Last modified: 2011-03-13 18:04:44 UTC
Although there are good reasons for defining a standard set of messages which belong in the MediaWiki namespace, it's disingenious to forbid custom messages in the parser. Messages and templates are included with the same syntax, so the distinction between the two is totally invisible to end users. It would be reasonable to expect any page in the MediaWiki namespace to override a page of the same name in the Template namespace; it is counterintuitive that the exact opposite is true, with the exception of standard messages.
Sorry, I don't understand this. Can you provide examples of what works and what not, and how you suppose it to work?
Created attachment 98 [details] Basic patch; is there a better way?
(In reply to comment #1) > Sorry, I don't understand this. Can you provide examples of what works and what not, > and how you suppose it to work? For example, if someone were to create a MediaWiki:Stub, {{stub}} would continue to find Template:Stub, even if Template:Stub did not exist. It would be natural for {{stub}} to alias MediaWiki:Stub rather than producing a red link to Template:Stub.
But {{ }} is for including pages from Template:-namespace, it's not intuitive if it would start getting the text from MediaWiki:-namespace. Sorry, but I still don't see the point in this.
(In reply to comment #4) > But {{ }} is for including pages from Template:-namespace, it's not > intuitive if it would start getting the text from MediaWiki:-namespace. > > Sorry, but I still don't see the point in this. Brace expansion currently includes messages from the MediaWiki namespace and templates from the Template namespace.
(In reply to comment #3) > For example, if someone were to create a MediaWiki:Stub, {{stub}} would continue > to find Template:Stub, even if Template:Stub did not exist. It would be natural > for {{stub}} to alias MediaWiki:Stub rather than producing a red link to > Template:Stub. This is expected behavior; there is a limited and documented number of "magic words" that are not treated as templates. Allowing the MediaWiki: namespace to override the Template: namespace is unnecessary, and could be confusing. With the patch, what if a vandal creates MediaWiki:Stub? It would override Template:Stub, even if the template is protected. I think this change has little practical benefit.
To clarify: the MediaWiki: namespaces exists solely for the purpose of making the wiki's internal user interface messages editable without digging into the source code. People ended up using a side effect to produce customized templates, which was neat but cluttered the namespace and bogged down performance as the MediaWiki: messages clogged the actual user interface message cache. We split off the Template: namespace to make the custom templates more reliable, easier to use, and not clutter up the MediaWiki: namespace. "Custom MediaWiki templates" thus have no meaning; all custom templates belong in the Template: namespace -- in fact the installer will rename your old 1.2-era MediaWiki: messages into the Template namespace. Note that as far as I know {{Foobar}} loads only Template:Foobar, not MediaWiki:Foobar.
