Template talk:Greybox

I believe I was in error in adding a help navbox. Some have wondered why we would need a navbox. My thinking was that each template page is a sort of help page, and so should allow people to see a copy of the help index, to navigate to other help pages. The idea was that if they were on that template page by mistake, they could go to some other page that might explain how to do what they wanted to do. Very possibly, template pages are not exactly help pages. --John Baab 10:13, 29 December 2011 (PST)

You made three mistakes in your edit:

• You added the NavBox twice. You realised that problem and removed one entry.
• You also edited the remaining reference to the NavBox to have a capital N (in Help Navbox). This meant that it wouldn't actually find the navbox as the real navbox has a lowercase N.
• The biggest problem was that you added the reference(s) in such a way that the NavBox would appear in every article/page in which the Greybox template was used. The syntax is a bit unclear, and it took me a while to get used to it, but basically everything you put on a template page appears wherever you use the template, except for text that is placed between <noinclude></noinclude> tags. The <includeonly></includeonly> tags do not mean "include only this part" as you might think. They mean "include this part only when using the template on another page", and are used to prevent that part from appearing on the rendered template page itself. Anything outside <includeonly></includeonly> and <noinclude></noinclude> tags—which is where you tried putting the navbox—gets included on both the template page and any page the template is placed on. So if you do want to put the navbox on the template page, you should do so between <noinclude></noinclude> tags.

Whether or not the help navbox should be included on template pages is a separate issue. I would suggest not, because (a) it's not normal (Wikipedia, etc.), and (b) I think that there is a general principle that navigation boxes are only put on pages that are listed in the respective navigation boxes. So the Help navbox should only be included on pages that are listed in that navbox. But that's just my opinion, and is a separate issue than how to do it properly if it is to be done.

Philip J. Rayment 17:17, 29 December 2011 (PST)

Ooooooh. Thank you very much, Philip. I do understand what I did, and I think I have derived the general principle to not mess around with Template pages. The templates seem even more magical than they did before.