User blog comment:Ducksoup/Why Wikia Evolves/@comment-24473195-20150619235105/@comment-24473195-20150621101233

I think I forgot to answer one part:

"Then how do I use it? If you want more people to use Lua, it's use (especially for common, 'simple' stuff) needs to be  specific."

Wikia and MediaWiki have provided Lua modules, and many extensions, they certainly can't make people use anything, nor can I. That page was provided as a simple example, which is why the syntax was wrong for so long, another page was written here to help users to no avail.

Generally speaking people work in terms of crisis, there is no perceived crisis, perhaps no perceived benefit of Lua modules, and no perceived drawback to mis-using franken-templates. So its use will continue until it either reaches a point where people are tired of it, or it causes severe server performance problems, or wikia/mediawiki force the change to new technologies (Innovate or Die).

There's an old saying, "you can take a donkey to a lake but you can't make it drink".