Template talk:WikiProject banner shell/Archive 10

Automatically adding ratings to banner shell
Would it be useful to have a bot go through all transclusions of and automatically fill in the class when there is none? (it should probably only do it in uncontroversial cases, like good/featured articles, or articles where all banners have the same rating) — Material  Works  20:06, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
 * See Template_talk:WikiProject_banner_shell above. -Kj cheetham (talk) 19:30, 7 October 2023 (UTC)
 * Yes - but ... this needs to be done very carefully because there are some projects that have opted out. We could also do some other edits at the same time, e.g. moving the listas parameter to the banner shell. I think has offered to undertake this work, but I'm not sure if he/she has free time currently. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 19:30, 7 October 2023 (UTC)
 * @MSGJ, I was planning on sorting out the conflicting ratings first. — Qwerfjkl  talk  07:37, 8 October 2023 (UTC)
 * @MSGJ, are there any issues with starting this now i e are the problems at blockers? —  Qwerfjkl  talk  14:47, 11 October 2023 (UTC)
 * Why not start the BRFA now because it will take time to perfect the algorithm and get approval? By the time it is approved, we should be ready. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 21:26, 11 October 2023 (UTC)
 * @MSGJ, sorry, I missed this (please ping me when you respond). What would the algorithm look like? The most straightforward case is when all the WikiProject classes are the same or missing, then we can just remove it from those that have it and add it to the shell. I assume for the purposes of this we would need to ignore WikiProjects that have opted out of PIQA? There are also additional things to keep in mind, such as when the article has a GA/FA template. — Qwerfjkl  talk  19:37, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

Future class
Is there a strong need to deprecate future-class as seems to have been done? The class could be applicable to a variety of wikiproject-topic articles, and serves the helpful role of noting that large changes are expected. CMD (talk) 13:16, 17 October 2023 (UTC)


 * Future-class has always been a bespoke grade and never on the standard scale. The main issue is that it says nothing about the quality of an article, which is what the quality assessments are all about. Something happening in the future could have an article that is Stub-class or it could be B-class. If projects want to continue to use it then they will need to opt out of PIQA, and they were all notified about this back in April. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 14:54, 17 October 2023 (UTC)
 * The class says that the quality is liable to extensive change, and this class is applicable to a wide variety of articles rather than specific wikiprojects. There was no mention in the PIQA RfC that any of the WP:Content assessment classes would be deprecated, so I'm not seeing how using long-established classes requires an opt-out from the classification system. CMD (talk) 16:37, 17 October 2023 (UTC)
 * PIQA will only use the standard scale. So if a project wants to use a non-standard grade they either need to convince the community to adopt it on the standard scale, or they opt out. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 17:36, 17 October 2023 (UTC)
 * If there is a plan to alter PIQA from its initial proposal to also deprecate a number of article classes, this should be established through consensus, preferably through a similar RfC. CMD (talk) 00:58, 18 October 2023 (UTC)
 * This was explicitly part of proposal from the beginning. To quote: If a "parameter |QUALITY_CRITERIA= has the value "custom", the project class will be displayed and used to create categories as at present." ... "Projects will be canvassed to set this parameter if they want to use custom quality assessment criteria." &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 20:11, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

B-class checklist
This is a formal proposal to include the B-class checklist in the banner shell. This idea was quite well supported in the previous discussion and we have recently removed a barrier to this, by tweaking the logic in the class mask. My idea on the exact implementation: &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 08:59, 12 October 2023 (UTC)
 * The checklist will only display if one or more of the parameters b1, ... b6 are used. This means it will be available to editors who find it useful but will not take up space on articles which don't use it.
 * When we migrate the assessments into the banner shell, any existing checklists could be migrated at the same time.
 * The checklist will not aggressively demote articles to C-class if the B-checklist is not completed. It will only demote if an editor has actually marked one or more B-class criteria as failed. In other cases it will defer to the class parameter input.
 * Sounds good to me. — Qwerfjkl  talk  16:14, 12 October 2023 (UTC)
 * Support. Hopefully Rater can be updated to automatically add the B-class checklist (or at least have an option to turn that on and possibly check/fill it in too). Happy editing, SilverTiger12 (talk) 17:33, 12 October 2023 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure how much Rater is maintained. — Qwerfjkl  talk  18:32, 12 October 2023 (UTC)
 * @SilverTiger12, @Qwerfjkl: A quick look at User talk:Evad37/rater.js shows that the software is being updated by others. GoingBatty (talk) 19:39, 12 October 2023 (UTC)
 * @GoingBatty, being maintained through edit requests isn't the same thing as being actively maintained, though. — Qwerfjkl  talk  20:30, 12 October 2023 (UTC)
 * @Qwerfjkl: User talk:Evad37/rater.js is the place to discuss the maintenance (or lack thereof) and requests. GoingBatty (talk) 20:48, 12 October 2023 (UTC)
 * Pinging @CX Zoom, @DFlhb, @Izno, @Trialpears who participated in the previous discussion &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 20:52, 12 October 2023 (UTC)
 * Support. Questions: will the MILHIST template would be able to read the B-ratings, despite opting-out of PIQA? DFlhb (talk) 22:00, 12 October 2023 (UTC)
 * I don't see why not. But it would be easier if they opt-in and Hawkeye7 has already stated that Milhist will be opting in. What I'm less sure about, is how we could accommodate their rather complicated assessment logic where different combinations of B-class criteria result in Start, C or B-class ratings automatically applied. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 08:12, 13 October 2023 (UTC)
 * Ah; just saw Hawkeye7's comment above. I'll inquire and try to work out the details on that DFlhb (talk) 08:25, 13 October 2023 (UTC)

First mock-up at Template talk:WikiProject banner shell/testcases. There is an issue with the alignment which needs looking into. And I don't know where to put the "IT is of interest to the following WikiProjects." sentence now ... &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:18, 13 October 2023 (UTC)

Just to dot our i's and cross our t's: could we ask the projects opting-in to using B-class checklists, if they're still interested in using them? I'd do it but I'm not sure how to come up with a list of these projects; my understanding is that there's relatively few of them. I support it being merged if projects are still interested, but now feels like a good time to check if they are. DFlhb (talk) 13:17, 16 October 2023 (UTC)


 * I can set up a tracking category, if you are happy to contact projects? &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 13:58, 16 October 2023 (UTC)
 * That works DFlhb (talk) 13:59, 16 October 2023 (UTC)
 * Category:WikiProject banners using a B-class checklist &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 14:08, 16 October 2023 (UTC)
 * @DFlhb did you find time to contact any of these projects and did any respond? &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 20:07, 23 October 2023 (UTC)
 * I waited to see if MILHIST would join PIQA, because that might affect B-criteria, but it doesn't look too likely now, so I'll contact the other projects.
 * edit: I just now contacted the top 3 projects using them; don't think there's a need to ping all 80+; even if only the biggest ones are still interested, it would still be worth migrating over. I'll report back in a day or so depending on feedback. DFlhb (talk) 00:09, 24 October 2023 (UTC) edited 00:36, 24 October 2023 (UTC)
 * Still no response, 4 days on, so I'll contact the other projects. I'll pursue this more diligently so we can move forward one way or another (either moving to the shell, or removing altogether). DFlhb (talk) 14:01, 28 October 2023 (UTC)

Everyone here is invited to participate in. DFlhb (talk) 12:19, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

Post-close
I have asked for some clarification to the closer on their talk page as asked by them. At User talk:S Marshall. Thanks! &#8212;CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • {C•X}) 17:31, 1 September 2023 (UTC) Example:   FA-class  " —  Qwerfjkl  talk  22:13, 1 September 2023 (UTC)
 * I wanted to wait until the close to say this, but: I really love 's suggestion (search-in-page for their name if needed). Very readable, unobtrusive, yet it retains colours and can still be parsed quickly. It's elegant enough that I think we should consider adopting it for Template:Class too (i.e. inside uncollapsed project banners, and if we can brainstorm how to, in WP1.0 tables too, since they both currently fail WCAG 2.0 by a wide margin for common classes). DFlhb (talk) 17:47, 1 September 2023 (UTC)
 * Me too - definitely worth exploring further &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 19:47, 1 September 2023 (UTC)
 * &#123;{u&#124; Sdkb  }&#125;  talk 20:54, 1 September 2023 (UTC)
 * For anyone else who isn't reading this page in a browser with a search function, Closhund's comment was this:"I would have preferred something that looks like the following example, similar to Design 4. I don't like the contrast between text and background changing depending on what kind of bubble it is. It seems fine though.
 * I love that, but here's something I've done based on Closhund's suggestion. ▶ FA-class Under my suggestion, articles get a certain shape, say, right-pointed triangle, while non-articles can have, say, circles, which may also allow us to use colors close to those in use for articles while retaining visual distinctiveness, so that we can let go of too bright colors. I'd appreciate if Closhund's and my suggestions can be reproduced on a banner, so that we can compare look at it against the beige background, and banner texts. &#8212;CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • {C•X}) 18:22, 2 September 2023 (UTC)
 * @, here's an example with both: <-- removed -->
 * Qwerfjkl talk  14:59, 3 September 2023 (UTC)
 * I prefer the simplicity of Closhund's design. I think any other design is probably lost at that small size. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 18:59, 3 September 2023 (UTC)
 * I do like the slightly thicker border, though. We could combine that with Closhund's design, like this:   FA-class  That would make it clearer that the pale blue part at the left applies to the text within the bubble, whereas at 1px someone with impaired vision might just see a pale blue semicircle and miss the rest of the oval. &#123;{u&#124;  Sdkb  }&#125;  talk 21:17, 3 September 2023 (UTC)
 * I like this version Sdkb presented. - Favre1fan93 (talk) 23:33, 3 September 2023 (UTC)
 * Perhaps it's just be, but all these colours seem far too pale for me to see clearly, especailly CX Zoom's one because the indicator is smaller. — Qwerfjkl  talk  09:58, 4 September 2023 (UTC)
 * These paler colours were meant to improve contrast with overlapping text; but if we're going this route, we can go back to the original colours. DFlhb (talk) 10:12, 4 September 2023 (UTC)
 * Ah, I see waht you mean. Yes, I think one of these designs but with stronger colours would be better. — Qwerfjkl  talk  15:23, 4 September 2023 (UTC)
 * I was thinking about the same thing, that mine might be too pale to sufficiently differentiate the indicators from each other. &#8212;CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • {C•X}) 14:41, 4 September 2023 (UTC)
 * Would you mind mocking up the proposed design without the pale colours so we can see what it would look like? &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 11:18, 7 September 2023 (UTC)
 * I've updated the mockup above: colours less pale, used thicker border suggested by Sdkb, added a slightly wider gap before the bubble, changed the hyphen to non-breaking. How's that looking? &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 11:12, 13 September 2023 (UTC)
 * Looking at it on mobile device, one thing I can say is that whatever design is chosen, the span tags need to nowrapped,   FA- class  <== This doesn't look good. &#8212;CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • {C•X}) 14:39, 4 September 2023 (UTC)
 * This will probably be my only comment on this, because I don't want to drag out what I thought was a throwaway suggestion. I know it breaks on small screens, and I can fix it if this gets more traction, but I'm not a web designer. I also did have in mind that brighter colors would be possible if the text and background were separate. That was my main suggestion from design 4. Keep the iconography separate, but make the color as big as possible while maintaining directionality. Closhund  /talk/  03:52, 11 September 2023 (UTC)
 * I also don't want this conversation to delay what an RFC closer recommended. I, of course, like my suggestion. But I also believe that the closer recommended the colored bubbles be removed until this gets sorted. I don't know how WP bureaucracy works yet, and I don't want anyone to get in trouble because of me. Closhund  /talk/  04:05, 11 September 2023 (UTC)

Question: does anyone have any insight as to the opposition to the coloured bubbles? Is it an accessibility thing, e.g. poor contrast with text, or is it just more opposition to colours in general? We can work with either, just need some clarification. in case you have any comments. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 11:31, 13 September 2023 (UTC)
 * If it's opposition to colour in general, then we could design some kind of monochrome bubble. But I think some structure is useful to separate it from other text/assessments on the same row &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 11:32, 13 September 2023 (UTC)
 * The community doesn't like the coloured bubbles. Some people were worried that the colours weren't accessible to colour blind people, and with my closer hat on, I gave some extra weight to that concern because it's squarely grounded in policy.—<b style="font-family: Verdana; color: Maroon;">S Marshall</b> T/C 14:50, 13 September 2023 (UTC)
 * Monochrome it is then! Can I get people's opinions on Template:WPBannerMeta/testcases? &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 14:58, 13 September 2023 (UTC)
 * Oh, how dull; and indeed, how samey - I now need to read the text to see what rating it is. For years we have had brightly-coloured rectangles, that I don't recall any complaints about, and it was the work of a moment to spot that whilst three WikiProjects were green (B) one was orange (Start). -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 19:54, 14 September 2023 (UTC)
 * Well I guess it's still an improvement on the version that we had for many years below. But I agree, a design based on the discussion above might be nicer!
 * Article-level assessment example.jpg &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 19:57, 14 September 2023 (UTC)

Update: I am not able to make any changes to the bubbles without clearer consensus, so more comments are needed. I see three main options: &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 08:41, 22 September 2023 (UTC)
 * Implement monochrome bubbles
 * Develop the "Closhund" bubble mentioned above
 * Accept that the opposition against coloured bubbles has dissipated, and keep the current format. Either people have got used to it, or they have already changed their personal CSS to hide it.
 * @MSGJ, I would prefer option 2 there. I don't see how there would be a problem with accesibility. Obviously colour blind people would have issues with the colours, but that's what the text is for. From MOS:COLOUR: Ensure that color is not the only method used to communicate important information (my emphasis). The other issue was contrast with background, which isnn't so much a problem with these because they are less pale.<span id="Qwerfjkl:1696348039174:Template_talkFTTCLNWikiProject_banner_shell" class="FTTCmt"> — Qwerfjkl  talk  15:47, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
 * I'll do a few mockups of option 2 in the sandbox so it can be seen live DFlhb (talk) 08:38, 13 October 2023 (UTC)
 * Mockup: WikiProject banner shell/mockup4 to see how it looks with all importance levels, with the old non-faded colours. Feel free to test with classes too. I think 1px looks best, also fine with 1.5px. Even if people can't clearly see the border, it should be intuitive that the colour relates to the importance - DFlhb (talk) 12:35, 17 October 2023 (UTC)


 * There are a lot of horizontal lines going on there. What would it look like if the bubble covered the full height of the row? &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 11:15, 18 October 2023 (UTC)
 * Great point. I'm still brainstorming how to do that without making the colour overwhelming, but in the meantime I've come up with a "single underline" mockup which I think looks neat and minimalistic. It's live at the mockup page. DFlhb (talk) 12:14, 18 October 2023 (UTC)
 * (Full-height version is in) DFlhb (talk) 08:30, 19 October 2023 (UTC)
 * Apologies, I have not replied because I honestly can't decide which I prefer &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 19:53, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

This has died down, and the option that received the most support was the Closhund/Sdkb bubbles version with the thicker borders; unless there's opposition, I'll deploy that within a week or so. Would like to get this over with. DFlhb (talk) 12:57, 3 November 2023 (UTC)


 * Screenshot-bubbles-appearance.png
 * Tested it on various articles; on some it looks right; on others it looks too visually overbearing (see pic). I think this would receive backlash... DFlhb (talk) 21:57, 6 November 2023 (UTC)
 * I think people have got used to the new layout and we have had no complaints for the past few months. I would be wary about changing it again unless there is strong agreement ... &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 22:08, 6 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I agree. For what it's worth, I tested the current design for all vision deficiencies & colourblind types I could and for every single one, got a "AAA Excellent" for contrast on the WCAC2.0 accessibility scale.
 * For comparison's sake, every bubble, under every colourblindness type, has 3x higher contrast than the text immediately to its left (the WikiProject name, lower contrast since it's in light blue). DFlhb (talk) 22:13, 6 November 2023 (UTC)

inside WPBS
It turns out that moving the vital article template inside the banner shell causes articles to show up at maintenance categories such as this one; unaware of the upcoming template merge, some have well-meaningly tried to clear the maintenance category out by separating the vital article banner back out again, on a large number of pages. Any way to fix this so people don't get misled again? AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 23:41, 5 October 2023 (UTC)


 * If the categories are changing when it's moved into the banner shell, then something is not working correctly. Can you give me more details, because that category is empty? &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 07:38, 6 October 2023 (UTC)
 * Okay I now see the issue. The class rating from the banner shell is not correctly being inherited for all the myriad of category intersections. I'll see if this can be fixed. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 08:26, 9 October 2023 (UTC)
 * @AirshipJungleman29 just to let you know that this template can now be used inside the banner shell &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 21:01, 7 November 2023 (UTC)


 * AirshipJungleman29, if you feel it's unclear on the doc page, you're welcome to edit it to make it better. I guess I just always assumed from the title that you couldn't include anything in it other than WikiProjects. The second sentence does kind of say this but is a bit vague, but the first sentence leaves room for interpretation. Maybe adding some better wording to the doc to make it clearer would be a good thing. Mathglot (talk)

i can fix this by converting those class/level and class/topic intersection categories into silent task forces. However we would need to rename the categories as they need to conform to the standard naming scheme. Please see Template:Vital article/sandbox. Don't want to spend too long on this, because we are supposed to be merging the template into the banner shell. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 11:03, 9 October 2023 (UTC)


 * I have put a proposal to rename these categories on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Vital Articles &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 20:55, 12 October 2023 (UTC)

Bot needed
I have filed a request for a bot to roll out PIQA across the whole encyclopedia. Please review my request and ensure it matches with your understanding of the consensus &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 22:19, 15 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Shouldn't there be a check for projects that opted out of PIQA? It should skip steps 1, 4 and 5. — Material  Works  22:28, 15 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Yes indeed. I will add that now &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 22:30, 15 November 2023 (UTC)
 * @Martin, I can handle this. I've been working on something else, but it'd be nice to take a break and work on this instead.<span id="Qwerfjkl:1700342637159:Template_talkFTTCLNWikiProject_banner_shell" class="FTTCmt"> — Qwerfjkl  talk  21:23, 18 November 2023 (UTC)
 * My code from Task 24 is now working so hopefully I can just reuse that and it won't be too difficult to do.<span id="Qwerfjkl:1700342685566:Template_talkFTTCLNWikiProject_banner_shell" class="FTTCmt"> — Qwerfjkl  talk  21:24, 18 November 2023 (UTC)
 * I'd given up on that task ever being done by bot - we've almost cleaned it out manually now &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 21:33, 19 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Oh well, at least I can reuse the code.<span id="Qwerfjkl:1700430815437:Template_talkFTTCLNWikiProject_banner_shell" class="FTTCmt"> — Qwerfjkl  talk  21:53, 19 November 2023 (UTC)

Category:Articles with conflicting quality ratings
It's down to articles now. Any help from other editors would be appreciated. The problem is every time I check it, a bunch of new pages have been added. There are a lot of editors who need to be informed about the new system. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 13:07, 21 November 2023 (UTC)
 * @MSGJ: I resolved a bunch of the issues. Seems the biggest issue is editors changing articles to redirects without removing the quality ratings. GoingBatty (talk) 17:17, 21 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Yeah they seem to pop up a lot, perhaps a simple bot task could routinely remove class parameters from talk pages that became redirects. I don't think that would be as hard of a task as the bot request mentioned above is.  Wandering  Morpheme   00:58, 23 November 2023 (UTC)
 * has an approved bot task for this, but for some reason they are not running it at the moment &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:35, 23 November 2023 (UTC)
 * @MSGJ, I was planning to wait until task 24 is approved, and then I can set that to run however often. If it's desirable I can just run the approved redirect task.<span id="Qwerfjkl:1700757870451:Template_talkFTTCLNWikiProject_banner_shell" class="FTTCmt"> — Qwerfjkl  talk  16:44, 23 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Most of the pages that come up are redirects, so please do that &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 18:03, 23 November 2023 (UTC)
 * I took a good chunk out it, leaving 4 left that I was unsure of.  Wandering  Morpheme   19:21, 21 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Thanks guys! Misuse of User:Evad37/rater seems to be a significant problem &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 19:40, 21 November 2023 (UTC)
 * @MSGJ: Just posted a reminder for Evad37 at User talk:Evad37/rater.js. GoingBatty (talk) 19:59, 21 November 2023 (UTC)

Everyone: I have a proposal above which would help keep these conflicts to a minimum. If you would like to comment, we might be able to move ahead with it &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:37, 23 November 2023 (UTC)

Ignore class on non-article pages?
Inside Category:Articles with conflicting quality ratings there are a lot of non-articles (e.g. redirects, drafts, disambiguation pages) which have an article class rating, e.g. start. I'm wondering whether we should simply ignore this parameter on these kind of pages, so no conflicts will occur? One obvious exception would be FM-class in the file namespace. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 15:06, 13 November 2023 (UTC)
 * I generally delete the parameters when I stumble across them, but personally I'd rather a bot removed them (with a comment saying what they used to be if need be) than just ignore them so that don't appear on that conflicts page. -Kj cheetham (talk) 15:09, 13 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Articles get redirected all the time, and as soon as this happens there will be a conflict in ratings. So unless we ignore these incorrect parameters we are creating for ourselves a continuous maintenance task which doesn't need to be done at all ... &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 15:15, 13 November 2023 (UTC)
 * True, hence the bot, but I don't have a feel for the scale of the issue for different non-article types and agree don't want additional ongoing maintenance without reason. I'm inclined to agree with ignoring ones for redirects specifically. Perhaps draftifying and other relavent scripts could be updated to strip off the ratings as part of their process? Disambiguation ones I am more inclined to say a bot should correct with them, as they shouldn't change much. -Kj cheetham (talk) 15:28, 13 November 2023 (UTC)
 * The reason that ratings on drafs should be ignored is that they may still be valid if/when the article is moved into article space. I don't like removing an editors rating when that same rating might need to put replaced later. It would be better if we could just ignore it on drafts and other non-articles. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 22:10, 19 November 2023 (UTC)
 * My thinking was if it's been draftified, it needs work doing on it before it can go back in mainspace, and so should be re-assessed. Plus Qwerfjkl (bot) has been adding (X being the class, not a literal X), so the information isn't lost. -Kj cheetham (talk) 17:05, 20 November 2023 (UTC)
 * In my experience, pages can be draftied, or turned into redirect/dab page only to be reverted a short time later. I would not want to remove ratings only for such articles to become unrated when the move/edit is reverted. So how about we ask the bot to wait a week or two before removing any ratings? In the meantime, is there any disadvantage in having the template ignore them? &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 20:17, 20 November 2023 (UTC)
 * I don't think it should be necessary to make manual edits like this. It would be better if the template could just ignore it &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 10:56, 22 November 2023 (UTC)
 * The only disadvantage I could think of in practice was regarding categorisation, but your suggestion below of creating something like Category:Pages using WikiProject banner shell with ignored class parameter (or a similar name with the same purpose) addresses that, plus it not populating Category:Articles with conflicting quality ratings, so I support your proposal. -Kj cheetham (talk) 11:48, 25 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Thinking further, I think this whole issue could be dealt with better by changing the logic in Module:Class mask so that it is impossible to rate a redirect as Stub-class (or any other article class): it will always be Redirect-class &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 13:22, 25 November 2023 (UTC)
 * This is now ✅. I haven't yet implemented the second tracking category. If people still want that, then please agree on a name. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 19:55, 28 November 2023 (UTC)
 * @Kj cheetham, my bot will hopefully be approved for this (see Task 24).<span id="Qwerfjkl:1700499700641:Template_talkFTTCLNWikiProject_banner_shell" class="FTTCmt"> — Qwerfjkl  talk  17:01, 20 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Martin pointed me to this discussion here, and I agree with the ignoring. It's just way simpler, doesn't need a bot and if something is redirected, draftified or a template gets assigned a class rating, it's just simply easier to ignore the class parameter there instead of going through a whole bot process doing a task that doesn't really need to happen.  Wandering  Morpheme   14:31, 23 November 2023 (UTC)
 * I support this proposal; would remove the need for a fair bit of busywork. For drafts, it's true that they'll sometimes need reassessment when moved back to mainspace, but it's not that likely (49% of articles are stubs and 31% are Start); and in my experience most of these are redirects and it really doesn't matter if they contain an ignored rating. DFlhb (talk) 07:53, 24 November 2023 (UTC)
 * @MSGJ: Is your proposal to have the category ignore class on non-article talk pages when it comes to populating this category, or to have WikiProject banner shell and/or the WikiProject templates ignore class on non-article talk pages, or both? GoingBatty (talk) 19:12, 24 November 2023 (UTC)
 * I propose that the template ignores the parameter (so it won't be displayed and it won't populate Category:Articles with conflicting quality ratings). We could possibly populate a different category such as Category:Pages using WikiProject banner shell with ignored class parameter for eventual removal by bot &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 22:42, 24 November 2023 (UTC)

Embedding the vital article template


I have been working to add support for vital articles in this template, as decided in previous discussions (see link above for details). This involved a fairly major rewrite of the module, and making the display for articles which are not globally assessed more consistent with those which are. The idea is that if yes the module will read Vital articles/list (work in progress) and add the appropriate message and link. I have also added a new parameter demo_page to simulate what the template will look like on different pages. Some examples can be seen at Template:WikiProject banner shell/testcases. Note that the live templates display will not be accurate because it does not yet support the demo_page parameter &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 22:36, 8 November 2023 (UTC)


 * A more detailed list of changes that will be made:
 * The appearance of the banner for articles which do not have a global assessment (the majority of articles currently) will change to more closely match the appearance of articles that do. (Examples below). ✅
 * Support for a new parameter vital which will accept any positive input (e.g. "yes", "y") and then change the wording accordingly.
 * Support for a new parameter demo_page to test the module. ✅
 * Remove support for parameter header which I have never seen used, and nor do I think it should be possible to use custom text. ✅
 * &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 10:09, 9 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Update: most changes deployed. The implementation of the vital articles is still under discussion at Wikipedia talk:Vital articles &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 20:14, 13 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Further update: code is on Module:Banner shell/sandbox which will read JSON pages at Vital articles/data/A.json, Vital articles/data/B.json, etc. when a parameter yes is defined. Just waiting for any further refinements per the discussion over there and then it can be deployed &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 20:34, 23 November 2023 (UTC)
 * This is now ✅ &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 20:40, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

Highlight conflicting ratings
Please see proposal at Module talk:WikiProject banner &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:37, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

Opted-out
Is there an appropriate place where we can maintain a list of Projects which have opted out of the shell's class functionality? I noticed some WP:VG articles being independently assessed and it took a minute for me to recall that this Project had opted out.— TAnthonyTalk 20:33, 1 December 2023 (UTC)


 * There's a category for it, if that's what you're looking for.   Wandering  Morpheme   20:36, 1 December 2023 (UTC)


 * Great, thanks. It does seem visually odd/unnecessary, though, that the Project-level class shows when it matches the overall class in, as in Talk:The Wheel of Time. Is this by design?— TAnthonyTalk 20:41, 1 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Yes it's by design, but if you have other ideas then we would be happy to hear them. The reasoning is that these banners do not "inherit" the rating from the banner shell, so need to indicate their rating independently. Also, if we hid the rating in this case then it would look no different from if it was unassessed. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 13:42, 2 December 2023 (UTC)
 * @TAnthony please see suggestion below &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 15:33, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

Issue with assessments not applying to WikiProject Lists template
I created a phabicrator ticket for this issue, but someone on Discord suggested I mention it here as well. It looks like there's an issue with the class parameter not cascading down to the WikiProject Lists template (examples 1, 2, and 3). It's not clear to me why, but hopefully someone can look through the template and figure out what the issue may be. Hey man im josh (talk) 20:48, 5 December 2023 (UTC)
 * @Hey man im josh: See . — m w  (talk) (contribs) 21:07, 5 December 2023 (UTC)
 * @MaterialWorks: So, in short, just don't use the banner shell template for any lists, eh? Hey man im josh (talk) 21:26, 5 December 2023 (UTC)
 * No, you *should* be using the shell template, you just need to also specify the rating in WikiProject Lists. — m w  (talk) (contribs) 21:32, 5 December 2023 (UTC)
 * As this question keeps coming up, I'll offer some suggestions for consideration.
 * We rename the class parameter for the opt-out projects to something like custom_class to make it clear that it should not be removed.
 * We allow opt-out projects to inherit the PIQA rating when it is a valid value on their custom assessment scale.
 * We add a new "bubble" for unassessed articles, so that an unassessed article does not look at the same as one with inherited assessment.
 * &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 08:19, 6 December 2023 (UTC)
 * MSGJ, option 2 there sounds good to me.<span id="Qwerfjkl:1701854006717:Template_talkFTTCLNWikiProject_banner_shell" class="FTTCmt"> — Qwerfjkl  talk  09:13, 6 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Option 2 is probably the best one there, though we have to also consider projects with B-class criteria like MILHIST. Inheriting B or A from an article that doesn't pass their criteria would probably get a few complaints. — m w  (talk) (contribs) 09:37, 6 December 2023 (UTC)
 * It would only inherit if they didn't have their own assessment. Also these suggestions are not mutually exclusive :) I think 3 logically goes with 2. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 09:45, 6 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Option 2 is the best in my opinion, it's what I'd say is the expected behaviour. Had I not been aware of this, I likely would have found myself removing the rating for articles where it's specified in the banner shell, not realizing that it hadn't been passed down. Hey man im josh (talk) 12:46, 6 December 2023 (UTC)
 * I concur option 2 is best. I have no objection to option 3 additionally implemented. -Kj cheetham (talk) 19:38, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

I've coded up option 2. You can try out WikiProject Lists/sandbox and see if it works properly &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 21:56, 7 December 2023 (UTC)


 * Seems to work based on this, good job @MSGJ. I personally don't care that it shows the rating from the banner in the lists template and I think it's a great work around, but I think that it could lead to some folks trying to edit and remove the class from there only to find there's no class specified for the list template. With that said, I think this solves a lot more problems than it creates and would be a good bandaid fix to implement. Ideally though, we'd have it inherited without showing the class in the lists template. Hey man im josh (talk) 22:50, 7 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Xtools is also showing the proper rating when using the Lists sandbox template. Hey man im josh (talk) 22:54, 7 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Ah I see what you mean, yes we could also hide the assessment inside the template. So it is becoming more and more like an opt-in project banner. In fact the only difference is that it will not identify as a conflict if the class differs. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 09:02, 8 December 2023 (UTC)
 * @Hey man im josh: okay please try the lists sandbox again now and let me know if that looks good. Unassessed bubble is also implemented, but you should only see it if the PIQA rating is incompatible with the project's rating &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 20:38, 8 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Looks good to me in my testing, great job @MSGJ! Hey man im josh (talk) 20:57, 8 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Okay, I'll do some more testing and then deploy &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 22:04, 8 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Passes all my tests, so deployed. As always, let me know if you see anything unexpected ... &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 14:13, 10 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Great job, thanks for this! Hey man im josh (talk) 17:49, 10 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Just found an issue @MSGJ. For whatever reason, a page that I'm working on, List of San Francisco 49ers first-round draft picks, is not inheriting the assessment of "list" added in the WikiProject banner shell (assessment link here). Hey man im josh (talk) 13:24, 11 December 2023 (UTC)
 * I think it is inheriting - it's in Category:List-Class List articles which proves it &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 13:25, 11 December 2023 (UTC)
 * I did a null edit and now it shows in PageAssessments too &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 13:27, 11 December 2023 (UTC)

Bug
I think I've found a bug. On Talk:Victory in Europe Day, MilHist is rated as Start-class, but no bubble is appearing to show that it is different from the PIQA rating of C-class &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:47, 13 December 2023 (UTC)


 * Yes, there is an issue with the logic but I'm not quite sure how to resolve this. I'll post an example for consideration below. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 15:33, 13 December 2023 (UTC)

In this example, Milhist has no rating, but the PIQA rating is B-class. What should happen? &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 15:36, 13 December 2023 (UTC)
 * 1) B-class is a valid class on Milhist's custom scale, so it should inherit B-class
 * 2) B resolves to Start-class on Milhist custom scale (because there are no B-checklist parameters) so it should automatically classify as Start-class.
 * 3) Milhist should not use the PIQA rating on this article.


 * Probably either 2. or 3. — m w  (talk) (contribs) 18:53, 13 December 2023 (UTC)
 * I agree with 2 or 3. Possible 2 is the most logical, but would it confuse editors? &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 10:38, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

Another example. I assume Milhist should now inherit the B-class, as all its criteria are satisfied. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 10:40, 14 December 2023 (UTC)


 * New code now on sandbox &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 15:54, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

Moving ahead with project-independent quality ratings
It's now been 6 months since we started displaying the quality assessment in the banner shell template, but most articles are still not using the new system. User:Qwerfjkl has kindly offered to do the bot coding for this. However there are a few blockers to implementing this, here are the main ones: &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 09:06, 22 September 2023 (UTC)
 * 1) Custom class masks. There are  projects are using custom class masks, which are incompatible with the standard assessment scale. For example they are using Future-class or they are not using A-class. In my opinion, every project which has not opted out of PIQA needs to have their assessment scale converted to the "standard" or "extended" scale. Bear in mind that this will mean that articles rated with non-standard classes (such as Future-class) will be converted to Unassessed, so a conversation may need to happen with the relevant WikiProjects.
 * 2) Conflicting ratings. Category:Articles with conflicting quality ratings has  pages [editorial: this number is dynamically generated] which cannot be harmonised. Qwerfjkl's bot fixed a lot of the easy ones (redirects which were rated Start-class, etc.) but the rest need looking at.
 * 3) B-class checklists. Some articles agree on B-class except for one project which has a B-class checklist which is automatically demoting it to C-class. There are two types of these:
 * 4) * An article with B and no cannot be converted to B-class because an editor has expressly indicated that one of the B-class criteria has not been met.
 * 5) * An article with B and a blank B-class checklist should be converted to B-class in my opinion because no was has assessed whether it meets the individual criteria so we should defer to the editor who rated it B-class. There is a discussion about this at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Council
 * PIQA ought to be our top priority for improving the assessment realm, so I support whatever is needed to make that happen. Removing custom classes is a plus even beyond the compatibility issue, so that's an easy yes.
 * How many articles are there of the first subtype of the B-class issue? That seems like a pretty niche issue, so hopefully it can be resolved manually.
 * For conflicting ratings, if we want to do all of those manually, we could offer Barnstar incentives, or even do a full campaign with a watchlist notice. If we want to take the easy route, going with whatever ORES says would resolve the majority of them pretty quickly, I'd think, and might be less controversial than having ORES rate from scratch since there's at least been a human in the loop at some point.
 * Cheers, &#123;{u&#124; Sdkb  }&#125;  talk 13:31, 22 September 2023 (UTC)
 * I'd be happy to help out manually with the conflicting ones. The category/template/draft/file/userspace conflicts could have a bot correct at least though? I'd also be happy once WP:RATER is updated too somehow. -Kj cheetham (talk) 13:52, 22 September 2023 (UTC)
 * I did a rough pass using AWB and fixed every conflict in category/template/draft (except for Template talk:WPBannerMeta/testcases and Template talk:WikiProject banner shell/testcases) and got the page count down to 2,087. Will do the other namespaces later. – Material  Works  16:49, 22 September 2023 (UTC)
 * Did file, user and help pages. 1,945 pages left. – Material  Works  17:18, 22 September 2023 (UTC)
 * Oh, and agreed on the second subtype of the B-class issue, MSGJ. &#123;{u&#124; Sdkb  }&#125;  talk 14:08, 22 September 2023 (UTC)
 * @Martin, I can probably tackle a few more of the conflicting ones. The previous bot task was just duplicating Enterprsey's bot, with the same scope, so it was restricted to redirects. I could also run it on non-mainspace pages that have mainspace qualities, or vice versa, pretty safely.<span id="Qwerfjkl:1695391056774:Template_talkFTTCLNWikiProject_banner_shell" class="FTTCmt"> — Qwerfjkl  talk  13:57, 22 September 2023 (UTC)
 * From a simple search there are about 662 non-mainspace pages in the category.<span id="Qwerfjkl:1695391178317:Template_talkFTTCLNWikiProject_banner_shell" class="FTTCmt"> — Qwerfjkl  talk  13:59, 22 September 2023 (UTC)
 * Mainspace pages which are disamb pages seem like another thing a bot would handle. -Kj cheetham (talk) 14:22, 22 September 2023 (UTC)
 * I think we should be careful with draft articles in draft space, project space, or userspace. It seems quite valid that these could be assessed for quality. Apart from that - yes please! &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 14:29, 22 September 2023 (UTC)
 * As per Content assessment, I thought any draft should only have "Draft" as the quality assessment? But could have importance assessments like mainspace articles. -Kj cheetham (talk) 14:47, 22 September 2023 (UTC)
 * Might be worth clarifying because rating draft articles seems like a potentially useful activity and if an editor has made the effort to include a rating then I would not want to overwrite their efforts &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 14:50, 22 September 2023 (UTC)
 * I admit whenever I stumble across a Draft article with a rating I remove it. Sometimes it's a case of it was in mainspace and then someone draftified it, rather than being rated whilst it was a draft. I agree would be good for clarification on this though. -Kj cheetham (talk) 15:09, 22 September 2023 (UTC)
 * Draft articles are by definition not yet ready for mainspace, so I have no problem with them all being rated draft-class, and I don't think rating them would be a useful activity — if a rater decides that they merit any higher rating, the appropriate course of action would be to publish them. Rating is also not a hard thing to do (or to restore, if somehow overridden), so the risk is minimal. &#123;{u&#124; Sdkb  }&#125;  talk 15:09, 22 September 2023 (UTC)
 * So essentially, any case where it's not two article quality ratings conflicting could be done by bot?<span id="Qwerfjkl:1695462885410:Template_talkFTTCLNWikiProject_banner_shell" class="FTTCmt"> — Qwerfjkl  talk  09:54, 23 September 2023 (UTC)
 * That's my interpretation. Plus even for mainspace, disamb and redirect pages could also be handled by bot. -Kj cheetham (talk) 10:25, 23 September 2023 (UTC)
 * For those interested, I've started a discussion at Wikipedia Talk:Content assessment on formalizing A-class reviews and related issues. voorts (talk/contributions) 22:48, 7 October 2023 (UTC)

I have proposed that FM-class be adopted on the standard extended scale. This is one of the main classes missing which will make many custom quality scales unnecessary &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 20:16, 24 September 2023 (UTC)
 * @MSGJ, seems like there are no objections to that. Also, I take it there are no issues with me filing a BRFA to fix some of the conflicting ratings as I described above?<span id="Qwerfjkl:1696348153934:Template_talkFTTCLNWikiProject_banner_shell" class="FTTCmt"> — Qwerfjkl  talk  15:49, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
 * Yes please! Another run with redirects (which are already approved) might be in order because I'm still finding plenty of them remaining in the conflict category? &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 19:19, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
 * I might set that to run once a day on Toolforge.<span id="Qwerfjkl:1696362927450:Template_talkFTTCLNWikiProject_banner_shell" class="FTTCmt"> — Qwerfjkl  talk  19:55, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
 * Or probably less frequently than that.<span id="Qwerfjkl:1696363088860:Template_talkFTTCLNWikiProject_banner_shell" class="FTTCmt"> — Qwerfjkl  talk  19:58, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
 * I've set it to run once a week.<span id="Qwerfjkl:1696363629637:Template_talkFTTCLNWikiProject_banner_shell" class="FTTCmt"> — Qwerfjkl  talk  20:07, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
 * @MSGJ, .<span id="Qwerfjkl:1696449885428:Template_talkFTTCLNWikiProject_banner_shell" class="FTTCmt"> — Qwerfjkl  talk  20:04, 4 October 2023 (UTC)
 * What's the plan for getting WP:RATER updated, to reduce the risk of editors not noticing the banner shell tagging and adding inconsistent ratings? -Kj cheetham (talk) 10:03, 4 October 2023 (UTC)

Custom class masks
Just noting here the banners which cannot be converted to the standard scale &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 11:57, 27 September 2023 (UTC)


 * Now that those have been converted, Category:Future-Class articles, Category:Needed-Class articles, Category:SIA-Class articles, Category:Mention-Class articles sub-categories that don't use these should be deleted (or the category themselves if no more sub-categories). Gonnym (talk) 12:16, 17 October 2023 (UTC)
 * Yes, for sure. I removed empty cat and I see the empty category taggers have already found them &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 14:11, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

Update
Just to update on the three blockers to this listed above: &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 20:06, 23 October 2023 (UTC)
 * 1) These are resolved with all non-opt-out projects conforming to the standard scale. I am planning to code the template so it is impossible to use a custom mask without opting out of PIQA in future.
 * 2) Kind of stalled, waiting for approval at Bots/Requests for approval/Qwerfjkl (bot) 24, but editors can help manually if they wish. Not really a blocker to the main task.
 * 3) More of less resolved, although there is a proposal at  to harmonise B-class checklists going forward
 * I've been slowing doing the odd couple manually for item 2, not sure how much of a dent it really makes, but the count is down to 3 digits rather than 4 at least. -Kj cheetham (talk) 18:03, 12 November 2023 (UTC)
 * I'm slowly working through them as well. Qwerfjkl bot did a bunch of the non-articles, but there are plenty left for humans to review &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 22:02, 12 November 2023 (UTC)

Update 2
Quick update. We now have two bot operators ( and ) who have stepped up to the task of implementing PIQA, and both bots are on the verge of being approved. Once approved, this should happen quite quickly. Expect Category:Articles with conflicting quality ratings to fill up with hundreds, or even thousands, of articles which will need human review.

After this, we we will be ready to think about deprecating the class parameter in all non-opt-out projects. This will make it impossible to introduce a conflicting rating to an article. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 17:20, 18 December 2023 (UTC)

Set index articles
Happy new year everyone! Please see Wikipedia talk:Content assessment. I am trying to get consensus on what an SIA is and whether they are a useful classification of article on Wikipedia. We have many pages which should be classified as disambiguation pages but are currently not being detected as such. Please comment there, thanks &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 17:55, 1 January 2024 (UTC)

Avoid adding categories where (e.g.) category=no
(re. Module:Banner shell) Is it possible for this module to be modified so that it doesn’t fill any maintenance categories where (for example) the category parameter is set to no? What lead me to request this is because User talk:WOSlinker/Archive 1 is currently sorted into due to a demo usage, and my attempted fix didn’t seem to work.

Let me know if I’m missing something (it’s very possible!) or if there are any questions. All the best, &zwj;—&zwj;a smart kitten[ meow] 23:05, 25 December 2023 (UTC)


 * I have added this code to the sandbox, if you would like to check it works? &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 21:16, 29 December 2023 (UTC)
 * @MSGJ: I’ve tested it in my sandbox, and it seems to work :) &zwj;—&zwj;a smart kitten[ meow] 21:38, 29 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Okay that is deployed now, thanks &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 21:00, 1 January 2024 (UTC)

A-class
Looking at Category:A-Class articles it seems that a vast majority of these categories are empty. Is this class really being used? Gonnym (talk) 13:43, 12 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Gonnym, well, according to Content assessment there are 2,447 A-Class articles.<span id="Qwerfjkl:1702388808778:Template_talkFTTCLNWikiProject_banner_shell" class="FTTCmt"> — Qwerfjkl  talk  13:46, 12 December 2023 (UTC)
 * That number can still be from just a few projects which would mean that the class isn't used by the vast majority. Seeing as how just Category:A-Class military history articles alone has 674 articles tagged and MH is using a non-standard quality scale. If projects aren't using this then this should be removed from the standard scale as its pointless having over 1000k permanent empty categories. Gonnym (talk) 13:55, 12 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Please see Wikipedia talk:Content assessment - there was a big discussion about this recently, and a couple of editors offered to start an A-class assessment process, but nothing has happened yet. I would agree that it is barely being used currently &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 14:11, 12 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the link! I knew I remembered a discussion but couldn't find it. I honestly don't see how a two-person team would handle this (and the fact that after a month nothing has happened seems to prove it), but it is what it is I guess. Gonnym (talk) 14:31, 12 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Two people manage FAC, so it can be done by two people. I will initiate an RfC later this month. Hawkeye7   (discuss)  21:51, 2 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Gonnym, where did you get 1000k categories from? I see less than 2000.<span id="Qwerfjkl:1702391671465:Template_talkFTTCLNWikiProject_banner_shell" class="FTTCmt"> — Qwerfjkl  talk  14:34, 12 December 2023 (UTC)
 * From a stupid mistake of c/e and forgetting to remove the "k"... Gonnym (talk) 14:36, 12 December 2023 (UTC)

Simplify bubbles
Opinions please on removing "class" and "importance" from the bubbles in the nested version. Compare examples below:

Ignore list of categories - that's for testing purposes only &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 13:03, 3 January 2024 (UTC)


 * A worry that comes to mind is that an editor less familiar with how Wikipedia works might be confused by the indicators Start and Low on their own. Best, &zwj;—&zwj;a smart kitten[ meow] 13:22, 3 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Is it reasonable to expect them to press "show" where they will get an explanation? My idea is that we are only trying to show a summary of information in the nested display. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 13:41, 3 January 2024 (UTC)
 * @MSGJ: I prefer the "class" and "importance" words, since there's plenty of horizontal space. I wish there were more bubbles or icons next to them to represent parameters such as "attention", "needs-infobox", and "needs-photo". GoingBatty (talk) 15:27, 3 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Yes, that is what i am hoping too, and freeing up some space seemed like a good idea :) You may have plenty of space on your browser, but we should not make assumptions about what type of browser/device people are using. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 16:51, 3 January 2024 (UTC)
 * We did eliminate the word "WikiProject" in front of the project, and this seems at least a bit analogous. But "WikiProject" is included in the shell header, whereas what "Start"/"Low" mean isn't. In a parallel universe, "C" might be an importance rating and "Top" a quality rating, so it's not at all intuitive for newcomers. So on balance, I share smart kitten's concern that this will confuse newcomers, but I don't feel all that strongly about it.
 * If we do simplify the bubbles, then a tooltip that shows the full text on hover might be useful. It's worth noting that, given all the excellent movement toward project-independent quality ratings, using up lots of text for quality ratings will become less of an issue over time. As for the issue of using up lots of text for importance ratings, my preferred solution remains having a single line for each importance level that lists all the projects at that level, as envisioned in the mockup I shared last May that kicked off all this redesign work. &#123;{u&#124; Sdkb  }&#125;  talk 17:41, 3 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Oh yes, I forgot about that - with the bots rolling out WP:PIQA, by my understanding, the only bubble on most WikiProjects will (hopefully) soon be the importance bubble. Best, &zwj;—&zwj;a smart kitten[ meow] 17:44, 3 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Again, would readers not click "show" if they wanted an explanation? To me, it is more intuitive that the bubble reflects the same info as the box on the uncollapsed version, and that does not use "class" or "importance" either. I will look into the tooltip possibility, although this usually comes with a dashed underline which would not look so good &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 22:32, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

I prefer keeping "class" and "importance", as it would be ambiguous otherwise, especially to novices. The words don't seem to take up much space, and even less so with the class moving to the top with PIQA. The disadvantage of having to click "show" is that it is an extra click, and just to resolve ambiguity that can be avoided up front. The box on the uncollapsed version has the abbreviated label, but a full explanation is right beside it. However, if a lot of other stuff was added to the bubble line, I might reconsider. Nurg (talk) 03:45, 4 January 2024 (UTC)
 * My preference is to keep the class and importance suffixes to allow enough pixel area for the background colouring to be seen and to aid readability. For the letter classes (A, B, C, etc) in particular, removing the text would give only a single character, making it hard to scan the colour at a glance. Keeping the text would also make it easier for novices to understand which scale is being used, as others have said. Harryboyles  07:54, 4 January 2024 (UTC)
 * My preference is also to keep the suffixes, for reasons people have already said. -Kj cheetham (talk) 10:45, 5 January 2024 (UTC)
 * As above. The "start" example above makes it look better; I don't think a solitary "B" or "C" would be intelligble to any newcomer. AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 12:50, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for all comments. Consensus seems clear on this issue, and I have removed the test from the sandbox. However there does seem to be some support for adding more information to the collapsed version, so I will make a proposal on this shortly &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:54, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

GOCE duplicated banners
How best to handle when there are multiple GOCE banners, with different dates from different reviews, in the banner shell? e.g. Talk:Hadrian and Talk:Airbus A330. Also noting WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors/Templates, which suggests instead converting the information for use in the banner. I don't know how widespread of an issue this is - perhaps a new tracking could be created if need be? (A la Category:Pages with multiple WikiProject Women in Red banners.) -Kj cheetham (talk) 14:00, 5 January 2024 (UTC)


 * @Kj cheetham: When I've come across these, I've combined them by changing the parameters for the older copyedits to old-user-1=/old-date-1=, old-user-2=/old-date-2=, etc. So for Talk:Hadrian, I'd combine the two banners into the following:
 * Best, &zwj;—&zwj;a smart kitten[ meow] 14:14, 5 January 2024 (UTC)
 * thank you! That's good to know. Feels like something a bot could perhaps? -Kj cheetham (talk) 14:26, 5 January 2024 (UTC)
 * @Kj cheetham & @Kj cheetham: Looking at Category:Pages using WikiProject banner shell with duplicate banner templates, there are no pages sorted into the "G" section, so I presume there are no more pages with multiple GOCE banners. If I'm wrong, please let me know. GoingBatty (talk) 15:28, 5 January 2024 (UTC)
 * , that's my interpretion. Must have been less than I thought! -Kj cheetham (talk) 15:30, 5 January 2024 (UTC)
 * , that's my interpretion. Must have been less than I thought! -Kj cheetham (talk) 15:30, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

Redirect with level-3 vital articles
This is a minor issue, but is it possible to avoid a redirect when linking to level-3 vital articles in the banner shell? For example, Talk:William Shakespeare links to Vital articles/Level/3, but this redirects to Vital articles. Template:Vital article avoids this redirect. I believe that fixing this just requires a simple change to line 87 of Module:Banner shell. Malerisch (talk) 01:36, 5 January 2024 (UTC)


 * I see what you mean. Yes, we could do this fairly easily. (Although one day hopefully, level 3 articles will be in their logical place!) &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:55, 5 January 2024 (UTC)
 * now produces . I will update WPBS shortly. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 14:49, 5 January 2024 (UTC)
 * , thanks for working on this. However, I can't help but notice that still has a redirect, which is probably due to line 25 of Module:Vital article. Malerisch (talk) 06:34, 6 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Yes indeed! Made a bit of a mess of that edit &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 06:38, 6 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Now added to banner shell &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 06:56, 6 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Looks good, thanks for fixing this! Malerisch (talk) 07:50, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

Resolving quality rating conflicts
When working through, is it okay to presume that the most recent rating for a PIQA-participating project is correct (in cases where the talk page history is clear enough to make determining this possible), or should we be doing a reassessment of the page to determine the quality? Best, &zwj;—&zwj;a smart kitten[ meow] 13:02, 6 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I've personally been doing very quick reassessments, but generally sticking with the highest rated existing rating. -Kj cheetham (talk) 13:05, 6 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Usually, we would hope that an article gets better over time, so the most recent is probably the best. Or if most projects agree and one differs, then I am going with the majority &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 13:40, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

United States WikiProject duplicated banners
Looking at Category:Pages using WikiProject banner shell with duplicate banner templates, am I right in thinking the majority are due to the United States WikiProject? Template:WikiProject United States has a lot of parameters, and rather than combining all into one banner many people have used multiple banners for different sub-projects/taskforces I think. The extra complication is some have different top-level importance ratings on the same article. -Kj cheetham (talk) 15:22, 5 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Mainly caused by wrapper templates which automatically substitute a new banner on the page. See Category:WikiProject United States banner wrapper templates for a list. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 15:24, 5 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I wonder if could automate edits like https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk%3AAdeline_De_Walt_Reynolds&diff=1193773097&oldid=985327680 (though no doubt there are issues I've not thought of, as I've only given it minimal thought!) -Kj cheetham (talk) 15:33, 5 January 2024 (UTC)
 * When I asked about this here they indicated that it could be done along with task 12 &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 07:56, 6 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I think I should be able to merge templates that don't have duplicate parameters, or that have the same parameter values. Kanashimi (talk) 08:44, 6 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Seems like a good idea to me (though I've not given it a lot of thought I admit). -Kj cheetham (talk) 22:24, 7 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Kj cheetham, I'm fairly sure there's a bot already approved for that.<span id="Qwerfjkl:1704536345002:Template_talkFTTCLNWikiProject_banner_shell" class="FTTCmt"> — Qwerfjkl  talk  10:19, 6 January 2024 (UTC)
 * That's good, though I'm not convinced it's currently running if so. -Kj cheetham (talk) 11:24, 6 January 2024 (UTC)
 * @Kj cheetham: It seems there are about 1,200 pages in the category due to the US WikiProject, and more pages in the category due to the Women in Red banners. GoingBatty (talk) 15:34, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

Icons for notes in collapsed version
A long requested feature is now in the sandbox. Any notes in the banner will display as a small icon in the collapsed version. The text of the note will show in mouseover.

In the example above, the second note does not display because it doesn't have an image defined &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 14:23, 6 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I like this concept (especially that is has tooltips). -Kj cheetham (talk) 14:25, 6 January 2024 (UTC)
 * @MSGJ: Wonderful - thank you! When I look at WikiProject National Football League, I see a camera icon indicating that an image is needed.  In the example above, where isn't the image defined?  GoingBatty (talk) 13:27, 7 January 2024 (UTC)
 * MSGJ is/was using the sandbox version of WikiProject National Football League/sandbox to demonstrate the new feature (see diff for temporarily removing the icon) - the live version of WikiProject National Football League still has the image in place.  Harryboyles  13:58, 7 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Great job! This is very helpful. Gonnym (talk) 13:51, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

A couple of technical questions. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 21:20, 7 January 2024 (UTC)
 * 1) Editors might click the icons assuming it will take them to more information about the issue. But of course it will take them to the image description page. I wonder if we could mark these as purely decorative images, because attribution will be provided in the uncollapsed version of the banner.
 * 2) Do we want these images to automatically disappear when the banner is uncollapsed (like the main image)?
 * Point 1 is a good idea. I have no opinion on point 2. -Kj cheetham (talk) 22:22, 7 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Okay, I have removed the link from those images. It is questionable whether this complies with MOS:PDI so if anyone queries this, we may need further discussion. I am not doing 2 at this stage. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 11:53, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

Category:Pages using WikiProject banner shell without banner templates
In the interests of tidiness, do we still need this tracking category? Having a banner shell without banner templates is now perfectly acceptable, so perhaps we do not need to track them anymore. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 10:40, 4 January 2024 (UTC)
 * MSGJ, I agree it should be deleted. It might still be useful to track cases where the WPBS isn't doing anything - when it can't automatically detect the class, doesn't have a class value supplied, etc. (e.g. Talk:Abney-Hastings baronets). Then someinr could go through and add WikiProjects / class ratings.<span id="Qwerfjkl:1704367945248:Template_talkFTTCLNWikiProject_banner_shell" class="FTTCmt"> — Qwerfjkl  talk  11:32, 4 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Well, unassessed articles are tracked at Category:Unassessed articles and there are of them &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 11:54, 4 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Fair enough.<span id="Qwerfjkl:1704369347595:Template_talkFTTCLNWikiProject_banner_shell" class="FTTCmt"> — Qwerfjkl  talk  11:55, 4 January 2024 (UTC)
 * There are talk pages that populate but not, though (PetScan query) - at a glance, this seems to include pages where a class= rating has been set but no WikiProjects have been added (examples: [1], [2], [3]). I'm not sure what the expected behaviour would be here, but there does currently seem to be a slight difference in function between the categories. Best, &zwj;—&zwj;a smart kitten[ meow] 13:17, 4 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Yes, this is all expected behaviour &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 13:21, 4 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I don't think we really need this cat, but perhaps it should go to CfD? -Kj cheetham (talk) 18:15, 4 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Probably not. It was just used for technical reasons so we can just depopulate it if it's not needed &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 07:53, 6 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I don't think it's great when an article has no WikiProjects though, it makes it harder to track articles with issues in need of attention and harder for people with an interest in that topic to find them. I think it's useful enough for tracking that so people can add them, even if it has a lot of overlap with unassessed articles (hopefully after PIQA is rolled out both of these will be easier to manage) PARAKANYAA (talk) 19:03, 6 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I might have misunderstood, I was thinking Category:Unassessed articles included articles with no WikiProjects, but given it contains approx 76k and Category:Pages using WikiProject banner shell without banner templates has approx 82k, I think I'm wrong. I agree with PARAKANYAA that it's not great if some articles have no WikiProjects. PIQA will definitely help with unassessed articles though. -Kj cheetham (talk) 19:10, 6 January 2024 (UTC)
 * There are nearly 6k articles in Category:Stub-Class articles (these also have no WikiProject banners) &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 23:32, 6 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Ah, so there's still at least one way to track it. That's less worrying. I'm less opposed now but IMO it still makes sense to have this tracking category, but feel free to disagree PARAKANYAA (talk) 16:35, 7 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Tracking categories are only useful if someone is monitoring and actively working on pages that are tracked. If you or anyone wants to work on tagging these 82k pages, then go ahead. Otherwise I suggest it's not helpful keeping it around indefinitely &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 20:28, 7 January 2024 (UTC)
 * @MSGJ I realize now that I can just take it out of Category:Stub-Class articles (I cleared out the few stragglers in start and C, and already 100 or so out of this one) so I don't really care if you wanna delete the category beyond that. I wish people would stop assessing pages without adding projects though... PARAKANYAA (talk) 14:53, 10 January 2024 (UTC)
 * The category was empty as of this morning and has been deleted as empty as proposed. Any admin is welcome to reverse this as they see fit. ZsinjTalk 16:36, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

B-class information when the article is a GA class
At Talk:Marvel Cinematic Universe, the bot merged the classes as it should, but I was wondering if the B-class values for WikiProject Comics should be kept here? The article is a GA, so it passed B and the B information is not displayed anywhere. Gonnym (talk) 10:58, 5 January 2024 (UTC)


 * As far as I'm aware, WikiProject Comics didn't opt out of WP:PIQA, so the B-class parameters were recently from its template (as a result of this discussion at WT:COUNCIL). Someone please correct me if I'm wrong though. Best, &zwj;—&zwj;a smart kitten[ meow] 11:25, 5 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Indeed, the code for the parameters was removed very recently, see https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template%3AWikiProject_Comics&diff=1193582963&oldid=1188355805. The B-class values on the talk pages are now effectively just being ignored. I have no views if they should be removed by the bot or not though. -Kj cheetham (talk) 11:28, 5 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I think has an active bot task that can remove obsolete parameters, if needed &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:56, 5 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I've also seen removing the now-unknown WikiProject banner parameters. Best, &zwj;—&zwj;a smart kitten[ meow] 13:23, 5 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Yes, BattyBot 79 is explicitly running through the "invalid parameters" category, which should in theory catch pages using WikiProject Comics with the B-classes on it (after a system cache I suspect). If for some reason it does not, I can have my bot do a one-off for that banner specifically. Primefac (talk) 14:21, 5 January 2024 (UTC)
 * @Gonnym, @A smart kitten, @Primefac: I just created Category:Pages using WikiProject Comics with unknown parameters, and will run my bot against it. GoingBatty (talk) 15:20, 5 January 2024 (UTC)
 * @MSGJ can the module detect pages with unknown parameters and for which there is no project-level category and place it in Category:WikiProject templates with unknown parameters? Once GoingBatty's bot finishes its run I don't think there would be much value in having all of these sub-categories anyway (but that is a different question for later). Gonnym (talk) 15:26, 5 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Yes, that's what it did previously. But there were thousands of pages in there and I didn't know there was any process of cleaning them up. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 15:27, 5 January 2024 (UTC)
 * @Gonnym, @A smart kitten, @Primefac: ✅ (although there may be pages not yet populated into the category, so I'll rerun if needed). GoingBatty (talk) 15:25, 7 January 2024 (UTC)
 * @MSGJ: When you remove parameters from a template, could you also please ? Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 13:43, 7 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Yes, I will try to remember! &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 15:42, 10 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I just removed a bit more documentation out of Template:WikiProject_Comics/doc, but I wasn't sure what the red-link for class was meant to point to? -Kj cheetham (talk) 15:49, 10 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Fixed it I think. The template code doesn't show it has a class sub-page. Gonnym (talk) 16:38, 10 January 2024 (UTC)
 * It looks fixed, thank you! -Kj cheetham (talk) 16:40, 10 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Not sure if Template:WPBannerDoc needs updating too whilst thinking of it? -Kj cheetham (talk) 15:51, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

I do have a few concerns about removing all these parameters. What if someone removes a feature from a template without consensus, or if a template gets vandalised? If these unknown parameters are removed promptly, then it will be difficult to retrieve all that information. Similarly, if a project goes inactive, and all their parameters get removed, then it is more difficult to revive the project in future. In general, these old parameters are not doing any harm, are they? &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 07:00, 6 January 2024 (UTC)


 * Harm is a subjective word. I spent more minutes than I wanted going over template code and discussions to find out why the B-class values weren't displaying. A different editor with maybe less experience would waste even more time in filling these up. That said, after this initial run, the cleanup can be done manually and not by a bot so any change wouldn't be handled that fast. Gonnym (talk) 07:24, 6 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I thought that's what the red unknown parameter warning is for &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 07:51, 6 January 2024 (UTC)
 * @GoingBatty: do you have any comments on this, i.e. how to mitigate loss of information in the event that a template is editing without consensus? &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 15:43, 10 January 2024 (UTC)
 * @MSGJ: Templates can be protected against vandalism and bot edits can be reverted. Once my bot has done its initial run, I imagine running it once a month to minimize issues with removal without consensus. GoingBatty (talk) 15:56, 10 January 2024 (UTC)
 * m more worried about the unprotected and semi-protected templates. Is there any way that your bot could leave any pages until they have been in that category for at least a month? I think that would satisfy most of my concerns &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 16:02, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

Pages with two 1-parameters
Could pages with two or more equal parameters ends up in a category, like this (two ) ):  with  .  Christian75 (talk) 10:07, 7 January 2024 (UTC)


 * Why don't we set up tracking of any unknown parameters and these will also be caught &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 14:03, 7 January 2024 (UTC)
 * @Christian75 unknown parameters now tracked at Category:Pages using WikiProject banner shell with unknown parameters. Positional (unnamed) parameters like the ones you described will be sorted under 0-9 &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 20:32, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

A lot of the "B" parameters are banner collapsed which might relate to a very old version of this template before the banners collapsed automatically. I think we could ask if these parameters could be removed by bot &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 21:18, 7 January 2024 (UTC)


 * @MSGJ: GoingBatty (talk) 21:25, 7 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Thanks that would help a lot. There are also lots of interesting spellings of collasped, collapse, Collapse, but these can probably not be fixed automatically. I think most of the rest will need looking at manually because of a variety of reasons. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 21:37, 7 January 2024 (UTC)
 * @MSGJ: ✅! GoingBatty (talk) 22:40, 7 January 2024 (UTC)
 * There's more now! &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 06:22, 8 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Thank you. Christian75 (talk) 07:09, 8 January 2024 (UTC)
 * @MSGJ: Yes, and I'll continue to work on this new category along with the others. GoingBatty (talk) 19:00, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

blp or living
There is a discussion about whether to use blp or living, and what to do if both are used, and whether we want to settle on one of these parameters eventually (probably should be discussed on this page) &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 10:05, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

Duplicate banner templates category
I’ve just been looking at. I’ve noticed that talk pages containing multiple (but different) banners from the same project are sorted into this category, despite the banners not being duplicates. (Random examples: Talk:Lidi Bessi Kama, Talk:Amy Bernardy, Talk:Christina Stinnett)

While it’s obviously not the end of the world, this does mean that the maintenance category gets at least a little polluted, as these talk pages can’t/don’t need to be ‘fixed’ in the same way as - e.g. - a duplicate inclusion of WikiProject Biography would. I was therefore wondering if there were any plans/ideas to prevent the presence of different banners from the same WikiProject from erroneously sorting the talk page into the ‘duplicate banners’ category.

(FYI, I’ll leave invitations to this discussion at Template talk:WikiProject Africa, Template talk:WPAFR10k & Template talk:WIR; as those are the WikiProjects I’ve noticed so far which have banners encountering this issue. There may well be more, though - if/when I discover more, I’ll leave invitations at the relevant template talk pages.)


 * Module talk:WikiProject banner
 * Template talk:WikiProject Africa
 * Template talk:WPAFR10k
 * Template talk:WIR
 * Template talk:WikiProject Europe
 * Template talk:WPEUR10k

Let me know if there are any queries about anything I’ve said. All the best, &zwj;—&zwj;a smart kitten[ meow] 00:51, 26 December 2023 (UTC)


 * There was a proposal to merge the WIR templates, but it got closed as no consensus. — m w  (talk) (contribs) 10:49, 26 December 2023 (UTC)
 * @MaterialWorks: I noticed that proposal. As a layperson, I’m inclined to suggest that there should potentially be an amendment to Module:Banner shell and/or Module:WikiProject banner, such that different banners from the same WikiProject are recognised as such; and so that doesn’t get populated unless the banners are truly the same. As far as I can see, this would resolve the issues with (a) pages with multiple WIR banners populating the category, and (b) pages with a WikiProject banner and ‘sub-banner’ (e.g. WikiProject Europe & WPEUR10k) populating the category. All the best, &zwj;—&zwj;a smart kitten[ meow] 11:09, 26 December 2023 (UTC)
 * @A smart kitten: Should the templates such as WIR-286 and WPAFR10k be removed from WikiProject banner shell, just like Feminism and Folklore 2023 isn't included? GoingBatty (talk) 16:10, 26 December 2023 (UTC)
 * I've always assumed such templates should be included, as they are WikiProject templates. Feminism and Folklore 2023 doesn't seem to be a WikiProject. -Kj cheetham (talk) 16:13, 26 December 2023 (UTC)
 * I should add, I would strongly object to such templates not being in the banner shell, which has been discussed multiple times before (though no RFC or anything formal), and will continue "manually" moving them into the shell when I come across them as I have been doing for a few years, which the WP:RATER tool currently supports. -Kj cheetham (talk) 16:33, 26 December 2023 (UTC)
 * @GoingBatty: Honestly, I’m not personally sure - if I get time later on, I might dig through talk page archives to see if I can find anything relevant - but WIR templates invoke Module:WikiProject banner (as does WPAFR10k), which on its own would seem to suggest to me that they should be included. I think I also remember having seen automated edits that place them inside the banner shell. Best, &zwj;—&zwj;a smart kitten[ meow] 16:17, 26 December 2023 (UTC)
 * I'd like to have another attempt at discussing with WIR project to see if we can find an acceptable way of merging those banners. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 22:48, 26 December 2023 (UTC)
 * I have converted Template:WPAFR10k into a tmbox and moved it outside the banner, which will resolve the tracking category issue. I think a better solution would be merging it into Template:WikiProject Africa. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 21:25, 29 December 2023 (UTC)
 * @MSGJ: FYI, you may already be aware, but there’s at least one other template in that currently uses Module:WikiProject banner. I’m not confident enough in this area to voice an opinion right now on what the standard should be (i.e., tmbox/wpbanner/etc); however, I imagine that - whatever it is - for the sake of consistency, it should probably be the same for all the challenge templates in that category. Best, &zwj;—&zwj;a smart kitten[ meow] 21:36, 29 December 2023 (UTC)
 * I've converted Template:WPEUR10k. Are there any more? &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 22:16, 29 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Template:WPLA10k too. — m w  (talk) (contribs) 22:24, 29 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Done that one too &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 22:32, 29 December 2023 (UTC)
 * FYI, @MSGJ: I've just come across Special:Diff/1090604618, which would seem to suggest that Cewbot inserts these banners into the banner shell (courtesy ping @Kanashimi). Best, &zwj;—&zwj;a smart kitten[ meow] 17:51, 3 January 2024 (UTC)
 * That's quite an old edit, so not sure if it is an active task &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 18:24, 3 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I think it might still be active - searching Cewbot's contribs brings up this edit from two days ago (apologies, though, I should have checked there first to make sure). Best, &zwj;—&zwj;a smart kitten[ meow] 18:29, 3 January 2024 (UTC)
 * fixed Kanashimi (talk) 23:00, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

For those interested, I have started a discussion with the Women in Red project at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Women in Red &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 23:10, 4 January 2024 (UTC)


 * @A smart kitten@GoingBatty@Kanashimi@MaterialWorks I have spent some time working on the sandbox of the WIR template and have a proposal at Template talk:WIR &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 22:58, 11 January 2024 (UTC)
 * @Hilst with new username (when did that happen?) &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 23:01, 11 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Two weeks ago :V –  23:04, 11 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Not for the first time, either. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 17:01, 12 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I can have a little rename every once in a while, as a treat. –  17:33, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

single banners and the shell
is making edits, taking single, standalone WikiProject banners and putting them inside this template. Its reasoning for this is. However, when clicking that link, and arriving at Template:WikiProject banner shell/doc, there's no explanation or rationale for putting the multiple-banner-condensing shell around a single banner template. Is either the documentation lacking, or the bot making mistaken edits? —  Fourthords  &#124; =Λ= &#124; 15:27, 15 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Its edits are correct, because all the class parameters are moving from individual banners into the banner shell. I'll see what documentating needs updating &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 20:05, 15 January 2024 (UTC)
 * 10-4. I don't have a preference one way or another, but saw the disconnect between the edits made & PIQA's documentation, and wanted to check and clear it up.  Thanks!  —   Fourthords  &#124; =Λ= &#124; 20:49, 15 January 2024 (UTC)
 * For interest, Bots/Requests for approval/Qwerfjkl (bot) 26 gives more technical details on what it's doing, which should also have been linked from the edit summary. -Kj cheetham (talk) 20:57, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

Question about Category:WikiProject templates with unknown parameters
Category:WikiProject templates with unknown parameters and its subcategories include hundreds of thousands of pages where the unknown parameters do not have a value. Is there a way we could view only those pages where the unknown parameter has a value? For example, I think fixing parameters such as Start is more important than cass. (If this question should be moved somewhere else, please let me know and I'll move it.) Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 17:40, 15 January 2024 (UTC)


 * Yes, this is possible and requires this change. This can be deployed at next sync if you are sure. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 20:10, 15 January 2024 (UTC)
 * @MSGJ: Looks great - thanks! When this goes into effect, we can update the category to explain that pages contained are only unknown parameters with values.  GoingBatty (talk) 20:54, 15 January 2024 (UTC)
 * @MSGJ: Hmmm, I'm seeing a difference today, so maybe I didn't make my request clear. Category:Pages using WikiProject Alabama with unknown parameters has 7 pages.  Each of these page has an empty importance parameter.  When I edit these pages, I no longer see the red message stating the parameter is unknown.  However, what I really wanted was the page to not be CATEGORIZED if it only has empty unknown parameters.  The goal is to have Category:WikiProject templates with unknown parameters and its subcategories only show pages with non-empty unknown parameters.  Hope I'm explaining this better this time.  Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 04:09, 17 January 2024 (UTC)
 * The change has been applied, but category links aren't immediately updated - they are done through the job queue system: Help:Job queue. Category-related changes to this template/the underlying module are always going to take some time to propagate to all pages, simply because of just how many pages include one or more WikiProject banners (3,220,000 pages approximately). I did a null edit on the 7 pages in the Alabama category, and only 2 remain (just to show the change is working - the job queue system handles this so we don't need to null edit every page).  Harryboyles  07:58, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

Tracking categories for articles that require performing WP:PIQA
Is it possible for us to create categories to track articles that need to perform WP:PIQA containing the following types? Kanashimi (talk) 21:59, 13 January 2024 (UTC) &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 23:27, 13 January 2024 (UTC)
 * 1) Called Module:WikiProject banner but does not contain WPBS.
 * 2) Contains WPBS but sets the same class as WPBS.
 * 3) Other types?
 * Yes, should be straightforward. How about Category:WikiProject banners without banner shells? Just to be clear, do we want banners not inside banner shells, or banners without any banner shell on page?
 * Do you mean contains a WikiProject banner which sets the same class as WPBS. Yes that it a good idea, as we can automatically remove class right? How about Category:WikiProject banners with redundant class parameter? Bear in mind that there may be non-redundant class parameters on the same page (e.g. non-opt-out projects, or banners with conflicting ratings).
 * I guess the other one is banner shells with no PIQA rating. How about Category:Pages using WikiProject banner shell without a project-independent quality rating?
 * &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 23:34, 13 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Yes, all the pages without WPBS. Also you reminded me that pages that are placing WP template outside of WPBS need to be addressed as well.
 * It would be nice to get rid of Category:WikiProjects using a non-standard quality scale.
 * May this kind of pages be merged to #1?
 * Kanashimi (talk) 23:49, 13 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Maybe need a cat for articles without WPBS and a separate cat for articles with WPBS but have WP templates outside of it?
 * I assume there's already an projects opted-out of PIQA cat?
 * WPBS present but without a rating seems like a different (but related) issue to #1.
 * -Kj cheetham (talk) 12:21, 14 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I have set up those three tracking categories on Module:WikiProject banner/sandbox. Would appreciate if anyone can check the code and/or test they work correctly. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 22:21, 15 January 2024 (UTC)
 * ✅ &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 18:54, 16 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Just to note that Category:WikiProject banners with redundant class parameter is not working correctly as it includes opt-out projects which are not redundant. This will be fixed at next sync. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 09:56, 17 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Thank you for your contribution. I think we'll use these categories after we run the first run. Kanashimi (talk) 10:01, 17 January 2024 (UTC)
 * For what it's worth, I've just been working on them in alphabetical order.<span id="Qwerfjkl:1705260643080:Template_talkFTTCLNWikiProject_banner_shell" class="FTTCmt"> — Qwerfjkl  talk  19:30, 14 January 2024 (UTC)

PIQA for unassessed pages
Another question from today's watchlist changes: Qwerfjkl (bot) is adding WPBS to pages that are not subject to any quality scale, such as files and categories, and thus do not have that parameter set for any WP template (example). Is this intended? Is this useful? IceWelder &#91; &#9993; &#93; 00:13, 22 January 2024 (UTC)


 * @MSGJ Do we need to exclude these namespaces? Kanashimi (talk) 00:29, 22 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I still think it is useful in general as it removes the repetition of "This file does not require a rating on the project's quality scale" on each separate banner. (Okay in the example you gave, there was only one banner so there is less utility.) Do you have a problem with these edits? &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 09:14, 22 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I don't have a problem with them per se, I just want to be consistent across my GAs and FAs. If WBPS is intended to be used for files, then this should be documented and applied accordingly, and reverted if not. IceWelder  &#91; &#9993; &#93; 11:06, 22 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Yep, I raised the same thing at User talk:Qwerfjkl. Qwerfjkl has temporarily paused the bot on non-article talk pages, i.e. redirects, DABs, files, category, etc. InfiniteNexus (talk) 18:27, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I've added the PIQA_namespace option to handle this. Kanashimi (talk) 22:00, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
 * What is  ? Does that mean your bot will not be making these useless edits ? Sohom (talk) 08:37, 24 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Yes, I have turned this into a user configurable option. See the settings page User:Cewbot/log/20200122/configuration. Kanashimi (talk) 09:05, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

Featured Article status of Military History articles
Cewbot has been stripping WikiProject Military History articles of their Featured Article status. Example (Note the change of categories.) There was no consensus for this action. Hawkeye7  (discuss)  21:17, 2 January 2024 (UTC)


 * @Hawkeye7, the diff there shows a change in code, but I'm not seeing a change in the article's categories. Could you specify which categories were removed or how the code changes are causing disruption?
 * If you're curious about why the code is changing, the nutshell is that it's to improve the display of talk page banners to reduce redundancy. It began with this, continued here, had further technical discussion here, and was recently approved as a bot task here.
 * We certainly don't want to remove featured status from any articles that have earned it, so if that's happening, it's a bug that should be dealt with. The only changes should be under-the-surface ones that improve banner design without impacting article status in any way. Courtesy pinging bot operator, approver , and BRFA discussant — I think there's room to improve the bot's edit summary to make it clearer what it's doing. &#123;{u&#124;  Sdkb  }&#125;  talk 21:46, 2 January 2024 (UTC)
 * The class was changed from FA to A. This was not intentional and I have asked Kanashimi and Qwerjkfl not to change the opt-out projects' ratings in any future edits. We will fix the ones which have changed. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 21:49, 2 January 2024 (UTC)
 * The same has happened to those of mine which are FAs and went through ACR, but not to those which were never A class. Gog the Mild (talk) 21:55, 2 January 2024 (UTC)
 * If you look at the 7 July 2023 version of the example, Talk:Leslie Groves, it is in Category:FA-Class military history articles (and several FA sub-categories). In the current version these have been replaced by Category:A-Class military history articles and its sub-categories. WikiProject Military History is not an opt-out project. Hawkeye7   (discuss)  22:08, 2 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I read the discussion on Template talk:WikiProject banner shell, and thought that the templates under Category: WikiProjects using a non-standard quality scale would inherit the class of WikiProject banner shell, so I changed the code. But it looks like it's not quite set up yet. I will leave the exiting categories untouched for now. Also, since I can't tell which templates I've moved, I have to recover them all. I checked the editors and it seems that only a few of them are WikiProject Military History related, so it might be better to recover them manually. Since I just changed the code yesterday, the issue should only be with the 200 edits or so... In the future I'll add changed templates to the edit summary, which will help to solve the problem with touching special templates. I apologize for the inconvenience. Kanashimi (talk) 23:11, 2 January 2024 (UTC)
 * @Hawkeye7 I think I've rolled back this batch of edits. Please let me know if there are any problems. Kanashimi (talk) 09:30, 3 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Thanks Kanashimi, and apologies again for the confusion &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 10:31, 3 January 2024 (UTC)


 * The bot has just gone through six or eight articles I took to FA, A class or both and seems to have handled them all appropriately, including a couple of mildly non-standard ones. Gog the Mild (talk) 16:42, 27 January 2024 (UTC)

Conflicting ratings
I was too scared to look in Category:Articles with conflicting quality ratings until today but now we have pages in there, which is too many to manually review. Does anyone have any suggestions on how to process these? &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:59, 29 January 2024 (UTC)
 * @MSGJ: Some of those will have a stub rating and another rating. Would it be safe to presume that if the article has a stub tag that the ratings should be stub?  Maybe with yes if the template supports it? GoingBatty (talk) 16:07, 29 January 2024 (UTC)
 * That's a good idea. We can use an edit summary like "rated as Stub-class because the article is using a stub template" to explain &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 16:10, 29 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Since your bots are in Category:Autoassessment bots, could any of you please help with the pages in this category? GoingBatty (talk) 16:50, 29 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I suspect a fair few of these will be where an editor updated the class rating for one wikiproject but didn't do so for the others. We could perhaps just favour the higher ratings?<span id="Qwerfjkl:1706547519420:Template_talkFTTCLNWikiProject_banner_shell" class="FTTCmt"> — Qwerfjkl  talk  16:58, 29 January 2024 (UTC)
 * @Qwerfjkl: I don't know what your bots have been approved to do and what the consensus is for handling conflicting quality ratings. GoingBatty (talk) 17:12, 29 January 2024 (UTC)
 * GoingBatty, my bot isn't really approved to handle anything that would help here, I'd need to file a new BRFA.<span id="Qwerfjkl:1706548394973:Template_talkFTTCLNWikiProject_banner_shell" class="FTTCmt"> — Qwerfjkl  talk  17:13, 29 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I've seen using most recent suggested (rather than highest, though would tend to assume they are the same), but the only consensus I've seen so far is conflicting ratings should be reviewed by humans. With still 2 million in Category:Pages using WikiProject banner shell without a project-independent quality rating and 5 million in Category:WikiProject banners without banner shells I can forsee the number of conflicts increasing further though! -Kj cheetham (talk) 20:15, 29 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Kj cheetham, slightly less than appears at first. Actually, looking at the former category there, it seems it's being expanded by my bot.<span id="Qwerfjkl:1706560909989:Template_talkFTTCLNWikiProject_banner_shell" class="FTTCmt"> — Qwerfjkl  talk  20:41, 29 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Good point about namespaces! Perhaps that category needs adjusting, or we need another tracking category just for what the bots are actually dealing with...? -Kj cheetham (talk) 20:46, 29 January 2024 (UTC)
 * My bot is using this query: if that helps. If I was better at SQL i would probably refine it a bit more.<span id="Qwerfjkl:1706561344639:Template_talkFTTCLNWikiProject_banner_shell" class="FTTCmt"> — Qwerfjkl  talk  20:49, 29 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I should probably take AnomieBOT out of the category. I haven't kept up with the changes to this template, I'd probably have to update my code. Anomie⚔ 22:32, 29 January 2024 (UTC)
 * @GoingBatty asked Would it be safe to presume that if the article has a stub tag that the ratings should be stub?
 * Unfortunately, the answer is no. In my experience, if something is tagged as a stub and as anything else, it's usually the other one that is correct.  If you'd like a tie-breaker, consider using the ORES rating.  Anything it declares to be a stub really is. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:05, 1 February 2024 (UTC)
 * I agree with WhatamIdoing. If anything conflicts between the article stub tag and the project ratings should be a tracking category if it's not already. -Kj cheetham (talk) 16:09, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

A suggestion for people who do want to work on these is to work from the top of Special:RecentChangesLinked/Category:Articles with conflicting quality ratings. That way we can catch early the editors who are still causing the conflicts, and educating them will help in the long run &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 09:42, 30 January 2024 (UTC)

Question about documentation
The template documentation currently states "All parameters are optional. However, one or both of class and 1 must be given." However, the template on Talk:Kevin Conroy seems to display just fine without class or 1. Is it OK to remove the "However,..." sentence from the documentation, or is there a requirement I don't understand? Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 21:07, 1 February 2024 (UTC)
 * GoingBatty, that page does have the implicit 1= as the first unnamed paramter. That said, I believe WPBS can be used as just  e.g. on redirect talk pages where no class is needed.<span id="Qwerfjkl:1706822051327:Template_talkFTTCLNWikiProject_banner_shell" class="FTTCmt"> —  Qwerfjkl  talk  21:14, 1 February 2024 (UTC)
 * @Qwerfjkl: Yes, but it doesn't have an explicit 1. And if you were to change it to   with no class or 1, it still seems to work OK.  Based on your comment and my little testing, I'll remove the sentence.  Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 21:27, 1 February 2024 (UTC)
 * GoingBatty, if you have then the foo has 1=, because it's equivalent to .<span id="Qwerfjkl:1706823367170:Template_talkFTTCLNWikiProject_banner_shell" class="FTTCmt"> —  Qwerfjkl  talk  21:36, 1 February 2024 (UTC)
 * @Qwerfjkl: Yes, and that explains that we don't need the documentation to state that "1 must be given". We don't need to add 1 to  because it's already equivalent to   even when we don't explicitly type the 1. GoingBatty (talk) 21:43, 1 February 2024 (UTC)
 * GoingBatty, I take that to mean the parameter is required, not the 1= which is for the most part cosmetic. It's easier to say 1= is required than "the first unamed parameter" is required.<span id="Qwerfjkl:1706823872594:Template_talkFTTCLNWikiProject_banner_shell" class="FTTCmt"> — Qwerfjkl  talk  21:44, 1 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Also you appear to have messed up your formatting.<span id="Qwerfjkl:1706823893086:Template_talkFTTCLNWikiProject_banner_shell" class="FTTCmt"> — Qwerfjkl  talk  21:44, 1 February 2024 (UTC)
 * @Qwerfjkl: Guess we disagree on how "1 must be given" can be interpreted, which is fine. What formatting have I messed up? GoingBatty (talk) 21:51, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

Any mechanism to have these changes be "silent" in terms of notification?
I've been flooded with email notifications from these edits on talk pages over recent weeks; I follow a lot of articles. Is there any means by which bot edits can be done without triggering notification emails? Just curious. cheers. anastrophe, an editor he is. 22:12, 2 February 2024 (UTC)


 * @Anastrophe: You could set up your watchlist to exclude all bot edits or just those edits with the tag "Talk banner shell conversion". There are several more options at Bots/Noticeboard. GoingBatty (talk) 03:20, 3 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Aha! I wasn't aware of that option (obviously). Thanks, I will check it out. cheers. anastrophe, an editor he is. 03:58, 3 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Welp, I added the exclusion for "Talk banner shell conversion" to my watchlist filters, no change, and in my watchlist preferences 'Hide bot edits from the watchlist', also to no avail. Dunno what I'm missing, but it's a small enough issue, I'll just live with it. cheers. anastrophe, an editor he is. 23:35, 3 February 2024 (UTC)
 * I have the same problem, and I think it's a rather big issue. I don't remember ever having experienced it before in my 19 years on Wikipedia. I get email notifications, and in each email it says that "There will be no other notifications in case of further activity unless you visit this page while logged in." So this means that this bot will effectively mute all my talk page notifications, as I don't go to every page this bot changes. Also, I get hundreds of unnecessary emails due to this.
 * At the link Bots/Noticeboard I just see a wall of text, so I still don't know how to stop this specific bot's edits from triggering all these emails and effectively muting all my notifications of changes to talk pages I follow. As I said, I never had this problem before and don't know how to stop it.
 * I would be happy to just ignore this specific bot if possible so it doesn't trigger email notifications and doesn't mute my notifications of subsequent changes to the talk pages I follow. Is that possible? Jhertel (talk) 11:48, 5 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Yes it should be possible, and no I don't know why it is not working. I have just tried excluding the "Talk banner shell conversion" tag and it didn't work for me also. So I will post at WP:VPT to get advice &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:57, 5 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Not sure why it's failing for you as I've been using it for a few days now and haven't seen one page edited with it on my watchlist since. Gonnym (talk) 23:21, 5 February 2024 (UTC)