Last modified: 2011-03-13 18:06:26 UTC
According to m:Template, inserting a template parameter in three braces will pull up a default value of whatever template is contained in the center two braces. I used this to some effect in [[Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse]]. This feature no longer appears to work. Instead, parameters show as plain text.
Please clarify...
This was a case of exploiting a bug rather than using a deliberate feature: undefined parameters were at one stage [mis]interpretted as nested templates, so that a template containing "{{{1}}}" called with no unnamed arguments would instead interpret this as "{{Template:1}}" (Or possibly "{"+"{{Template:1}}"+"}", I forget). Some people took advantage of this as a method of creating "default parameters", but this was only ever a hack: to use it properly, every template parameter would have to have a globally unique name, such as "{{{common name of plant species}}}" rather than the much more natural "{{{common name}}}". I'm marking this bug as WONTFIX because it's asking for a previous bug to be reintroduced just so it can be used in what is anyway a non-ideal hack. Meanwhile, bug 364 is a request for / discussion about a "proper" way of doing default template parameters.
