Hi - my immediate reaction is to list this in Template for Deletion, however I see you are running a bot, and I want to hear what the justification for this fork of the main template is before I put it up for deletion. I also suspect this template was allready TfD'd in the past and thus the resulting redirect. --Stbalbach 18:43, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

This is not a fork, per se. Currently, Template:Main supports up to 5 parameters in the form {(main|1|2|3|4|5}}. That requires some very complex coding (see the source of that template). Ideally, this template should just accept a single parameter, which can be like {(main article|1}} or {(main articles|1, 2, 3}}. By converting the few articles that used this template to that format, we now have a place where we can now start converting the rest to use the single parameter method. -- Netoholic @ 18:53, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

The main template should remain, but have new code, if thats what decided. Change the code of main, not create a whole new template, it's a fork. TfD conversations have supported this position over and over, we have a single main template, and this is and always has been {main}. Discuss it on the {main} talk page is the proper way to go about it. I believe that the removal of the redirect for this template is in violation of a previous TfD vote. --Stbalbach 19:38, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

No, that's fine... the problem is in the timing. If you change Main first, all the articles break. If you change the articles first, they look bad until you're completely done and can change the template. Main_article was a redirect with a few links to it, so I changed the template and quickly converted the pages using it. Now, we have a place to convert Main's articles to. After they all get moved, we can just change Main into a redirect here. -- Netoholic @ 19:50, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

this template always automaticaly linked, you exculided [[ ]]'s breaking tens of pages. Congrats! --Cool Cat^Talk|@ 20:16, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

Since this change is disputed and it breaks usage on a large number of pages, I've reverted to the traditional version. There doesn't seem to be a dispute about the change itself, but rather updating implementation; the notes placed by the template are useless if they don't link to the main article. This should be very easy to do with a bot using the whatlinkshere feature, but you should plan to do this in advance so that the template is broken for as short a time as possible.

I retract the above; it seems I responded with insufficient research. // Pathoschild (_admin / ^talk) 21:31, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

It think brackets are okay as it's the singular form. There's {{main articles}} for the plural. Royal Blue ^T/_C 10:56, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

Stop adding brackets. Use this template like {{main article|[[This article]]}}. It is intentionally different from other similar templates, and adding brackets to the template source will break it when you view the articles using it. -- Netoholic @ 11:12, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

I don't see any harm in using the brackets. You can use bot assistance to replace the templates. Royal Blue ^T/_C 12:28, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

I cant tell for sure, but is it indented? It should be to match others and was before. -- Stbalbach 16:28, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

Tell that to Netoholic. I've reverted. --Khoikhoi 19:24, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

This template survived a request for deletion. The result of the discussion was redirect to (and replace with) Template:Main.