Elite Dangerous Wiki:Substitution
Substitution provides local editorial guidance for the independent Elite Dangerous Wiki. Apply it alongside community standards and existing local policies.
Transclusion and substitution
Ordinary template use, such as {{Template name}}, transcludes the current template when the page is rendered. {{subst:Template name}} saves expanded wikitext into the edited page instead. Later template changes generally will not update that saved expansion.
Choose deliberately
Follow the local template's documentation. Some user-talk messages are intended for substitution, while navigation and infoboxes usually need transclusion. Do not substitute a template just because an imported example says to do so. Check dates, signatures and any nested templates before saving.
Preview
Test unfamiliar templates in a sandbox. Substitution can produce a large amount of wikitext and unexpected categories or links. Do not substitute templates into many pages without checking the result. See Project:Template documentation.