Template talk:Retitle

Why not just use DISPLAYTITLE?

Why is this wiki using a template which uses the DISPLAYTITLE magic word instead of just using the DISPLAYTITLE magic word? Using the DISPLAYTITLE magic word changes the source HTML title, too; i.e., what’s between the <title></title> tags in the wiki’s source code. I don’t see any benefit of using a template instead of the magic word, itself.
―PapíDimmi (talk | contribs) 18:15, July 14, 2016 (UTC)

This is a really great question. I can certainly understand why, if you come from another wiki, it might seeem a little strange.

The answer lies in the way the wiki developed over the years -- details with which I won't bore you. But the long and short of it is that there's a ton of material in a 50+ year-old franchise (whose writers, incidentally, have a penchant for naming stories with nouns from their stories) that require an easy disambiguation method. Also, we tend to use DISPLAYTITLE via templates merely to add partial italicisation -- we want it to be The Stones of Blood (TV story) -- a stylistic choice that matters very little to the HTML <title>. And {{retitle}} doesn't trouble the title's presentation in the <meta> keywords or the <meta> names that are shared on social media.

Thus, our emphasis has always been on the editors' ease of use. Several other retitling templates sprang up following this one -- some fairly elaborate and more obviously time-saving than simple, little {{retitle}}. But even this most basic of titling templates is better for editors because, unlike DISPLAYTITLE:

• it's shorter
• it's an ordinary English word
• it has ordinary capitalisation
• it'll be found by autoselect when the editor types as little as {{ret

So it's easier to type accurately.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍  21:21: Thu 14 Jul 2016