Wikipedia talk:MediaWiki namespace/Archive

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I like this stuff! If I understand this right, do we get to have like substitute-text with $1 and $2 and stuff? How is it done? (Perhaps I should have asked this first before creating MediaWiki:Vio :/// ) Dysprosia 06:38, 6 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I don't think there is a way to specify what $1 and $2 are, so the vio page isn't going to work. Also, that might be a bit too long to be allowed. Angela. 06:57, 6 Dec 2003 (UTC)~

Darn. Maybe it can be broken up, something like {{subst:vio1}}[site]{{subst:vio2}}...? Otherwise I'll get rid of it... Dysprosia 07:02, 6 Dec 2003 (UTC)

You could but I'm not convinced that makes things easier than they are now. I'd find it quicker to go and copy the boilerplate from somewhere than to remember and type three different SUBST messages, but if you think it would be easier then you could make them. Angela. 07:08, 6 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I think I'm gonna delete it until a developer makes happy-vfd-substitutey-stuff :) Dysprosia 07:14, 6 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I was also thinking about how it would be if we could specifyi parameters, like { {SUBST name|param1|param2} } in the article text, and use { {$1} }, { {$2} } in the message definitions. With some expansion it could become a useful templating tool for many things. But, that would probably require changes to software to keep it fast enough. OTOH, if the maximum number of parameters were to be kept down to a reasonable number for use in messages (say 5), it shouldn't be too hard to do. Zocky 19:22, 11 Dec 2003 (UTC)

---

Since this page is almost entirely about MediaWiki and not really about anything specific to Wikipedia, I think this page should be moved to meta and become part of the meta:MediaWiki User's Guide. --mav 07:36, 6 Dec 2003 (UTC)

You're right. I've moved most of it to m:Meta-Wikimedia:MediaWiki namespace. Angela. 07:43, 6 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Oh, I thought you would just copy it to meta. Are you going to delete Wikipedia:How to edit a page as well? -- Tim Starling 00:55, Dec 7, 2003 (UTC)

Yes. I think the aim is to move all the help pages over to Meta. If they are kept in both places, people tend to edit one and not the other and they end up out of sync. Angela. 01:07, 7 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I don't think that Wikipedia:How to edit a page should be moved to meta, only copied. The copy on meta should be more general and the one on wikipedia should be more wikipedia-specific, above all in examples. Also, I don't think new users should of wikipedia should be immediately bothered with the whole notion of meta, interwiki links, etc. Zocky 19:13, 11 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Powerful and handy stuff, now if only I could figure a way to keep track of all of them (that user's guide will become more important, no doubt). Or maybe I'll just wait until Angela adds them all to her stash :) Dori | Talk 00:07, Dec 7, 2003 (UTC)

I've been keeping a list at Wikipedia:MediaWiki custom messages but it does depend on people remembering to add any new ones they create. Angela. 01:10, 7 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Hmm, this is powerful. Where do we discuss changes? Martin 04:23, 7 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I would suggest Wikipedia talk:MediaWiki custom messages to discuss changes to custom messages and Wikipedia talk:MediaWiki namespace text for changes to the default messages. Angela. 04:32, 7 Dec 2003 (UTC)

msg considered harmful

Is this a good place to rant about the use of these "{{msg}}" things? I don't want to discuss changes to custom messages or changes to the default messages, but just the policy about their use. I thought about bringing this up back in January, but then decided it wasn't that important. But now they're getting out of control, and I've changed my mind.

Basically, I think that these "{{msg}}" things go completely against the wiki idea: that anyone can come along to a page, click on "edit", and change the text however they want. Nowadays, if they find a page full of text and click on "edit", they'll quite likely get an edit box that just contains something like "{{msg:flgb_start}} {{msg:flgb_middle}} {{msg:flgb_end}} {{msg:flgb_blgddyblg}}", with the text that they wanted to edit nowhere to be seen. When someone tries to edit an article, they should be able to see the text they are editing, shouldn't they? Isn't that a fundamental point about what a wiki is? The fact that what is shown in the displayed article bears so little resemblance to what is in the edit box is just going to confuse most people, and turn them away from Wikipedia. Even if "{{msg:flgb}}" doesn't put them off completely, unless they are computer geeks who are intrigued by goobledegook, they won't know what to do with it. There is no intuitively obvious way of getting from a "msg" in an edit box to editing the message itself. Maybe someone is going to come up with a solution to that, involving yet more intrusive links all over the pages, but we have too many of them already. Wikipedia is a mess...

The place seems to be turning more and more into a haven for computer geeks, and becoming less usable for the vast majority of people. And this is a bad thing! -- Oliver P. 08:41, 14 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I agree. I thought {{subst}} would be useful as a shortcut, but that people would avoid msg for basically the reasons you outline. I was quite surprised that so many people jumped on the bandwagon, with so little dissent. Now people want argument substitution as well. I'm afraid that this will make wikitext look like a programming language. -- Tim Starling 09:52, Mar 14, 2004 (UTC)

Hurray! I thought everyone would disagree. :) I have nothing against programming languages, but please, not for editing encyclopaedia articles... -- Oliver P. 11:15, 14 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Well! No-one has disagreed with my "msg considered harmful" thesis. Can I take it that no-one has any counterarguments? Can I take this as a consensus? ;) If no-one can answer my arguments, I might just start going round replacing all the "msg" tags with "subst" ones... -- Oliver P. 00:37, 16 Mar 2004 (UTC)

It's just that this has been discussed before, and probably no one really feels like re-hashing it all again. Also, you haven't given people enough time to respond. Old arguments should be somewhere on Wikipedia talk:MediaWiki namespace text Dori | Talk 00:43, Mar 16, 2004 (UTC)

The previous argument is at Wikipedia talk:MediaWiki namespace text/Archive 1#SUBST vs MSG. User:Tim Starling

Thanks. I'll go and read that now... -- Oliver P. 02:32, 16 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Okay, I've read it. The first point brought up there, about possible mass vandalism, is interesting. On the one hand, I don't see vandalism of MediaWiki pages as a special problem, because there must be people watching them, and even if not, the vandalism will show up in many articles, so it would quickly be noticed and reverted in the usual way. On the other hand, I don't like the idea that an article can now change (whether by vandalism or not) without it showing up as a change to the article itself, either on "Recent changes" or on people's watchlists. I want to know what's happening to articles without having to remember which messages they contain and watching those message pages too.

Eloquence's point about easy modification of messages in one fell swoop is valid, but I don't think it's especially important. Messages for stubs, Vfd, disambiguation, etc. are unlikely ever to change radically, and even if they do, editors can always just wait until they next edit the article, and re-"subst" the message. Piecemeal improvement over a long period of time is the norm in a wiki, and for most articles lacking up-to-date messages will be a small problem compared to their usual incompleteness, NPOV problems, and the like. They'll have to be edited many times for those things anyway, so one more thing to edit them for is, I think, trivial in comparison.

The next point, about finding stubs, seems to be only a technical matter rather than a policy one, and I have no comment on that. Have I missed any other points?

It seems that no-one brought up the main point I'm making, which is that the "msg" concept takes away the whole basic idea (and indeed the joy) of a wiki, enabling anyone to see and edit the full text of an article with just one click. It makes the editing process a lot more counterintuitive, difficult to learn, and generally off-putting, and all for what I consider to be a very small benefit. Now, any comments...? :) -- Oliver P. 03:15, 16 Mar 2004 (UTC)

It's possible, and probably should be recommended, to explain in an html comment how to edit the msgs contained in an article. Other people argue for msgs rather than large infoboxes on articles, as they believe that a big chunk of table html or wiki table markup is more disconcerting for a newbie to find when they click "edit this page". I think you're dismissing the importance of central editability. Many of these messages (article series etc) which need to be edited and maintained appear on hundreds of pages each. No one wants to have to correct hundreds of pages each time they need to make a change. fabiform | talk 03:41, 16 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Oliver, I think you have some good points in your arguments. I was (and am) in favor of using msg in limited ways. For example, I think stub:msg makes perfect sense. Same thing for msg:disambig. These are long-term, short messages where consistency is definitely desireable.

As for the rest, I'm not certain. We do want to keep Wikipedia simple to edit, and based on that alone, your argument has merit.

Your argument that using msg is completely against the "wiki idea" is much less compelling for me. The objective/goal of Wikipedia is the creation of a great, free encyclopedia. As far as I'm concerned, whether it is in keeping with the "wiki idea" is a secondary question. The first question is whether the feature provides a net positive contribution to the making of a great, free encyclopedia.

In many cases, consistency from article-to-article (especially in a series) is very desireable in an encyclopedia. Given the collaborative nature of Wikipedia, some aspects of that consistency will change over time. msg is an important method of maintaining such consistency.

Wikipedia is breaking new ground, given its size and its objectives. We may need to tweak how msg is being used, but I'd be firmly against abolishing it.

-Rholton 03:56, 2004 Mar 16 (UTC)

But it is actually easier to edit using messages. You edit one page, and the change happens across hundrends, or thousands of articles. Messages shouldn't be used for content, but rather for small messages and tables. Can you imagine redoing all sort of pages just to make a small change. People would be opposed to it, just because it's become "convention". Also for pages that use tables, not only would you have to paste all the table code in the articles where it's used, but you would have to customize them (i.e. bold the current link, instead of having it done automatically). Eventually, there could be links in articles to edit the messages that are contained in it, and perhaps have a link to their histories as well, but right now messages a too useful to be gotten rid of. Dori | Talk 04:01, Mar 16, 2004 (UTC)

I've only been around a very short time and I picked up on how msg worked very easily. I haven't seen people asking many questions about them either. I think the standard messages like VfD, stub, etc. are all more useful as msg than as subs. I do not consider those to be part of the content of an article. I don't see it as a problem if new users are not able to edit that part of an article -- it's not supposed to be edited.

On the other hand, it seems some messages are getting more elaborate and I don't even know anything about parameterized messages. I'd have to see examples before I ventured an opinion about them. It seems that if someone wanted to edit something in a msg, they would ask about it, either on the talk page or the Village Pump. Which is probably a good thing, no? I mean, if the message is used for purposes of standardization, then presumably (I would hope) that there had been some discussion and consensus about the content of the message before it is put into widespread use. And if someone wants to make changes to it, it should be discussed first, no? Or is that contrary to the spirit of Wiki as you see it? Bkonrad | Talk 04:09, 16 Mar 2004 (UTC)

msg has exactly the right effect for newbies; it encapsulates material that they probably cannot edit correctly, and for which there are a hundred ways to get it wrong. A "good" article nowadays needs annotations and navigational aids of various sorts, and if you subst into each article individually, all those substs are going to get randomly changed, because few people will know that there are many other articles with the same boilerplate. (We have far more articles than most people realize; even oldtimers are creating dups without realizing it.) Stan 14:00, 16 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Msgs are not actually a problem if we understand that it should be used for categorisation and navigation, not for content. We have far more un-wiki stuff to take care about, like table syntax. That one is hairy. — Sverdrup 20:32, 16 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Proposal for a technical fix

Perhaps a good technical fix to these concerns would be to add a "section edit" link associated with each msg: that takes you directly to editing the MediaWiki: page that msg comes from? For example, instead of just

This article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.

you'd see

This article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. [edit]

Of course, when you just clicked "edit this page" for the page as a whole, you'd still see {{msg:stub}}, but it'd be pretty simple to just click cancel and then the section-edit link instead. Bryan 05:58, 16 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Such an edit-link seems to invite to vandalism. We could do without.--Ruhrjung 09:16, 16 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Vandalism has consistently been cited as a particular concern for MediaWiki: namespace pages. However since they have been introduced there has been virtually zero vandalism (and yes there are non-protected pages, but not enough). As Oliver points out above, such vandalism would be noticed and corrected even faster than regular vandalism. I think something like this would be worth a go. Of course the top of the edit box would have to say "WARNING: This is a transcluded message, changing it will affect all the pages on which it appears" or something. Pete/Pcb21 (talk)

Better to have a list generated when you edit the page saying "Messages transcluded in this article:" with a button or something to jump to the appropriate MediaWiki: page. This came up on the Village Pump a while back, but I haven't time to find where it was archived at the minute.

That said, I will weigh into the conversation above later on how often msg should be used rather than subst. - IMSoP 10:55, 16 Mar 2004 (UTC)

That's an interesting one, I hadn't heard it before. Although it's my opinion that "transclusion" is just a silly made-up word which means the exact same thing as "inclusion", as a programmer understands the word. Any thoughts on the formatting and placement of this list? -- Tim Starling 11:45, Mar 16, 2004 (UTC)

First, the syntax of these messages will soon change. Instead of {{msg:stub}}, you will write {{stub}}. The page itself will no longer reside in the "MediaWiki:" namespace, but in the to-be-created "Template:" namespace (some have also suggested "Block:" or "Module:").

Second, the goal of this syntax is ultimately to make Wikipedia more newbie-friendly, and to increase the joy of editing. This is especially true for parametrized messages with name/value combinations. For example, you would be able to say something like:

{{ country name=Germany | population=82 mil. | language=[[German language|German]] | tld=.de }}

You would get a nice table with the parameters inserted in the right places, making it possible for any newbie to easily alter the values without dealing with the layout.

This syntax is entirely made up. The system currently in development uses numbers instead, so you have to pass parameters in the order in which they appear in the template, and you don't know what aspects of the template you are changing unless you look at it. This is bad usability, but it was easier to code.

Second, yes, we need a better way to edit these templates. Preferably, that method should only be accessible if the page itself is unprotected. We don't want to provide easy-edit links for the messages on the Main Page, because we want these unprotected.

A dropdown box on the edit page would make the most sense. It would look roughly like this:

Templates used: [ country ....... ^ ] [edit]

It would only be shown if at least one of the templates in question is unprotected, or if the user has sysop status. (This requires a DB look-up, but should be within acceptable limits.)

The proper position for this dropdown box would be at the footer of the edit page, below even the copyright notice. There should be a separate notice below the dropdown to the effect that edits to the page itself will be lost.—Eloquence 20:34, Mar 16, 2004 (UTC)

Hey as long as this is in development, I'd like to mention that links would be preferable to dropdowns since you can't open the dropdowns in new tabs. Dori | Talk 21:24, Mar 16, 2004 (UTC)

Hmm, I hadn't thought of that, Dori. Useful though it would be, it would potentially be a lot of links down the bottom, which might prove a bit ugly. Have it drop-down by default, but flattenable in preferences? You can always clone the tab first, and then use the form button, of course; or have an option to open in new window, and force your browser to always use tabs not windows somehow.

As for the Template: syntax, I would really like to see the paramaterisation markup got right first time. It wouldn't be that hard to do, surely? I've never used PHP before, but in Perl, you could simply do

%args = split /=|\|/, $string (where $string is whatever the user put after {{template_name:)

And you'd have a hash containing all the appropriate named variables. For instance {{foo:bar=baz|fred=barney|bob=jane}} could point at Template:Foo, in which $bar was replaced by $args{bar} in the PHP rendering.

If you wanted to be clever and not die if users put an = in their arguments, you could have a more complex regex. Or just do two splits, first on /|/ then on /=/. It would be a lot easier to read the wikisource if implemented this way.

- IMSoP 22:37, 16 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Good God, it's all a hundred times worse than I thought. "[The] goal of this syntax is ultimately to make Wikipedia more newbie-friendly, and to increase the joy of editing." You can't seriously believe that, can you? Every increase in complexity discourages more people. I am horrified at the direction that you are pushing this project in. This has got to stop. -- Oliver P. 13:42, 22 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I don't entirely agree with Oliver as I do see many places where msg: is useful, but I can understand his concerns. I think if the syntax is going to get more complicated, and start to look like the {{countryname=Germany |population=82 mil. |language=[[German language|German]] |tld=.de}} example given above, then perhaps they should appear in a separate edit window from the main text. If they are used for meta data, is there a need for them to appear to people who just want to edit the actual content of the page? Would splitting the edit window address the concerns of confusing newbies? Angela. 00:23, Mar 24, 2004 (UTC)

I don't know. I think if the template system is implemented and used wisely, it could actually be a lot less ugly than messes of table syntax, for a start. I mean, {{country info box | name=Germany | population=82 mil. | language=[[German language|German]] | tld=.de}} seems pretty "transparent" to me. Maybe I've just spent too long in geekdom - does x=y not have obvious meaning to "Joe Internet User"? - IMSoP 00:31, 24 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Your example tells the user that this is the information for the country info box, that Germany is a country, that its population is 82 mil., etc. It doesn't tell them how to change the formatting, how to add extra rows, where in the box the "name" parameter is displayed and what will happen if it is changed, etc. To edit Wikipedia effectively and confidently, the user must learn the template syntax completely. This is intimidating. -- Tim Starling 03:46, Mar 24, 2004 (UTC)

Can't something be done so that expandability becomes a little more automatic? For example, using the above, tweaked a little

{{country info box | '''Country:'''=Germany | '''Population'''=82 mil. | '''National language'''=[[German language|German]] | ''Domain suffix''=.de}}

and say, I want to add the fact that it's national food is potatoes (I don't know if it is, but let's just say ;)

So...

{{country info box | '''Country:'''=Germany | '''Population'''=82 mil. | '''National language'''=[[German language|German]] | ''Domain suffix''=.de | '''National food'''=[[Potatoes]]}}

So instead of shielding the user absolutely from the MW message, the MW message becomes a skeleton for the formatting, which becomes extensible as desired. Dysprosia 07:30, 24 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Out of interest, what is the reasoning behind selecting the syntax {{foo|bar=baz}} rather than {{Template:foo|bar=baz}}? It seems to me that the latter has several advantages, since it makes it obvious to the user that this is in fact a template and points to the exact location where that template lives. What's more, if we have a drop-down list at the bottom of the page (which does seem rather a good idea) saying "the following templates are used on this page", it would be rather good to give the user a strong clue as to what a "template" is. If the syntax simply consists of punctuation, they will have to guess based on spotting the same name in the article and the list. - IMSoP 15:31, 25 Mar 2004 (UTC)

{{Template:}} requires the pressing of more keys. In the CVS version, it's obvious where {{thing}} goes because if Template:Thing doesn't exist, a broken link to Template:Thing will be displayed. So it'll only be obscured until the user makes a typo. Also, it's been proposed to provide links to all linked templates in the edit screen. Note, however, that {{Template:thing}} will be valid syntax. The new syntax allows the user to designate the namespace. {{:Main Page}}, {{subst::Main Page}}, {{msg:Wikipedia:Boilerplate text}}, etc. are allowable. The caveat is that changing the text of an inclusion only clears the cache of the referring articles if the included page is in the Template namespace. -- Tim Starling 00:07, Mar 26, 2004 (UTC)

Empty talk page messages.

Please see Wikipedia talk:Talk pages#Editing the No talk page template. and MediaWiki talk:Noarticletext#Different message for talk pages?. These are 2 different messages, one when going directly to the empty talk page, the other when they click on the red "discussion" link. -- Jeandré, 2006-04-24t12:20z

Undo-failure

The current content of MediaWiki:Undo-failure is:

The edit could not be undone due to conflicting intermediate edits.

I propose to change this into:

The edit cannot be undone due to conflicting intermediate edits.

(Underlining for highlighting the difference only.)

Rationale: In the situation in which the user gets to see this message, the edit would not yet have been undone anyway if there had been no conflict; it is only by then saving the page that the edit will be undone, if such is possible.

 --Lambiam 12:48, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Show/hide function

Hi: How could I use the show/hide function (where is that template btw?) to show or hide multiple panes in the list of letters in the "Dining Late with Claude La Badarian" article. I would like to hide by default all of the panes that show the References section in the list of letters at the bottom of the article, and by one click to show them all. This is of some importance since by default I want the list of letters to be shortened. I appreciate any help you could offer.Manhattan Samurai (talk) 21:06, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

Merge?

This page is an obvious fork of Help:MediaWiki namespace, isn't it? When they're merged into one, which namespace should it be in? (I suggest Help:, since this is just information about how the software works.)--Kotniski (talk) 09:45, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Yes, merging Wikipedia:MediaWiki namespace, Help:MediaWiki namespace and Wikipedia:MediaWiki seems like a very good idea. If you should use the first or second name doesn't matter much. I think you should go ahead with it, since it seems very uncontroversial.

--David Göthberg (talk) 12:42, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

OK, I will in a few days, when I get some time, but if anyone else feels like working on it in the meantime, that will be great.--Kotniski (talk) 18:58, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Done. (Though the resulting page still needs some tidying up.)--Kotniski (talk) 10:57, 6 December 2009 (UTC)