On 6/15/06, Rob Church robchur@gmail.com wrote:
Substituting templates should be done when the template is being used as a boilerplate or in cases where, for instance, it'll never need to be changed again. Something like a vandalism warning, as an example, isn't going to need to be changed in all locations, so substituting it is more appropriate, not to mention, if it's a "testX" template, then the user can hit edit and start to understand how the site works, not be confronted with a brace substitution.
So, when to substitute: (in the context of en.wp) * message templates on talk pages (eg, {{welcome}}) * "boilerplate" (any examples? not quite sure what you mean) * project templates that substitute in time/date (eg, {{prod}}) * project templates that create text that should then be edited (eg, on WP:FPC)
When not to substitute: * when better site performance is the only goal
I can't speak for the developers as a team. We all have our own opinions about what's "neat" and "clean" from a technical standpoint. For what it's worth, however, Brion Vibber has expressed a previous opinion that fragile editorial constructs are...fragile (spoken from the perspective of an editor, I think) and that policies shouldn't be dictated based on what people believe the server load to be.
It occasionally happens that someone says "According to the developers, X is bad, so we should do Y". Is it best to just ignore such claims until a respectable developer actually shows up and says X is bad?
Steve