David Gerard fun@thingy.apana.org.au wrote:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration#.5B.5BWikipe...
If I understand correctly (and I may not understand correctly, so please correct me if I'm wrong), the basic argument is that when you edit a meta-template you invalidate a lot of pages, which then have to be rebuilt. But meta-templates are most often used when many templates should have the same formatting, correct? So wouldn't you just have to edit all of the templates individually, invalidating the same number of pages?
To put it more concretely:
Pages A-M use template 1. Pages N-Z use template 2. Let's say that templates 1 and 2 are similar, so if we allow meta-templates they're based on template 0.
Editing template 0 will invalidate both A-M and N-Z. But presumably if we had to edit template 0, we would otherwise have to edit both templates 1 and 2 anyway, which *also* means that A-M and N-Z are both invalidated. It could even save us cache misses if both 1 and 2 are used on the same page.
So I don't see how avoiding meta-templates will help anything.