Documentation

Template documentation

This documentation is transcluded from Template:Documentation/doc.

To discuss this template as a whole, please user discussion tab. If you wish to discuss general wordings, rather than the wording or formatting of this specific template, don't post here, or else what you say will probably go unnoticed.

This template automatically displays a documentation box like the one you read now, of which the content is taken from another page. It is intended for pages which are transcluded in other pages, i.e. templates, whether in the template namespace or not.

Usage

<noinclude>{{documentation}}</noinclude>
or 
<noinclude>{{documentation|:namespace:any article}}</noinclude>
or 
<noinclude>{{documentation|template page}}</noinclude>

This code should be added at the bottom of the template code, with no extra space before "<noinclude>" (which would cause extra space on pages where the template is used). The parameter can be used as shown above to transclude an arbitrary documentation page. If no argument/page name is provided the /doc subpage of the page is used -- just like this /doc page is used for it's parent.

Add categories and interwiki links to the documentation page inside <includeonly> tags.

If the documentation page contains <includeonly> or <noinclude> tags as part of the documentation, replace the "<" with "&lt;".

Functions

If the documentation page doesn't exist, the "edit" link includes a preload parameter so that clicking it will pre-fill the edit form with the basic documentation page format. The header depends on the namespace; for example, it will display "Template documentation" in the template namespace.

Rationale

This template allows any page to use any documentation page, and makes it possible to protect templates while allowing anyone to edit the template's documentation, categories, and interwiki links. It also reduces server resources by circumventing a technical limitation of templates. See Wikipedia Village pump for a developer's explanation.