Wikiversity:FAQ/Template

For immediate help with templates, see Help:Template at Meta.

A template is a wiki-page, containing a section of wikitext to be inserted into other pages (via either "transclusion" or "substitution").

Templates at Wikiversity have a variety of purposes:


 * 1) Messaging: Everyone needs little signs along the way - see especially "page flags" and "ratings" templates below.
 * 2) Navigation and classification: Things that need to appear the same on many pages while linking them together often contain compact navigational aids or infoboxes
 * 3) Learning: Templates may add functionality, content or formatting to a page which assists its educational purpose.
 * 4) Fun: Userboxes have long been a tradition with Wikimedians, Wikipedians, Wiktionarians and such. Wikiversitans should be no different.
 * 5) Iterative computation: See meta:help:recursive conversion of wikitext.

Guide to templates
The following is a user-friendly guide to the most important kinds of template. There is an exhaustive list of categorised templates which does not include uncategorised templates. See also: |full list of templates, including uncategorised ones.


 * Templates which assist with making content
 * Category:TOC templates, Category:Navigational templates
 * Citation templates - for citing external resources such as books and articles.
 * Template:Participants - creates an attractive box for lists of participants.
 * Template:To do - creates an attractive box with a list of things to do.
 * Page creation templates
 * Educational templates (there need to be more of these)
 * Template:activity
 * Template:Assessment checklist
 * Template:Boxed Activity Start


 * Messaging templates
 * Page flagging templates - some of the most useful administrative templates for quickly marking pages for merges, deletion, or for putting requests, information or warnings at the top.
 * Ratings templates - ratings displays, for rating the maturity/activity of learning projects, or other ratings purposes. (NB: the size of the images in the percentage boxes needs increasing for proper display).
 * Welcome templates


 * Useful shortcuts
 * Polling templates - for voting.


 * Administrative templates
 * Administrative templates, Wikiversity maintenance
 * User warning templates - see vandalism.
 * Copyright templates - mostly used for uploaded files.


 * Templates for fun
 * User templates - typically used on user pages to provide information about a user. Mostly for fun. See Userboxes.
 * Language user templates - provides information about a user's linguistic abilities.
 * Knowledge user templates - provides information about a user's other abilities.
 * Award templates - awards. For fun. See Barnstars.

You can help
Please  Help:  the Template Taskforce develop this Help page and participate in Template Policy discussions.

Learn by doing!

Help namespace
To see what's in the Help: namespace, click Special pages to your left. Scroll down to Prefix index and click that. Then, where it says Namespace:, click the drop-down box, select Help then hit Go.

You will then see a page – All pages (Help namespace) which gives you an alphabetized list something like Category through Help:	WordToWiki. These are your basic  Help:  pages at Wikiversity.