On 30 July 2013 04:36, Martijn Hoekstra <martijnhoeks...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Jul 30, 2013 at 1:01 PM, David Gerard <dger...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > On 30 July 2013 09:06, Martijn Hoekstra <martijnhoeks...@gmail.com> > wrote: > > > > > 6. Announce a date from where on saving a page with a transcluded > legacy > > > template will be blocked. Expect public outcry. > > > An important consideration that all developers must keep in mind is > that > > > though the current syntax is quite horrible, it also serves a purpose, > > and > > > though its existence in itself is quite horrible, the fact that it is > > > widely used is completely reasonable. > > > > > > The question then will be how to keep parsing old versions reasonably. > > I suppose we could keep an old wikitext parser around. *shudder* > > > > (Or just punt the question into the long grass. Do old page versions > > pull in contemporary versions of the page's templates or use the > > current versions? If the latter, then heh, too bad.) > > > > This *sounds* horrible, but is exactly what happens now. If a template > changes, old revisions break. I suppose that if MediaWiki would go for a > change in template semantics, an option besides letting them break, is to > substitute all 'legacy' templates into their parents last revision before > the changeover. How many revisions back one would want to do this and in > what timeframe sounds like a discussion point, but I don't see this as a > far more broken process than template changes cause right now. > That's what we did last time we switched how templates work (the MW 1.2 -> 1.3 transition) . "Template syntax conversion bot" (or whatever) spidered across the corpus and created a new top revision as needed, IIRC. J. -- James D. Forrester Product Manager, VisualEditor Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. jforres...@wikimedia.org | @jdforrester _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>