Pikipedia:Template guidelines

Shortcut: P:TEMPLATE

Templates are special pages that are inserted into normal articles, normally with content that can change dynamically. Templates on Pikipedia should adhere to the following guidelines.

Documentation

Every template page needs documentation on the template. Make sure to wrap this in <noinclude> tags. The following sections should exist, when applicable:

Info

This section explains what the template does and when it should be used.

Parameters

If the template has any parameters, this section should detail them using a table. The following is how the table should look like:

Parameter	Mandatory	Default	Purpose	Detailed description
<parameter>	<mandatory>	<default>	<purpose>	<description>

• Parameter: The name of the parameter, or its number, in the case of parameters that are not named.
• Mandatory: "Yes" or "No", depending on whether the template needs the parameter to work correctly or not.
• Default: The parameter's default value, in the case that it is optional. Special content, like Template guidelines, should be displayed in italics.
• Purpose: This column should only exist if there are unnamed parameters. All unnamed parameters can be given a name here.
• Description: An explanation of the parameter.

When creating the parameter documentation, the following code can be copy-pasted and edited accordingly:

{| class="wikitable"
! Parameter || Mandatory || Default || Purpose || Detailed description
|-
! 
|  ||  ||  || 
|-
! 
|  ||  ||  || 
|-
! 
|  ||  ||  || 
|}

Skeleton

For templates that have parameters, a template template (a template skeleton) section should be created. This is simply a snippet of MediaWiki markup surrounded by <pre> tags, so that editors who want to add the template to articles can just copy-paste the snippet and replace the values with their own. Value placeholders should start with < and end with >. Example of a template skeleton:

{{example | <parameter 1> | <parameter 2>}}

Examples

In cases of dynamic and complex templates, it may be better to have a section with examples, that shows some of the template's behavior when presented with different parameters. The examples should be displayed inside a table like so:

Code	Result
<code>	<result>

• Code: A snippet of MediaWiki markup that calls the template.
• Result: What the template looks like.

Be careful with calling the template itself to provide the result, in cases where the template has side effects, such as adding a category to any page that includes it.

Like before, the following code can be copy-pasted by editors to help create an example table:

{| class="wikitable"
! Code || Result
|-
| <pre>{{}}</pre>
| {{}}
|}