Template talk:WikiProject banner shell

Add assessment date and/or assessed revision for article quality ratings
Reason: This way, others can figure out if an article needs a reassement (or if it's just a diffrence of opinion) without going through talk page history and article history, and only need to compare the revisions. OrdinaryGiraffe (talk) 23:15, 22 March 2024 (UTC)
 * We have this for FA and GA (possibly A-Class too), but not for B-Class and lower. However, I am certain that this has been suggested and rejected on several occasions - just not on this page. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 01:12, 23 March 2024 (UTC)
 * I figured that might have happend. I'm just not sure where the old discussions are, so if you know, could you link it? OrdinaryGiraffe (talk) 16:10, 23 March 2024 (UTC)
 * I'm not dead set against the idea, but unless there was a concerted effort (or even a requirement) to use this parameter then it would rapidly become useless &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 17:24, 24 March 2024 (UTC)
 * Could you explain why? OrdinaryGiraffe (talk) 17:25, 24 March 2024 (UTC)
 * If it was implemented, I honestly can't see it getting regularly updated other than by a bot. I'm also not convinced of the benefits of having it at all. -Kj cheetham (talk) 17:28, 24 March 2024 (UTC)
 * Oh. Never mind. I was thinking it would help, but I guess there's no point if it's just a random date. OrdinaryGiraffe (talk) 17:37, 24 March 2024 (UTC)
 * It's a nice idea, just difficult in practice. -Kj cheetham (talk) 17:49, 24 March 2024 (UTC)
 * @OrdinaryGiraffe: Some WikiProject templates have an assess-date parameter (e.g. WikiProject India). If there's a particular WikiProject that you think would benefit from an assess-date parameter, you could discuss it on that WikiProject's talk page. GoingBatty (talk) 17:30, 24 March 2024 (UTC)
 * Is there any point in having these parameters in WikiProject banners now that the quality rating has been moved to the shell? (I guess it could refer to the importance assessment.) &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 18:17, 24 March 2024 (UTC)
 * That was my original idea., because importance ratings usually aren't supposed to change. Quality is. OrdinaryGiraffe (talk) 20:53, 24 March 2024 (UTC)

"Last assessed" parameter?
A major issue in the current assessment system is that many articles' assessment is years out of date. Even worse, there is no way to tell whether ten year old assessments are still current or not, as there is no way to explicitly agree with the current rating. Should we add a "last assessed" parameter to the banner shell that could be updated to the current time every time somebody used Rater or a similar semi-manual tool? —Kusma (talk) 11:17, 29 April 2024 (UTC)


 * Alternatively, to catch most old and incorrect ratings, is it feasible to regularly compare all article assessments with their ORES predictions and then manually re-assess all those where ORES and the assessment are more than one level apart? —Kusma (talk) 15:04, 29 April 2024 (UTC)
 * I can't imagine there would be the volunteer labour to do that manual re-assessment on an ongoing basis, but I would like a "last assessed" parameter (that automated tools like Rater could be expanded to interact with) and the ability to analyse data on class assessment and ORES prediction on a WikiProject-by-WikiProject basis. — Bilorv ( talk ) 21:45, 2 May 2024 (UTC)
 * I see this discussion had ended nearly 2 months ago. Anyway, here's my thought:
 * There should be an assess-date parameter in the Banner shell
 * It should have the default value of  when initially adding the Banner shell.
 * Automated tools such as Rater should add / update the date automatically when assessing / re-assessing an article (or any other page).
 * That's all I've got for now.
 * User ping: @Bilorv, @GoingBatty, @Kj cheetham, @Kusma, @MSGJ, @OrdinaryGiraffe, @Redrose64 Vestrian24Bio ( TALK  ) 18:05, 21 June 2024 (UTC)

class=NA
Most of the invalid values of class that are being tracked in Category:Pages using WikiProject banner shell with invalid parameters are there because NA. At the moment this is not recognised and these are just left unassessed. That's because non-articles (e.g. redirects and disambiguation pages) are supposed to be identified automatically and the class is only for classifying articles. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 09:46, 24 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Martin, presumably they can just be removed then? — Qwerfjkl  talk  11:24, 27 April 2024 (UTC)
 * The value of NA was never intended to be explicitly set in a class parameter, it was always set automatically under certain circumstances - such as that the class parameter is blank or absent, and the banner was used on a talk page for something other than an article (file, template, category etc.), and that the banner did not use the extended quality scale. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 13:10, 27 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Yes. Unless anyone thinks that NA should be able to be set explicitly &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 17:01, 27 April 2024 (UTC)
 * How should subpages in the article namespace (such as Talk:WandaVision/FAQ) be handled? Gonnym (talk) 19:27, 29 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Are there any subpages that need WikiProject templates? Why? —Kusma (talk) 19:43, 29 April 2024 (UTC)
 * The WP banners on article talk pages are meant to assign the articles themselves to WikiProjects, not necessarily the talk pages. So FAQ pages are like talk archives in that they are not meant (in my view) to be tagged into Projects, because they are not directly attached to article pages.— TAnthonyTalk 19:50, 29 April 2024 (UTC)
 * They are not even remotely close to talk archives. They are more similar to project pages that offer information and are actively updated and edited (unlike talk page archives). They should be tagged and categorized as any other project page. Gonnym (talk) 21:27, 29 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Hard to do for a project page in talk space. The WikiProject banner for such a page needs to go in the Talk talk: namespace. —Kusma (talk) 05:51, 30 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Would suggest that if Talk:WandaVision is tagged for the project, then that should be sufficient? &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 07:55, 30 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Notice that the page is listed in Category:Unassessed television articles and can't be taken out of it either with NA or Project. Gonnym (talk) 08:05, 30 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Interesting, will need to look into this. Perhaps because the subject page does not exist, it is automatically classifying it as a non-article. What would be the expected behaviour for a subpage in the Talk namespace? &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 08:09, 30 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Template:FAQ expects FAQ pages to be in Talk:&lt;article&gt;/FAQ (this can be manually set to a different page but most probably aren't changing the default location) so this is a unique sub-page in talk article space. One solution would be to handle all /FAQ sub-pages here as project pages. Gonnym (talk) 08:16, 30 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Template:Pagetype will now check that pages in mainspace exist and will not classify a non-existent page as an "article". So I think we can update the code in this module, to say something like "This page does not require a rating on Wikipedia's content assessment scale" as per other non-article pages. It will also need an update to the Wikiproject banner module to ensure that these are rated NA-class rather than unassessed. I started looking at this yesterday but it got a bit complicated and I need to test everything thoroughly &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 08:59, 14 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Symbol abstain vote.svg Proposed icon for non-existent pages &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 09:01, 14 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Instead of repurposing NA, a value that many people and bots automatically remove outside of mainspace, I think a different and more descriptive value should be used. Since this will be used for non-existent pages, what about DNE for "Does Not Exist"?  ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  10:41, 14 May 2024 (UTC)
 * We don't need to use the class parameter for this, as it will be detected automatically. When I said NA-class I was referring to the categories like Category:NA-Class medicine articles which are a catch-all for non-articles &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 11:13, 14 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Looks like @TAnthony has cleaned these out, thanks! &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 07:36, 29 April 2024 (UTC)

Support for non-existent/vacant pages added to sandbox. I think the best approach is just to remove these banners (because a non-existent page does not need to be tagged as within scope of a project). However in case someone adds them to the talk page of a deleted page, it might be useful to change the message to explain why no rating is accepted &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:50, 16 May 2024 (UTC)


 * I'm unclear why this is tagged as "vacant page". Just use "page" or let users override it as it's a project page. Gonnym (talk) 12:54, 16 May 2024 (UTC)
 * I assume we are talking about WandaVision/FAQ. It's not a project page (these are in Project namespace). It's a subpage of an article which does not exist. Technically it's not even a page because it doesn't exist. Any other suggestions? &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 13:07, 16 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Shortened "vacant page" to "page" on sandbox, but still uses the specific icon which may provide some explanation of why a rating is not required. I would still prefer to say "vacant page" or "non-existent page", but happy to drop if it looks awkward. What do you think? &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 13:51, 17 May 2024 (UTC)
 * It's also still didn't fix the actual issue of leaving the page in Category:Unassessed television articles. Gonnym (talk) 12:54, 16 May 2024 (UTC)
 * It will. But the television banner is still using the live code instead of the sandbox &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 13:05, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

Any other comments on this, or can we move ahead? &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:20, 23 May 2024 (UTC)


 * Forgot all about this. Now deployed. So non-existent pages will be identified accordingly &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 08:58, 13 June 2024 (UTC)

Amazing milestone
Thanks to ‎TAnthony and many many other editors, we have now emptied Category:Pages using WikiProject banner shell without a project-independent quality rating which means every single article in the project now has a PIQA rating. Great job everyone! &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 21:09, 14 May 2024 (UTC)

needs-infobox, and related
I came accross Talk:Erin Hawley which has 4 project banners that all have yes and yes and was thinking that it might be better to move most or all of these types of parameters into the banner shell. The banner should only place the page in project category if that category exists Gonnym (talk) 09:05, 16 May 2024 (UTC)


 * Would it need to populate all the separate categories, like United States articles needing infoboxes, Women articles needing infoboxes, Biography articles without infoboxes, Politics articles needing infoboxes or just one category like Articles needing infoboxes? &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 09:20, 16 May 2024 (UTC)
 * I'm assuming nothing would change. Currently this populates:
 * Politics articles needing infoboxes
 * Wikipedia requested images of politics
 * Biography articles without infoboxes
 * Wikipedia requested photographs of people
 * United States articles needing infoboxes
 * Wikipedia requested photographs in the United States
 * Women articles needing infoboxes
 * Wikipedia requested images of women
 * I don't think this should change as it will allow projects to find articles in their scope that need attention, but it shouldn't add a red-linked category if it does not exit.
 * For the infobox category for example, Template:WikiProject Women, Template:WikiProject Politics and Template:WikiProject United States use the default naming convention category, while Template:WikiProject Biography has one manually set (though Bio could probably be updated to use the non-note version of the code). Gonnym (talk) 10:10, 16 May 2024 (UTC)
 * So individual projects will be inheriting the need-infobox from the banner shell. In that case the relevant note will not be displayed in each banner, but will somehow be displayed in the shell? How do you envisage this would look? &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 10:31, 16 May 2024 (UTC)


 * Maybe something like above. --Gonnym (talk) 10:46, 16 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Excellent idea, and one that will likely lessen the # of pages ending up at .  ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  16:33, 16 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Looks promising and happy to explore further. We would need a way to display the whole message, rather than just the icons. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 09:20, 21 May 2024 (UTC)
 * "Articles without infoboxes" is something very different from "Articles needing infoboxes". Many articles without infoboxes deliberately do not have them or otherwise do not need them. This is a terrible flag that should be removed instead of made universal. —Kusma (talk) 10:39, 21 May 2024 (UTC)
 * There are 512 categories listed at Category:Wikipedia articles with an infobox request. This isn't adding any feature. Gonnym (talk) 11:06, 21 May 2024 (UTC)
 * My point is that noticing that an article does not have an infobox is not a request for an infobox. Any attempt to unify these categories should clarify this. The banner shell should be neutral in the infobox wars. —Kusma (talk) 11:26, 21 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Again, the above does not add any new feature. If a project, lets say WP:WikiProject Television already has a category (Category:Television articles without infoboxes), then the page will be added there. If a project doesn't, then nothing happens. This also isn't added by bots noticing that an article does not have an infobox, but by editors who would be adding needs-infobox to the projects (see Talk:Erin Hawley). Gonnym (talk) 11:47, 21 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Gonnym thanks for clarifying for everyone, I love this.— TAnthonyTalk 14:07, 21 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Is no what needs to be on an article that correctly does not have an infobox?
 * Talk:Erin Hawley is an odd example: the article has had an infobox since the first edit. —Kusma (talk) 15:58, 21 May 2024 (UTC)

A mock-up with an expanding version &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 14:48, 21 May 2024 (UTC)


 * Ditto map request (Template:Map requested) --- Another Believer ( Talk ) 15:49, 21 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Ditto logo request (Template:Logo requested) --- Another Believer ( Talk ) 15:50, 21 May 2024 (UTC)
 * What about spoken article request? (Template:Spoken article requested) --- Another Believer ( Talk ) 15:51, 21 May 2024 (UTC)
 * None of these are supported natively by Module:WikiProject banner so it would be more difficult to merge because they may not have standard wording, purpose or parameter names. It would probably be simpler to start with the native notes before thinking to add others &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 05:18, 22 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Template:WikiProject United States (and probably others) use needs-map. Another possible addition for the second wave of parameters is unref (used by templates like Template:WikiProject United States) and needs-refs (used by templates like Template:WikiProject Television). Gonnym (talk) 12:40, 22 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Let's concentrate on the first wave first? Opinions on mock-up above? Obviously there are spacing issues and we can probably lose the bold. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:14, 23 May 2024 (UTC)
 * The mock up looks good (but yeah, reduce the amount of empty space). Gonnym (talk) 18:09, 26 May 2024 (UTC)

BLP tagging
I'm hoping somewhere here is more familiar with the correct policy on this. According to the section on the AWB general fixes pages, AWB "removes,  ,  " from banner shells. It also says:


 * If WikiProject Biography exists inside the shell:
 * with  then removes   if exists
 * with  then adds
 * with  then adds
 * with  then adds

This means that talk pages with  in their banner shell will lose the living parameter when AWB is run on the page. The living parameter is required on all biographies per Template:WikiProject banner shell. See this edit for example. The biography articles without a living parameter category has a sudden 650+ page backlog because of this. I'm assuming this is supposed to happen but I don't understand the point. Are articles supposed to have the blp parameter in the banner shell or in the WikiProject Biography template? Is the  alias preferred over  ? Does this change if the subject is living or dead? Because right now AWB just seems to be removing living parameters and not replacing them. What's going on here?

Tagging GoingBatty because they've helped with similar issues.

Thanks in advance, Clear  friend  a  💬  17:04, 18 May 2024 (UTC)


 * Thank you for bringing this up. AWB should not be removing blp from any biography. The AWB team were formally asked to stop doing this in February 2024, so it is concerning if this is still happening. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 04:43, 22 May 2024 (UTC)


 * Unfortunately, the AWB developers have not yet updated the AWB to match the many changes made to the banner shell. I added the Tracked template above for you.  GoingBatty (talk) 16:54, 24 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Who are the developers, and have they indicated any timescale for making these changes? &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 20:36, 24 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Is there anything we can do about this in the mean time to stop the growing backlog of biographies without a living parameter? Clear  friend  a  💬  17:27, 25 May 2024 (UTC)
 * @Clearfrienda: You could reach out to the individual AWB users who are adding pages to the backlog to explain the impact of their actions. GoingBatty (talk) 15:45, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

Unassessed WikiProject banner appear inside an assessed banner shell
I do not know if this is a one-off issue simply because of the particular banner settings I used but when I edited the banner shell and added two WikiProject banners on the Talk:Herman Helcher page, all the individual WikiProject banners displayed "Unassessed" and I had to add class= settings to each individual banner. Each banner now displays a separate "C class" assessment. This is unlike previous behaviour where the banner shell assessment was propagated to each WikiProject banner inside the shell. - Cameron Dewe (talk) 21:19, 30 May 2024 (UTC)
 * - removed stray "}".  ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  22:16, 30 May 2024 (UTC)
 * @Tom.Reding: Thanks for that. Sometimes it is hard to spot those stray characters. - Cameron Dewe (talk) 23:24, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

Category:WikiProject banners without banner shells
This category is (almost?) entirely populated by non-mainspace pages, which there was contention about running our bots on. Is there any point in populating the category with non-mainspace pages that are probably going to stay there forever? Thoughts @Martin? — Qwerfjkl  talk  10:52, 9 June 2024 (UTC)
 * If the pages aren't published, they will eventually be deleted and the category will gradually empty.-- Auric   talk  11:30, 9 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Auric, that's true for drafts (although probably it would be better to only consider them when they become articles), but not for any of the other namespaces. — Qwerfjkl  talk  17:27, 9 June 2024 (UTC)
 * In my opinion the banner shell should be added to all talk pages except the user talk pages* (with User:UBX sub pages being the exception as some userboxes are created as sub pages and should be treated like regular templates). But user talk should really be excluded from the category so it will be easier to monitor. Gonnym (talk) 18:48, 10 June 2024 (UTC)
 * I think there is definitely a case for using banner shells in some namespaces. For example in draft space, from where articles are frequently moved into the main space. The advantages of the banner shell are two-fold: (a) having one assessment that works for all projects, and (b) avoiding the redundancy of saying "This article is rated blah blah" multiple times. In non-article namespaces (a) does not apply, but (b) is still a real advantage &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 19:49, 10 June 2024 (UTC)
 * I agree that shells should be added to draft talk pages. I'm also noticing that this maint category contains category and file talk pages, which I think we all agree should have them as well.— TAnthonyTalk 20:29, 10 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Cewbot has recently cleared around 100k pages from the category from category, file, template, and module talk namespaces and I don't see any new post complaining on the talk pages. Gonnym (talk) 21:46, 10 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Okay, let's continue. I note the bot was approved to work in all namespaces, even though we began with main talk &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:01, 11 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Along with sub pages of User talk:UBX, sub pages of User talk:AlexNewArtBot should also be included in the bot run. Gonnym (talk) 12:05, 18 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Talk pages of sub pages of User:WP 1.0 bot/Tables/Project (User talk:WP 1.0 bot/Tables/Project/Beetle) should also be included. Gonnym (talk) 10:51, 23 June 2024 (UTC)

Template:WikiProject Cooperation oddity
Some oddity in case someone stumbles on this later on and wonders why. I noticed that both Cewbot here and Qwerfjkl here didn't place Template:WikiProject Cooperation inside the shell, I'm assuming it's because at the time it wasn't using Module:WikiProject banner and used tmbox instead. Gonnym (talk) 22:00, 10 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Using tmbox would certainly cause it to not be treated as a WikiProject banner, although I think that or its inactive veriant is what is really being searched for, rather than the module. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 10:08, 11 June 2024 (UTC)
 * I'm pretty sure both of our bots used categories to determine which templates are wikiproject banners. — Qwerfjkl  talk  14:33, 12 June 2024 (UTC)

Extra pipe
It happens reasonably often that editors put an extra pipe in the syntax which means the content of the shell becomes the second positional parameter instead of the first, which is not recognised. An example is here. I think the code could be adapted to ignore an empty first positional parameter and use the second one instead. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 08:28, 12 June 2024 (UTC)


 * I'd prefer we track all incorrect usages, including these, in Category:WikiProject templates with unknown parameters. Gonnym (talk) 17:05, 12 June 2024 (UTC)

Enhancement request for article vital level
Can you add a new entry point so that I can create a template that will return the vital level for a given article, and empty string if none? So that we would have: (Unfortunately, Template:Vital is already a redirect to a WikiProject, or I would've used that name.) There is already code in the Module to find vital level, so hopefully adding an entry point would not be too onerous. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 20:26, 12 June 2024 (UTC)
 * ⟶ 1
 * ⟶ 2
 * ⟶ 3
 * ⟶ 4
 * ⟶ 5


 * I think you have posted on the wrong talk page. This relates to Module:Vital article, correct? I assume you are aware of which produces . You are asking for just the level number only? I would suggest a parameter on that template, e.g. yes which would hide the name of the article &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 08:06, 13 June 2024 (UTC)
 * PS, we already have a function for this:  produces  &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 08:11, 13 June 2024 (UTC)
 * , Thank you, yes, I meant to post on the Module talk page. I was not aware of vital article link (advanced search leaves a lot to be desired) but I thank you for that as well. The new param you suggested sounds ideal for that.
 * (post-ec) I hadn't noticed the  function somehow, and that totally solves the problem! Mathglot (talk) 08:27, 13 June 2024 (UTC)