Talk:Community Wishlist/Wishes/Template inheritance

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Easier implementation

I believe there is an easier way for solving problems with undetailed infoboxes for obscure topics. Although this sounds like a local wikiproject problem, I'm offering the solution here to point you into the right direction. Usually, infoboxes have a parameter like empty_data= and empty_param= that allows some margin of customisation of the infobox inside the article. Instead of implementing new overly complicated technologies I believe we could solve much of the mentioned problem via such empty parameters. Best regards, A09|(pogovor) 12:50, 29 July 2024 (UTC)

So, when you have n articles which need the same fields, you manually add them to each article? This sounds like making a nonsense of the very idea of templates. Minilexikon (talk) 12:54, 29 July 2024 (UTC)

You are free to propose changes to the template on its template talk page. They aren't unchangeable. A09|(pogovor) 08:41, 30 July 2024 (UTC)

That doesn't cut it. The wish is not about changing templates. It is about extending them into child templates. Minilexikon (talk) 20:36, 30 July 2024 (UTC)

Examples

I think we should collect a LOT more specific examples of this to identify it is a problem worth dealing with. My personal opinion, is that if it isn't important enough to move into the main template, it probably doesn't have to be in the infobox to begin with. Prose is great at solving problems like this. Sometimes I'm wondering why ppl put everything into an infobox, since we already have Wikidata as a facts database. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 13:32, 29 July 2024 (UTC)

Thanks!

@Minilexikon thanks for submitting this wish. Being relatively new to wikimedia, I have found templates to be extremely flexible and also quite challenging. You're bringing up some great points and I agree with @TheDJ that it might be helpful to share more examples (and specific examples) in your wish description.

Is the problem that Infoboxes contain some "templatized" information (ie, categories or parameters), and yet also need some free-form fields? JWheeler-WMF (talk) 19:34, 29 July 2024 (UTC)

No, it is not about this. The problem is, that there can't be easily identical templates, yet with additional specialized fields for different templates based on a base template. Sure, there are workarounds but none of them are maintainable without problems. Minilexikon (talk) 20:39, 30 July 2024 (UTC)

The English Wikipedia uses w:Module:Template wrapper for this in certain situations. * Pppery * _{it has begun} 21:53, 2 August 2024 (UTC)