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Let's completely change how templates work

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Let's completely change how templates work
Wikimania 2019

The current wikitext template system is a marvel of engineering: conceptually simple yet extensible to allow a huge variety of different tasks to be done on-wiki. It is perhaps ''too'' powerful, templates seem to be used for ''everything.'' [[mw:Extension:VisualEditor|Visual Editor]] has made wikitext editing more accessible to new users. However, it imposes a low ceiling on contributors: only the most basic edits to template invocations are allowed, and you cannot use Visual Editor to author or edit the templates themselves. Let's discuss how the template system could be modernized. I expect discussion along three axes: * Incremental improvements to the current template system, like [[phab:T114432|heredoc syntax]], [[phab:T114445|balance]], or JavaScript support in [[mw:Extension:Scribunto|Scribunto]]. * Specialized/improved alternative mechanisms to accomplish some of the tasks which templates are currently used for, like [[mw:Requests_for_comment/Scoped_language_converter|glossaries]], workflow, or [[:en:User:Cscott/Ideas/Amazing_Article_Annotations|annotations]]. * Rethinking the underlying template mechanism: [[phab:T121470|global templates]], template i18n, or [[phab:T114454|visual templates]] (which allow templates to be authored/edited with Visual Editor).

Speakers: C. Scott Ananian