Global templates/Proposed specification, short version/zh

维基媒体计划存在一个问题. 它们的软件混合了来自两个来源的代码：


 * 1) 已部署的软件：MediaWiki核心及其扩展，它们通过Gerrit、translatewiki和相关工具集中开发、部署和国际化.
 * 2) 本地自定义：在每个本地维基网站上开发的大量维基工具：模板、Lua模块和小工具.

对于站点的编辑和读者来说，不同的技术相互融合并作为一种产品出现，但是不同的软件开发过程也带来了一些挑战：


 * 本地自定义通常在多种语言中有用，但是在维基和语言之间进行移植非常困难且耗时.
 * 诸如可视化编辑器和内容翻译之类的软件功能无法识别此类本地自定义. 例如，信息框是许多维基的显著功能，但它们在每个维基中都是单独实现的，因此可视化编辑器不能具有“插入信息框”按钮，而只能具有“插入模板”按钮，并且每个编辑器都必须知道模板的名称，然后输入.
 * Wikis with smaller communities are disadvantaged because they don’t have the expertise to develop templates and gadgets, and there is no way to port them easily. New wikis, in particular, start with a very bare-bones installation of MediaWiki and extensions, whereas a lot of the older and larger sites’ functionality is actually provided by templates and modules, which cannot be quickly installed and have to be imported manually.
 * Incompatibilities between deployed software and local customizations cause bugs that are hard to anticipate and detect. Fixing them must be done on each wiki site separately. This can even lead to the rejection of some features by the community, waste of development resources and friction between the software developers and the editors. All of this could be avoided.
 * The differences between the local customizations make articles harder to translate. Resolving this problem will dramatically increase the speed in which content is translated and made accessible to larger parts of humanity.

Despite being very large, these problems are overlooked most of the time. Software from the different groups is often blended seamlessly into the site’s user interface. People who primarily edit in one language or project may not realize that a certain feature is only available on that project, and think that it’s available everywhere. Even experienced software designers and developers often make this mistake.

The proposed solution:


 * 1) Allow making some templates and modules global, similarly to images on Commons, global personal JS and CSS pages, global user pages, etc. (Gadgets should be global as well, but this is already possible in practice using hacks such as those used by HotCat. It’s not perfect, but it’s much less problematic than the issue with templates. Gadgets are therefore not in the scope of this proposal.)
 * 2) 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.
 * 3) The user interface strings of the global templates must be translatable in a translatewiki-like interface, similarly to extensions.
 * 4) The templates and modules will still be editable as wiki pages and immediately usable after publishing.
 * 5) Policies about maintenance, sharing, protection, and deletion of templates and modules will be developed by the editors community.

Building the infrastructure for global templates and modules is challenging, however the core platform developers have said multiple times that it’s possible, and mostly requires product management and dedication. It has to be done, because the lack of global templates is the biggest usability challenge for all stakeholders: developers, new editors, veteran editors, and translators, in all languages and in all wiki projects.

If this sounds interesting and you want to know more, please read the full detailed Global templates proposal.