On 6/15/06, Rob Church <robchur(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Substituting templates should be done when the
template is being used
as a boilerplate or in cases where, for instance, it'll never need to
be changed again. Something like a vandalism warning, as an example,
isn't going to need to be changed in all locations, so substituting it
is more appropriate, not to mention, if it's a "testX" template, then
the user can hit edit and start to understand how the site works, not
be confronted with a brace substitution.
So, when to substitute: (in the context of en.wp)
* message templates on talk pages (eg, {{welcome}})
* "boilerplate" (any examples? not quite sure what you mean)
* project templates that substitute in time/date (eg, {{prod}})
* project templates that create text that should then be edited (eg, on WP:FPC)
When not to substitute:
* when better site performance is the only goal
I can't speak for the developers as a team. We all
have our own
opinions about what's "neat" and "clean" from a technical
standpoint.
For what it's worth, however, Brion Vibber has expressed a previous
opinion that fragile editorial constructs are...fragile (spoken from
the perspective of an editor, I think) and that policies shouldn't be
dictated based on what people believe the server load to be.
It occasionally happens that someone says "According to the
developers, X is bad, so we should do Y". Is it best to just ignore
such claims until a respectable developer actually shows up and says X
is bad?
Steve