User:Retro/Templates/Titles

Terminology

TODO: argument, parameter, tplarg, transclusion, substitution, "template" (in the broader context it's sometimes used, less restrictive than that of the template; it's also sometimes used synonymously with "transclusion"), parser function, magic word, etc. (I wonder if I can utilize existing lists; ideally one would already exist somewhere in the "Wikipedia" namespace. Wikipedia:Template glossary should exist, either as the primary page or as a redirect.)

Note this uses {{term}}, {{defn}}, and {{gli}}: I am interested in these templates and their usage and will probably want to look into Wikipedia glossaries more in the future.

Metatemplate

A template that has a primary purpose of being used in other templates.

Transclusion

The main method of using templates. Pages in the template namespace are trancluded using the wikicode {{<Template name>}}, where <Template name> is the template's title. For namespaces other than the template namespace, prefixing with the name of the namespace is required for the transclusion to work properly.

Wrapper

A template that produces the same type of result as another template and transcludes that other template.

Terminology notes

"Metatemplate" has many other definitions; I can imagine one referring to Template A as a "metatemplate" of Template B if Template B transcludes Template A. I can also imagine the term being used more strictly in certain contexts. However, there are clearly wrong usages, like referring to wrappers as "metatemplates".
Regarding "transclusion":I don't know how to transclude pages in mainspace. I am familiar with LST.
I think my current definition of "wrapper" is not precise enough, because "same type of result" is a bit vague. I interpret the term strictly, where if Template A wraps Template B, everything Template A can display can be displayed by Template B.

Search links:

		Namespaces
		Template	Category
`metatemplate`	`intitle:`	2	0
	`insource:`	46	0
	plural `intitle:`	1	4
	plural `insource:`	115	19
	plain	217	19
`meta template`	`intitle:`	2	0
	`insource:`	189	12
	plural `intitle:`	0	2
	plural `insource:`	66	4
	plain	32,407	12
	plural plain	592	5
`wrapper`	`intitle:`	13	13
	`insource:`	988	27
	plural `intitle:`	0	3
	plural `insource:`	325	7
	plain	1,854	33
`wrap`	`intitle:`	17	18
	`insource:`	1,072	22
	plural `intitle:`	9	3
	plural `insource:`	130	6
	plain	2,642	1,403

Abbreviations

Templates names that are abbreviations are often moved to the title using the unabbreviated form. There are many examples:

Template:gli to Template:Glossary link internal

Sidebars/navboxes

Sidebars and navbox templates are often titled the same as the parent topic's article title, with an occasional "sidebar" or "navbox" suffix. For more specific sidebars, there's often local conventions.

"Wikipedia" prefix

I need to read some guidelines to understand when prefixing categories with "Wikipedia" is ideal. I would like to do a comprehensive search of all the categories starting with "Wikipedia", then find how many have a corresponding non-Wikipedia category, and of those, find how many with a non-Wikipedia category solely contain articles.

I get that Category:Wikipedia featured content is a WP:maintenance category, and Category:Featured content is to hold categories that contain the Wikipedia's featured content but how is it useful to separate in this way? It seems redundant.
Category:Wikipedia featured portals vs. Category:Featured portals: here, there are actually different pages, with one having "Portal" namespace pages, and the other having "Portal talk" namespace pages.
Category:Header templates vs. Category:Wikipedia header templates: Appears there is mutual non-awareness.

Category:Wikipedia header templates having Category:Wikipedia namespace templates is erroneous; the header templates included in this category are more broad than simply "Wikipedia" namespaces templates, evidenced by the subcategory Category:Talk header templates. It may be worthwhile to merge this into Category:Header templates (I'm currently unclear of that category's focus, so I may be misguided here). This demonstrates a broader issue I've been observing; the usage of the prefix "Wikipedia" in category names is ambiguous and often creates problems. Clearly to specifically refer to the namespace, the less ambiguous term "Wikipedia namespace" should be used. Perhaps "Project namespace" is also useful for more general categorization, though it's a bit jargonny.
- Relevant related searches:
  - intitle:"Wikipedia" (52,651 results)
  - intitle:"Wikipedia namespace" (3 results)
  - intitle:"Project" (4,011 results)
  - intitle:"Project namespace" (2 results)
  - intitle:"Namespace" (71 results)
- These searches suggest my original naming intuition was mistaken; I still think "Wikipedia" is ambiguously used, but I'm now more uncertain how to solve this. More research will probably be useful.