12:09, 27 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Ymnes, I'm so sorry, I only noticed it now! The answer is yes, of course! It's one of the most important points, and it's written explicitly several times in both the short version and the long version. For example:
- "Each editors community will keep its independence to maintain local templates and to make local changes to global templates’ functionality and the information they present to readers."
- "Policies about maintenance, sharing, protection, and deletion of templates and modules will be developed by the editors community."
- The sections It must be possible to make some templates non-global and It must be possible to override some functionality or appearance of a global template in the long proposal.
I hope it answers your question! --Amir E. Aharoni {{🌎🌍🌏}} 10:15, 7 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Amire80: thank you for your answer! Ymnes (talk) 10:28, 7 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

oppose the proposal (visual editor)
oppose the proposal (source editor)