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 | This page in a nutshell: Not all mistakes are apparent, and not all detected mistakes have an evident repair. |
There are many manuals of style in English Wikipedia. But if an editor even knows them all, then s/he is not necessarily good in fixing mistakes of another editors. This manual presents several mistakes which are not especially well-known. They either are not recognized as mistakes by most Wikipedians, or are not easy to fix properly, without adding further errors.
Fully automatic rules for fixing poor wikicode cannot exist. If the code's author is MoS-unaware, then s/he is not know what s/he is doing. You ever have to think, instead him/her. You also have to think after a blind button-pushing fixer who edited the article between the original author and you.
The aim of this manual is not only the manual itself. One day, a smart wikicode analyser will be created. This manual will help to identify common problems.