User:Priyanka Nag/OPW

Documenting noteworthy local templates, gadgets and styles in various projects

In addition to MediaWiki and its extensions, Wikimedia sites run a huge amount of other code: locally developed templates, gadgets and styles. Some of the tools that were developed in the English Wikipedia became full-fledged extensions, for example Wikilove. But there's still a lot of code that runs in some projects, that could be useful to other projects, but is hard to install them elsewhere, because it's hard to port and install them. Some examples:

• The English Wikipedia's Citation toolbar.
• The Russian Wikipedia's typography improvement tool ("Wikificator").
• The Portuguese Wikipedia's spelling switcher (could be useful for some languages with different orthographies, such as English, Catalan and others).

The same goes for templates: some templates are so common and useful on some Wikipedias that users expect them on other MediaWiki installations, too (I can think, for example, of en:Template:Cite web, , en:Template:Lang and a bunch of others). The prevalence of such templates may hint at the features that the users need.

This project deals with the fact that each Wikipedia has its own CSS styles, JS gadgets, and templates. It's most a good thing, because it gives each language community the freedom to customize and innovate. But there's also a problem: these things may be useful in other languages, too, and it's hard to port them. Most MediaWiki developers are aware of the customization in the language they speak - mostly English, and to a lesser extent German, Dutch, Russian and French. And they aren't even aware of the useful developments in other languages. And they may not be aware that a customization that works in their language is not available in other languages.