Template talk:REMOVE THIS TEMPLATE WHEN CLOSING THIS AfD

This template is obtrusive
There is no need for this template to contain any text in order to perform its function, and the text that it contains makes the per-day pages a lot longer and cluttered with extraneous junk that is completely unnecessary. I've therefore removed the text from this template, leaving just the categories. Uncle G 03:33, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
 * This template needs to be fixed somehow; it screws up the page breaks, using too much of one, I think. Ryūlóng 03:39, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

Bot
This template should be removed by bot automatically, not something closers of AfDs are required to do. Closing AfDs is backlogged enough... there's no need to add more tedius steps (and inevitable "you forgot to do x" nags) for closers. A bot can easilly remove this from closed AfDs. --W.marsh 03:58, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Strangely enough, I'd already put in the bot proposal when I saw this... --ais523 17:10, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

Capitalisation in parameter
Could please be changed to  ? I'm requesting this change because occasionally users use lowercase when categorizing an AfD, and it would be nice if the template worked in this case too. --ais523 13:53, 23 October 2006 (UTC)


 * [[Image:Yes check.svg|20px]] Done --  Netsnipe  ►  16:52, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Proposed change
editprotected

I propose the template be changed to the code at User:Amarkov/REMOVE THIS TEMPLATE WHEN CLOSING THIS AfD, which will work with the change to the afd2 template I'm also proposing to automatically remove the categories. I brought it up at WT:AFD, and there seemed to be no problems. -Amarkov blahedits 06:01, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
 * An example of this working is at User:Amarkov /testingtweak. -Amarkov blahedits 06:04, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Done.  J Di  talk 17:43, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

The recent change seems to break something, see e.g. Articles_for_deletion/Sienna_Falls. Sandstein 18:47, 17 December 2006 (UTC)
 * I have reverted the change, as it introduced a "Expression error: Unrecognised word "expression"" in some AfD pages (don't know if all). Kusma (討論) 18:48, 17 December 2006 (UTC)
 * The change on afd2 was marked 'not done', and the changes would have to be done together. I've opposed this change at WT:AFD pending further discussion. --ais523 12:04, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Requested edit
This template is protected, and should be tagged with, or another suitable protection template. Thanks – Qxz 19:27, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Done. --W.marsh 20:55, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Edit to reduce uncategorized debates
editprotected

In order to reduce the incidence of uncategorized debates, I propose a change to the template. The alternate can be viewed at User:Dgies/AFDTemplate. The gist ot it is that if the category key is missing or invalid, it will produce the message:
 * Note: This debate has not yet been categorized. Please select an appropriate debate category and update the code letter in the REMOVE THIS TEMPLATE WHEN CLOSING THIS AfD template.

Do others agree with this change? &mdash;dgies tc 17:33, 20 March 2007 (UTC)
 * The template used to mark the categorisation of all AfDs, but the text was removed. This seems interesting as a possible compromise. --ais523 17:35, 20 March 2007 (UTC)
 * The proposed template looks good, although I'm wondering if we can condense the two #switch statements into one. This would mean repeating, but it depends on what everyone else wants to do.  Grace notes T  § 20:41, 20 March 2007 (UTC)
 * I considered that solution and played around with it but it makes the markup really big and hairy. This method also separates the warning message from the construction of a category statement which makes the template a bit easier to understand.  &mdash;dgies tc 20:44, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

✅ Cbrown1023 talk 22:21, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

editprotected

Please remove the &amp;nbsp; from the lastest addition, as it is causing extra space to appear on pages using the template. --- RockMFR 22:52, 20 March 2007 (UTC)
 * ✅ Cbrown1023 talk 23:01, 20 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Please remove the whole "please select an appropriate debate category" message. This is instruction creep. Creating AfDs is bad enough without having to think of a category. I am perfectly happy for someone to follow me around categorising the AfDs I create but I am not going to do it myself. -- RHaworth 08:21, 21 March 2007 (UTC)
 * "Please select" is a suggestion, not a mandatory step.  &gt; R a d i a n t &lt;  10:04, 21 March 2007 (UTC)
 * I will also note the the population of Category:AfD debates (Not yet sorted) is way down. &mdash;dgies tc 15:23, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

I'd like to object to this change; I think we should go back to the way it was before. My reasoning: AfD categorization was done based on a community feeling that it wouldn't get in the way and we might as well, NOT based on the idea that it was actually important to categorize AfD debates. The current version makes it feel like this is an additional required step in making an AfD, and it shouldn't be. Mango juice talk 04:02, 30 March 2007 (UTC)


 * I object as well. While I am personally alerted by them to categorize the AfDs, I don't think that message should get in the way of the actual debate for editors who couldn't care less. It's not that essential to categorize AfDs asap. –Pomte 10:40, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Requests for technical template stuff
Couldn't some of this be automatic? E.g. the nom mentions WP:BIO, it gets sorted as a biographical AfD. If it mentions WP:ORG, organizational AfD. It would occasionally be wrong, but usually wouldn't, and would save a lot of time in total. Also, if the template could just automatically not include itself in the category after 5 days (when the AfD closes), we could finally can the very obnoxious name for this template, and save closers time/nagging. --W.marsh 15:10, 21 March 2007 (UTC)
 * While a lot of it is obvious, the template itself couldn't do that. We would need a bot.  Also, date-based categorization would not be good because it can't tell if a debate is still open but overdue.  Even if we wanted date-based categorization, it would probably require the sort of string processing provided by StringFunctions, which are not installed on Wikipedia, I assume for performance reasons.  &mdash;dgies tc 15:22, 21 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Indeed none of this would be possible using templates alone; a bot would be needed. The time-based thing could certainly be done by a bot, but I don't think categorizing could – or at least, it wouldn't make sense to do so; far better to have every user take a moment to categorize their nomination than to have a bot do some and not others and end up with miscategorizations and the like. If a user cares enough about the fate of a non-speedyable, non-proddable article to try and get it deleted, they should be able to take a few seconds to decide what kind of article it is. I think the name of the template is obnoxious too, but while delegating the task of removing it to a bot would remove the need to instruct people to remove it, it would probably just get renamed to "Template:DO NOT REMOVE THIS TEMPLATE UNTIL THE AfD IS CLOSED" to stop people removing it early – Qxz 17:08, 21 March 2007 (UTC)


 * After 6 days, few afds are open... there's no way to have the template check to see if the "afd closed" templates are present? or to have the two templates work together? Templates should be as automated as possible... if there's any human action required for what could be an automated task with no quality lost, we need to work harder on the template so people can do human tasks rather than robotic ones. Saying "Well it's only a few seconds of robotic work" is not helpful... this stuff tends to pile up if left unchecked. --W.marsh 18:15, 21 March 2007 (UTC)
 * As far as I can tell, there is no way to make this template check for the presence of a different template in some page both are transcluded onto. The only solution I can see would be to merge this template and the afd top template into a single one but that would be a bit of work and require reeducating everyone performing AfD closures.  &mdash;dgies tc 18:30, 21 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Well, there's, which I'm running every Monday at the moment. (By the way, time-based decategorisation is a bad idea; User:ais523/UnclosedAfDs is a list of AfDs that were categorised using this template but not closed for over a week; many are relisted debates, and some are malformed (decatting the relisted debates would reduce the number of people who would come across them, and decatting the malformed debates would make them hard to locate).) --ais523 09:34, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Add documentation
editprotected I would appreciate the addition of the text  to this template. Since this template now links to itself when an AFD debate is uncategorized, adding a list of these categories, and their respective letter, on a subpage (basically, template usage instructions) would be rather useful. Grace notes T § 23:36, 13 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Documentation will be useful if only to link to Category:AfD debates, where the category codes are already listed. Note however that 3 editors including me above have opposed the appearance of the message when an AfD is uncategorized. While there's an edit request here, can someone respond to my question at Wikipedia talk:AfD categories to see whether code L should be added? –Pomte 00:11, 14 April 2007 (UTC)


 * I was more thinking along the terms of template documentation than information about policy: starting with how this template technically works. Grace notes T  § 01:26, 14 April 2007 (UTC)


 * I made the doc page and linked it here. CMummert · talk 12:40, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

editprotected Sorry to bother, but could be removed from the template? I've already added it to the documentation. It makes sense to have it in the documentation, and plus, this template is transcluded usually 100+ times on an AFD log page; best to keep the pre-expand size down. Grace notes T § 00:37, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
 * [[Image:Yes check.svg|20px]] Done. Cheers. --MZMcBride 02:43, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

Edit to remove del-sorts and del-logs from categories
The following code will remove Deletion log pages and deletion sorting pages from the categories:

-- Ned Scott 19:58, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

✅ --Stephanie talk 20:05, 8 June 2007 (UTC)


 * editprotected
 * Oops, I forgot the doc page, and corrected the log removal:
 * {| class="wikitable"


 * }
 * -- Ned Scott 20:13, 8 June 2007 (UTC)
 * [[Image:Yes check.svg|20px]] Done. Cheers. --MZMcBride 20:45, 8 June 2007 (UTC)
 * The most recent change to this template is resulting in redlinks proliferating the AfD page. I am uncertain if this is intentional, but without any context it is confusing as to what purpose these redlinks serve - and more confusing is the fact that they change depending on whether you are at the AfD log page or examining an individual AfD entry.  Ark yan  &#149; (talk) 21:12, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

editprotected
 * You guys are going to hate me... I messed up again. The doc page needed to be in a noinlcude tag (which explains the redlinks), and the log thing was right the first time. I'm pretty sure I have it correct now:
 * {| class="wikitable"


 * }
 * -- Ned Scott 21:27, 8 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Are you sure you need the second #ifeq? Any page outside Articles for deletion/Log doesn't need to be categorized, so it seems superfluous to check for WikiProject Deletion sorting. –Pomte 21:42, 8 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Two types of pages were being included in the cats that were not the AFDs themselves, delsort pages and the logs. -- Ned Scott 00:25, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

Latest edit has been rolled back. It was improperly including the /doc template in the includeonly section. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 22:30, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

Better delsort removal
editprotected I don't know why I didn't think of this before.. This is basically doing the same thing as the edit request mentioned in the above talk section, but more efficiently. Instead of looking for two types of BASEPAGENAMEs to remove, it now looks for one BASEPAGENAME, "Articles for deletion", to include. This will now filter out any page that isn't an AFD page itself from being in the categories.

Replace current template code with the following code:

-- Ned Scott 07:03, 17 June 2007 (UTC)


 * done. &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 18:48, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

How do I watch one category?
Hi there, I was wondering how I can get new additions to the Category:Sci and Tech AfD to appear on my watchlist? I've tried watching this page but the new additions don't appear. Any ideas? 15:23, 28 July 2007 (UTC)
 * You can watch categories, but all you will see is changes made to the category page, rather than additions to the category. – sebi 05:04, 22 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Special:Recentchangeslinked/Category:AfD debates (Science and technology) will make a watchlist for all pages in that cat. -- Ned Scott 06:07, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

See also User:ais523/catwatch.js, a user script that allows you to watch additions to a category (which may be what you're looking for here). --ais523 15:14, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

Add another category? Maybe Two?
This is just a suggestion, not a formal request.
 * It seems odd that "Organization, Company or Product" would be one category. This means that if the Republican Party page were up for deletion, it would be categorized with Spam, since one is an organization and the other is a product. It seems that organizations should be split off by itself, or even broken into Religious Org, Charitable Org, Educational Org... etc.
 * It is also very difficult to classify non-fiction television shows, movies and books. I've been lumping them into 'Society Topics.' I'm not sure how we should break this up either. Television shows fall into 'Media and the arts' I guess. Maybe 'literature/books' just needs its own category.

Thanks for taking the time to read this. -Gr0ff (talk) 18:54, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

Slash page bug
Not sure if this is already noted, but BASEPAGENAME leads to AfDs for articles with slashes (/) in not showing up. For better explanation, the AfD here uses this template, but because the title has a forward slash in it, the switch at the front of the template causes the categories to not be added. The issue with this is that the discussion is undiscoverable through the AfD categories, a route many editors take. Not sure if there's a way to fix this, but it would be swell if there was. Thanks! Greg Tyler (t • <b style="color:#A00">c</b>) 21:40, 5 August 2009 (UTC)
 * using titleparts, see here. Cenarium (talk) 22:28, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

Do not add category on In closing
editprotected

The page Articles for deletion/In closing that transcludes indirectly this template shouldn't be added to any category by it as discussed at the Village pumparchived. To do this the code of this template should be changed to

<pre style="white-space: pre-wrap">

Svick (talk) 21:51, 15 April 2010 (UTC)
 * ✅ —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 01:23, 16 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Per, the page appears to be included with the categories again. Any ideas? UltraExactZZ Said~ Did 13:01, 23 April 2010 (UTC)


 * The only category Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/In closing is in is Category:Relisted AfD debates (added by ). And Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Log/ pages are in that category too. Is this category causing the problem? Svick (talk) 13:45, 23 April 2010 (UTC)


 * I know, that's what puzzles me. The bot parses the Biographical AFD Debates category and populates User:Jennavecia/AFDBIO by date. It also indicates whether a debate has been relisted by parsing that category. But just being relisted shouldn't put it in with the bio debates - and, indeed, the In Closing page fell off after two days, as seen this morning per . Since this listing is the only place where this is a concern, I might ping the bot op and see if they can exempt this page, as it may be simpler to do it on that end. UltraExactZZ Said~ Did 13:51, 26 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Kingpin updated the bot's code, so this is now a non-issue - but I'd still like to know what happened. Thanks again, UltraExactZZ Said~ Did 12:12, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

Editprotected
Per general agreement here, please merge the "Nominator unsure" and "Not yet sorted" categories. The requisite modifications have been made in the sandbox. — This, that, and the other (talk) 06:23, 3 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Done. Ucucha (talk) 11:33, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

Missing category problem
Generally this template being used on AfD pages is all that categorizes them. When it is removed, the expired AfD discussions are no longer categorized.

I think all things on Wikipedia (even closed AfD debates) should be categorized, so there should be some kind of solution here for keeping track of them. Is there a way I'm unaware of?

For example I do not see "Cat=C" so couldn't we say "change to C when it is closed" rather than removing it outright? Then 'closed' debates could be grouped in a mass category, instead.

Also why are they organized the way they are? Shouldn't it be alphabetical? MOBSWGTFPIU is very odd. The last few make sense, but many are just arbitrary. Ranze (talk) 21:31, 24 April 2013 (UTC)
 * If you want a list of all AfDs, even closed ones, you'll find it here. --ais523 11:12, 6 October 2014 (UTC)

CfD for Category:AfD debates (Web or internet)
Category:AfD debates (Web or internet), which has been nominated for renaming to Category:AfD debates (Web or Internet) at Categories for discussion/Log/2016 January 6, affects this template. If the consensus was to rename the category, then the template and the documentation subpage should be updated to reflect the rename. GeoffreyT2000 (talk) 02:04, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

Template-protected edit request on 18 August 2022
Add  right after tag near the top. It will transclude into AfD Log pages. Then by using a code, the number of open debates on a certain day can be found out. Further, future bots or userscripts may utilise this span id for their own use. Sandbox experimentation may be seen here. Thanks! &mdash;CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • {C•X}) 08:55, 18 August 2022 (UTC)
 * ✅.  P.I. Ellsworth &thinsp;, ed.  put'r there 10:27, 19 August 2022 (UTC)
 * Paine Ellsworth, the recent edit seems to have affected AfD transclusions, resulting in a blank line rendering below each AfD section heading. --Paul_012 (talk) 13:40, 19 August 2022 (UTC)
 * not seeing it. Can you provide examples?  P.I. Ellsworth &thinsp;, ed.  put'r there 14:02, 19 August 2022 (UTC)
 * Well, for example on today's daily log page Articles for deletion/Log/2022 August 19 there's a blank line beneath every third-level section header, which I'm pretty sure wasn't there before. Should I provide a screenshot? --Paul_012 (talk) 15:01, 19 August 2022 (UTC)
 * . the Afd log page linked above (for 19 August 2022) did have extra whitespace that was eliminated by reverting this edit.  P.I. Ellsworth &thinsp;,  ed.  put'r there 15:13, 19 August 2022 (UTC)
 * Thanks Paul for reporting the issue. Thank you Paine for pinging me. I'll think of something else before making another request. &#8212;CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • {C•X}) 06:13, 20 August 2022 (UTC)