Template talk:WikiProject banner shell

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Template:WikiProject banner shell is permanently protected from editing because it is a heavily used or highly visible template. Substantial changes should first be proposed and discussed here on this page. If the proposal is uncontroversial or has been discussed and is supported by consensus, editors may use {{edit template-protected}} to notify an administrator or template editor to make the requested edit. Usually, any contributor may edit the template's documentation to add usage notes or categories.

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On 15 February 2023, it was proposed that this page be moved. The result of the discussion was not moved.

Archives

Archive 1a: {{WPB}} February 2007
Archive 2a: {{WPB}} February 2007
Archive 3a: {{WPB}} February – October 2007
Archive 4a: {{WPB}} May 2007 – March 2010
Archive 1: March – July 2007
Archive 2: February – August 2007
Archive 3: September 2007 – October 2008
Archive 4: October 2008 – August 2009
Archive 5: September 2009 – January 2021
Archive 6: December 2020 – April 2023
Archive 7: April 2023 – May 2023
Archive 8: May 2023 – July 2023
Archive 9: July 2023 – October 2023
Archive 10: October 2023 – February 2024
Archive 11: January 2024 –

This page has archives. Sections older than 60 days may be automatically archived by when more than 5 sections are present.

3 WikiProjects to merge

Could someone make the necessary changes to the to-be-parent WikiProject templates, and then I'll work on merging transclusions of all the children?

merge {{WikiProject Thomas}} into {{WikiProject Animation}} via |thomas= & |thomas-importance= (TfD)
merge {{WikiProject Open Access}} into {{WikiProject Open}} via |access= & |access-importance= (TfD)
merge {{WikiProject Bradford}} into {{WikiProject Yorkshire}} via |Bradford= (no importance param) (TfD)

~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 17:16, 23 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Gonnym: Are you working on this? —CX Zoom[he/him] ^{(let's talk • {C•X})} 19:59, 23 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I've done only the first (which also needed category renaming). Gonnym (talk) 08:06, 24 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I'll do the other two then. —CX Zoom[he/him] ^{(let's talk • {C•X})} 12:46, 24 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@CX Zoom: there's an issue with {{WikiProject Open}}, where {{WikiProject Open Access}}'s cats don't show on a post-merger page: see before & after. Can you fix? This is true for mainspace as well. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 18:32, 27 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The banner is marked as inactive. There are no categories for inactive banners. Do note though, that once you change that, you'll need to create dozens of new red categories. Gonnym (talk) 08:26, 28 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I see. {{WikiProject Open}} is correct as-is then, since Wikipedia:WikiProject Open/Open access task force is also tagged inactive. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 10:57, 28 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Liz: Category:Thomas articles by importance was correctly moved to Category:Thomas & Friends articles by importance, but then Category:Thomas & Friends articles by importance was deleted? ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 12:41, 27 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Done! Thanks all! ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 14:11, 28 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

User talk:UBX and tracking categories

User talk:UBX/Template:BeginningWiki, while in userspace, is one of the user pages that we should be tracking (and are tracking in other areas). Currently all of the banners are outside the shell but the tracking category isn't activated. Gonnym (talk) 12:45, 9 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Is this related to the valid_users setting in Module:WikiProject banner/config? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 19:13, 9 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, it's in the valid users list. Gonnym (talk) 08:04, 10 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Could request parameters be ignored & tracked on detected redirects?

Perhaps in Category:WikiProject request parameters on redirects for followup, so they don't pollute their respective request cats like Category:Wikipedia requested images? Parameters include |needs-image=, |needs-infobox=, |needs-attention=, |pref-photo=, |pref-photo-2=, |person-photo=, |needs-PD-image=, |screenshot=, |screenshots=, and many other variants. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 11:33, 20 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Support but make it more wider. Any non-article or draft should be included. There is no reason why categories, dab pages or templates (for example) need these also. Gonnym (talk) 11:42, 20 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Even better ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 11:44, 20 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Vital article

How did we end up with vital articles WikiProject as the header here? Moxy🍁 23:27, 1 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Is this what you're looking for: Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2023 May 17#Template:Vital article? —CX Zoom[he/him] ^{(let's talk • {C•X})} 01:50, 2 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Dame... I participated in that discussion..... can't believe the promotion of this one WikiProject above all other was the result of that discussion. I've been wondering why there's been such a decline in WikiProject participation over the past year or so..... I now see why = Illusory superiority.Moxy🍁 02:30, 2 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Unnecessary class ratings

This template currently places the talk pages of drafts, redirects and disambiguation pages with class ratings in the shell into Category:WikiProject banners with redundant class parameter. This typically occurs when rated articles are changed to drafts or redirects, and the class ratings are not removed. It would be helpful to have these instances be placed into their own maintenance category, like Category:WikiProject banners with unnecessary class ratings, where they can be more efficiently fixed with AWB or a bot. Thanks.— TAnthony^Talk 16:17, 16 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

It's the same thing. The bot should remove the class from all instances in that category. The fact that doesn't is just an error. Gonnym (talk) 16:37, 16 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Is this something that's being addressed? The category in consistently full of hundreds of redirects.— TAnthony^Talk 16:50, 16 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I've asked once or twice for it to be fixed, but nothing was done as far as I can tell. Gonnym (talk) 16:50, 16 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Here is one discussion I found Template talk:WikiProject banner shell/Archive 12#December update. Gonnym (talk) 16:55, 16 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Pinging @Kanashimi to this. Gonnym (talk) 08:38, 22 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

This category seems to be getting cleaned up, and I'm not sure which pages have what problem. Would it be possible to pinpoint which pages have problems and leave them unfixed? Kanashimi (talk) 00:35, 23 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah I went through and fixed over 1000 pages lol. I can revert as many as you need, but there are two items currently in there: Talk:Bob Humphreys (American football) and Talk:Principal Doctrines. Thanks! — TAnthony^Talk 01:14, 23 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Kanashimi any page you see in this category has a class rating and they shouldn't. Gonnym (talk) 15:38, 23 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I'm a bit skeptical about the use of tidying these up. A redundant class parameter does not cause any problems, it just gets ignored. So what is the actual benefit of removing these? We have had some issues caused by this task. Quite often an article which is redirected gets reverted shortly after. If the class parameter is removed in the meantime, then that article becomes unassessed, which adds to the backlog. So please tell me why we are doing this? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:58, 23 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

That makes sense, but if we think removing the unnecessary parameters causes more issues than it's worth, then there's no need to track it with a maintenance category that will just get bigger and bigger, forever. Thirty-one more items have populated the category since yesterday, and I believe the previously mentioned 1000+ only took about a week to accumulate.— TAnthony^Talk 15:20, 23 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I would add, I believe the primary function of Category:WikiProject banners with redundant class parameter was to catch instances of class ratings in individual WP banners that were redundant of the rating in the shell. It's sort of weird that redirects with unnecessary ratings are placed in this category as well.— TAnthony^Talk 15:27, 23 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The bot isn't instantaneous. At best it runs once a day, usually longer. If the page gets reverted then reverting the talk page is exactly one click. Gonnym (talk) 15:36, 23 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Project-independent assessments in the PageAssessments extension

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T395124

Now that we have project-independent quality assessments, should the banner shell call mw:Extension:PageAssessments in the same manner as all the individual banners? Module:WikiProject banner calls the following function:

page_assessment(project, class, importance)

which is defined as:

local page_assessment = function(project, class, importance) -- add PageAssessments parser function
	local assessment = table.concat({project, class or '', importance or ''},'|')
	frame:preprocess('{{#assessment:' .. assessment .. '}}')
end

Should the shell also have something similar, albeit with project hardcoded to 'Project-independent assessment' and importance as ''? Currently, parsing the database requires API users to specify a project to get a class assessment, which is troublesome. See for instance this API call requesting the class of the article Apple. Programmatic access to article class first requires deciding which of the projects to use and then using that project's class, even though the article's class is specified at Talk:Apple in the banner shell. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dan Leonard (talk • contribs) 21:31, 21 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

No harm in doing this, if it would be useful. "Project-independent assessment" seems a bit long. What happens if we just leave the project blank? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:59, 23 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I have just tested this and if the project is left blank the assessment is just ignored. Would it be worth asking for this to be changed? Or shall we just use "PIQA" in place of the project? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 13:05, 23 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

We get 128 characters so I'm opposed to use of an acronym. I think it’s ambiguous for future users of the API over spelling it out, and including "quality" might be a misnomer if we start using the importance parameter or if we roll vital articles into the system. Leaving it blank might be an even better option if the folks working on phab:T395124 implement special handling for this use case. Dan Leonard (talk • contribs) 15:07, 23 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]