User:Davidgothberg/Editnotice loader/doc

This is a documentation subpage for User:Davidgothberg/Editnotice loader.
It may contain usage information, categories and other content that is not part of the original user template page.

This is the {{editnotice loader}} template. It takes no parameters.

This template was meant to be installed in the main "hyphen-style" editnotice for each namespace. It will then load user-friendly "slash-style" editnotices. It also adds links back and forth between the edit page and the editnotices thus making it easy to find and edit the notices. And it makes it possible for users to edit the notices for their user space. And it supplies both page specific notices and page group notices.

This template at the moment prints two small start and end messages. They are just for our testing. If/when we deploy this template we will remove those messages.

Link demo

Improved editnotice system

MediaWiki uses numbers and hyphens "-" in the editnotice names. This causes problems since in template programming we can not convert back to a slashed "/" page name from such a hyphenated name. These names are also hard for humans to handle.

But we can put code in the main "hyphen-style" editnotice for each namespace that in turn loads "slash-style" editnotices for a page. This gives us several nice possibilities:

1: We can load "user editnotices" from user space that the users can edit themselves. (We already do this, but we can improve it.)

2: We can make two different types of editnotices: One type that is only shown on the one page it was made for, and a page group type that is shown on its own page and all its subpages. The current hyphen-style editnotices are only of the page group type, they are always shown on the subpages too, which can be confusing.

3: We can automatically (at load time) add view links on top of the editnotices so it is easy to find them and edit them.

4: A slash-style editnotice can link back to its subject page since we can convert back and forth between a page name and its editnotice name using only template code. In fact, the loader can automatically show that link as an editnotice when editing the editnotice, thus it doesn't have to be in the editnotice's code.

All this might sound a bit tricky, but we can make it very user-friendly.

The sections below show what addresses the old and new type of editnotices have for this page and some related pages.

Hyphen style

This is the old system.

This namespace: MediaWiki:Editnotice-2 (talk)
Grandparent page: MediaWiki:Editnotice-2-Davidgothberg (talk)
Parent page: MediaWiki:Editnotice-2-Davidgothberg-Editnotice loader (talk)

This page: MediaWiki:Editnotice-2-Davidgothberg-Editnotice loader-doc (talk)

Slash style, for admins

For most namespaces we probably should use editnotices that only can be edited by admins.

This namespace: MediaWiki:Editnotice/User (talk)

This page: MediaWiki:Editnotice/User/Davidgothberg/Editnotice loader/doc (talk)

For its talk page: MediaWiki:Editnotice/User talk/Davidgothberg/Editnotice loader/doc (talk)

Page group: MediaWiki:Editnotice-group/User/Davidgothberg (talk)

Talk page group: MediaWiki:Editnotice-group/User talk/Davidgothberg (talk)

Slash style, for users

For user space and perhaps template space we probably should use editnotices that can be edited by any user. Here the talkpage of an editnotice is the editnotice for the corresponding user talk page.

This page: User:Davidgothberg/Editnotice loader/doc/Editnotice

For its talk page: User talk:Davidgothberg/Editnotice loader/doc/Editnotice

Page group: User:Davidgothberg/Editnotice-group

Talk page group: User talk:Davidgothberg/Editnotice-group

More examples?

The text and links this box shows was produced by the template {{Wikipedia:Editnotice/linkdemo}}. You can put this template on any page to see the links to the different possible editnotices for that page. You can use edit preview so you don't need to save this template on the page.

Basically the loader will load at most three editnotices for each page, if those editnotices exist: The editnotice for the whole namespace, the editnotice for the current page group, and the editnotice for the current page. And it adds links back and forth.

Try it here

For demonstration and testing purposes this editnotice loader is already installed so it works for all the pages and talk pages under this template. Try editing the /sandbox or the talk page of this template and see the editnotices. And feel free to edit those notices to see the backlink to the subject page that this loader automatically puts there.

Try it in your user space

For testing you can transclude this template into the two hyphen-style main editnotices for your user space. That is, put this code {{editnotice loader}} into these pages:

MediaWiki:Editnotice-2-Yourname
MediaWiki:Editnotice-3-Yourname – For your talk pages.

(If you are not an admin you need to ask an admin to do it for you. You can ask at the talk page here since then you will get help from an admin that is interested in editnotices.) Then you can start to use and test the user friendly slash-style editnotices for your user page and for all its subpages. Visitors to your pages will also see the slash-style editnotices when they for instance edit your talk page.