Test ([перевiрка, perevirka] Error: {{Lang-xx}}: text has italic markup (help); [проверка, proverka] Error: {{Lang-xx}}: text has italic markup (help)) is what this is...

Let's first discuss this briefly before getting into mass-convertion from ua to uk. It's just that "uk" is a little confusing for obvious reasons. How about that? --Irpen 15:50, 6 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I just discovered that template:Lang-ua was a redirect to template:Lang-uk. Lang-uk is used in over a hundred articles, but Lang-ua in only about a dozen, which I've already converted [1]. The redirect will continue to work, so there shouldn't be any problems, but now all the examples use the correct form. —Michael Z. 2005-10-6 15:59 Z

Please do not use this template and do not under any circumstances replace existing links with it. Templates strain the servers unnecessaraly and this template amounts to little more than a few saved characters.

Peter ^Isotalo 20:35, 15 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Can you point out some documentation explaining how much templates strain the servers, and how it is unnecessary? If this is the case, then why have we not heard any general call to stop using templates on Wikipedia?

And why not make it more efficient by simplifying or removing the redundant calls to other templates instead? That would probably save a large proportion of overhead.

This template does not just save typing. It marks a span of text with language metadata. —Michael Z. 2005-10-15 20:56 Z

    <span lang="uk" xml:lang="uk"></span>

What's the point of the metadata?

Peter ^Isotalo 21:14, 15 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I'd like to point out that the difference between typing

{{lang-uk|foo}}

and

{{lang|uk|foo}}

is zero: there is zero benefit, and positive harm, to this template's existence. This template—and all the rest of the {{lang-xx}} templates, for that matter—serves merely to clutter up the Template: namespace with yet more redundant cruft, and slow the servers down further with unnecessary extra template instantiations.

As far as the benefits of marking the text as being in a particular language, given that the vast majority of foreign-language text in any language's Wikipedia etc. is not so marked, and that I am unaware of any (X)HTML user agents that actually process this information, I can't imagine these supposed "benefits" outweigh the negative impact on server load.

As far as template use driving up server load: Every template that is used must be fetched from the database without the benefit of the page cache, then its markup parsed, parameters substituted, and the resulting text transcluded into the calling page. Templates on their own are not the problem, users who gleefully think they can nest them indefinitely, turn them into redirects, and so on are the problem.

I've already fixed Template:LangWithName to 1) not bounce off the Template:ll-to-Template:Language link redirect, and 2) manually subst:'d the contents of Template:Language link directly into Template:LangWithName, to avoid the overhead of two gratuitous template references and a redirect.

There's no cure for this template short of its outright replacement with {{lang|uk|...}}.

IceKarmaॐ 21:37, 15 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]