User:DLJessup/navigation section

This template is experimental.

Usage edit

This template is intended to be used as part of a technique for separating navigational templates from the remainder of an article, both visually and in editing. Basically, an editor inserts the wikitext line “=={{Navigational section}}==” immediately before any navigational templates, categories, or interwiki links. This creates a section which appears to have a blank section header. (Simply inserting “== ==” fails to work because MediaWiki refuses to generate an empty h2 element.) In essence, it adds some vertical space, a horizontal rule, and an “[Edit]” wikilink visually. Now, by default, the starting edit summary for the section is “/* {{Navigational section}} */”, which is much clearer than the normal “/* External link */” or “/* References */” in terms of describing what is being affected.

There is at least one problem with this hack. Because MediaWiki doesn't do a very good job of creating anchor elements for section headers containing MediaWiki metacharacters, the backlinks in the history will not take the user to the section head, but leave them at the top of the article.Navigation