User talk:Pokechu22

ifexist vs Template:Exist

Using Template:Exist in certain cases (like on Template:Infobox VG) causes MediaWiki to throw a recursive template loop error (see Category:Pages with template loops). This happens because Template:Exist functions off of transclusion while ifexist does not. That's why ifexist is used instead. I mentioned this on the Template:Exist documentation here though I know that's pretty hard to find and not very explanatory... The tradeoff was triggering an actual error on MediaWiki or creating a bunch of bad redlinks, I chose to silence the errors instead. Either is technically fine though, the errors don't show up on the pages or affect page output at all as far as I can remember besides the hidden error category. (As I understand it, the transcluded templates which trigger the error are not actually used, so page output is not affected.) - Xerxes (talk) 05:26, 24 November 2019 (CET)