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Adding dates to assessment templates

Hi, Not having managed to find this page on my own, I started a discussion at Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)#Adding_dates_to_assessment_templates - please feel free to participate there or move the discussion here, whichever suits best.dramatic (talk) 09:13, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

Interesting idea. I've posted an example of what I think you may be asking for. Is this correct? (This is on Template:WikiProject New Zealand/sandbox, but is not yet in a state to be deployed.)

• I see you have been given other suggestions and pointers on the village pump discussion. Perhaps you could try these and let us know if you still feel a template solution is warranted.
• For banner templates which assess quality and importance, would you propose having a separate date for each assessment or a combined date? If the latter, does it make sense to have it on the quality assessment row and not on the importance row?
• An alternative solution would be to use a separate row in the table to display this. This could be achieved by adding a "note" to the banner. (See example below.)
• At this stage we would probably look at adding this to the project banner you are working with. It is only if many projects were interested that we would start thinking about adding it to the meta-template.

— Martin (MSGJ · talk) 19:50, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for putting some thought into this martin. Yes, it is pretty much what I was thinking of. I think that quality is the significant one here, as article quality changes significantly over time, whereas the importance of an article to a project seldom changes. While it would be great to have it on WPNZ, since I've been visiting unassessed articles, it is all the other projects I'm seeing the no-longer-appropriate ratings on (With WPBIO probably being the most common instance). I'll go and look at the other responses now. dramatic (talk) 02:10, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

What do I need to do to get a task force quality template running?

Several WikiProjects have taskforces. I would like to add such taskforces to Wikipedia:WikiProject Sociology (Template:WikiProject Sociology), starting with the social movements task force, but I cannot find a guide on how to do so, and the code in existing templates with that functionality is too complex for me (Template:WPMILHIST or Template:AfricaProject). I'd appreciate your help! --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 17:04, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

See Template:WPBannerMeta#Task forces –xeno^talk 18:36, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. How can I get a task force assessment statitics to display (like here)? The project list is here. Also - do I need to create the categories listed at Template:WikiProject Sociology? I don't think I want to reassess the articles for the taskforce, I just want them to have a category and to enable the task force stat list as mentioned above (like MILHIST does). --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 20:46, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

Just guessing here, but you probably need to create and fill the requisite categories, the toplevel quality (Social movements articles by quality) and importance categories probably need Category:Wikipedia 1.0 assessments and then add {{Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Social movement articles by quality statistics}} somewhere. (You could also copy what milhist has done if you want it to be a malleable template that accepts the parameters for the different task forces) –xeno^talk 20:51, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

I've created the top level category. I am not sure how to activate the other template to generate those nice quality stats... hopefully somebody can offer suggestions on that. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 22:44, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

I believe you need to wait for the bot to run ... once every 24 hours I guess? You also need to add TF_1_QUALITY=yes , I think... And create those cats, and so on. Best place to ask for more help on this would be Template talk:WPBannerMeta, where the WPBM vets hang out... –xeno^talk 23:11, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

I asked there - thanks. I added the TF_1_QUALITY=yes - don't recalling seeing it in the previous guide. So far, no visible changes, but there may be delayed due to the bot you mention or a need for a simple cache purge. I'll check on this tomorrow :) Thanks, --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 23:27, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

It may have something to do with the custom class mask in use. I'm sure the WPBM vets can help, in any case. –xeno^talk 23:30, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

Moved from WP:VPT

You need to set the ASSESSMENT_CAT parameter, which I have now done. I've also added prompts to the custom class mask for all the categories which need creating. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 05:38, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

Thanks - now, how can I get a task force assessment statitics to display (like here)? The project list is here? This is not working for me. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 19:12, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

You haven't yet created the categories required - these are shown on Template:WikiProject Sociology/class. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 07:12, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

A minor point occured to me. Is there any reason why {{{TF n_ASSESSMENT_CAT}}} shouldn't default to "{{{TF n_NAME}}} articles"? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 10:27, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

This has now been  Done — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:31, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

Sixteen task forces?

I am drafting in my sandbox to try and add the Roald Dahl task force to WikiProject Novels. However, this project already has fifteen task forces. Is there a way to add any more? strdst_grl (call me Stardust) 08:47, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

You will need to add another taskforce hook, which will allow another 10. (Have a look at how Template:ChristianityWikiProject does it.) — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 10:22, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

Template:WikiProject Amiga

In the above template, and probably several other TFs of WPComputing [1], the way the QS is set for the TFs and for the qualimpintersect is causing the template to categorize certain pages into two different WPComputing quality categories at the same time. See the bottom of Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Amiga, the page is both in the NA-Class and Project-Class of Computing articles. Obviously, this double-classification is not preferred. Does someone know how to clean up the WPAmiga template, and the others to place the pages into the categories defined by Template:WikiProject Computing/class for its project and sub-projects? It would be better if the TFs had matching qual cats to the main project. Thanks, --Funandtrvl (talk) 15:04, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

 Fixed [2] ? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 15:21, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

Terrific, thx for catching that! --Funandtrvl (talk) 15:29, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

category parameter

Just wondering if we can simplify this parameter and make it more consistent over the subtemplates. A previous discussion resulted in |category= (i.e. blank) and |category=yes not opting-out of categories. I've only just found at that this change wasn't copied over to the hooks. But I'm thinking the whole system is more complicated than it needs to be. We could decide only to accept |category=no to prevent categorisation. This would be easier to understand than all these ¬ chains perhaps. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 13:04, 18 June 2010 (UTC)

and ...

BANNER_NAME could default to "Template:WikiProject {{{PROJECT}}}" (or "Template:{{{PROJECT NAME}}}") and become an optional parameter. —Preceding unsigned comment added by MSGJ (talk • contribs)

 Done — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:54, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

Inherited importance

For your information, I have updated the /taskforces hook to support a new feature for task forces to inherit importance from the main project if no specific importance has been assigned. There are more changes planned (see Template talk:WPBannerMeta/hooks/taskforces). If there are any problems (hopefully not!) and I am not online to deal with them, please revert this and this. Thanks — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 14:35, 18 June 2010 (UTC)

Help wanted on Template:BM-related

The WP:GLAM/BM task force is currently using this banner to track quality data to help drive the workspace page. This is not a project in its own right but I was wondering if the standard meta banner could be adopted without letting the tracking break? Fæ (talk) 12:50, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

 Done. Let me know if that looks okay. The only limitation is that it is not currently possible to remove the word "WikiProject" from the nested title. This is probably something we should look at changing though, because there are other banners with this problem. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 13:07, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

Wow, that was quick. Thanks for your help wizard Martin. Fæ (talk) 13:10, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

:) — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 13:12, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

I propose to add a {{{PROJECT NAME}}} parameter, which would default to WikiProject {{{PROJECT}}}. Thoughts? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 13:12, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

Code is in the sandbox now. Any objections? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 09:49, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

No objections. Code looks fine. -- WOSlinker (talk) 09:57, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

TL;DR – looks good. There was some related discussion at WT:GLAM/BM#{{BM-related}} upgraded WRT possible plans for future project status but nothing that was in conflict with the meta template usage. Fæ (talk) 10:26, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

Okay, now implemented. I'll update BM-related now and this might allow some others to be converted, like {{WP1.0}}. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 21:48, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

• Hmm, we seem to have an error on Template:WP conlangs. Not sure what's going on there. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 07:28, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

   Fixed. I had forgotten to pass the new parameter from /templatepage. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:34, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

Help wanted to try a new article rating method

WikiProject United States Public Policy is testing out a rating system where ratings can be assigned using a more detailed numerical scale, which then can be translated into the standard 1.0 assessment classes. The system is described here. I want to make version of the project's banner that can work like a normal banner, taking the normal class parameters, but can also be used with the detailed rating as parameters, and then template automatically calculates what the corresponding class is and displays that. I'm not sure how to get started with it, so any help from a template guru would be great.--Sross (Public Policy) (talk) 14:16, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

Certainly possible, but may be complicated to set up. It would be much easier if the class depended only on the total score, rather than having to keep track of numerous separate factors. How would you anticipate using the template - something like the following? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 14:31, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

{{WikiProject United States Public Policy|sourcing=3|npov=2|comprehensiveness=2|...}}

Yes, exactly. Unfortunately, I don't think it's feasible to translate between class and total score, because a bad score in one area can pretty much prevent an article from being above a certain class. Like no matter how good the rest of the scores are, if an article doesn't cite any sources, it's not going above Start-class.--Sross (Public Policy) (talk) 14:36, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

It sounds like you are asking for something like a modified version of the B-class checklist except that, (1) it determines every class not just B-class and (2) it uses grades rather than just pass/fail. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 14:41, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, something like that seems about right. And then manually specified classes would preempt the results of the detailed scoring.--Sross (Public Policy) (talk) 14:49, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

Okay then. I suggest you carry on discussing it and then come back when you know exactly what you want. One thing: you cannot do GA and FA-class in this way since these are Wikipedia-wide assessments and WikiProjects can't impose their own criteria on these. You are free to use stub/start/c/b/a however you wish though. 14:54, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

About GA and FA, of course. What I had in mind was that if the score what corresponds to the GA and FA criteria, the template would still assign a rating of B, but also display a note that the article may make a good candidate for GA or FA. If you implement the current logic here, I'm sure I could make whatever adjustment might be necessary as the scheme changes. Thanks for you help, by the way! I really appreciate it.--Sross (Public Policy) (talk) 15:07, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

I think I'm making progress; I created a parser expression for translating all the scores into standard ratings. Now I need to figure out how to integrate it into the WPBannerMeta framework.--Sross (Public Policy) (talk) 19:33, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

Looks good. I've moved your code to Template:WikiProject United States Public Policy/class. You can use Template:WikiProject United States Public Policy/sandbox to experiment with the code until it's working properly. If you look at my recent edits you should get an idea of what you need to do next. I'll be busy most of the weekend but will help out when I can. Have fun — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 09:06, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

A little more progress now... I took the next steps from your edits, and now the sandbox will display the proper class when the new parameters are put in (and inputting class directly takes precedence if it's there, so that's great). I'm flummoxed by how the bchecklist hook works. I've been playing around starting from the bchecklist code at Template:WPBannerMeta/hooks/numericalratings, but I haven't figured out how to make it display the checklist details (which it ought to do any time there are any of the b1-b6 parameters present).--Sross (Public Policy) (talk) 13:41, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

How's it looking now? There are a couple of examples on /testcases. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 22:06, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

Strange category

{{WikiProject Chess}} is in redlinked Category:Unassessed chess articles of ¬-importance. Most, if not all, the talk pages that transclude that template are in something similar - see Category:FA-Class chess articles of ¬-importance, Category:GA-Class chess articles of ¬-importance, Category:B-Class chess articles of ¬-importance, etc. I'm guessing that they should be in Category:B-Class chess articles of Mid-importance, or similar. What causes this, what should be done to fix it? --Redrose64 (talk) 20:46, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

I've fixed it with this edit -- WOSlinker (talk) 20:53, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Ancient Egypt broken banner

Our banner for Wikiproject Ancient Egypt, Template:WikiProject Ancient Egypt, is giving us crap for an unclear reason. It displays all B ranked articles as C ranked. For example, see Talk:Ahhotep_I. I really know nothing about editing templates, but it was suggested that we ask over here for help. Thanatosimii (talk) 02:38, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

It was due to the banner including the B-Class checklist parameters. I've removed them with this edit and now the banner shows the B class on that page. -- WOSlinker (talk) 06:58, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

Christianity project banner

I am considering updating the Template:WikiProject Christianity so that it can indicate, and categorize, the various articles which are being used for the various portals associated with Christianity. Those portals include the Christianity, Anglicanism, Baptist, Bible, Book of Mormon, Calvinism, Catholicism, Christadelphian, Christian metal, Christian music, Christianity in China, Christmas, Creationism, Crusades, Eastern Christianity, Latter-day Saints, Lutheranism, Messianic Judaism, Narnia, Oriental Orthodoxy, Pope, Saints, Seventh-day Adventist Church, and Vatican City portals. I am personally at a loss regarding how to make such substantive changes to the banner to accomodate all such portals. Any assistance would be very, very greatly appreciated. John Carter (talk) 21:08, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

There are some portal features in {{WikiProject Comics}}, {{WikiProject Aviation}} and {{WikiProject China}}. Would any of them work as a starting point which could then be customised further to meet your needs? -- WOSlinker (talk) 22:00, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

file vs. image, still both categories out there, some within the same project

I'm not quite sure how this ended up, but is the {{class mask}} for FQS now defaulting to "File-Class", instead of "Image-Class", or are both still implementing, with a yes/no parameter required? Just wondering, because several projects have both categories out there, like: Category:File-Class rail transport articles and Category:Image-Class rail transport articles. I'm wondering if I should redirect the Image cat to the File cat, or does the {{WikiProject Trains/class}} page (which is protected) need to be corrected instead? Thanks, --Funandtrvl (talk) 00:25, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

That is (just guessing) most likely caused by the images int he later category still calling it "images" and only showing File superficially on the front-end, compared to former category actually using "file", Although that probably should get fixed, it would caused a lot of empty categories I would be guessing, and a far bit of load changing all those categories around. Peachey88 ^{(T · C)} 01:59, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

See WP:RIF/WT:RIF. Those are the last few stragglers... –xeno^talk 02:35, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

Yes, you're right. Since July the class mask is defaulting to File-class. I regard this sluggish movement of pages between categories as a bug. The majority moved over fairly quickly, but I don't think the job queue can be blamed for the others taking so long. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 19:53, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

Marvelous, I didn't realise this was finally being done. :) I was only aware of the "no concensus" outcome of the initial CfD. PC78 (talk) 12:23, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

Case sensitivity of parameter names

I was just trying to assign an article a wikiproject class. I have done this several times and would have thought it could be a fairly intuitive exercise, having read the criteria for assigning articles. But to get the 4 permutations of upper and lower cases of "Class" and the letter signifying the value right took me... yees, you guesssed it, 4 goes. And then there was getting the order of the quality and importance right to please the templates.

I presume there's a master template for the plethora of minor wikiproject categorization templates (many unfilled, perhaps not helped by this tediousness). Wouldn't some template wiz feel great about disposing of unnecessary case (and order) sensitivities to help move this along a bit smoother? Trev M  ~  12:38, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

Suggest this at Template talk:WPBannerMeta. –xeno^talk 17:51, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

Always good to get a bit nearer to the business end of things – thanks Xeno.

So, here's that thead copied to here. Any thoughts? Trev M  ~  19:24, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

This can't be done at WPBannerMeta. It needs to be done at all the individual project banners. For example replacing

|class={{{class|}}}

with

|class={{{class|{{{Class|}}}}}}

would then mean that it works with class= and Class= . -- WOSlinker (talk) 19:31, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

I notice the words "getting the order of the quality and importance right to please the templates" in your original post. I'd like to mention that since |class= and |importance= are named parameters, the order in which they are given is completely immaterial (see here).

What matters is that both the spelling and capitalisation of the parameter names should be exactly as per the template's documentation. Further, the same named parameter cannot occur twice: for example, if you put

{{WikiProject Tulips |class=c |importance=low |class= }}

the second |class= overrides the first, so the talk page goes in the "unassessed tulips articles" category.

Most, if not all, project banners are completely tolerant about the capitalisation of parameter values; so |class=c is treated as if it were |class=C; but I don't know of any that would allow |Class=C. There seems to be a convention that parameter names are almost always entirely lowercase, with the capitalised form only used for proper names: for example, {{WikiProject Trains}} has |Scotland=, but not |scotland=. --Redrose64 (talk) 21:02, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

I don't think this is an issue; template parameters are generally assumed to be lower-case. Changing them to recognize upper-case and lower-case (i.e., class= versus Class=) has no purpose, in my opinion. Intelligentsium 00:15, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

The parameter is lower case but the value is not. It's correct to have class=C. I also don't think it's an issue but perhaps some WikiProjects have an issue like the above Scotland= example WikiProject Trains. Regards, SunCreator ^(talk) 00:26, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

It is only an issue at WP banner templates that use the upper case for parameters, and don't remember to double-code it to take both uc and lc characters. Maybe this could be pointed out in the TF setup instructions, somewhere? --Funandtrvl (talk) 20:19, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

The original poster is not complaining about case-sensitivity of parameter values, but of parameter names. Most WP banners have at least five parameters - the standard-ish ones being |category=, |class=, |importance=, |listas=, |small=; and I don't know of any banner templates that are coded to allow variants on these five such as |Class=.

On the other hand, the values of these five are normally passed through to {{WPBannerMeta}} completely unaltered, which handles all five in a largely case-insensitive manner; so |class=c is identical in effect to |class=C whatever the banner. --Redrose64 (talk) 20:35, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

Open tasks

Would it be possible to add an "open tasks" parameter, so that instead of just saying that there will be a list of open tasks, it might say something like "a list of open tasks"? AliveFreeHappy (talk) 00:43, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

That should be possible. Just to be clear, are we talking about the /todolist hook? Could you give some context like tellings us which project's banner or page you would like to change? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:33, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

Actually that wasn't the hook I'm talking about - that seems to be a to-do list for the page the banner is on. I was thinking more of the phrase see a list of open tasks. that appears in the banner and replace it with see a list of open tasks. for projects, like WikiProject Firearms, that have a to-do list that applies to the project, not the article. AliveFreeHappy (talk) 16:28, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

I've made a change in Template:WikiProject Firearms/sandbox. If you like it, you can open it over to live. -- WOSlinker (talk) 22:19, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

Sweet. Do I just cut/paste it from the sandbox to the existing template then? AliveFreeHappy (talk) 22:26, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

WP:TEMPTEST is a good one to read. --Redrose64 (talk) 22:31, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

Yes, that's all that needed doing. I've done it now though. -- WOSlinker (talk) 06:57, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, I hadn't had the chance to do it yet. Looks nice. AliveFreeHappy (talk) 16:07, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

Task force quantity

• User talk:Black Falcon#Hi : )
• User talk:Happy-melon#Poke
• User talk:Xeno#Coding question
• User talk:MSGJ#Question

I'd like to ask:

a.) If anyone knows why the template is limited to only 10 task forces (or if that was just an arbitrary choice)

b.) Would someone be willing to change it to 20, or even better, come up with a dynamic way to do this that doesn't have a coded upper thresh hold.

Any help, advice, ideas would be welcome. - jc37 22:45, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

10 was fairly arbitrary, but given how easy it is to add further multiples of 10, don't see much benefit in increasing it. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 11:57, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

That may be because you're a fairly proficient coder : )

Not everyone is.

Also, I would guess that changing these to 20 would encompass most current WikiProjects' workgroups/taskforces. And when they need more, then multiples of 20 would be possible.

Is there any particular reason to not make the change? - jc37 01:56, 5 October 2010 (UTC)

Any number that we chose would be equally arbitrary. At least 10 is consistent with the number of notes on the notes hook, and actually that is enough for the majority of projects. Moving to 20 might help yours (but not really because that is sorted now) but there are still several with much larger numbers that could never be supported by one hook: {{WikiProject Christianity}} has 36; {{WikiProject Japan}} has 32; {{WikiProject Australia}} has 40. If you ever need help with the template, you can always post here and someone will sort it for you. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 09:03, 5 October 2010 (UTC)

I realise that there are others with more. Military history was the one I was looking at.

And wouldn't multiples of 20 just be easier for them as well? I looked at how some projects are coding this, and to say it's complex doesn't begin to cover it. And from what I can tell (though I'll admit to not being an expert at template coding), not everyone is coding them using your hooks method. So perhaps going to 20 might help with that as well. (And I would guess that anything we do to reduce the well-meaning usage of parser functions would be a plus too?)

So anyway, you've said that 10 was arbitrary, so if I or someone else were to boldly change it to 20, that wouldn't break anything. Am I understanding correctly? - jc37 17:43, 5 October 2010 (UTC)

If it gets upped to twenty, then twenty sets of parameters are needed which bloats the meta template - as opposed to simply tacking on a next set of ten via a hook. Perhaps a better solution would be to provide a "for dummies" instruction manual on how to properly use hooks? –xeno^talk 17:52, 5 October 2010 (UTC)

Formatting problems with {{WikiProject Multi-sport events}}

{{WikiProject Multi-sport events}} works fine, except for one thing: Even though the |MAIN_CAT parameter is defined by Category:WikiProject Multi-sport events articles, all articles fall instead under Category:WikiProject Multi-sport events, which is the parent category. ANGCHENRUI ^Talk♨ 05:50, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

Of course, you know something must be wrong with the template if all the articles tagged under it are listed in Category:WikiProject banners with formatting errors. I'm not sure if there is only one problem, the one I stated above. ANGCHENRUI ^Talk♨ 05:51, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

It seems to be working fine now? The categories may take some hours/days to update themselves. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 08:55, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

Alright, everything's good now. Thanks, ANGCHENRUI ^Talk♨ 05:36, 11 October 2010 (UTC)

Requesting help - quality assessment of Template:WikiProject Asia not working

God help me, I can't figure out where I went wrong right away, but I clearly did somewhere. If someone can make the class assessment appear and function in the above banner, it would be very greatly appreciated. Thank you. John Carter (talk) 16:04, 11 October 2010 (UTC)

See the second box down, first bullet 'The QUALITY_SCALE parameter is set to "subpage" but there is no custom class mask held at /class. Therefore the quality scale has been switched off.'. Either create that page, or amend |QUALITY_SCALE= to either "standard" or "extended". --Redrose64 (talk) 16:36, 11 October 2010 (UTC)

Yep, that did it. Egregious fawning thanks are generally looked down upon, understandably, even when they are deserved, so I hope a "thank you" is received well. John Carter (talk) 16:45, 11 October 2010 (UTC)

Problems with this template

It has been brought to my attention that there are a number of problems with the use of the this template on WikiProject banners. I am going to try and fix some of these items myself but I am not the greatest wikicoder out there so any help would be appreciated.

1. We need to fix the problems on the todo list
2. This template needs to be modified to allow for more task forces than five. Several project have a lot of task forces and this template should allow for that.
3. Several projects use custom fields and it is believed that using this template means they cannot use their custom fields. I do not believe that to be the case so if anyone can give me an example of a project that does I would appreciate it. --Kumioko (talk) 00:53, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

1. I have removed the to-do list for now. Those items were not "problems" as such but ideas for future development, mainly by Happy-melon quite some time ago.
2. It is easy to support more than 5 taskforces. See #Task force quantity for some more background on this.
3. Of course, any custom fields can be supported. Most project banners have been adapted to suit their own needs.

— Martin (MSGJ · talk) 09:27, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, thats what I thought. One project tried to tell me that they couldnt use this template because they had custom fields. After looking at Template:WikiProject Canada though I see that was absurd. One last question. Is it possible to display the project links in line like this Project 1, Project 2, Project 3, etc rather than the way they are displayed in most projects?--Kumioko (talk) 13:39, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, I don't understand. Could you rephrase that question? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 15:09, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

No problem but I think it will make more sense if you see what I am talking about. If you take a look at Talk:U.S. Route 30 and expand the Banner for WikiProject U.S. Roads you will see that they use an inline approach rather than stacking the projects like Template:WikiProject Canada. I was wondering if this template allows for that? Its no big deal really, im not tryin to make them convert Im just wondering. --Kumioko (talk) 15:45, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

That functionality could be supported. It would be best to create it as a subpage template and then inserted into the banner via a hook parameter. There isn't a hook parameter in exactly the same location at present but one could be added. -- WOSlinker (talk) 16:02, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Ah, I see what you mean now. The inline display of taskforces/sub-projects is not an approach which has been followed by any other project so far. A more common method is to put the taskforces into a collapsible box (see Template:WikiProject Philosophy for an example of this). If the project wanted to retain the current structure then it would be a little more complicated but I'm sure we could rig something up. You'll notice that from time to time I have worked on a WPBM-version of the roads template. It's not finished yet as I got sidetracked, but all of the notes/alerts are ready I think. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 16:06, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

Thanks fro clarifying. I appreciate it. They mentioned that the banner didnt support their needs and I found that suspiciously unlikely and thought I would ask. --Kumioko (talk) 17:23, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

2 main categories?

How do I get a banner to transclude two main categories? I am using this code. It works on the talk pages, but it is returning the "Category not found" message on the template:

|MAIN_CAT = All New York City public transportation articles{{)!}}{{)!}} {{!(}}{{!(}}Category:New York City public transportation articles not covered by another WikiProject

— Train2104 (talk • contribs • count) 23:52, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

Just put the first in MAIN_CAT and then after the WPBannerMeta template put the following:

{{WPBannerMeta/hooks/cats
 |category={{{category|¬}}}
 |BANNER_NAME = {{subst:FULLPAGENAME}}
 |cat 1=yes
  |CAT_1      = New York City public transportation articles not covered by another WikiProject
}}

WOSlinker (talk) 07:48, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

I've changed it in Template:WikiProject New York City Public Transportation for you. -- WOSlinker (talk) 07:52, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

Is there a way to line up things?

Is there a way to line things up using this template so they dont look so messy. For example. On {{WikiProject United States/sandbox}} the portals are all aligned to the right making the banner look rather messy. I would like to align the portals to the left so they all start at the same point on the column. --Kumioko (talk) 15:14, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

Do you know of another banner where the portal boxes are left-aligned? --Redrose64 (talk) 20:19, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

No I dont unfortunately. --Kumioko (talk) 20:26, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

{{WPBannerMeta}} calls {{WPBannerMeta/core}} which calls {{portal}}, where the default is right-aligned. It is possible to left-align portal boxes, {{portal|Trains|left=yes}} produces

but the parameter is undocumented, so may be unreliable or deprecated; further, there is presently no way of passing that through from a project banner that uses standard portal techniques.

Something that can give a neater effect, and still be right-aligned, is to combine the portals into a single box: {{WikiProject Trains}} uses a special subtemplate for this, {{TrainsWikiProject/portalbox}}; you can see the effect at Talk:Royal Oak tube station which has three portals. --Redrose64 (talk) 21:34, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

Thats great thanks. --Kumioko (talk) 21:41, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

Could you take a look at {{WikiProject United States/sandbox}}. I dont see a way to invoke the portal align left switch. --Kumioko (talk) 21:49, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

There isn't one. To pass |left=yes into {{portal}} needs modifications to both {{WPBannerMeta/core}} and {{WPBannerMeta}} which is one of the reasons that {{WikiProject Trains}} ignores the standard portal methods (such as the |PORTAL= parameter of the {{WPBannerMeta}} template, and the {{portal}} template itself) completely. If you examine {{WikiProject Trains}}, you'll see that it handles the portals by squeezing {{TrainsWikiProject/portalbox}} into the |MAIN_TEXT= parameter of {{WPBannerMeta}}. --Redrose64 (talk) 22:33, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

You can also add the call to {{portal}} to the TF_n_TEXT parameter instead. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 09:57, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

Idea: {{portal box}} - how suitable is this? Will check later. --Redrose64 (talk) 00:09, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

Thats a good idea but ideally I would like the portal to be inline with the wikiproject it goes with. I would just prefer it was left aligned instead of right aligned. --Kumioko (talk) 01:31, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

Testcases page using shell problem

Hi - on the testcases pg for WPUSA, in the example using the WPBS, see: [3], just wondering why the box containing "This WikiProject banner uses..." is not collapsing into the shell? It used to before. --Funandtrvl (talk) 16:50, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

Fixed by adding category=no to suppress the extra box. -- WOSlinker (talk) 17:35, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

Auto importance and class for Category and Template pages

I would like to suggest that this template auto populate the class and importance of categories and templates. The class for these should always be either Category or template as applicable but some pages have them as Stub, start, ? etc.

The importance should also be set as NA. There is no need to set the importance to these as Low, mid, high or top but some currently have this. --Kumioko (talk) 17:26, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

It already does set the class & importance automatically but it can be overridden by setting the parameters when adding the banners to the talk page. -- WOSlinker (talk) 17:32, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

(edit conflict)The present behaviour depends on two things, one being the way that the banner is set up, the other is the way that it is used.

Taking usage first, if the banner is placed on a category/template talk page, the only way that it will show as start/stub/etc. is if the banner is explicitly given |class=stub etc.; and the only way that it will show importance as low/mid/etc. is if the banner is explicitly given |importance=low etc. If these parameters are omitted, then the class and importance are set automatically, to Category-class/NA-importance or Template-class/NA-importance.

Considering the set-up: if the banner passes |QUALITY_SCALE=standard, or omits that parameter, then Category-class and Template-class are disabled, and use of |class=cat will result in NA-class, as will the omission of |class= when the banner is placed on a category talk page. --Redrose64 (talk) 17:39, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

Redirect class articles become NA class

For some reason the Category:Redirect-Class Dacia articles that we created end up in Category:NA-Class Dacia articles. Unless we did something wrong, looks like a bug. We are using {{WikiProject Dacia}} which is derived from WPBannerMeta --Codrinb (talk) 19:53, 27 December 2010 (UTC)

I think I fixed it for ya. I added a custom class mask and a couple of other things. Let me know if you still need some help. --Kumioko (talk) 20:27, 27 December 2010 (UTC)

Thanks a lot! --Codrin.B (talk) 04:28, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

Portal switch question

Is there a way to add the "yesno" template to this code for the portal switch on {{WikiProject United States}}, so that parameters with "DC=Yes" or "District of Columbia=Yes", which use the upper case "Yes", will also take on the switch from the USA portal to the Washington, D.C. portal? The template is only recognizing the switch when the lower case "yes" is used, and I'm not familiar enough with the coding needed to do the job. Thanks.

|PORTAL = {{#ifeq:{{{District of Columbia|{{{DC|}}}}}}|yes|Washington, D.C.|United States}}

--Funandtrvl (talk) 17:57, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

|PORTAL = {{#ifeq:{{lc:{{{District of Columbia|{{{DC|}}}}}}}}|yes|Washington, D.C.|United States}}

--Redrose64 (talk) 18:33, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

Thank you!! It worked!! Is there a page on WP or m: that explains how to use the "lc:" function? --Funandtrvl (talk) 18:41, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

Why not just |PORTAL = {{yesno|{{{District of Columbia|{{{DC|}}}}}}|yes=Washington, D.C.|def=United States|no=United States}}? Happy‑melon 18:45, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, is there a difference between the results in using one or the other templates, or will there be an equal computational result? --Funandtrvl (talk) 18:48, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

Details of {{lc:}} are at WP:MAGIC#Formatting.

{{yesno}} will be "hungrier" than just using {{lc:}}, because it not only pushes the value concerned through {{lc:}}, but also performs some other checks. It treats "n" and "0" as equivalent to "no"; "y" and "1" as equivalent to "yes"; it also recognises blank values as equivalent to "no"; and other values as equivalent to "yes". These last two can be configured to be treated differently. It can then (as Happymelon demonstrated) be used to yield any two result strings, not just "yes" or "no". Finally, it handles the special character "¬" as a separate case. --Redrose64 (talk) 20:36, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

Thx for the explanation & the pointer to the help pg! This is probably way beyond my comprehension. :) --Funandtrvl (talk) 21:08, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

Other languages?

Can this be used on another language Wikipedia? I am hoping to use it on the Romanian Wikipedia, together with the assessment. If not, can anyone point me to what would it entail to translate/adapt this to another language? Thanks! --Codrin.B (talk) 22:15, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

Multiple portals

Is it possible to have two or more portals listed using this template? --Codrin.B (talk) 04:29, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

Yes; see, for example, the {{WikiProject Trains}} banner on Talk:London Paddington station. --Redrose64 (talk) 13:14, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

Taskforce portal

{{WikiProject Washington/sandbox}} - I can not get the Seattle Taskforce to show the Seattle portal link. Help? --AdmrBoltz 21:13, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

The portal for taskforces only works on the hooked version. I've updated the sandbox to use the hook. -- WOSlinker (talk) 21:38, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. I figured I was missing something. --AdmrBoltz 21:44, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

To-do list

Resolved

 – Redrose64 (talk) 21:48, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

In {{WPBannerMeta/hooks/article todolist}} why does the image on the left show as a link (File:Stock post message.svg) not the actual image? --Redrose64 (talk) 17:07, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

No idea. It seems to behave like that on every page not just that one. is showing as a link not an image. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 18:02, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

Further investigation shows it's not confined to English Wikipedia, nor Wikipedia in any language - but all WikiMedia projects such as Wikiversity. Have raised a thread at commons:Commons:Help desk#Non-displaying image, because they're hosting the image. --Redrose64 (talk) 18:36, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

They've fixed it on commons, and I've purged {{WPBannerMeta/hooks/article todolist}}. It should (slowly) roll out now. --Redrose64 (talk) 21:48, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

Sorting Seems To Be Broken, Again

I know that |listas= calls {{DEFAULTSORT}} and that in the absence of an explicit sort value a page will be sorted by the PAGENAME. Why, on the fourth page of Category:Biography articles without listas parameter, does Talk:Aaron Sangala follow Talk:Azzo Alidosi? JimCubb (talk) 19:37, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#categorically random categories. Looks like updateCollation is still running on enwiki.[4] ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 19:51, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

Hidden TOC

A problem at Talk:Boeing 707 was that the talk page table of contents appears hidden inside the comment box in the Template:WikiProject Aviation. I removed the level 2 header (==Foo==) on the comment subpage at Talk:Boeing 707/Comments and the toc now appears in the correct place. No idea of the cause but I just thought I would raise it here to see if it is a template issue, thanks. MilborneOne (talk) 19:09, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

Yes this is a common problem and the simplest way to fix it is exactly what you have done. It's a problem inherent with this system of transcluding /Comments pages because the TOC will display, by default, before the first heading on a page. The longterm solution is to stop using them altogether and it's about time I got round to implementing that! Any volunteers to help? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 19:18, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

• Dropping /Comments pages should be no real problem, but Good Article (/GA) review pages might be a different matter. -Fnlayson (talk) 21:58, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

How can I get a report of a specific project articles with incomplete B-class checklists?

Also asked there, after a while I was directed here... --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 16:32, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

I don't know if there's anything on the toolserver that'll help you with this, but as an alternative solution one could create a maintenance cat and add code to {{WikiProject Poland}} which would bucket all pages with the b1–b6 parameters set to "no" (or missing altogether, depending on what you mean by "incomplete") into it. It's the same principle used to populate this category. Hope this helps,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); April 14, 2011; 16:44 (UTC)

Could somebody who knows wikicode better than I implement it for WikiProject Poland? For our use we would like the list of articles which are class B or C and do not have the checklist at all, or it is not filled. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 18:45, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

Actually, come to think of it, it's not that difficult to implement. I've added the code to {{WikiProject Poland}}, and Category:WikiProject Poland articles with an incomplete B-Class checklist should start to populate soon (depending on the server lag). I left the cat red on purpose in case you want to rename it (if so, just change the cat name in the WP:POLAND's assessment banner code. The cat will include all C-Class articles, and all B-Class articles for which either b1, b2, b3, b4, b5, or b6 parameter are left unfilled. Will this work for you?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); April 14, 2011; 19:56 (UTC)

See Template_talk:WPBannerMeta/hooks#Checklist_tracking_categories. -- WOSlinker (talk) 20:28, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

Requested edit to WPBannerMeta/note

Please edit {{WPBannerMeta/note}} from

Code removed for readability

to

Code removed for readability

to remove the hyperlink from the note image (the only change is the addition of |link= to the end of the line containing Note icon). Thanks! — OwenBlacker (Talk) 00:01, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

I've moved your proposed code to Template:WPBannerMeta/note/sandbox (sandbox diff) to aid readability. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 11:32, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

Something similar was previously discussed in archive 8. The reason that it wasn't implemented at that time was the belief that non-public domain images need to be properly attributed and a link to the file description page is the only practical way to do this. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 11:39, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

One more item to get from the template

Thanks to those who helped implement the incomplete B-class category for WP:POLAND. We have one more question: can we get a list of articles that are assessed as stub but do not have a stub-template in the main body? --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 19:06, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

Sorry there is no way that a template can automatically detect whether a stub template is on a page. For that you would need to use toolserver or something similar. Or you could perhaps request a report at Wikipedia talk:Database reports. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 16:27, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

Proposal: IMAGE_NEEDED parameter

Folks, I'd like to resurrect this earlier discussion about formally adding an "image-needed" parameter: Template talk:WPBannerMeta/Archive 8#Support for an image-needed parameter.

I like MSGJ's proposal here:

• IMAGE = a yes/no parameter to trigger the image category code
• IMAGE_LOCATION = an optional location to pinpoint where a photograph may be found
• IMAGE_CAT = a default image category for this WikiProject if the IMAGE_LOCATION category does not yet exist
• IMAGE_DETAILS = extra text describing specifically what the requested image should include

We have learned from working on organizing image requests that it's critical to support a location parameter, and even more than one if possible (IMAGE_LOCATION_1, IMAGE_LOCATION_2, IMAGE_LOCATION_3, etc). Without that flexibility, image request categories quickly become flooded and useless (e.g. 5,700 articles currently in Category:Ireland articles needing images.

I don't personally think that the IMAGE_CAT "default category" feature is critical, but if it's easy to implement then by all means it seems like a good idea :-)

In response to a question in the earlier thread: it turns out that an IMAGE_DETAILS parameter really is useful. An article may already have several images, but if an editor feels it's important to find a specific image (e.g. in the case of an architect or artist, an image of the author's better-known works), then it helps a lot to be able to specify clearly in the banner what image has been requested. Otherwise, another well-meaning editor may come along, see that the article has images, and helpfully remove the image request notice.

Feedback solicited on this idea. Is this proposal plausible? I have done some template coding and can try to contribute a suggested patch, but it would probably be better for someone more familiar with the WPBannerMeta code to take a stab at it. —Tim Pierce (talk) 15:56, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

This would be a good idea and I'm glad someone is taking a stab at it. I can't remember why I didn't pursue this in 2009, but if I can be of assistance let me know. By the way, not sure why but traditionally we use lowercase for names of parameters which are simply passed to the meta, and uppercase for those containing the custom settings. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 17:04, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

Feedback: NEEDS-IMAGE

Following discussion in 2009 and revived last month, I've added support for a "needs-image" parameter in the sandbox, and would like to hear feedback before proposing to edit the template.

The relevant diffs are:

• to {{WPBannerMeta}}: diff
• to {{WPBannerMeta/core}}: diff

The new parameters are:

• needs-image - (passed in from the toplevel template) a yes/no trigger that adds an image request to the banner.
• image-location - (passed in from the toplevel template) a location where a suitable image might be found. e.g. image-location=Wisconsin adds the article to Category:Wikipedia requested photographs in Wisconsin.
• IMAGE_CATEGORY - specifies a default image category, e.g. Category:Ireland articles needing images. If the category specified by the image-location parameter does not yet exist, the photo will be put in this category instead.
• image-details - (passed in from the toplevel template) a description of what specific image is desired.

Example of how a WikiProject banner might implement these:

    {{WPBannerMeta
      |PROJECT = Flibbertigibbet
      |BANNER_NAME = Template:WikiProject Flibbertigibbet
      ...
      |needs-image={{{needs-image|}}}
      |image-location  = {{{image-location|}}}
      |image-details   = {{{image-details|}}}
      |IMAGE_CATEGORY  = Wikipedia requested photographs of flibbertigibbets
      ...
    }}

One thing I would like to fix is that I think image-location should not override IMAGE_CATEGORY. For non-geographical wikiprojects, e.g. Wikipedia:WikiProject Dogs, the default category would be something like Category:Wikipedia requested photographs of dog breeds. An article about a very specific breed of dog only found in one part of the world might add image-location, but that shouldn't take the article out of the master category. It's not clear to me how to fix this cleanly in the WPBannerMeta code -- I'm open to ideas. —Tim Pierce (talk) 05:05, 30 May 2011 (UTC)

Nice work. A few comments:

• The template uses attention rather than needs attention and infobox rather than needs infobox. Should the needs image parameter match this? Similarly the template uses CAT rather than CATEGORY for all other categories.
• Is the image-details actually used/useful? I've noticed that several banner templates use this construction but haven't really observed it being used much though. We should only code basic stuff; anything complicated or specific to few projects can be added by using a note.
• About always using the default category (as well as any image specific category), would this behaviour be always desirable? Or just sometimes?
• Additional categories could be added to the text parameter or at the end of the note code. But the proper category opt-out code should be used.

— Martin (MSGJ · talk) 10:03, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

Personally I would favour |needs-image= and |needs-infobox= over |image= and |infobox= because of the ambiguity of the latter - does |infobox=yes mean that it needs an infobox, or that it has an infobox? See, for example, Template:WikiProject UK geography/doc#Deprecated parameters. --Redrose64 (talk) 11:39, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

Well, the internal parameters used by the template are not necessarily related to the actual parameters which are fed into the template. For example Template:WikiProject Ireland currently uses the following syntax:

|infobox={{{needs-infobox|}}}

— Martin (MSGJ · talk) 11:53, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

Good questions. My thoughts:

• I used needs-image and IMAGE_CATEGORY for the sake of clarity. I realize that these parameters are not exposed to the end user; I don't really have strong feelings about the exact name of these parameters when and if they're ultimately implemented.
• We've found, with the {{image requested}} template (formerly {{reqphoto}}), that an image-details parameter really is useful, particularly for articles which already have one more more images. In such cases, the "details" parameter helps to clarify for other editors that there is an outstanding request for some specific image, and that the image request shouldn't be removed until that image has been supplied.
• The default-vs-specific category is a tricky question. I think it's important to allow image requests to be categorized both by subject and location (e.g. "image request of a train station" and "image requests in Germany"), and they shouldn't override each other. So perhaps the template should support both IMAGE_CAT and IMAGE_LOCATION, and each instance of a banner template could override these with "image-category" and "image-location" parameters.

—Tim Pierce (talk) 19:45, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

Okay, I can understand all these answers. But this is getting complicated and so we should perhaps reconsider adding it to the main template. How about putting all this functionality into a "hook" which could then be called via HOOK_NOTE? Then it is almost as easy to use and we don't have to worry about complicating the main template. Two different types of category might work - how about TOPIC_CATEGORY and LOCATION_CATEGORY? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 18:12, 4 June 2011 (UTC)

I've made a start on this, feel free to pitch in. Something else I thought about was a {{{type}}} parameter to allow for other types of images (e.g. maps). — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 21:03, 4 June 2011 (UTC)

That makes sense. I'll look at the hook code and see if I can understand it well enough to comment on it usefully. :-) —Tim Pierce (talk) 15:45, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

I've finished the coding, but haven't tested it yet. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 14:56, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

Is there a way to manually resize an Icon?

In {{WikiProject United States}} a couple of the WikiProject icons (namely library of congress and United States Government) have icons that are smaller than the others. I would like to manually resize them to make them slightly bigger and easier to read. Is this possible to do and if so how do I do that?--Kumioko (talk) 18:09, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

 Done Nevermind its fixed now thanks. --Kumioko (talk) 19:03, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

FM class

There was a recent discussion about creating a FM (Featured Media) class at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#A new class for Featured media. This has now been done. What is still being discussed is adding FM to the extended class list by default. Anyone with comments about this should make them over on the Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals) page rather than here though. -- WOSlinker (talk) 22:04, 4 June 2011 (UTC)

Are there any instructions as to how to enable {{FM-Class}} in individual WikiProject banners? Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 02:59, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

There are still a couple of key files that need to be modified before it will work properly. I added 2 to the discussion because I don't have the ability to edit protected templates. Once these are updated I think it will work. --Kumioko (talk) 03:09, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

Yes, Template:Class mask/doc contains this information, although it could perhaps be clearer. (Example.) I would argue against including it in the extended scale, until we see how widely this new class is adopted. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 11:37, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

Class issue

Template:WikiProject_Turtles/class is empty and the template uses the extended class set. However, if you put |class=fm into the banner it comes up as NA class. Is there anything that I need to do to fix this? Is there any way to include this as a standard class so we don't need to add fm to the custom class list project by project? cheers --Guerillero | My Talk 04:55, 8 June 2011 (UTC)--Guerillero | My Talk 04:52, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

Currently, the only way to use FM-class is to set up a custom class mask at the /class subpage. There was a suggestion above that this new class be included in the "extended scale" set but this has not been done yet. The problems with retrospectively adding a class to a set are:

• Suddenly there are a huge number of categories which need creating.
• In addition, every project using this set will get a big warning box on their banner template, telling them that a category needs to be created.
• You are imposing a class on many projects that may not necessarily want it.

— Martin (MSGJ · talk) 13:57, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

Where would it be best to get a consensus to add this to the extended list of classes --Guerillero | My Talk 19:40, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

We can still add it to the turtles project without adding it to the extended classes if you are interested in doing that. --Kumioko (talk) 20:00, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

Yes please. I would but I don't know all the needed formatting. --Guerillero | My Talk 21:09, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

• I think there should be a step-by-step guide somewhere that tells users how to use FM-Class, even if their banner does not use a custom class mask, to avoid a string of similar question popping up in the future. Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 23:10, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

Your right of course. I fixed the WPTurtles one so that should be working now. --Kumioko (talk) 23:52, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

Template:WikiProject Animation

Hi, I have worked at Template:WikiProject Animation myself many times before someone is protected by admin, including the 6 B-Class checklist like WikiProject Anime and manga and WikiProject Horror. Yes, I have worked at the WikiProject Animation banner too much, and added some work groups back in November though March since many of the Animation related WikiProjects have gone inactive like WikiProject American Animation, WikiProject Warner Bros. Animation and WikiProject Cartoon Network which went inactive, and I've converted into work groups of WP:ANIMATION. I am not really happy about the indefinite protection of the template, and I should have been an admin myself. Recently, I have added the A-Class parameter, and added new work groups including Cartoon Network and Hanna-Barbera. I have a sandbox at my user page which I had been working myself to ensure it is working correctly. JJ98 (Talk) 23:16, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

Template:WikiProject Essex

WikiProject Essex is now a TF of WikiProject East Anglia. There are 1,400+ transclusions of Template:WikiProject Essex on article talk pages. What is the best/easiest way to update those talk pages, so that they now show {{WikiProject East Anglia|Essex=yes}} and are sorted into Essex article categories, as well? --Funandtrvl (talk) 15:46, 16 July 2011 (UTC)

DodoBot may be able to help. -- WOSlinker (talk) 17:12, 16 July 2011 (UTC)

Suppressing comments

I suggest the following edit to {{WPBannerMeta/core}}: change --

</table></td></tr>{{#if:{{{COMMENTS|}}}
 |{{WPBannerMeta/comments
  |CAT={{{COMMENTS_CAT|}}}
  |class={{{class|}}}
  |BANNER_NAME={{{BANNER_NAME}}}
  |category={{{category|¬}}}
 }}
}}

to --

</table></td></tr>{{#ifeq:{{lc:{{{class|}}}}}|redirect||{{#if:{{{COMMENTS|}}}
 |{{WPBannerMeta/comments
  |CAT={{{COMMENTS_CAT|}}}
  |class={{{class|}}}
  |BANNER_NAME={{{BANNER_NAME}}}
  |category={{{category|¬}}}
 }}
}}}}

Rationale: if a page is a redirect then there is no reason for it to be assessed, and therefore there is no reason to invoke the /comments subtemplate. This avoids needless cluttering of the links table for redirect pages. (See WP:Database reports/Redirects containing red links for an example of such clutter.) --R'n'B (call me Russ) 16:09, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

Although I see your reasoning Im not sure I agree for a couple reasons. 1 many projects include Redirect as a class of content they track, 2 sometimes articles are changed from content to redirect innappropriately and without discussion and having the "comment" show up is a good tip off of this activity, 3 the comment subpage structure was eliminated sometime ago and the comments should be moved to the talk page so we should be continuing to move or simply delete these comments rather than hide them from view IMO. --Kumioko (talk) 16:20, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

I agree with Kumioko. Happy‑melon 16:47, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

A good option would be to ask for a change to that report at Wikipedia talk:Database reports. -- WOSlinker (talk) 22:38, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

Since there's no consensus for this change, I've disabled the edit request. Ucucha 23:29, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

Template:WikiProject Africa

We need your help at Template talk:WikiProject Africa#WikiProject Somalia, and Template talk:WikiProject Africa#Edit request 06 August 2011. Thank you! --Funandtrvl (talk) 19:08, 6 August 2011 (UTC)

Regarding the WP:SOMALIA issue, I hadn't yet seen Redrose's comment before I asked again. I haven't tried Redrose's solution yet but we may not need help (unless someone else wants to verify the solution). Thanks, -- Gyrofrog (talk) 20:10, 6 August 2011 (UTC)

I did try it, the template itself now does what I wanted it to do, but it is also placed in Category:WikiProject banners with formatting errors, with a message at the top that says "The WikiProject banner below should be moved to this template's talk page." -- Gyrofrog (talk) 20:21, 6 August 2011 (UTC)

Suggestion for a change to this template

I am sure this has come up before but is it possible to modify this template so that projects can be more identifiably grouped within the template if multiple projects are listed. For example: In {{WikiProject United States}} we have about 25 projects that are supported in some way by WPUS and that list is growing. Some have projects and task forces that fall under them. A good example of this is US Government. There are at least 3 that fall under it including FBI. South carolina is also a good example with the Myrtle Beach project under it. When they appear in the list they just appear one after the other and when multiples are used they sometimes blend together. I was thinking it might be better if we could associate these better and offset them so instead of looking like this:

WikiProject X

WikiProject XX

WikiProject Y

WikiProject X

They could appear like this:

WikiProject X

WikiProject XX

WikiProject Y

WikiProject X

I'm sure this isn't the only way its just the only one I could think of and I don't even know if its possible but its seems like it would make it a lot easier to distinguish the relationships between projects when dealing with multiples. Thanks. --Kumioko (talk) 00:31, 23 August 2011 (UTC)

class

• Hi, I created the same of this template on Turkish Wikipedia but when I add |class= parameter, it always appears "This template sayfası does not require a rating on the quality scale." Can someonebody help? Cemallamec (talk) 21:05, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

  Can you give me a link to an example of this problem? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 15:59, 5 September 2011 (UTC)

  Look here please. near KM (en: GA) it says "Bu şablon için herhangi bir değerlendirmeye yapmaya gerek yoktur" (english: This template page does not require a rating on the quality scale.).~ for this template, must we add something on MediaWiki? --Cemallamec (talk) 14:44, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

  It looks to me at though within Şablon:WPBannerMeta/kaliteölçeği it's something to do with {{#ifeq:{{str endswith|{{pagetype|}}|tartışma sayfası}}|evet but I can't be certain. -- WOSlinker (talk) 18:03, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

Task forces with 2 parent projects?

Say you have a task force that is a child of two projects. I'd like to be able to have the banner add the article to the assessment categories of both projects. The most obvious way of doing this would be to add a new field, along the lines of TF_1_ASSESSMENT_CAT_1 that behaves exactly like TF_1_ASSESSMENT_CAT. Ultimately, I think it might be helpful to offer this for more than two projects, but my current problem could be solved with the one new field.

An example of where this could be helpful is the transportation in China task force. Ideally its assessments would be shown in the China and Transport projects.

If there is a cleaner way to achieve the same result, I'm all ears. Thanks. Haus^Talk 06:42, 5 September 2011 (UTC)

Yes there is a way to do this. But before I start let me clarify what you are trying to do. At the moment {{WikiProject China|transportation=yes}} adds the article to Category:WikiProject Transportation in China articles (and the appropriate quality and importance subcategories). Are you saying that you want this also to add it to Category:WikiProject Transport articles? If so, would it not be rather unnatural and unexpected that {{WikiProject China}} would add articles to this category? It might be better to set up a new banner template for the Transportation in China task force and get this is add both the China and Transport categories. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 15:58, 5 September 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the response. First off, I'm just using the Transportation in China task force as an easy-to-understand example - I have no relation to that task force. I do take your point about a new template for the Transportation in China task force, but my hope is that there is a better way.

Fundamentally, "Transportation in China" articles should be a subset of "Transport" articles. So, if someone rates and tags an article for "Transportation in China", why not have that same action rate and tag it for Transportation?

My main motivation here is that there are 59 projects that have listed themselves as children of Transport. It would probably take years, if not decades, to independently tag & assess all those articles. And then there's the matter of maintenance. I can only see minimal advantages in this approach at a huge cost.

Conversely, the gains in a parent project sharing the "assessment space" of its children include: a global assessment table, a global recent assessments log, a global article alerts log, and so forth. Does this make sense? Thanks! Haus^Talk 16:42, 5 September 2011 (UTC)

Two portals in one WP template - possible?

{{WikiProject Law}} links, understandably, to Portal:Law. Is there a way of setting a parameter or similar that would allow articles within the scope of Portal:Law of England and Wales to be linked to that portal as well? I can't quite see from the instructions if that is possible or whether it would require alterations to the meta template. Bencherlite^Talk 17:46, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

Several WikiProject banners have more than one portal linked; for example, {{WikiProject Trains}} and {{WikiProject United States}}. The techniques vary. --Redrose64 (talk) 17:55, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, that's very helpful - and thanks for clearing up after me in the law template sandbox! Bencherlite^Talk 18:58, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

Template:WikiProject Internet

I don't know exactly what these error messages mean, but I know enough to alert someone know who does.

• A custom class mask is in use.
• This banner template includes a link to Portal:Internet. The name of the accompanying image is held here.
• The following categories are required for the banner to work correctly. Please either create these categories or adjust the banner so that they are not required. Category:Semantic Web articles

Senator2029 | talk 18:43, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

The first two are informative, not errors; no action is needed.

The third merely means that one of the categories required by the project banner hasn't been created. This is the category declared by the |TF_1_ASSESSMENT_CAT=Semantic Web articles and |TF_1_MAIN_CAT=Semantic Web articles parameters to {{WPBannerMeta}} within Template:WikiProject Internet. --Redrose64 (talk) 19:15, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

Thank you Senator2029 | talk 21:51, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

Template:WikiProject Food and drink/sandbox

Need help at Template:WikiProject Food and drink/sandbox-- cannot get the "tfnested names" to show in the testcases for the sandbox version. Have idea it's related to the hooks-collapsed, and the TFs' hooks. Appreciate help in advance! --Funandtrvl (talk) 01:23, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

Has this helped? --Redrose64 (talk) 11:38, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

Yes, thank you!! These big templates are too complicated!! --Funandtrvl (talk) 18:19, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

Task force aliases

{{WikiProject Apple Inc.}} had an iPhone task force which was renamed to the iOS task force, but the banner still uses iphone= and iphone-importance=. Is there a way to enable ios= without breaking all the existing transclusions? --Pnm (talk) 02:25, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

Do you just want to add iOS or replace iPhone with iOS? --Kumioko (talk) 03:38, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

I'd prefer to replace iPhone with iOS, but that would only work if the existing transclusions could be updated to comply. --Pnm (talk) 03:47, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

Well you could update the code and then get a bot to do the replacement or else do it manually. Not sure how many articles its on but it shouldn't take too long. --Kumioko (talk) 04:03, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

OK, I updated the template code and added logic for a category if any of the invalid parameters are used. Still need to create the category but you can see it if you look at the bottom of the code for the template.. I tested the change here. Prior to changing iphone to iOS the task force did not display. Once the task force name was updated all was good. It seems like there are only a couple hundred articles with that task force parameter so it shouldn't be too hard to go through those. --Kumioko (talk) 04:22, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

Thanks so much for your help! --Pnm (talk) 00:14, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

needs-image

I am trying to work out for a number of projects how to have different categories depending on a task force. Take for example Template:WikiProject Computing/sandbox, if the needs-image is set to yes then it places the talk page in Category:Computing articles needing images. However I would like to change this to Category:Software articles needing images if the task force software is set. I do not however want to keep the original categorisation and duplicate the request, as current you can see with Template talk:WikiProject United States#image-needed. How can I do this? --Traveler100 (talk) 11:47, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

I've made the changes in the sandbox. -- WOSlinker (talk) 18:46, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks that is useful.--Traveler100 (talk) 22:02, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

Related question; I am struggling to understand the syntax a little. In Template:WikiProject Trains for example there is code to set specific categories when two parameters are set. For example |cat 1={{#ifeq:{{lc:{{{NYPT|{{{NYCS|}}}}}}}}|yes|yes}} |CAT_1 = New York City public transportation articles needing images . But why does this only get set when Imageneeded is set? --Traveler100 (talk) 18:10, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

For that one, it's because it is within NOTE_3_TEXT so only sets the cats when that note is visible. -- WOSlinker (talk) 18:37, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

I think I am beginning to understand, not the most user-friendly syntax though :-) . Can you recommend a text editor that counts and displays the brackets well? --Traveler100 (talk) 22:02, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

Requesting assistance with Christianity banner

I've tried adding the material from Wikipedia:WikiProject Arminianism to Template:WikiProject Christianity, but have screwed up so far. If anyone can get the material added, probably with the image on the Arminianism project page, I would be very, very appreciative. John Carter (talk) 20:52, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

I've done a version in the sandbox for you to check. -- WOSlinker (talk) 21:22, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

Looks good. Knowing this is a great deal of work, would there be any way to move the Arminianism to directly below the Anglicanism, and, maybe, add parameters for Wikipedia:WikiProject Catholic canon law so that that line would appear just below the Catholicism? I know it is a great deal of work, but it would be useful. John Carter (talk) 01:01, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

Resizing the portal icons in a banner

I would like to resize the portal icons in Template:WikiProject United States to be a bit bigger. Right now they have little tiny icons and I would like them to be more prominent and visible. Does anyone know if thats possible? --Kumioko (talk) 14:34, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

It is possible, but you'd need to write a custom version of {{WPBannerMeta/hooks/taskforces/taskforce}} and pass its name through |TASKFORCE_TEMPLATE=. The generic one forces a height of 15px. --Redrose64 (talk) 17:39, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

Oh ok thanks, I don't suppose it would be possible to add a parameter to allow a project to resize the portal image would it? --Kumioko (talk) 17:43, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

Not easily. The alternative is to group all the portals at the top right, see for example Talk:Tooting Bec tube station - here, the {{WikiProject Trains}} uses a custom template {{WikiProject Trains/portalbox}}. --Redrose64 (talk) 17:57, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

I've got a sense of déjà-vu here... checking back through the archives I find Template talk:WPBannerMeta/Archive 9#Is there a way to line up things? and some other related threads. --Redrose64 (talk) 18:06, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

Wow you have a good memory I totally forgot about that. I might look into doing that thanks. --Kumioko (talk) 18:19, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

Issue I've encountered

Hi, I'm having some trouble with this template at Template:WikiProject A Song of Ice and Fire. If it's something really simple I overlooked sorry, any help is really appreciated. Thanks, Magister Scienta^talk 23:56, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Sorry, never mind. I found the issue (I accidentally included a period). Magister Scienta^talk 00:23, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Implementing a task force

I'm having trouble getting a task force to show up on a WikiProject banner. I've added what I think are the required parameters - see diff here - but it's not showing up. Help? -- SatyrTN (talk / contribs) 23:33, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

You've added it within the peerreview section. Move the }} on the line below TF_1_MAIN_CAT to a line above tf 1 to fix it. The taskforce link doesn't exist though. -- WOSlinker (talk) 00:16, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

Perfect - thanks :) -- SatyrTN (talk / contribs) 05:27, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

Comments subpages

Since there are still sometimes issues with comments subpages and tables of contents when comments use headings and also multiple banners showing the same contents, and also since comments are no longer actively used. I've changed them from being inline within the banners to just being a link to the comments page instead. If a particular banner still needs to show the comments inline then add |COMMENTS_SHOW_INLINE=yes to that banner. -- WOSlinker (talk) 15:33, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

Documentation for subtemplates

The subtemplates {{WPBannerMeta/core}}, {{WPBannerMeta/importance}}, {{WPBannerMeta/class}}, {{WPBannerMeta/qualityscale}}, {{WPBannerMeta/importancescale}}, and {{WPBannerMeta/comments}} need documentation subpages, at least to include the {{high-risk}} template. If there is nothing substantial to document, then the doc subpage could just be a redirect to Template:WPBannerMeta/doc or possibly some other related template that is also high-risk. Does this make sense? Set theorist (talk) 08:22, 26 March 2012 (UTC)

I'm not sure I see any advantage in using the documentation template on this pages, because all the documentation is centralised on the main template. At best it is useless and at worst it could be rather confusing to redirect them all to the same page. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 20:05, 26 March 2012 (UTC)

Problem that needs fixing

I made a change to a WikiProject template yesterday (see). But the changes don't manifest as I had expected. Can someone help me fixing the problem? __meco (talk) 19:28, 26 March 2012 (UTC)

I think I've fixed it for you. You adjusted the setting for the qualimpintersect hook (which is what populates all the categories in Category:Years articles by quality and importance) rather than the main assessment classes. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 20:02, 26 March 2012 (UTC)

Much appreciated! __meco (talk) 20:58, 26 March 2012 (UTC)

Linking to template

Hello,

It would be useful to have a link to the template page on every banner template, in the same way as {{infobox}} (with its "View", "Talk", and "Edit" links, although I think only a "View" is necessary). This is useful in order to see what parameters it accepts, such as task force assignments, without having to edit the page, see its name, and looking it up.

Thank you! InverseHypercube (talk) 03:42, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

The feature is already there but hidden by default. See Template talk:WPBannerMeta/Archive 2#Editlinks. -- WOSlinker (talk) 07:38, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

Great, thank you! Maybe this should be mentioned in the documentation? InverseHypercube (talk) 20:34, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

WikiProject Carrom template

I don't want to start mucking about with things that I don't know much about. Is it possible to fix up Template:WikiProject Carrom (or associated pages) so that a quality rating shows up on the talk pages that use this template (and will be classified in those quality scales in the BTGProject quality scales)? Right now, pages using that template are showing importance ratings, but not quality ratings. Many thanks. --Craw-daddy | T | 15:58, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

Sorry you didn't get an answer to your question. This template is complicated because it is calling another template {{WikiProject Board and table games}} and so is affected by that template's settings. I think I've fixed it now, but let me know if you want any more help with it. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 15:17, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

Question regarding Template:WikiProject United States

I'm not sure where the best place is to ask this question so if it needs to move just let me know where. I would like to change how Template:WikiProject United States displays some of the WikiProjects. For example, I would like it to work more like Computing where if an article is in the scope of Arizona for example, the template would display WikiProject Arizona as the primary and United States as the lower level project. I believe this will offer better visibility of the more specific WikiProject topics and allow the reader a more direct avenue to the most accurately associated project. I have started to do this using Arizona as an example here and here but I can't quite get the logic right. If someone could answer a couple questions it might help.

1. Is there a way to do this without completely duplicating the entire banner logic on every template?
2. Do I need to recreate the logic in the beggining of the WikiProject United States template in order for all those categories and logic to work or is there some way we can triger it based on the embedded template for the supported project?
3. Is there a better way? This seems unnecessarily complicated?

Thanks in advance for the help. Kumioko (talk) 19:22, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

Not sure if there is any simple way to do what you want. It would probably take a lot of template code to do. You could build the banner without using WPBannerMeta (as a few still do) but again would still need a lot of template code. -- WOSlinker (talk) 21:01, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

I had a look at the computing banner and couldn't really see what you mean. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 21:04, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

@WOSlinker - Thanks, thats kind of what I was afraid of.

@MSGJ - Maybe that was a bad example but it was the closest I could come up with. Basically if someone adds the WikiProject United States banner with Arizona=Yes it adds something that looks like:

What I would like to do though is somehow, if possible, dynamically change the main part of the temaplate to display Arizona as the Main text with United States where Arizona is currently embedded, but only if something other than WPUS is there. The only way I could think of doing this was to create some kind of template switch that would look at something like

if the AZ parameter =yes and if so then it would display that instead of the WPUS/AZ example above. This would allow AZ to have top billing of WPUS but still display them both. I thought I could do it by using the BANNER NAME parameter like in Template WikiProject Computing but I couldn't make it work. Kumioko (talk) 21:23, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

Questions

I am currently working on a major overhaul of the Christianity WikiProject Banner at User:John Carter/Christianity banner. Beyond the existing problems with the banner's sometimes unusual phrasing, two other questions come to mind:

• 1) How would I implement FM class in the banner
• 2) Is there any extant way in the template to indicate, like Template:WikiProject India does, when an article was last assessed? John Carter (talk) 20:41, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

• 1) set QUALITY_SCALE = subpage and then create a /class subpage with the following code:

{{class mask<noinclude>/templatepage</noinclude>|{{{class|}}}
 |topic=Christianity 
 |FQS=yes
 |book=yes
 |redirect=yes
 |fm=yes
}}

• 2) Not at present. A standardised version could be made into a hook template. -- WOSlinker (talk) 20:58, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

Problem with Redirect not working with banners

There is a rather lengthy discussion brewing on my talk page here about errors caused by adding WikiProject banners on article talk pages with redirects. Obviously adding the banner above the redirect breaks the redirect so I had been adding the banner below that to ensure the article was tagged for the project but now have been told that this breaks the redirect too. Currently there are about 26300 redirect tagged for WikiProject United States/one of the supported projects and of these about 1350 are showing up on the toolserver as a broken link. For most of these I can probably just remove the #REDIRECT from the talk page, leave the banner and move on with my day but for some they are both needed.

So, is there a technical way to allow a page to contain #Redirect as well as a WikiProject Banner? My first thought is to create a template similar to template:Category redirect so that they can both function in the cases where its necessary to redirect the talk page and have a banner (which obviously isn't always needed) but I'm not sure if this the best way or the only way. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Kumioko (talk) 17:45, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

You might want to consider using {{Soft redirect}} which is not a proper redirect but would at least provide a link to the other talk page. -- WOSlinker (talk) 19:51, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

Thank you would that allow the redirect to function along with the banner and can I use that in all namespaces or just certain ones? Kumioko (talk) 20:09, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

I think so, the code for the soft redirect tmp shows "talkspace". --Funandtrvl (talk) 20:19, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

It works in most namespaces but shouldn't be used for category pages. See Wikipedia:Soft redirect. --Redrose64 (talk) 21:11, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

Great thank you. Kumioko (talk) 22:38, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

Oppose this breaks the functionality of the redirect, requiring an extra click; that's much more important than the WikiProject tag. --Rschen7754 08:34, 10 June 2012 (UTC)

Its not a perfect solution but if I can't do it this way I will, in most cases, have to remove the #Redirect from the talk page when tagging it anyway in order for the main page to be tracked. Otherwise the page will have to be tagged with the categories directly rather than the template and that is counter productive and confusing. There needs to be a way to tag these pages with the template. I don't know how to do it personally but I am 100% sure that there is a technical solution to this problem. Kumioko (talk) 13:51, 10 June 2012 (UTC)

Certainly not. What is more important, having a functioning redirect, or having a WikiProject tag? (By the way, don't use AWB to do this, as it is clearly controversial). --Rschen7754 22:59, 10 June 2012 (UTC)

Well I think there both important and I think that fixing the problem is important too particularly if its a known issue and its been going on for a while which its seems to have been. What does seem to irritate me is that this is turning into a USRoads against United States discussion and it shouldn't be. There's no need for threats and there's no room on Wikipedia for article ownership. The bottom line is there is a problem with the template that is causing redirects to not work. Either we need to fix the template or we need to do a bugzilla report and work it from the Wikisoftare side but clearly and without a doubt in my mind there is a fix to this problem that doesn't involve turning this into an us against them dispute. Kumioko (talk) 23:07, 10 June 2012 (UTC)

If you put the redirect at the top, and the WikiProject banner below that, the redirect works, as does the categorisation, even though the banner does not show. See here. --Redrose64 (talk) 18:09, 11 June 2012 (UTC)

Thats what I thought to but Rschen7754 and a couple of others insist it breaks the redirect. Kumioko (talk) 19:19, 11 June 2012 (UTC)

No... my opposition is to your using a soft redirect. --Rschen7754 19:41, 11 June 2012 (UTC)

Sorry Rschen7754 I must have misunderstood the discussion you started on my page here where you and Imzadi were indicating that I was breaking the redirects by applying banners. Kumioko (talk) 19:51, 11 June 2012 (UTC)

Well, I also oppose your putting the banner as the very first thing on a redirect page, as that clearly breaks the redirect. When you're using AWB you have to be careful that you don't break pages. --Rschen7754 19:59, 11 June 2012 (UTC)

I again find myself confused because I have purposfully putting the banner below the redirect because I knew that putting the banner above the redirect caused the redirect to not function. I am fine with the banner not showing on redirects but it still helps for categorization purposes and so bots like ArticleAlertbot will function. In fact I have logic built in AWB that will not allow me (at least I haven't found an exception yet) to put the banner above the redirect. Kumioko (talk) 20:12, 11 June 2012 (UTC)

Putting the template below the redirect code still breaks the redirect page, as has been explained above; not as badly, but it still does. Furthermore, I oppose this on the grounds that you're adding another project's pages in project space to your WikiProject. I'm sorry, but this is a solution looking for a problem. --Rschen7754 20:22, 11 June 2012 (UTC)

The bottom line is this is another ridiculous attempt at article ownership by you and certain members of US Roads. Your using the excuse that I am breaking redirects but thats what it boils down too. The fact that you and some other members of USRoads think that they have sole ownership over pages that say stuff like WikiProject Rhode Islands roads and that Rhode Island nor United States have the right to put their banner on it andn watch it is pure hog wash. If it says USRoads X or WikiProject US Roads X or something like that you might have a leg to stand on but even then I doubt it. If the page pertains to another project like a State project or a City project then there is an inferred collaboration wether you choose to accept that or not. I have already told you that US Roads is free to tag whatever they want if they think it will help yuor project or the articles in it. You don't have the right to tell our project that we can't tag it. Period. I'm not going to keep having this debate with you just because no one wants to enforce the article ownership policy and I'mm getting really tired of the same 3-5 members of US Roads ganging up on me every time I tag an article in your scope. Get over it, you don't own them. Kumioko (talk) 20:29, 11 June 2012 (UTC)

Template:WikiProject Food and drink

Hi, Template:WikiProject Food and drink has errors that are placing it into Category:Pages where expansion depth is exceeded. I tried paring down the /doc page, but that didn't get rid of the error. Could someone take a look at the template? Thanks, --Funandtrvl (talk) 23:35, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

• Per WP:MULTI I have replied at Template talk:WikiProject Food and drink#Pages where expansion depth is exceeded because that thread pre-dates this one. --Redrose64 (talk) 14:05, 14 July 2012 (UTC)

Adding Quality (FL) to the Assessment table

In Wikipedia:WikiProject_Israel#Assessment, I have added the FL tag and created the categories like the FA does but when putting the class=FL in the talk page of the articles I only get ??? (like in here Talk:List of Israeli football champions) and an empty note in the FL-class category. After using the toolserver updater the FL was removed. Can someone see what I did wrong and add FL correctly to the Assessment of WikiProject_Israel so we have it aswell.
  – HonorTheKing (talk) 15:56, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

At Template:WikiProject Israel/class you need to amend |fl=no to |fl=yes. --Redrose64 (talk) 16:11, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

There is a separate problem that right now the toolserver database is severely lagged - more than a week. There is a thread about it on WP:VPT. So, even once things are correct on the wiki, it will take a long time for the WP 1.0 statistics to reflect them. — Carl (CBM · talk) 16:32, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

Thank you.
  – HonorTheKing (talk) 17:03, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

B icon size

Please see an issue I'm wondering about for the B-class icon and it's appearance. I found an archived discussion about reducing the size as it appears in the banner but either it's not working, needs adjustment or something is wrong on my end. Brad (talk) 23:58, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

WikiProject Soap Operas

Hello. I recently added the extended quality scale to the banner for {{WikiProject Soap Operas}}. I'm in the process of making sure everything is properly classified, but for some reason the articles tagged with "class=redirect" are still showing up as "NA-class". I'm sure that there is something simple that I am missing, but something needs to be fixed, so that all the redirects in the project show up in the proper category. Thanks! Fortdj33 (talk) 12:55, 6 August 2012 (UTC)

Redirect is not part of the extended class scale. I've created a custom class mask page so that the banner will work with the redirect class. -- WOSlinker (talk) 13:10, 6 August 2012 (UTC)

Featured Media class assessment for subprojects in Christianity banner

OK, I went ahead and did the appropriate changes to the Christianity WikiProject banner to allow for FM class, but when I have done a few assessments with it for FM class, and added the parameters for some of the subprojects, they only come up as being "File" class for the subprojects. Any idea where I screwed up in adjusting the banner, because I fairly obviously did somewhere? John Carter (talk) 00:10, 10 August 2012 (UTC)

Just needed to do set it for the taskforce templates as well. See this. -- WOSlinker (talk) 06:42, 10 August 2012 (UTC)

This is the most confusing template ever, I need someone smart

Does anyone have a clue as to a way to add Category:Articles covered by WikiProject Wikify (dated) and Category:All articles covered by WikiProject Wikify to all articles tagged as needing an infobox? This would be in addition to the current default and the WikiProject categories. {{DMCA|Articles covered by WikiProject Wikify|from|All articles covered by WikiProject Wikify}} would work, it's just a matter of where to put it so it is only enabled if the page needs an infobox and doesn't get overriden. Ryan Vesey 15:19, 11 August 2012 (UTC)

I guess this is follow-up to WP:VPT#WPBannerMeta categorization. --Redrose64 (talk) 17:59, 11 August 2012 (UTC)

Here's something in the sandbox to add those two cats. working with dates would need few more changes to WPBannerMeta and also to all of the individual banner templates to pass through the date param as well. -- WOSlinker (talk) 18:25, 11 August 2012 (UTC)

If it's undated, I wouldn't want it to be a part of the non-all category. Is there any reason that the two wikimarkup categories couldn't be replaced with the template I provided? In either situation, we need to hold off for User talk:Ryan Vesey#WikiProject Wikify to be cleared up before we move forward. Ryan Vesey 18:30, 11 August 2012 (UTC)

Here it is using the DMCA template. -- WOSlinker (talk) 19:41, 11 August 2012 (UTC)

Oh, now I see what you meant by a date parameter. I guess that wouldn't work very well since there isn't a date parameter in the templates. The best solution then is probably to only add the "all" one. Ryan Vesey 19:46, 11 August 2012 (UTC)

Clarification of discussion links

Where a talk page has more than one instance of this template, we end up with two or more, ambiguous [[...|discussion]] links. Also, the wording suggests that discussion takes place on the project page itself, (not the talk page) I therefore propose, to resolve these issues, that we change:

|If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the [[{{TALKPAGENAME:{{{PROJECT_LINK}}}}}|discussion]] and see a list of open tasks.

to:

|If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can see a list of open tasks; or join the [[{{TALKPAGENAME:{{{PROJECT_LINK}}}}}|{{{PROJECT_NAME}}} discussion]].

Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 09:43, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

I've amended the {{editprotected}} because the code for this is in {{WPBannerMeta/core}}, not {{WPBannerMeta}} - this talk page is shared. --Redrose64 (talk) 13:14, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

In my opinion there is no confusion possible, because of the previous sentence. (This article is within the scope of XYZ ...) And using {{{PROJECT}}} before discussion would sound unnatural in many cases. In any case, this needs more discussion, so I have disabled the request. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 20:01, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

It wouldn't be {{{PROJECT}}} alone - when {{{PROJECT_LINK}}} or {{{PROJECT_NAME}}} are unspecified, the code in Template:WPBannerMeta creates replacements for those as Wikipedia:WikiProject {{{PROJECT}}} or WikiProject {{{PROJECT}}} respectively. Consider {{WikiProject Albums}}: the message would be or join the [[{{TALKPAGENAME:Wikipedia:WikiProject Albums}}|WikiProject Albums discussion]]. which produces "or join the WikiProject Albums discussion." --Redrose64 (talk) 21:33, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

Okay, I see. In that case it would possibly look okay, so my opposition is reduced. But I still question whether this is needed. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 11:55, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

Assistive technologies like screen readers used by people who have sight impairment offer the option to read links in isolation. WCAG accessibility standards say that links should be distinguishable in such circumstances. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:00, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

In the absence of a response by Martin, does anyone else have a view? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 20:44, 10 September 2012 (UTC)

Add category Exclude in Print

I recommend adding logic to include all WikiProject banners using this template to be included in Category:Exclude in print. Kumioko (talk) 18:42, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

I also suggest someone remove the affected WikiPrjoject banners from MediaWiki:PDF Template Blacklist. I can't think of a good reason they are there anyway.Kumioko (talk) 18:59, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

Template:WPBannerMeta/templatepage is only semi-protected so you can do that yourself. -- WOSlinker (talk) 19:34, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

Its done thanks. Kumioko (talk) 19:58, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

Limit to the number of task forces?

Hi. I am currently looking at adding UK Parliament constituencies as a task force of the broader Politics of the United Kingdom. It has now been suggested that we have separate task forces for UK Parliament constituencies (eg Argyll and Bute) and Scottish Parliament constituencies (eg Argyll and Bute) so there are separate sets of quality data. This suggestion has merit but could lead us to having 5 or 6 different task forces to cover the various political institutions.
Is there a limit to the number of task forces that can be supported by this template? I wouldn't want to use up so many task forces if the number is limited but there won't be an issue if the number is very large or infinite. Road Wizard (talk) 16:16, 8 September 2012 (UTC)

There is a builtin limit of 5 but you can add more using the hooks system. See {{WikiProject United States}}, {{WikiProject India}}, {{WikiProject Film}} and others for examples of the use. -- WOSlinker (talk) 17:49, 8 September 2012 (UTC)

By using hooks, you can in theory have an infinite number of taskforces, but in practice the MediaWiki template limits will kick in at some point. Where that point exactly lies varies according to what else (primarily other WikiProject banners) is on the target talk page. In the UK we have something like 650 parliamentary constituencies, and I don't know of any WikiProject banner that has that many task forces. The one that I know of with the highest number is {{WikiProject United States}} - that has over 100 taskforces, one or more for each state plus a few more besides. --Redrose64 (talk) 19:37, 8 September 2012 (UTC)

If a taskforce was needed for each parliamentary constituency then something custom could be written rather than using the standard taskforce hook template. -- WOSlinker (talk) 21:34, 8 September 2012 (UTC)

Thank you both for the replies. Just brainstorming a list of potential sub-topics for the project I can only come up with 30 distinct areas, so it sounds like we have plenty of capacity. However I expect most of those sub-topics will never get to stage of having their own task force. I'll take a closer look at those suggested banners if I need to add the hook code. Road Wizard (talk) 21:42, 8 September 2012 (UTC)

Taskforce parameter syntax

At present the syntax for a taskforce is:

[taskforce name] = yes

I would like to see it changed to:

taskforce = [taskforce name]

The latter is more intuitive for new editors.

The old syntax may have to be retained? Is all this feasible? -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 21:14, 8 September 2012 (UTC)

There are banners that have more than one taskforce enabled at once, so would also need

taskforce2 = [taskforce name]

taskforce3 = [taskforce name]

taskforce4 = [taskforce name]

taskforce5 = [taskforce name]

The old syntax would have to be retained, not may. It's all possible to implement but would probably need discussing somewhere more visible first if it were to be configured on all banners. -- WOSlinker (talk) 21:27, 8 September 2012 (UTC)

Would also need corresponding params for importance for those taskforces that assess importance independantly. -- WOSlinker (talk) 21:30, 8 September 2012 (UTC)

taskforce-importance = value

taskforce2-importance = value

taskforce3-importance = value

taskforce4-importance = value

taskforce5-importance = value

So it is feasible? Also, if the new method is adopted I would like the current syntax to eventually be deprecated. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 21:56, 8 September 2012 (UTC)

I think the current syntax is probably clearer than what is proposed. It may make sense for projects with mutually exclusive task forces, but this is not usually the case. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 16:46, 10 September 2012 (UTC)

Please don't do this. WikiProject US has like 90+ subprojects all using the same banner and this new code would make that impossible and or a complete nightmare to update. A lot of other projects are similar like Canada, Milhist and others all have a lot of taskforces. Kumioko (talk) 16:52, 10 September 2012 (UTC)

Martin, whta prompted me to propose this change is that creating {{WikiProject Africa|Nigeria=yes}} is completely counter-intuitive. {{WikiProject Africa|taskforce=Nigeria}} seems better to me. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 20:49, 17 September 2012 (UTC)

Kumioko, if both formats are used it is not an issue. Also if the current format could be deprecated and a bot could make the tedious and extensive changes to the proposed format. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 20:49, 17 September 2012 (UTC)

Why is {{WikiProject Africa|Nigeria=yes}} completely counter-intuitive? To me, this is saying "yes, this is related to Nigeria". Besides, it's the same technique as is used for virtually every other taskforce or subproject in virtually all WikiProject banners (I say "virtually", because I can't prove 100%: but I don't recall seeing it done any other way). For example, {{WikiProject Trains}} allows |stations=yes, |locos=yes, and many others, meaning "yes, this is related to stations", "... to locomotives", etc. --Redrose64 (talk) 21:26, 17 September 2012 (UTC)

IMHO |taskforce=Trains and |taskforce=Stations would be better for newbies. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 00:46, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

I think it is worth reiterating the point made by WOSlinker above, that would make this system less intuitive than you might think. Suppose we had an article related to Nigeria and Cameroon, of high importance to the former, but low importance to the latter. Under the current system, you would enter the following:

{{WikiProject Africa|Nigeria=yes|Nigeria-importance=high|Cameroon=yes|Cameroon-importance=low}}

which is fairly clear. However, under the proposed system, this would become:

{{WikiProject Africa|taskforce=Nigeria|taskforce-importance=high|taskforce2=Cameroon|taskforce2-importance=low}}

It is now not as clear that the "high" is related to Nigeria, and the "low" is related to Cameroon. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 09:05, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

Taskforce portals

I notice that the recognised parameters for the five "main" taskforces are not the same as those for those provided via {{WPBannerMeta/hooks/taskforces}}. Ignoring the permitted number of taskforces (5 vs 10), I've found that {{WPBannerMeta}} doesn't recognise |TF_1_PORTAL=. This has come to light because this edit only added two portal boxes, not the expected three. --Redrose64 (talk) 19:50, 12 October 2012 (UTC)

The TF PORTAL params are only support through the hook mechnism. As to reason why, I'm not sure. But I've fixed it by stopping to use the 5 builtin ones and adding more hooks. See this edit. -- WOSlinker (talk) 20:16, 12 October 2012 (UTC)

Request for Modification

Hi. On what page is the the text, "This article has been rated as ???-importance on the project's importance scale." Specifically I am asking about the output from {{WikiProject Freemasonry}} template. I want to know where to go to look at the code that outputs the text, "This article has been rated."

Thanks. RiverStyx23{^talk_email} 18:38, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

It's in Template:WPBannerMeta/importancescale -- WOSlinker (talk) 20:20, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

OK, the talk page for that comes back here, so here goes. As I understand the importance rating, it grades the importance of the subject matter of the article, not the article itself. Thus I suggest the wording be changed from "This article has been rated as ???-importance on the project's importance scale" to "This subject matter of this article has been rated as ???-importance on the project's importance scale." RiverStyx23{^talk_email} 20:46, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

Burp... or bump... or something...? RiverStyx23{_submarine^target} 23:47, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

These banners might be breaking WP's community

Hi,

Discussion on Talk pages has been dwindling for years. I used to be able to post questions and expect some kind of reply in the coming weeks or months, but the replies have been drying up drastically.

I'm starting to think that the problem is that when someone clicks on a Talk page, they used to see a table of contents with a list of discussions and questions, but nowadays they see a bunch of boxes.

I don't know where to raise this. Anyone got ideas for other ways to include these boxes without hiding the Talk page table of contents? And what forum I should use to raise this issue? Gronky (talk) 17:44, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

You could enclose the WikiProject banners in either {{WikiProjectBanners}} or {{WikiProjectBannerShell}}; or you could set |small=yes on each WikiProject banner. The |small=yes parameter, although not documented on all WikiProject banners, is recognised by the vast majority (I don't know of any that don't, but I've not checked them all). Please note:

• |small=yes doesn't work properly in conjunction with either {{WikiProjectBanners}} or {{WikiProjectBannerShell}} so you should pick one method or the other, but not both;
• these techniques don't work for those boxes which are not WikiProject banners. --Redrose64 (talk) 18:06, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. I'll look into that. I fear it won't be enough to make the table of contents visible without scrolling, but there might be ways to get there from what you recommend. One idea would be to have the small banners appear on the right-hand edge of the screen. Fixing the problem this way would also involve all banners having this feature, and it being on by default, so I'll still have to find the forum where such conventions can be suggested and defended. Gronky (talk) 21:27, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

Er... don't the small banners already appear on the right? --Redrose64 (talk) 22:16, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

Thanks :-) I was thinking of something else. I've got it working now on Talk:Emacs. I'll give that a try for a few months and see if things pick up again. Gronky (talk) 06:03, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

Or there's {{skip to talk}} where the. But if people don't feel like pressing the "down" button on the keyboard to get past the boxes (which aren't generally as numerous as at, say, Talk:Richard Nixon, what makes you think that they would be bothered to reply to messages anyway? Isn't more likely to be related to a decline in active editors? Bencherlite^Talk 22:27, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

I think this problem began before the problem of declining editors, and I think replies have declines faster than number of editors. Just my perceptions. {{skip to talk}} is better than nothing, but I think the problem is that the table of contents doesn't stand out when people look at Talk pages. (It's often not even in the first screenful.) ...and I think this my require a project-wide solution rather than one where I modify the Talk pages I use (which might then be undone by the archive bots - who are probably also a lesser cause of this problem). Gronky (talk) 05:50, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

Long portal name = empty space on right

Wikiprojects with long names that use this template like Bosnia and Herzegovina and Trinidad and Tobago have an odd and unnecessary empty space in their portal link box. Could someone fix this? --◅ PRODUCER (TALK) 22:51, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

Does the extra space only appear in certain browsers (e.g. Chrome) and not in others (e.g. Internet Explorer)? If so, I suspect the same issue as described at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 107#Portal Links. --Redrose64 (talk) 23:08, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

Category:WikiProject Categories articles

See Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2013 January 21#Category:WikiProject_Categories_articles, where there was a local consensus to rename Category:WikiProject Categories articles to Category:WikiProject Categories pages.

Can this be implemented? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 17:51, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

Fairly sure this doesn't require anything more than changing

|MAIN_CAT = WikiProject Categories articles

to

|MAIN_CAT = WikiProject Categories pages

On {{WikiProject Categories}}. Happy‑melon 18:06, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

Thanks! Done that. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 18:13, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

See also Category:Project-Class Editor Retention articles, per Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2013 January 18#Category:Project-Class_Editor_Retention_articles. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 18:09, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

Misunderstanding of Book-class

Do we have any tools for detecting when |class=book has been used for a page which isn't a Wikipedia:Book, but is in fact a regular article that just happens to be about a published book? See here for example. While we're about it, can we detect any other inappropriate uses of |class= such as Stub on a category, or Template on an image? --Redrose64 (talk) 19:34, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

I suppose a check for this could be added to Template:Class mask and a tracking category could be populated. Or if there are certain combinations of class and namespace which would never be appropriate, we could simply prevent them from occuring by overriding the class parameter. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 09:29, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

The check may be better at the end of Template:WPBannerMeta/core after the class param has been cleansed by class mask. There would still be quite a few combinations to check though. -- WOSlinker (talk) 10:21, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

If you could do such a check, couldn't it just set or override the class? --— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 12:09, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

|category=no conflict with FQS

I was just doing some cleanup and came across an example of someone trying to use the |category=no switch with a WPBM-based banner. AFAICT, the problem is that {{WikiProject Law}} uses a custom class list with {{class mask}} |FQS=yes. What seems to be happening is that |category=no seems to be applied by {{class mask}} to stop the category class being used, rather than applying to WPBM to stop the article being included in a category. Am I right in that interpretation? It's obviously not ideal having the same parameter being used by two parts of the same template, particularly when the less important bit is "winning" the battle to use that parameter. I'm not sure what is the least bad way to fix this, perhaps we need two new versions of FQS in {{class mask}}, one where category=yes is assumed, and one with category=no implied, so that {{class mask}} doesn't need a separate category parameter? (I did search the archives to see if this had come up before, apologies if it has) Le Deluge (talk) 19:55, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

It's fine. The |category= parameters are used in the different templates in different ways and one does not affect the other. For example: {{WikiProject Law|class=category|category=no}}

-- WOSlinker (talk) 20:12, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

Ach, sorry to bother you like that. I've now realised that the sandbox version of the template had a not-very-obvious transclusion that applied a category and was ignoring category=no. My fault, apologies again. Le Deluge (talk) 00:44, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

Hmm, altering the WPLAW banner so that it would take an optional additional portal link was an idea I had, but I never got round to taking it live. Does the code you've now tweaked fix a problem I didn't even know I had?! Can you see anything stopping the revised code being used? Thanks for looking at this. Bencherlite^Talk 08:30, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

I thought it was working, but now it's definitely not. I've tried to simplify it (take it out of the EW detection etc) just for now but it still doesn't seem to be picking up the {{{category}}} correctly. I'm very much a beginner at template synbtax, if anyone wants to have a look the relevant transclude is at Template:WikiProject Law/sandbox/portalbox‎, the rest of it is at Template:WikiProject Law/sandbox and a test is at Template talk:WikiProject Law/sandbox ‎ - one thing I did find is that it works much better if you test the version you've been editing in the sandbox rather than the "live" one that's not been touched!!! Le Deluge (talk) 22:40, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

The reason was that you weren't passing the category param through from one template to the next template. I edited Template:WikiProject_Law/sandbox to add that. I've also edited Template:WikiProject Law/sandbox/portalbox to make it use {{WPBannerMeta/hooks/cats}} but you can go back to your original method if you want to. -- WOSlinker (talk) 23:33, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

Thank you to everyone for fixing my inelegant and inaccurate (and incomplete!) attempts. I've now updated the main template with the new code. Bencherlite^Talk 23:56, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

I made a further fix. --Redrose64 (talk) 00:04, 26 February 2013 (UTC)

Rewriting in Lua

Hello.

I am interested in having the templates using {{WPBannerMeta}} being rewritten to use a Lua module.

Possible benefits:

• Cleaner code. It can make banner template code less verbose, easier to maintain, more self-documenting and semantic. As the developer of Rater, I would also like to be able to parse banner template code directly instead of relying on separate data blobs, prone to errors, being incomplete and outdated. Doing that with current templates is rather hard, with all the subtemplates, nested parameters and parser function calls. (Try reading the code of Template:WikiProject United States to see what I mean)
• More uniform parameters. Was it "US", "US-task-force" or "US-work-group"? "musician-importance" or "musician-priority"? "image-needed" or "needs-photo"? A Lua function could recognise all variants in all templates without hassle.
• Automatic documentation generation. The Lua code may detect when it is being called on the documentation subpage and generate a list of recognised parameters and their descriptions.

A module, Module:WikiProjectBanner should be written, with functions generating banner fragments based on parameters pulled from the template call and their own invocations.

Thoughts? Keφr 10:57, 9 March 2013 (UTC)

I'd be interested in this too. The various templates used by WPBannerMeta account for a great deal of the top entries at Wikipedia:Database reports/Templates transcluded on the most pages, and it would be a good chance for me to learn Lua. It looks like it will be a heck of a job though. I think I'll start small with things like Template:Portal. If anyone else wants to help, or has a grand vision of how to implement this, I'm all ears. :) — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 13:45, 23 March 2013 (UTC)

Me too! Perhaps we could also wait for WikiData transclusion to be enabled, and figure out if we can use it to store some of the primary data (per project ratings/importances?)? YuviPanda (talk) 02:37, 31 March 2013 (UTC)

Please do so. This template seems to be really punishing the job queue for a while. Aaron Schulz 23:51, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

• Consider below: "#Streamline to bypass /core for simple options" because rewriting so many parameter options in Lua script could take weeks of coding and testing. Unless weeks of testing of the Lua version were done, then the rewrite in Lua could break some banners, which would prompt some users to really complain. -Wikid77 14:47, 25 May 2013 (UTC)

• I don't think a rewrite in Lua should be done as a drop in replacement for Template:WPBannerMeta anyway. It would be better to create Module:WPBannerMeta and then gradually go around and update each of the projects banner templates to use the module directly. -- WOSlinker (talk) 16:33, 25 May 2013 (UTC)
• I agree that a Lua rewrite is the way to go, as opposed to the streamlining option. That said, I do ask that you keep WP:1.0/I in the loop about any proposed changes to the quality/importance display, such as the WikiData proposal above. Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 17:29, 25 May 2013 (UTC)

Streamline to bypass /core for simple options

Rather than rewriting in Lua script, the top-level Template:WPBannerMeta could be modified to quickly format the banner-box, using similar table-box structure, when only the basic options are used, else call {WPBannerMeta/core} when rare parameters are also passed. The typical template speed seems to be {WPBannerMeta} runs in 0.34s (one-third second), which is equivalent to running about 300 #ifeq conditions. So, if the template were modified to run with a streamlined design, with only 50 #ifeq conditions to format the banner-box for the basic parameters, then it would run 6x faster, as 18x times per second, rather than 3/sec. The current expansion-depth level is 33, which would increase by 1 as 34 levels to format rare options, after the template became streamlined. A similar streamlined design was used in Template:Cite_web/sandbox4, to only call {Citation/core} when rare parameters were used. Note: all banner parameters would still be allowed, but using only the basic parameters would format a banner over 6x faster, as with perhaps 95% of current banners. -Wikid77 (talk) 14:47, 25 May 2013 (UTC)