Template talk:Talk page of disambiguation page

Sandboxing
Yeah, it looks great. I created the maintenance category following the Category:Talk pages of redirects as an example and used the same hidden tracking category as the parent. Feel free to make any changes.

One thing I noticed, though, is when the Category:Talk pages of disambiguation pages was created, the transcluded Template:Talk page of disambiguation page/sandbox removed the previous redlinked category (see what I mean at Talk:Idles). I'm not quite sure why. Any idea?

If it's because you have it set to add the talk page to Category:Talk pages of disambiguation page, without the plural page, can you just update the coding to use the plural? Alternatively, you could possibly boldly move the category without leaving a redirect, maybe. Not sure if that's the issue, though.

Anywhoo...

Cheers,

--Doug Mehus T · C  18:47, 25 January 2020 (UTC) PS: We might actually just seek to delete since it doesn't really serve a purpose. The wikiproject might, but the banner does not. Or it could be merged with this one, but I don't really see anything useful in "spamming" every DAB talk page with notice that there's a tiny maintenance-oriented wikiproject about such pages. Maintenance categorization serves a maintenance purpose but "advertising" that maintenance exists probably does not. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  19:42, 27 January 2020 (UTC)
 * , okay, starting now I'll reduce my 'thanks' for you. What would you say is a fair number of 'thanks log' and discussion pings from me? No more than once of either type per day? --Doug Mehus T · C  18:44, 27 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Weird, see, now that you've moved it out of the sandbox, it's not adding the applicable tracking category at Talk:Idles. Bug? --Doug Mehus T · C  18:50, 27 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Also, I see you re-ordered the talk page headers at Talk:Idles. Honestly, I've never read through the MoS, but have just been ordering the TP header tags in the following format (as applicable): Old XfDs (in reverse chronological order), WikiProject headers (in a shell, if more than one), TP header template applicable to the type of page, "not a forum" for frequently off-topic forums, old move requests (if any), and, finally, various other templates in no set order. Is there an actual preferred placement order to these things? --Doug Mehus  T · C  18:50, 27 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Not officially, but I order them by "What do we actually need someone to see, what are they most likely to care about otherwise, and what is trivia we're piling up here for lack of somewhere else to put it?" order. So, a notice that they probably shouldn't use using this page is no. 1, project stuff they might conceivably care bout no. 2, and XfD administrivia last.  If there were something exciting at a talk page like FA or got mentioned in the news, I would put that above project banners.  Other people might approach all of this differently, though.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:22, 28 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Whatever was up with it during testing, it is working properly now as far as I can determine.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  19:00, 27 January 2020 (UTC)
 * , Hrm, before, when Talk:Idles was using the sandboxed version, the sandboxed version automatically added category Category:Talk pages of disambiguation pages, which I thought was useful. talk page of redirect does this as well, as I recall. Is there any way you tweak the coding to automatically add that category when the template is added? It's useful for tracking which dab pages have the tag added. When I have more time in the spring, I'd like to reconcile all our disambiguation pages and add the disambiguation WikiProject and this header to their applicable talkpages. Doug Mehus T · C  19:08, 27 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Oh, no, please don't. Feel free to propose it at WT:WPDAB, but please don't add it to any large number of pages without discussion. There's generally a preference against having dab talk pages with such placeholder content (see the documentation of Template:WikiProject Disambiguation). Some version of the current template may be useful in some limited circumstances, but I really don't see its applicability in the general case. There's nothing wrong if a discussion concerning a dab page is carried out on that dab page's talk, and in fact that's what happens most of the time: escalation to the project talk page usually only occurs if those involved fail to reach agreement. As for the lengthy text about RMs: this is not wrong, but not necessary either: it applies to RMs involving a move of a dab to or away from a primary topic, which would be a multi-move request, and so advertised by RMCDbot on all the pages concerned, so it will be largely immaterial where the discussion takes place. – Uanfala (talk) 19:23, 27 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Or maybe the template has some uses that I'm not foreseeing? – Uanfala (talk) 19:29, 27 January 2020 (UTC)
 * See the template's own documentation (which is new). It is not placeholder content for the creation of DAB talk pages to hold such placeholders. It's a maintenance-category tag and a "you probably don't want to actually use this page" notice for DAB talk pages that . Getting them all tagged and categorized is probably the fastest and easiest way to track down otherwise-empty DAB talk pages, and pointless ones (e.g. have nothing else on them but a WikiProject Disambiguation banner) and mass-nominate them for deletion, while retaining the small percentage that have actual discussion on them, or which have mandatory stuff on them like XfD results/history tags.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  19:34, 27 January 2020 (UTC)
 * PS: This template now adds the wikiproject's category, so the wikiproject template really has no reason to separately exist. Should probably just be redirected to this template, though I would propose that at WP:TFD rather than just go do it. Wikiproject people sometimes get territorial.  On second thought :  If WP:WikiProject Disambiguation want to retain, for tagging things (e.g. project namespace pages, templates, etc.) that pertain the project, I suppose } could be hacked so that if used on a "Talk:" namespace page it just outputs a call to .  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:40, 28 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Actually, regarding the merger, I was wondering how advanced your coding skills are...would it be hard to include this template's coding into WikiProject Disambiguation with a parameter like "TPheader=[yes/no]" where it is enabled or not? If "yes," it displays the dab talk page header and adds to the applicable hidden category. Doug Mehus T · C  01:46, 28 January 2020 (UTC)
 * That would not be technically difficult, but would result in a feature people will not remember to use, and would have to manually go use a zillion times retroactively, to do anything useful (i.e., they won't do it). It would make more sense to have their template output this one  when used in a circumstance that calls for it, and just do their project "advertising" otherwise.  Much of the goal here is to get every talk page of a DAB page categorized.  Doing it this way would get us most of the way to that goal instantly, without any need for a bot, probably, to finish off the rest of them.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:22, 28 January 2020 (UTC)
 * That's true...that reminds me of all the WikiProjects that have task forces and sub-task forces with parameters lots of people (myself included) forget to specify. I agree that this header is more useful and we could probably merge the WikiProject Disambiguation header into this one, with a single line and perhaps a small logo (at the top or at the bottom) that says it's within the scope of the WikiProject Disambiguation. Doug Mehus T · C  02:44, 28 January 2020 (UTC)
 * I'd been thinking of that, too. However, it's going to need to look quite different when it's on the DAB-talk page (should look like this template not that one) versus when it's on something else, like very page we're commenting at now (should look like the project template not the DAB-talk template). It's kind of complicated in that 100% of DAB talk pages both should be tag-categorized as such  are also within that project scope, so it seems inefficient to have two templates. Meanwhile 0% of non-DAB-talk pages should be tagged as DAB-talks with this template or otherwise, even when they are within the project's scope for other reasons. But not merging or at least implementing a call from the project tag to the maint-catting tag would cost us the ability to just auto-categorize the majority of DAB-talk pages.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:42, 28 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Dmehus, The template adding the category; that's what the template is for. That category is showing up at Talk:Idles. If it isn't for you, then you probably need to clear some browser cache or something. You should be seeing (at that talk page):
 * Categories: WikiProject Disambiguation pages
 * Hidden categories: Talk pages of disambiguation pages
 * If you are not, and if clearing cache, reloading, logging out and in again, etc., don't fix it, you may not have turned on the "Show hidden categories" option in your site-wide Preferences menu.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  19:34, 27 January 2020 (UTC)
 * SMcC, thanks for the reply...here's what I'm seeing:
 * 2020-01-27 11.39.26 en.wikipedia.org d0d5b2339765.jpg dab page; dated 27 January 2020; taken by Dmehus. -DM]] Doug Mehus T · C  19:44, 27 January 2020 (UTC)

Then one or another of the solutions I mentioned should fix it. I would start with ensuring you have hidden categories turned on. Then try a WP:PURGE. Failing that, the blunt-force approach to this is to log out, nuke all en.wikipedia.org cookies, and log back in. The categorization system also has some latency to it, and I think it can depend on exactly which server in the farm you reach. Intervening systems can also cause such issues (e.g. ISP-level caching). I've had cases before where an article would not show up in a category (for me, but would for someone else) for something like a week. Last time that happened, it went away when I looked at it from somewhere in the world (through a VPN), probably getting a completely different WMF server box than the one that tends to respond to my home IP address's requests. Sometimes editing the category page itself and doing another purge can help. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  19:56, 27 January 2020 (UTC)
 * I did try the purge button, and forcing a refresh with "Ctrl" (if that even still does anything these days). I hope it's not a Vivaldi-specific bug; have encountered a few oddities since finally moving away from Chrome. What browser do you use? Doug Mehus T · C  20:01, 27 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Good thought on ISP-level caching, assuming this is different than DNS caching, as it hadn't occurred to me ISPs do that. DNS-wise, I'm using 1.1.1.1. Will try the blunt-force approach. Doug Mehus T · C  20:03, 27 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Right this moment, I'm using Chrome on a Mac. Anyway, I just put the same template on Talk:Eight-ball (disambiguation) and am seeing all categories that I should be, given the tags on the page.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:44, 28 January 2020 (UTC)
 * , Okay, I looked in Category:Talk pages of disambiguation pages, and it's clearly adding the talk pages to the category, but can still not see the "Hidden categories: Talk pages of disambiguation pages." I have tried clearing English Wikipedia cookies and, indeed, all Wikimedia Network cookies and restarting my web browser twice. Shouldn't have anything to do with DNS, but should I try a /flushdns, perhaps? Or can you think of anything else? Doug Mehus T · C  01:46, 28 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Like I said a ways up, check your Preferences options, and make sure that hidden category display is on. It seems to be under Special:Preferences.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:24, 28 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Oops, I must've missed that. Well, gosh, that worked. How did my hidden categories get unchecked? Weird. I was worried I had a conflict with a recent script installation in my common.js file. Did you, by chance, make a slight coding tweak? Reason I ask is because a few days ago, Talk page of disambiguation page was displaying as a non-hidden category. It probably makes more sense as a hidden category, actually. Now that I'm thinking about it...I wonder if WikiProject Disambiguation should be tweaked to display that as a hidden category. Would that be a change you could make boldly, or would it be best to get consensus first? Doug Mehus  T · C  02:51, 28 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Not sure. Would need to see what is usually done with wikiproject categories, and whether any are hidden (e.g. because they're internal-maintenance-focused and have nothing to do with reader-facing content and working on it). I would need to look into what even sets a category as hidden; I suspect it's something done at the category level by a "This is a hidden/maint category" banner over there, though I'm embarassed to say I don't actually know yet. Something I meant to look up years ago and just forgot about.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:42, 28 January 2020 (UTC)

Wording of the text
I've asked for more feedback at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Disambiguation. Feel free to comment there. – Uanfala (talk) 14:23, 13 February 2020 (UTC)
 * I've just removed the more unusual bits of the text. I don't have any strong opinion on what this template should say (as long as it doesn't say things that are contrary to existing practice), but in my opinion it will be most helpful if it links to either WP:DDD or MOS:DAB (which should provide answers to most questions people are likely to ask). The statement about there likely being few watchers could also be expanded with some piece of advice along the following lines: if your discussion hasn't attracted any participation, consider bringing it up at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Disambiguation. – Uanfala (talk) 16:32, 1 September 2020 (UTC)