Template talk:Def preload

May I simplify the instructions for putting in the definitions of Actors? (I find it IMPOSSIBLE to put line breaks in here!) by Hayford Peirce, copied from here

Right now, when you click on the link, this is what you get:

"(Delete this note, including the enclosing quotation marks, after reading.)

1. In the space above, paste everything *between* the 'nowiki' tags, i.e. from '<noinc...': <noinclude>{{Subpages}}</noinclude>

2. Write the definition here (maximum one sentence of 150 characters, ignoring formatting characters). Don't include the term defined in the definition itself, and start the text with a capital letter. 10-30 words are usually enough.

Further details of how a definition should look like are given at https://en.citizendium.org/wiki/CZ:Definitions#Format_of_Definitions >

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I read that over for a LONG time, and it baffled me. Can I change it to:

"(Delete this note, including the enclosing quotation marks, after reading.)"

1. In the space above write the definition (maximum one sentence of 150 characters, ignoring formatting characters). Don't include the term defined in the definition itself, and start the text with a capital letter. 5 - 15 words are usually enough.

To cut a long story short: <noinclude>{{subpages}}</noinclude> is needed; it's a workaround for a problem which seems to have cropped up in later versions of MediaWiki, after all this 'subpages' stuff on CZ was devised and written. Longer explanation:

This template is unusual in that it's designed to produce raw text in the wiki editing window, so you should ignore what it looks like as a page and instead click 'Edit' to see what the user is supposed to see when they click Add brief definition or description on a missing definition. This text is 'transcluded' from the template into a new editing window. (The <noinclude> tags are needed around {{subpages}}, otherwise when a definition appears on another page via transclusion, it will bring with it a load of junk. We just want the definition text itself to be transcluded, not the menus etc. which are generated by {{subpages}} alone. Leave out the tags and the {{subpages}} menu tabs ('Related Articles', etc.) will be embedded in a page where the definition is supposed to be.)

Originally, these instructions popped up in the wiki editing window whenever you started a new definition complete with <noinclude>{{subpages}}</noinclude> at the very top. But then the MediaWiki software started to interpret it more literally: there's a <noinclude> tag, so we won't include that line when we transclude the instructions! That's why there's a blank line at the top of the wiki editing window for any new definition: MediaWiki has stripped out the essential line <noinclude>{{subpages}}</noinclude>.

So I tried to rewrite the instructions to remind people to insert <noinclude>{{subpages}}</noinclude>, then replace the instructions with the definition. But if I just typed <noinclude>... MediaWiki would make *that* disappear in the editing window too, so I had to include <nowiki> in the instructions to get it to ignore what the tag does and just show the tag itself.

So it's a mess where the instructions are referring to templates and tags which the software is trying to execute. (Just look at *this* text in the editing window: it's full of <nowiki> tags to make the software ignore the other tags.) You can rewrite it, but definitions need <noinclude>{{subpages}}</noinclude> at the top. John Stephenson (talk) 10:46, 12 August 2020 (UTC)