Last modified: 2013-08-05 16:31:41 UTC
Some templates are only used to include metadata, e.g. categories. In this example http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ashton_Agar&oldid=564224425&veaction=edit the document starts with two such categories, producing linebreak characters, with templates spanning 0 characters in between (accessible still be cursoring). An uninitiated user may just decide to delete this whole line at the the top, thus removing the hidden templates. Perhaps we need to detect if a template contains no meaningful content and then move it into the metadata so it can't be accidentally deleted. We'd also need a UI for editing them though.
To help searching: the cited examples are {{Use dmy dates}} and {{Use Australian English}}. Increasing importance/priority because they can be deleted unintentionally, and it is very unlikely a new user will know how to add them back before they click save.
Another example given on WP:VEF is {{Link FA}}
*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 49806 ***
This is not the same as bug 51420. This specifically concerns templates which only produce 'metadata' in the VE-data-model meaning of the term.
Change 75331 had a related patch set uploaded by Esanders: Handle meta-only transculsions as meta items https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/75331
I marked this as a dup of bug 49806, not dup of 51420.
Change 75331 merged by jenkins-bot: Handle meta-only transclusions as meta items https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/75331
Fixed and will get deployed in a few minutes.
Additional issue with empty HTML elements produced by templates (which are used for metadata) in bug 52551.
