Template:Documentation/doc

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

Best practice
This code should be added at the bottom of the template code, with no extra space before " " (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.

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

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

Customizing display
Overrides exist to customize the output in special cases:


 * : change the text of the "documentation" heading. If this is set to blank, the entire heading line (including the first [edit] link) will also disappear.

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.

Rationale

 * Use of this template allows templates to be protected where necessary, while allowing anyone to edit the documentation, categories, and interwiki links.
 * Text on the template page itself adds to the amount of text which must be processed when displaying the template, which is limited for performance reasons: there is a . Placing the documentation in a subpage reduces the wikitext for documentation on the template page itself to a template call and noinclude tags. MediaWiki developers have recommended this system for this reason.