Forum:Transclusion vs Templates

Recently I had cause to ask where Templates began and Translcudable pages in the main namespace left off.

Is there any written rule? Guidelines? Anything?

Neither one is intended to really stand as a page on its own. However,...
 * 1) Tooltip is pretty meaty for a template.
 * 2) Accuracy and other article management tags live without parameters, and include more than nominal amounts of text into a page.
 * 3) Tier 7 armor source has little text of its own and lots of parameter useage.  Yet, it is hardly a generic template suitable for any file.
 * 4) and of course, templates like item, loot, and npc can take most relevant pages and use them through transclusion.

When should a translcudable page be in the main name space (if ever), and when in the template namespace? --Eirik Ratcatcher (talk) 23:28, January 14, 2010 (UTC)


 * I'd suggest the following guiding principle: anything that is an incomplete chunk of text that gets pulled into more than one page should be a template. The main namespace is for articles -- and you'd almost never want to include a complete article in another article. [This does leave a gray area -- parts of articles that have been split off to separate pages for management reasons.]
 * The topic was discussed earlier: Category_talk:Templates_that_should_have_been_local. -- foxlit (talk) 00:06, January 15, 2010 (UTC)


 * That grey area can be ungreyed (only in the cases specifically of solitary pages needing management) if we say, move them to a subpage of the article's talk page, which pulls them out of article space (they aren't proper articles which seems to be an agreeing factor). I.e., there should never be pages in the main space which are not article content. --Sky (t · c · w) 22:02, January 16, 2010 (UTC)