Wikipedia:Mess with the templates
 | This page is intended as humor. It is not, has never been, nor will ever be, a Wikipedia policy or guideline. Rather, it illustrates standards or conduct that are generally not accepted by the Wikipedia community. |
 | This is a humorous essay. It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors and is made to be humorous. This page is not one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints. This essay isn't meant to be taken seriously. |
Wait a second, let me fix that...
| This is a humorous essay on hjfdhfkjashdkfjhaskjd)§]§]€9££{¥[€)jd7. It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors and is made to be humorous. This page is not one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints. This essay isn't meant to be taken seriously. |
Okay, now let us get started. The goal of templates is to help the article and make things clear. But to make things clear, who will make the templates clear? You. That's right- you. The templates would not work unless someone messed with them.[sarcasm] Otherwise templates would look like this:
 | This article includes a list of references, related reading, or external links, but its sources remain unclear because it lacks inline citations. |
Very, very boring. People just don't want to help articles with boring templates on it. So it's up to you to... jazz it up.
You also have to relate to the public.
| This boring text that stands before me includes a list of references, related reading, or external links, but its sources remain unclear because it lacks inline citations. (August 2022) |
 | This fan who keeps raving about a living person needs additional citations for verification. The reason given is: No reason :). ({{SUBST:Feburary 30}} {{SUBST:3089}}) |
Or just make the templates not interpretable to save everyone the time to read it.
 | z xuhjffuhjhghgjytfghfgvhyghghf is currently hibernating after an exhausting day of biting vandals and will be back on Wikipedia soon. If they have been gone for an incredibly long amount of time, they may have retired. |
So, why am I writing this? It's because one day I needed to use a template but I didn't know which template to use. An article had no references except for one secton. Since I didn't know which template to use, I just used the "no references" template. That wouldn't work, since there was one reference. However, I messed with the template and it turned out better[sarcasm] than if I had just used "citation needed" a bunch of times!
Doesn't that look much better??[sarcasm] NO?? Says the person who messed with templates in their sandbox. Well... anyway. I wanted to pass this information on to all future Wikipedians. And the next time you see too many photos on a page:
 | This article-looking thing contains too many pictures for its overall length. (although I still liked it[sarcasm]) |