[Mediawiki-l] templates and parsing question

[Charlie McElfresh]

In an effort to figure out how templates work on mediawiki, I copied the
source from Wikipedia's "Sacramento, California" page, and then installed
the "Infobox_City" template on my Wiki.

I installed ParserFunctions.php.  When I look at my "Sacramento, California"
page in edit mode, under the "Templates used on this page" section, here is
the first template listed:

Template:!

I trace this back to the template "Infobox_City", where there are lots of
operators like this:

{{!}}

... which, I am guessing, are being interpreted as template declarations.

Can someone set me on the right track on how to get my wiki to parse these
{{!}} operators properly?

Thanks,

Charlie