Template:Documentation/doc

Shortcut: {{doc}}

This is a documentation subpage for Template:Documentation
It contains usage information, categories and other content that is not part of the original template page.

This template automatically displays a documentation box like you are seeing now, whose 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.

Usage

Normal /doc

<noinclude>{{Documentation}}</noinclude>

Any /doc page

<noinclude>{{Documentation|Template:any page/doc}}</noinclude>

In-line content

<noinclude>{{Documentation|content=This is documentation.}}</noinclude>

In-line content with [view][edit] links

<noinclude>{{Documentation
|1=Template:any page/doc
|content={{Template:any page/doc|parameters}}
}}</noinclude>

Best practice

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.

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

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

Customizing display

Overrides exist to customize the output in special cases:

{{documentation|heading=}}: 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 pre-expand include size maximum of 2,048,000 bytes. 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.

Remember

Add categories to the /doc subpage and interwikis in Wikidata, not in the template page.