User talk:Alexander Lichtenstein

Hey Alexander Lichtenstein

I'm sending you this because you've made quite a few edits to the template namespace in the past couple of months. If I've got this wrong, or if I haven't but you're not interested in my request, don't worry; this is the only notice I'm sending out on the subject :).

So, as you know (or should know - we sent out a centralnotice and several watchlist notices) we're planning to deploy the VisualEditor on Monday, 1 July, as the default editor. For those of us who prefer markup editing, fear not; we'll still be able to use the markup editor, which isn't going anywhere.

What's important here, though, is that the VisualEditor features an interactive template inspector; you click an icon on a template and it shows you the parameters, the contents of those fields, and human-readable parameter names, along with descriptions of what each parameter does. Personally, I find this pretty awesome, and from Monday it's going to be heavily used, since, as said, the VisualEditor will become the default.

The thing that generates the human-readable names and descriptions is a small JSON data structure, loaded through an extension called TemplateData. I'm reaching out to you in the hopes that you'd be willing and able to put some time into adding TemplateData to high-profile templates. It's pretty easy to understand (heck, if I can write it, anyone can) and you can find a guide here, along with a list of prominent templates, although I suspect we can all hazard a guess as to high-profile templates that would benefit from this. Hopefully you're willing to give it a try; the more TemplateData sections get added, the better the interface can be. If you run into any problems, drop a note on the Feedback page.

Thanks, Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 21:15, 28 June 2013 (UTC)