Auto-populating page with template when its created 

Newsgroups: gmane.org.wikimedia.mediawiki
Date: Sat, 27 Jan 2007 03:21:32 -0800
> I have a MediaWiki page listing all the rivers of the world [not really]
> as local hyperlinks. Whenever someone creates a "river page" by clicking
> on the link, I want the page automatically populated with a "river
> template".

Use MediaWiki:Newpageintro for the text above the edit window. And a template such as Template:Newriverpage to populate a new page that is called from an entry in an inputbox (install the inputbox extension - http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Inputbox). The inputbox should be called in a similar manner as the following:

<inputbox>
type=create
editintro=MediaWiki:Newpageintro
preload=Template:NewOrganizationpage
width=35
break=no
</inputbox>
<noinclude>
[[Category:Rivers]]
</noinclude>

We use this at http://www.appropedia.org: We use MediaWiki:Newpageintro for the text above the edit screen, and templates like Template:NewOrganizationpage to populate a new page started by creating a page using the following inputbox Template:Organizationinputbox, which can be seen at - http://www.appropedia.org/Category:Organization

Lonny