Forum:Introducing documentation and timeline templates

There are two new templates that have been added to the wiki.

The first is Template:Timeline, for use on, oddly enough, the timeline pages.

The old navigation code looks like this:

By comparison, the new template creates the following output:

When you check out the template, you'll find instructions for how to use it on year, decade and century pages. If you're editing or surfing through the timeline pages and come across the old code, please take a few seconds to replace it with the new template. :)

Which brings us to Template:Documentation, which is intended to make creating and documenting new user templates easier.


 * → Koschei: :  Life. But not as we know it.  16:56, March 26, 2010 (UTC)


 * I really like the "standardization" that the documentation template will bring. Very crisp.  Not so wild about the timeline thing, but it's better than what was there before.  I don't visit year/century pages all that often so I was surprised to discover that the previous navigation was apparently not a template at all.  So who's actually going to be doing the laborious work of putting this new temp on the hundreds of pages involved?    Czech Out   ☎ | ✍  12:50, March 27, 2010 (UTC)


 * The beautiful thing is that once all those pages are hit with the template, it'll be trivial to insert a new navigation panel if someone feels like designing it. Until then, the layout at least has the advantage of being easier to navigate visually for folks who have problems with closely grouped strings of text on screen.
 * → Koschei: :  Life. But not as we know it.  18:22, March 29, 2010 (UTC)


 * Oh, absolutely. And I applaud you for introducing a template.  The only thing I worry about is that the task gets completed.  Are you actually going to be physically putting that template on each page, or you want me to call out the bot to help you?  I played around a little with it, and haven't got quite the right regular expression going, but I'm sure it's possible. Some editors like to have a bot help them along; some really enjoy the act of physically seeing every page their template goes on.  Lemme know if you want me to wave a magic wand.   Czech Out   ☎ | ✍  21:15, March 29, 2010 (UTC)


 * In the mean time, just change 'em here and there as you see 'em. I've changed a few over here and there thus far myself. -- sulfur 21:46, March 29, 2010 (UTC)


 * Yeah I noticed your post about the bot. How would it handle (a) parsing the values (prev, next, decade, century) from the old html to the template on pre-existing pages, and (b) interpreting those values from scratch, plus adding the appropriate category tags?
 * → Koschei: :  Life. But not as we know it.  14:19, March 30, 2010 (UTC)