Wikipedia talk:Transclusion costs and benefits

message: A dumb question, which I haven't seen answered here--and may be answered in the MediaWiki documentation, but I'm too lazy to go look.  :)  Does the software prevent infinite loops and/or infinite recursion implemented via transclusion?  
The most trivial case, of course, would be a template which attempts to transclude itself.  Non-recursive (but potentially expensive) attack vectors would include pages which transclude the same template multiple times; templates which themselved do the same thing, so that the number of transcluded pages grows geometrically.  
Either require a small amount of work by a vandal; but could (if not prevented by some means) severly overload the Wikipedia servers, or crash them altogether.
For obvious reasons, I will not be experimenting with Wikipedia in this fashion.  :)
--EngineerScotty 00:50, 14 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: m:Help:Template#General: "If a template calls itself directly or indirectly, inclusion works only on one level for each template." —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 03:26, 27 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Dumb and lazy question 

message: If I am attempting to transclude information, is it necessary to edit the target page to make source changes appear?  Is there a way to force the target page to re-render without direct editing?  Thanks —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 130.199.3.3 (talk • contribs) 07:19, 3 February 2006  (UTC)
:Yes and no, respectively. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 03:26, 27 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Although the change will eventually "happen" without editing the target page. See WP:Job queue. Rich Farmbrough, 12:22, 14 October 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Force page rendering? 

message: I've looked and looked and have not found what I had always assumed to be part of wikimedia, that being the transclusion of part of a page via transclusion, identified by the header you which to transclude.  Does this exist?  I would think this would save in the massive proliferation of miniscule transcludable templates.  Epte 17:35, 4 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: (No expert responded in 4 years, so here goes...) I'm pretty sure you can't identify the section you want to transclude.  Certainly,  pulls in the entire article, not just the "Charging" section. It's technically difficult to do; the structure of a page is apparent to us humans, but the id="Subsection_header_name" attribute that identifies a section in the TOC doesn't magically indicate how far that section goes. However, you can achieve this result if you use use the noinclude tag to carve out the parts you don't want to pull in when you transclude: blah blah All the text you don't want to appear.  If you did this, expect some vigorous debate; it seems that WP frowns on transclusion, you're supposed to write the best prose for each article, and if appropriate write a template for the common stuff. -- Skierpage (talk) 00:06, 1 June 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Subheader/Subsection Translusion?  (Feature request?) 

message: Hi, to whomever interested in analyzing the cost of transclusion,</br>
Please take a look at this simple case, a template with code that is effectively only a one-liner, no computation, functionally self-contained, used by around 100 pages, mostly user pages. The only usefulness of this template is a readable-name that ease coding a bit, otherwise it's quite pointless. Then it leads to 2 questions:
*How much resource is this template costing the servers?
*Is this benefit of having a readable-name worth the resources it costs?
Please kindly advise. Thanks. Godric/Talk 01:03, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Seeking advise: How costly is this simple transclusion case? 

message: I'm worried that this section is somewhat out-of-date, and the advice that it gives is no longer relevant (this page reminds me of WP:AUM). I've tagged it  in the meantime, but more input on this would be useful. --ais523 10:30, 11 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Imho that entire section could be removed. Firstly, it doesn't directly deal with template transclusions, and secondly most of the advices are questionable. For instance, "Edit by section. It is a lot less wear and tear on the page" seems more like a joke to me. In fact, i wonder if the advice given would have significant effect even if a majority of wikipedians followed it. /SvNH 23:49, 1 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  'Emergency measures' section 

message: I can't get a hidden note to show up correctly in the code in a substituted template. 
Please look at my edits in the history of this template: Template:Skiptotoctalk
I was trying to get this note to show up only at the code level after substitution:
:Above wiki code created with 
I kept having unwanted text or characters showing up at the visible level after substitution. Or there was a "template loop" message, or something similar, at the hidden level.
I tried no-include tags, hidden comment tags, etc.. Nothing worked correctly when I tried substituting it into a page. 
Try it in any template or test template. Then try the substituted template in a sandbox and see if it shows up correctly at both the visible and hidden levels. It is essential to try out the substitution in order to see the problems show up. 
This hidden note would be useful for others who want to duplicate the latest version of the template elsewhere. This would encourage more people to substitute templates, too.
What is the template loop?--Timeshifter 10:40, 19 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Hidden note in substituted template 

message: I redirected the page. The technical parts of the topic are fully covered in Wikipedia:Transclusion (and in the pages on templates etc). The other content is speculative and contradicts Wikipedia:Don't worry about performance (which is written by, or at least checked by, the developers). If you want to keep it as an essay - fine, but then the links that imply it is an opinion held by more users than its author should be removed (for instance the one in Template:Purge). /SvNH 18:34, 13 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: -( I think it's a reasonable technical essay and useful, but if you don't think it's worth having, then update any links to it in other essays to point to the shorter Wikipedia:Transclusion and it won't be referred to as much any more, or file an WP:MfD about it. But you can't just unilaterally delete a WP page just because there's a shorter one. • Anakin (talk) 16:52, 14 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Redirect