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I laud you for trying to simplify the code, but I'm with Ruakh, it would seem to be better to make test edits to a new template like {{testcontext}} or {{contextsandbox}}, and test-transclude that new template on pages to check that it works as expected, rather than modifying the venerable, widely-used {{context}} and hoping nothing breaks.

All I'm doing is adding line breaks and indentation, which supposedly shouldn't change how the template behaves at all. Since we're discussing the inner workings of the template, I figured it would be a good starting point if we could all see more easily what it does to begin with.

The fact that you made four edits to a template transcluded on hundreds of thousands of pages before I rolled them back, then another seven afterward; the fact that your first batch of edits and second batch of edits both involved edits that broke the template; the fact that you didn't notice the breakage yourself the first time, and then that it took you a few tries to fix it; does any of these facts suggest to you that maybe you're mistaken?

Note that there's a significant penalty to editing a very-widely-transcluded template even if you don't break anything.

And if your goal is just to add line breaks and indentation so we can see what the template is doing, then you don't actually need to edit {{context}} at all, because that sort of presentation doesn't need to be at http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Template:context?action=edit. It could just as easily be at http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/User:CodeCat/Test?action=edit or http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wiktionary:Sandbox?action=edit&oldid=... or even http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/User:CodeCat/Test directly. As far as I can see, the only reason to make these changes to {{context}} without testing them is if you really think that they might break it, and you want to see that breakage if they do. And if so, then, well, yes, you think rightly, but that's hardly something to be proud of.

(We all make mistakes, sometimes big ones, and I really don't want to excoriate you for this, but I need you to acknowledge that this was a mistake, because if you really do still think that these edits were just peachy, then I need to nominate you for de-sysopping before you do further damage. And I really don't want to do that, because in general you're a great admin, but repeatedly breaking {{context}} for no reason really is a really big deal.)

I would like to be able to test the template out separately, but it's so intricate that it's very hard to do. {{context}} relies on label subtemplates, as well as several copies of itself with different names, all of which would need to be duplicated just to test it out. I honestly don't even really know where to start with it. I hoped that by making small incremental changes, it would be easier to spot mistakes as they appear and they would be quicker to find.

I see why you might think that, but it's not really true. I notice that you only modified {{context}} itself, not any label-templates and not any of the differently-named copies, which means that you could have performed the same test by creating a User:CodeCat/Test that still used those label-templates and differently-named copies.

And I maintain that it's not relevant, because your goal was to make no functionality changes, so you could have done this just as well at Wiktionary:The annotated 'context' or something. In fact, I think a regular project page, with code from {{context}} interspersed using <tt> or <pre> or something, would be a lot more useful and readable than {{context}}'s edit-page.