Forum:"nowiki" problems

I've gone over the help several times and I suppose I probably just missed it, but I guess it wouldn't hurt to ask here then:

I wanted to use the template or style, or whatever its called where you have to the right side of the page general information about a country. (For example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States )

However I had some trouble in doing this:

Here's what I did: I clicked "Edit this page" / "View Source", I copied the relevant text (all of the  ) from the wiki to mine, and when I clicked on the Wikitext Source button, all that code I had copied had an additional  tag applied to it. That is exactly what I did NOT want to happen. In fact its the exact 100% opposite of what I was trying to achieve by copying over the template or whatever its called. (I was going to copy it over, and then edit in my own information).

Now, I assumed at first (Because the first time I had used Wikipedia, the page for the United States) that the website's code was somehow incompatible, so then I found a similar design on a Wikia.com Wiki. However I got the same results: a  tag. The extra space between wiki and > is to avoid formatting troubles.

So, can anyone explain why its doing this, or alternatively... where I might be able to find some Templates to use? The Help section talked ALL about Templates, except for where to actually find them. I haven't used wikis much so excuse me if I get the terminology incorrect or whatever.


 * Links please? 12:18, 13 May 2009 (UTC)


 * If you're using the new editor, you need to switch to source mode to copy it across. Per Ose, where are you having the issue? (Note, Wikipedia also uses an extension called HTML Tidy, which tries to clean up HTML. Since we don't run it, it can be oddly-coded templates from Wikipedia can have issues here, but this may be unrelated). 13:46, 13 May 2009 (UTC)


 * It's very likely that you are using the new visual editor. If it's the case, go read visual editor problems for details. The visual editor always "de-wikifies" your codes, which is inconsistent with most other visual editors outside wikia (e.g. visual editors in blogs and forums). The developer should fix it ASAP. Having to switch to source mode just to paste codes are awkward and clumsy. --MyBrute Resource Center@Ronga 21:49, 13 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Hmm, I thought I had put the links in, but I guess not. The first one I tried was from Wikipedia's entry on the United States: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States The other example I tried was for an entry on Osea from the english Ace Combat Wiki: http://acecombat.wikia.com/wiki/Osean_Federation If you'll note the blue box to the right with basic country information, that's the section I was attempting to copy over. Same for the USA page. I wanted to use some sort of a country info panel. I'll see if the Visual Editor help page will give me any info, thanks for the replies at any rate. MrShinra 00:21, 14 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes, but over where are you trying to copy things ?
 * Link to the source is ok, but link to the destination is even better. — TulipVorlax


 * I found a work-around solution actually, I just need to click the Wikitext Source button first and paste the relevant code in there, because then it doesn't auto-add the  tag. I was copying it over to a private project of mine, and since its nowhere near complete yet, I'd rather not share it right now. However since I have (for the moment anyway) found a workaround to my problem, you can consider this specific issue resolved, thanks for the suggestion about the visual editor help and so forth. The quad-tilde (so sign my comment) isn't working for some reason.