Say, I made this template,
[[Category:{{{1}}}]][{{fullurl:Category:{{{1}}}}} {{{1}}}]
(
http://radioscanningtw.jidanni.org/index.php?title=Template:C )
as I want categories clickable right where I mention them on a page.
And my site has a thousand categories that have members but no text,
and should stay that way, hence the fullurl to avoid the action=edit.
Of course the categories are repeated again at the bottom of each
page, but there is no __NO_CATEGORY_LIST__ to turn that off.
I suppose my template is OK. Can't think of a better way.
I suppose what I really want is something like the ISBN detection code
that one can set up to match certain regexps and do certain things so
one wouldn't need to use a template at all. And in the rare case when
one doesn't want a match, one could use <nowiki>.
Yes, a general perl style filter that would do things on the wiki text
mediawiki sees without changing what the user sees.
And all in one or two Local_Settings variables.
(Hmmm, probably just increasing the house of cards risks to the system.)