Board Thread:Support Requests - Getting Technical/@comment-15636815-20150825045826

Our Wiki is extremely template-heavy. Previously, this was no big deal because all the editors were using the Source Editor. With the new VisualEditor, we've seen a huge increase in the number of less sophisticated users adding pages with the templates. The pages look fine, but when we go to edit or update them, things are screwy. Sometimes the entire template and all its input parameters will show on one line. Frequently, instead of using, the VE will add. Again, this works, but it makes editing more complicated.

The MediaWiki version of TemplateData is a fantastic solution, primarily because it tells users exactly what to enter for each parameter. (We have /doc pages with these kinds of instructions, but many users have never looked at them, or they did previously and don't realise that we've changed things and they need to look again.) When I added TemplateData to one of our templates, all the code just printed on the page like any ordinary text. That leads me to believe that Wikia doesn't support TD.

Is there another solution that will behave similarly? So far, the closest thing I've found is the  tag. I set up a test scenario that uses a preloaded template and edit intro text, and that works, sort of. The drawback here is that I must include documentation within the preloaded template, or provide a blank template with perhaps a link to the documentation in the edit intro text, or provide two input boxes (for non-experienced and experienced editors, respectively). And even if I do all of that, anyone can bypass the page of boxes and just go off creating pages any which way they want.

The goal here is to create a scenario in which all users are forced to interact with the template documentation at least once, one way or another. For VE-only editors, the goal is to give them instructions at the point of entry, if at all possible.

Are we sunk, or is there hope?  