Template talk:Universal page list with custom separators: Difference between revisions

@Grufo: On the one hand, this is cool. I like programming, and Module:Params is obviously super powerful. But it’s not a good choice for a place like Wikipedia. It’s simply too complex. Basically, you’ve created another programming language. When I see stuff like entering_substack, I think of Forth (programming language). 🙂 The main problem is: Nobody but you will be able to maintain this template. But Wikipedia is based on collaboration by (mostly) non-expert volunteers. We need code that is readable and writable by a large number of users. We should stick with Lua modules and Mediawiki templates, and the code should be kept relatively simple. I’m sorry, and I admire your work on Module:Params, but I don’t think it’s going to be a good fit. — Chrisahn (talk) 14:17, 16 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Chrisahn. I hear your points. But I believe part of the difficulty of this particular template is that involves regular expressions. However these would be the same independently of what module we used (there would be the exact same regular expressions if instead of Module:Params we used Module:String). The idea behind Module:Params is indeed a bit that of giving a bit of Lua’s power to template editors without having to program in Lua – often with even more optimized/efficient results. More than a new programming language I would say “a very rudimental proto-language” or “a rich set of directives”. In the module I used plain English for all the directives and the documentation is pretty rich, so dealing with it should be easier than dealing directly with Lua. While it is true that I am the one who created the templates that exploit the module’s powers in full, I am not the only one able to use it (e.g. #1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6, etc.). P.S. That module was born on Latin Wikipedia, because there nobody knows Lua. Before Module:Params there were basically no modules there (still there aren’t many), and so everything was extremely painful until Module:Params became the game changer. —Grufo (talk) 14:48, 16 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]