I found the crazy one! I found him!
Seriously though, not many people like doing that, and its always impressive when people can. If you want, I can send you some of the more advanced template-making documentation.
Haha. I've been scavaging template syntax putting together a Minecraft mod wiki. I liked the crafting grid template thingies, so I found the one on Buildcraft's wiki (pure image placement) and was able to slowly dissect it as I needed a simpler version for my own machine. Replaced the background, removed 7 of the slots, repositioned the remaining two...
And once I was down to only the eight or so lines of code I started to be able to pick out the patterns. It's just hugely buried in the wikisyntax. {{{foo}}} is a variable reference for the variable foo and {{{foo|}}} checks to see if it was passed to the template (why that syntax, I have no idea). The three braces were necessary because one is just a brace and two refers to a template (yes, you can use templates
inside templates!)
It is, on the other hand, neigh impossible to debug. You have to save the template, then edit a page using it, and preview that page to see if it worked.