Hi,
You asked about Template:fr and linking language names. The policy (at WT:ELE#Translations) is: "Broadly, language names that refer to country are not wikified. Wikify only the names of regional languages, dialects and recognized artificial languages. Only those that the user might not recognise should be wikified."
The purpose of using wikilinks sparely, as I understand it, is that that for every link made, the software has to do a lookup when the page is loaded to see if it exists or not (to decide whether to make it a regular link or an edit link) and for some users how big it is (to decide whether to mark it as a "stub" link). It is apparently expected that most English users will know what, for example, "French" means in a list of translations (or wherever else Template:fr might be used) and are not likely to click on it (unlike, say, Dyirbal), so the link will not be worth the cost to the database of making it.
This is also why we have a policy of not ] ] ] ] ], as some have suggested. —Muke Tever 18:34, 15 January 2006 (UTC)