774383 - In template editor, indicate how many pages use that template and list some examples

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(developer.mozilla.org Graveyard :: Wiki pages, defect, P2)

Description

[John Karahalis [:openjck]]

Jean-Yves made a very interesting point in this comment:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=773855#c1

We should help template writers realize how much their changes can impact the rest of the MDN. It would be great to indicate, somewhere on a template's editing page, how many pages use that template.

Some design ideas:
1. Provide a message that lists the exact number.
2. Provide a message like "This templates is used on {dozens,hundreds,thousands} of pages."
3. Highlight the message if it is used on more than N pages?

Comment 1

[John Karahalis [:openjck]]

Sheppy: Any thoughts on this?

Comment 2

[Eric Shepherd [:sheppy]]

I think this would be useful, although I think a bonus atop seeing a list of the actual pages (since that would help find samples of the usage).

Comment 3

[Les Orchard [:lorchard]]

Basically, the hurdle to implementing something like this is that there is no index of templates-per-page or pages-per-template - and there's no easy or simple way to build one.

:davidwalsh has an initial stab at this, but it's a bit inaccurate and demanding on the database & browser:
    https://github.com/mozilla/kuma/pull/414

I also have bug 767176 to build a system that records templates used in the course of building a page. That info could be used to build an inverse index - ie. pages per template. But, that tracking demands some additional IT infrastructure, along with hooks into kumascript itself to record the templates - so, not a thing to expect done soon.

Comment 4

[Les Orchard [:lorchard]]

FWIW, here's an interesting template use case that makes this even more challenging:

https://developer-new.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Template:InterfaceEntry

That template uses the value of a parameter to decide the name of another template to call at run time.

Comment 5

[John Karahalis [:openjck]]

We have this, albeit in a slightly different form. Every template has a link to a search of that template, which in turn lists the number of documents found.

E.g. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/search?locale=*&kumascript_macros=DevProgramListSOTopics