Template talk:WikiProject banner shell/Archive 6

Collapse by default
The default is currently no. Proposing changing the default to yes. Reasons: this is too much noise on already bloated talk pages, and the information (whilst helpful when needed) is not helpful most times someone is on a talk page, but it adds so much weight to talk pages and banner blindness, eg Talk:Bill Gates. Related discussion: Village_pump_(idea_lab). ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 12:08, 6 December 2020 (UTC)
 * This was originally two different shells, (which collapsed) and  (which didn't). They were partially merged in 2009, and fully merged following this TfD in 2016. At the time of the full merge, the documentation advised collapsing only when there were six or more enclosed banners. Later that year, the advice was removed by  in . The problem with collapsing is that you need to click two [show] links in order to see all of a banner's rows. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 23:09, 6 December 2020 (UTC)
 * What's wrong with a double collapse? The information in the 2nd collapse is even more useless for most (seemingly just an explanation of the terms in the summary view, for those who don't follow), so I don't think this is really a problem. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 15:13, 22 December 2020 (UTC)
 * What do you mean by "an explanation of the terms in the summary view"? -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 21:59, 23 December 2020 (UTC)
 * The collapsed view says: WikiProject Criminal Biography (Rated C-class, Low-importance)
 * Showing the collapse says: "This is part of XY project, an attempt to do blah. If you want to participate, edit the article, join the project, etc! It's C Class on the quality scale. It's low importance. [Our project has a broader todo list]!"
 * This is an explanation of terms / more extraneous info of what is already shown in the collapsed view summary. It just explains what the terms mean. It's mostly useless to practically anyone who knows what a WikiProject is. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 22:34, 2 January 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for the ping. I've posted a comment at the TfD. I'm quite keen to add some intelligent auto-default logic, per 's suggestion. Rchard2scout, could you create a module which simply counts the number of separate banners in the first parameter, and we can code the rest of the behaviour within this template? &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 21:48, 9 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Support – I think collapsed by default is fine; especially as the project grows. As far as the "click two [show] links in order to see all of a banner's rows", I agree that is a minor annoyance in those cases, but in weighing the number of times I imagine someone goes to the TP in order to view that level of Project detail for a given project, vs. the number of times readers editors go to the TP for any other reason (and get there faster with less scrolling), I think that's an acceptable trade-off. Especially when you consider that those who visit the TP in order to find just the names of related WikiProjects (e.g., to post APPNOTEs for an Rfc or something) which would require only one click. I'm also wondering if we added a class to some element in the collapse banner at the same time, whether that would permit the development of a script to modify that behavior per user opt-in in their common.js. Otoh, changing a default risks alienating those who prefer the current default, and we probably won't hear from them unless we try it. Is there precedent for doing a temporary, "beta test" change of this sort, to see if it kicks up any fuss, and after expiration of a pre-determined X interval, either back it out, or retain it depending on feedback or lack thereof? Mathglot (talk) 01:01, 11 December 2020 (UTC)
 * I've went ahead and done this, at least on a trial basis along the lines of your last sentence, given this discussion started over a month ago and I suppose it isn't getting any more participation. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 10:24, 8 January 2021 (UTC)
 * @: Request reversion to previous. There is no consensus for this and and you have used or I would say abused your privileges to implement this.  I feel like you are pissing and laughing all over me with your additional privileges.  Djm-leighpark (talk) 11:33, 8 January 2021 (UTC)
 * You were the only opposing voice, in a month of discussion. Not sure what the best way to get wider participation on this is. Templates for discussion, possibly, although not a 'deletion' it would be a widely advertised discussion where the input of the average editor can be obtained. I don't see sufficient activity on Template talk:WPBannerMeta or enough active TPWs compared to here to think it would be much more useful. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 11:46, 8 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Sent to TfD. It is templates for discussion after all, and it produced good results on the similar consensus discussion for the WikiEd banners a few months ago. A widely advertised discussion is the best way to figure out what people think imo. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 12:24, 8 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Oppose: no giving one WikiProject per line is quite neat. In fact there is more of a problem when WPBS is not used at all especially if more than one WikiProject present.  yes is hard work to see at a glance what are the WikiProjects and there associated classes. Djm-leighpark (talk) 02:21, 11 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Oppose: collapsing methods exist. Scans to find highly-populated WPBS's exist. Automated tools exist to collapse them.  ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  11:40, 8 January 2021 (UTC)
 * It's used on millions of pages, very few set a collapsing parameter, not because they like it expanded, but because nobody really cares to apply advanced options most of the time. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 11:48, 8 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Comment I would prefer to collapse only when there are more than X projects, say 4 or 5. --MarioGom (talk) 12:26, 8 January 2021 (UTC)
 * It's not possible for the template to detect that. All the child templates are passed in via a parameter. They're expanded by the time they're processed in the template. That would be this Gerrit patch, I think. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 12:40, 8 January 2021 (UTC)
 * , good point. It should be easy to automate it with a bot though. MarioGom (talk) 11:59, 9 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Propose Redesign I think the root problem to be addressed is the template design more than considering collapsed/noncollapsed. The useful information to be displayed at a glance need only be a small table of info with three columns: WikiProject, Rating, Importance. We could right align this in a collapsed state to allow it to sit alongside the table of contents on most talk pages, like we already have done with the small option on Article History and Auto archiving notice templates. Also, I'm convinced that the BLP template within this shell is superflouous info for the talk page – we now display a BLP warning as a edit notice on article pages (the best location for such a warning), so suggest we use this opportunity for a redesign and get rid of the additional talk page warning too. SFB 20:35, 8 January 2021 (UTC)
 * These are all good points. thoughts, as template maintainer? ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 05:30, 9 January 2021 (UTC)
 * I'd generally support the standardisation of templating on the talk page. In terms of the blp/blpo parameters they will usually but not always duplicate WikiProject Biography but there are some other articles where these apply which may not be biographical articles, I think particularly of (fatal) crash articles for example.  The wikiprojects are the most basic entry on the talk page, but there's others as well, the case where content has been copied elsewhere is one of the most important.  But a standardised order/layout would be really useful and making better use of space is also important.Djm-leighpark (talk) 08:59, 9 January 2021 (UTC)

Add class/importance attribute on shell
Currently, if a shell banner has 4 WikiProjects, I need to manually update each one. For something like importance, they will usually vary from project to project (with most being low importance), but for class status, it will usually be the same. A stub is a stub, a template is a template, no matter the ranking. Of course we could also allow granular per WikiProject overrides, in case where the Project has stricter standards, such as WP Medicine. Shushugah (talk) 20:10, 22 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Do you have an idea how to implement that? For example, Talk:United Nations says:


 * Is WikiProjectBannerShell supposed to analyze its parameter with string processing to figure out which WikiProjects are listed and which WikiProject categories should be added? Or should the WikiProject templates read the page source to look for parameters outside their own parameters? It sounds too messy and likely to cause worse problems than having to add a few identical parameters. PrimeHunter (talk) 20:42, 22 February 2021 (UTC)
 * does not know what class ratings are valid on the WikiProjects that it encloses (they don't all work from the same list - there are three basic lists: standard, extended and custom - and custom could be almost anything), nor does it know what rating is presently set. It also cannot pass a rating back "down" to the enclosed WikiProjects. In essence, we would need to add code to WikiProject banner shell that duplicates the class rating code from every WikiProject banner that it might possibly enclose - and there are hundreds of them - the present count is approximately 1,600. Then, any time that one of the banners has its set of valid class ratings amended, we would also need to amend the corresponding set in the shell. It's just not feasible. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 20:47, 22 February 2021 (UTC)
 * The simplest solution I could think of, would be to have a bot, that goes periodically through these, and replaces any non custom values/and or approved/opt in WikiProjects. It could start for example, with checking if blp=yes and then update the living attribute inside WikiProject Biography. The example with the United Nations is good one, where all 6 WikiProjects have status of Good Article. Shushugah (talk) 20:58, 22 February 2021 (UTC)

I did a quick test, and was disappointed to find that setting BLP on top level, doesn't affect the WikiProject BLP. This is one of the cases, where a confusing/contradictory interface already is potentially problematic.

Shushugah (talk) 20:49, 22 February 2021 (UTC)
 * See previous discussion at Template talk:WikiProject banner shell/Archive 5. We probably should have an FAQ for this question since it comes up all the time. --Izno (talk) 21:04, 22 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I read through the discussion, they mentioned some changes to Gerrit, and also a central database of Article ratings, which are not currently visible in the UI. Do you or anyone else have a technical status update? Shushugah (talk) 22:08, 22 February 2021 (UTC)
 * You have noticed that the yes parameter of and the yes parameter of  are independent (although they have the same purpose), and need to be kept synchronised; similarly there are yes and yes, which are each provided in both templates and also need to be kept synchronised in a similar manner to yes. The existence of these three pairs demonstrates that the two templates cannot pass information between each other, since if such a method existed, we would have eliminated the need for  to have yes and the other two some years ago. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 22:55, 22 February 2021 (UTC)

Mention on WP:Merging
Currently, there is the following text on the How-to page about article mergers, referencing one of the last steps in tidying up the source of a merger:

Reconcile templates: copy them from the source page to the destination and remove duplicates (look out for alternative templates; e.g.  is the same as  ). Once copied, change the source article WikiProject templates so that they contain (even for WikiProjects that do not yet support a redirect class); this does not have to be done if  is being used, since that template will automatically choose the class.

Is that technically correct? I was under the impression that the banner shell does not actually interact with the individual WikiProject templates, and that even though the text may now display 'redirect', the page will still turn up in WikiProject maintenance categories etc. under its old rating.

Does anyone here now about that? Felix QW (talk) 16:48, 24 February 2022 (UTC)
 * It is almost never necessary to set redirect explicitly, because (with the single exception of ) all WikiProject banners will autodetect the page as Redirect-class provided that (a) the code of the project banner has been set up to recognise that class and (b) you either leave class blank or omit it entirely. What is necessary for this to work is that if the banner already has some explicit rating, e.g. start, that rating needs to be removed.
 * As far as is concerned, the classes set by the enclosed banners are ignored. It includes code to autodetect the talk page of a redir, and amends its own text from "This article is of interest to ..." or "This page is of interest to ..." to "This redirect is of interest to ...". -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 20:29, 24 February 2022 (UTC)
 * Thank you very much for your fast reply! Felix QW (talk) 21:49, 24 February 2022 (UTC)
 * For what it's worth, unless there is a  invocation in the banner (or similar), a bare class will cause the template to not auto-recognise redirects. Not sure how huge of an issue it is, but until I just fixed it in astronomy it was the cause of 90% of the pages that were listed in Category:Unassessed Astronomy articles. Primefac (talk) 08:43, 25 February 2022 (UTC)
 * Thank you very much, User:Primefac! The redirects in Category:Unassessed mathematics articles were what actually motivated my question. I had just changed them all by manually adding  to every one of them, but it seems like a simple change to the template is preferable.  Felix QW (talk) 09:27, 25 February 2022 (UTC)
 * I have made an edit request on Template talk:WikiProject Mathematics. Felix QW (talk) 09:33, 25 February 2022 (UTC)
 * should not be necessary. I know of no other Wikiproject banners that do that, and many of them autodetect a redirect just fine. The only ones that don't are the ones where the class subpage (the page like this) either doesn't exist, or isn't set up to enable yes. See for example Template:WikiProject Solar System - that needs no special hack to put Talk:(5550) 1981 UB1 into, even though both WikiProject banners on that talk page have class with no value. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 22:28, 25 February 2022 (UTC)
 * So in other words, my edit wasn't strictly necessary, but an edit is necessary; it's still a case where something needs to be done in order for the template to auto-detect redirects. Primefac (talk) 14:12, 26 February 2022 (UTC)
 * It's not clear what the problem was that was intended to solve. If it was that pages like Talk:(5550) 1981 UB1 weren't showing up in, a WP:NULLEDIT to Talk:(5550) 1981 UB1 should have fixed that. Or was it something else? -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 14:55, 26 February 2022 (UTC)
 * Well, I undid my edit to the project template to show you what I meant, and now things are working as intended. I'm not really sure what's going on now... Primefac (talk) 15:19, 26 February 2022 (UTC)

'collapse' alias
Any objections to adding an alias collapse for the collapsed parameter? I don't think the template should cease to work simply due to a tense difference (arguably yes is more correct anyway). ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 14:50, 5 April 2022 (UTC)
 * My only main objection is the one that always gets brought up when this question is raised, in that we should be trying to get folks to use the right parameters and not give all possible options for "gee I don't remember the exact parameter name". "Collapsed" as a stand-alone word implies the current status, where as "collapse" implies an action, almost a question. Primefac (talk) 07:22, 6 April 2022 (UTC)
 * I'm sympathetic to aliases, including this request, because I think we should cater to users, first. The reason users can't remember the exact parameter name is because template writers are inconsistent, and sometimes it's talk and sometimes it's discuss and sometimes it's just 1; ditto collapse vs. collapsed (and don't forget the inverse, because in some templates, yes and no give the same result&mdash;but not always!&mdash; and then sometimes you also have collapsed). I can't count the number of times I've tried three different ways before either lucking out and guessing right, or giving up and forced to consult the /doc to see which flavor of the word collapsed this template requires (read: "which way this template writer has decided to code it, without bothering to check for consistent usage with other templates"). Users come first in my view, template-writers ninety-ninth; I vote we alias everything, until we get consistent param names across the board. And yes, this is a perennial question when this comes up. Mathglot (talk) 09:21, 6 April 2022 (UTC)
 * I do agree with this, and it's one of those weird cases where I do actually see the intention and reasoning behind both sides, and I genuinely cannot say which one is "better". Unfortunately whenever we try and standardise things we usually end up making it worse... goodness knows I can never remember if it's "autocollapse" or "autocollapsed" when dealing with navboxes. Of course, this is where VE is supposed to come in handy, because with TemplateData we know the parameter names and intended values, but I don't actually know of any template editors who use it. Primefac (talk) 10:02, 6 April 2022 (UTC)
 * Yeah, what you describe is exactly the issue I keep having. It's mildly irritating. The mixed community opinion on editing articles to rename parameters doesn't help with a standardisation effort, otherwise we could more easily just edit and standardise templates. We should do one or the other, I don't mind too much which it is. But if we're not going to be able to standardise, we should alias. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 16:11, 18 April 2022 (UTC)

Make a passthrough of Template:Banner holder
I've sandboxed some edits that make this template a passthrough of Template:Banner holder. It will require some adjustments in a few other templates (basically identified at MediaWiki talk:Common.css/to do). You can take a look at the testcases page.

Any objections? Izno (talk) 20:46, 19 May 2022 (UTC)
 * I'm going to ask the dumb question, because I know not everyone will be super-familiar with either this template or banner holder (for me, the latter, as I've never heard of it), but... what are you changing, and why? I see no appreciable difference between the live and sandbox versions of this template, which I suppose is the point, but also makes me wonder why it's necessary. Primefac (talk) 13:10, 20 May 2022 (UTC)
 * Questions are fine.
 * why My primary purpose in this is 1) TemplateStyling the relevant templates (described at MediaWiki talk:Common.css/to do) 2) with an eye to a future world where the *mbox templates are not table based.
 * The first objective means moving the styles listed at MediaWiki talk:Common.css/to do and MediaWiki talk:Common.css/to do from MediaWiki:Common.css to the various templates. in the case of the styles listed at the #WikiProject banners section, those get spread around.
 * The second objective means I am trying to minimize templates that are using common styling either to the *mbox templates directly, or combining like templates, or in some cases shipping the template to TFD, or finally (but least preferred) adding manual TemplateStyles tags. In the case specific to this template, I'm proposing making banner shell a passthrough (i.e. item 2) because it makes more sense to me that we should have this template be based on the more generic name, even if this template is the older of the two, and also that it shouldn't be TFD/Md because of the transclusion difference.
 * what are you changing Summary of the changes for each:
 * This template (see /sandbox): turn into a passthrough of Template:Banner holder, add its own templatestyles (from Common.css),
 * Banner holder (/sandbox): add tmbox templatestyles, add its own templatestyles (from Common.css and moving from the template), adjust the classnames to reflect the name of the template, and then a handful of changes to allow WPBS passthrough with same-appearance
 * WPBannerMeta (see /core/sandbox): add tmbox templatestyles, add its own templatestyles (from Common.css and moving from the template)
 * BLP (see /sandbox): add the new classname for hiding
 * and then the others in the same general 'class' listed at MediaWiki talk:Common.css/to do in similar fashion.
 * Banner holder was basically a copy-paste from WPBS, so adjusting it was trivial. Izno (talk) 23:35, 22 May 2022 (UTC)

strange spacing caused by spacing
Some editors, myself included, place a space before each individual banner template (leaving the shell unindented) for differentiation and ease of editing. Nobody's ever said not to, and I (and presumably others who do so) find it both helpful and without problems. Until, that is, recently WikiProject Military history began spacing weirdly in the shell, as can be seen at Talk:Kevin St. Jarre (permalink). Removing the leading space does fix it, but is there a way to rectify that without requiring all of the curly brackets be lined up left-aligned? —  Fourthords  &#124; =Λ= &#124; 15:37, 18 September 2022 (UTC)
 * It happens if you remove the  line and leave the spaces, therefore it's nothing to do with WPBS. The problem is an effect of the presence of   at the top of Template:WikiProject Military history. This WikiProject banner is extremely non-standard, and amending it to put those tags elsewhere, or even to use  like other WikiProject banners, will be difficult. In short: don't put spaces before it. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 16:09, 18 September 2022 (UTC)
 * Frustratingly weird, but thanks for the whys of it! —   Fourthords  &#124; =Λ= &#124; 16:20, 18 September 2022 (UTC)
 * I've inserted a permalink to the issue as seen when it was raised. Primefac (talk) 17:19, 18 September 2022 (UTC)

Placement on talk page
The template usage instructions currently do not explain where on an article's Talk page the banner shell should be placed. WP:TALKLEAD advises that the banner shell should be placed in the Lead Section of the Talk page (i.e. The part of the talk page accessed using a URL like &action=edit&section=0) after banners related to warnings and decisions about the page but before other banners about page. Also, those instructions indicate that the banner shell be used if there are 3 or more WikiProject banners on the talk page. Since the effect of the banner shell is to collapse each included WikiProject banner to a single line of text within the banner shell, using the banner in this way saves significant amounts of screen real estate. Can the usage instructions be updated to recommend using the banner shell if there are three or more WikiProject banners on the talk page and refer to WP:TALKORDER for order in which the banner shell appears in the talk page lead section? - Cameron Dewe (talk) 20:21, 23 October 2022 (UTC)

"Template:WikiProject banner" listed at Redirects for discussion
An editor has identified a potential problem with the redirect Template:WikiProject banner and has thus listed it for discussion. This discussion will occur at until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. Izno (talk) 18:16, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

Order of WikiProject banners within the shell
The template usage instructions currently give no guidance about the order in which WikiProject banners are placed within the banner shell. When WikiProjects are added to the banner shell, they are often placed at random, usually within the shell, but sometimes before or after it. If the banner shell is used then all WikiProject banners should be placed within the shell, apart from the Vital Article banner which has its own place in the talk page order. Additionally, banners that are not WikiProject banners should not be placed within the shell. In my experience, placing WikiProject banners in the WikiProjects' displayed alphabetical order is often used, as this means that duplicated banners are easily identified, especially when different WikiProject template shortcuts and abbreviations have been used. The advice in WP:TALKORDER to place the Biography WikiProject first, so that the "Biography of a Living Person notice" that is often displayed above the WikiProject banners is unhelpful, if the banner shell is used, because the banner shell itself can display the same notice. At the same time, using the banner shell also suppresses the notice displayed above the Biography WikiProject. This suggests if there are only two WikiProjects and one is the Biography WikiProject, then using the banner shell is acceptable if the Biography WikiProject is placed second in alphabetical order. Can the usage guidance be updated to suggest that displaying WikiProjects in alphabetical order within the shell is helpful to readers and editors alike, because it minimizes the chance of having duplicate WikiProject banners, though also mentioning that the vital article banner should always be placed outside and above the shell, due to its importance, while all other WikiProject banners should be contained within the banner shell. - Cameron Dewe (talk) 21:18, 23 October 2022 (UTC)


 * The description for banner shell already mentions Adding |blp=yes or its alias |living=yes will display the BLP banner above the shell, detailing Wikipedia's official policies regarding biographies of living persons. This must be added for articles about living people. ~ 🦝 Shushugah (he/him • talk) 23:48, 23 October 2022 (UTC)
 * Thanks @Shushugah for pointing out that the |blp=yes attribute, or its alias, can be added to the WikiProject banner shell, too. My point is that if this is done then there is no need to place the WikiProject Biography banner first, and it can appear in alphabetical (or any other) order within the banner shell. Placing the WikiProject Biography banner first is only necessary if the WikiProject banner shell is not used. I am suggesting that you could use the WikiProject banner shell if there were only two WikiProject banners, one was the WikiProject Biography banner and it was second in alphabetical order and you needed to display the banner.  - Cameron Dewe (talk) 10:16, 13 January 2023 (UTC)
 * You are correct that is placed outside, but this isn't because of its importance - it's because it's not a WikiProject banner. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 09:16, 13 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Thanks @Redrose64 for clarifying that the banner is not a WikiProject banner. I thought it was one, on account of there being a WikiProject Vital Articles. Unfortunately, many editors include the Vital article template inside the WikiProject banner shell because they assume that it is the WikiProject Vital Articles banner template is this template, when it is not. That is why I said it was more important. Clearly, many other editors have the same misunderstanding. - Cameron Dewe (talk) 10:04, 13 January 2023 (UTC)

In general, Project Banner would be ideal source of truth for an articles quality status, while individual WikiProjects could ascertain its importance. I imagine there is a lot of support for this, but uncertainty on the technical side. The other example of BLPs and Vital article also highlight confusion users have between tags and wikiprojects. Lastly, these are still not visible on mobile 🙈 ~ 🦝 Shushugah (he/him • talk) 11:18, 13 January 2023 (UTC)

Another possible approach
According to Izno, we are going about this the wrong way round. To quote selectively from his talkpage: ''Basically, "stop having the categories be emitted by the children", at least pertaining to the quality rating. Izno (talk) 17:30, 14 February 2023 (UTC)'' &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 21:33, 14 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Reimplement the decision tree for categorization in Lua. (We have to do this anyway for later as noted above.)
 * Have the WikiProject banners emit a similar construct to yesterday's suggestion, with the values that are set pertinent to the categorization logic e.g. PROJECT and etc.
 * We should already know all the relevant hooks, but if those aren't known, we can pass those values up as well.
 * Add that to the banner shell.
 * Find those values in the banner shell's Lua implementation.
 * Have the banner shell remove any attempt, using, by the children banners to categorize the page, at least pertaining to the quality rating.
 * If we implement the category logic correctly in Lua, then this just means finding the exact same string as generated for the Lua version; if not, then we can look for categories with "quality" in them.
 * Here's how I understand the suggestion above. Each separate banner would emit, via a microformat, its "class" and "topic". For a C-class article on Iran, class=C and topic=Iran. These microformats are read and parsed by WPBS in order to do the categorisation (in Category:C-Class Iran articles) on behalf of the WikiProject. Then, categorisation can be turned off on each separate banner. Parsing the data in this way could be more reliable than tmpv hacks currently being considered, and does not require the whole content of the page to be fetched and analysed. It also allows other possibilities like auto-assigning global quality class (e.g. if all classes from non-opt-out projects are equal.) &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 21:38, 14 February 2023 (UTC)
 * @MSGJ, seems reasonable, though I don't think auto-assigning global class is a good idea, because it makes more sense if a global class is just passed once. — Qwerfjkl  talk  22:21, 14 February 2023 (UTC)
 * If I understand this correctly,
 * Each wikiproject template renders something like , plus the normal wikiproject display
 * The banner shell, implemented in Lua, parses its 1 parameter to pick out each wikiproject's name, optout, quality and importance and use that to render categories.
 * If data-wikiproject-optout="N" and data-wikiproject-quality is missing, the banner shell uses its global class value to form the wikiproject quality category
 * The banner shell removes any category strings from the 1 string and renders what is left.
 * If a project banner is not wrapped inside the banner shell, it should receive the class value so it can generate categories as today
 * That eliminates the redirect problem and the need to scan the whole talk page. It is a bit messy because the categorization logic is in two places. The main drawback is that we cannot put a banner shell to display the overall class, and have a wikiproject outside the banner shell pick up this class for use in categorization. Aymatth2 (talk) 15:08, 15 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Yes, I think that matches my understanding more or less. I've thought about it more today and I don't think this is the right way forward. The problem is the project banner will not "know" whether it is inside a shell, or whether a global class is in use or not. It will be harder, if not impossible, to change the display of that banner depending on these conditions. Categories can be suppressed fairly easily, but I don't fancy trying to hide the quality class by using string manipulation. I suggest we go back to the TMPV approach, and reconsider this approach later when the transition has been made. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 18:36, 15 February 2023 (UTC)
 * I am not really comfortable with the TMPV approach either. Performance does not seem to be an issue, and finding the parameter value seems stable enough: nobody will put anything but a simple string as the value. But it relies on knowing what the redirects are, and someone is bound to add a new one like WP Banner every so often. There is some simple magic trick for passing values sideways between templates waiting to be discovered... Aymatth2 (talk) 22:25, 15 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Some improved coding has been going on behind the scenes at Module:Template parameter value/sandbox and is almost ready to be deployed. I believe this will make this method stable and robust &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 21:38, 21 February 2023 (UTC)
 * @MSGJ: Will custom data-* attributes like data-project="Aviation", data-class="GA" and such work? Per Help:HTML in wikitext. &#8212;CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • {C•X}) 08:55, 20 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Yes I think those will be parsed before Sanitizer starts to render the page. Not relevant now anyway (but maybe later) &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 21:37, 21 February 2023 (UTC)

Banner shell naming
A question occurred to me, that how relevant would the name WikiProject banner shell be, considering that post-conversion, it will no longer be just a shell for other banners, but a standalone rating-holder-template, which can work even without internal banners. &#8212;CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • {C•X}) 20:20, 14 February 2023 (UTC)


 * Yes, I was wondering the same thing. Perhaps a name change is in order. Perhaps just generic like "WikiProject assessment"? &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 20:54, 14 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Should I start a pre-emptive WP:RM discussion? Whatever comes out of it will be enacted once conversion is over. &#8212;CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • {C•X}) 07:08, 15 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Agree with renaming, but not to "WikiProject assessment". It was left vague in the proposal, but the new class-holding template does not have to contain the wikiproject banners, although it can. So it is an assessment holder and/or a shell to hold the wikiproject banners. Maybe "Assessment header". Aymatth2 (talk) 14:04, 15 February 2023 (UTC)
 * The shell has other functions (including hide/show), and also under the current title (and occasionally in current practice) it rolls up "banners" of any kind, not necessarily just WikiProjects. If it becomes known as the assessment shell, that seems to imply no more inclusion of non-WikiProject banners. Which could be okay, if that's how consensus comes out, but it should be discussed, not just assumed. However it comes out, the consensus usage should be explicitly stated in the template doc. Mathglot (talk) 10:22, 16 February 2023 (UTC)
 * "WikiProject banner shell" should always only contain WikiProject banners. Other banners should go under Banner holder. If non-WikiProject banners have been placed inside WPBS, they are misplaced and may be fixed. &#8212;CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • {C•X}) 16:59, 16 February 2023 (UTC)

Requested move 15 February 2023

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion. 

The result of the move request was: not moved. (non-admin closure)  ❯❯❯  Raydann  (Talk)   06:29, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

Template:WikiProject banner shell → ? – A very recent discussion at VPPR: Village pump (proposals) was closed with unanimous support that article quality ratings should be determined on a global scale and not just at individual WikiProject level. See. Thus, article quality ratings from individual WikiProject banners will be migrated into the WikiProject banner shell. In fact, even when an article may not fall under any WikiProject's scope, the global quality rating will still be applied. As such, this template is no longer going to be just a "shell" to hold WikiProject banners, but a standalone rating-cum-banner-holder-template. So, this template needs renaming, and this discussion is to decide what that name is going to be. Among the ideas floated above are WikiProject assessment and Assessment header. &#8212;CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • {C•X}) 14:30, 15 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Oppose. Because it looks like this will involve an entirely new system in which we would have to modify every single talk page with the banner, replacing each Wikiproject's individual assessments for the global one, I would rather tag this as Deprecated template and have the new banner created on a separate template. Zzyzx11 (talk) 18:33, 15 February 2023 (UTC)
 * It will be a modification of this template with some extra functionality. It will still act as a banner shell if banners are placed inside it. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 18:37, 15 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Well, that is something we could do, yeah, which will also allow us to dump the consideration of the template's compatibility with old revisions of talk pages. But, the proposal passed as to "modify" the existing template to include additional features. No one brought up the idea of new template until this. &#8212;CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • {C•X}) 18:38, 15 February 2023 (UTC)
 * I'm just concerned that renaming before or during the migration will be confusing. Especially if it is moved before any of the changes are implemented. I would rather have something up live and working beforehand, so we could get a better sense about what the title should eventually be. Zzyzx11 (talk) 18:51, 15 February 2023 (UTC)
 * @Zzyzx11, this would be completed at the same time as the changes (to avoid WP:COSMETICBOT). — Qwerfjkl  talk  20:44, 15 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Again, you are asking to preemptively rename a template before any changes have been made to it, or has not been fully tested yet. It would be like renaming article "A" to article "B" without modifying any prose via the principle of least astonishment why it should be titled "B". Zzyzx11 (talk) 05:16, 16 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Support but I have no sensible suggestions of what to call it at this time. We could wait and let the dust settle on the new system, and a logical name might have arisen by then. — Preceding unsigned comment added by MSGJ (talk • contribs) 18:38, 15 February 2023 (UTC)
 * I felt like, since we would have to run a bot for the mass changes, we could as well change the banner name at the same time, to whatever makes the most sense as the template name. &#8212;CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • {C•X}) 18:44, 15 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Oppose, as per Zzyzx11 and WP:NOHURRY. Let's come up with a new system first (I'm not even clear if the proposal involves eliminating all individual WP banners, or just changing them into mere afterthoughts...), and then figure out the names for things. And, FTR, I strongly dislike Assessment header as a proposed (future) name – WikiProject assessment or WikiProject banner assessment would be better names for down the line. --IJBall (contribs • talk) 21:19, 19 February 2023 (UTC)
 * The individual WikiProject banners would remain, if only to display which WikiProject(s) the page is of interest to. They also need to remain in order to hold importance ratings, because these differ between WikiProjects - and intentionally so. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 23:57, 19 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Oppose at this time. It'll still be a shell from what I can gather, just with some extra bells and whistles. -Kj cheetham (talk) 23:38, 22 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Oppose for now along the lines of IJBall. I do believe this should be moved to something more appropriate, but we should wait until we know exactly how the new version of this template will function before deciding on a more appropriate name. Once the new version is rolled out, I would likely support some sort of rename. In other words: I would support opening a fresh RM once the technical details are finalized. HouseBlastertalk 01:41, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Icon and color
Should the banner shell incorporate the class icon and colour, as is currently done on project banners? &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 17:23, 14 February 2023 (UTC)


 * I support this ofcourse. &#8212;CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • {C•X}) 18:31, 14 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Yes. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 19:14, 14 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Absolutely. — python coder (talk &#124; contribs) 02:00, 15 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Yes, with any needed tweaks to fit in the new format. CMD (talk) 06:40, 16 February 2023 (UTC)
 * I have a thread open at Template talk:Class proposing to add a parameter to specify the width of the cell. I think 50px looks about right, see below &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 21:36, 21 February 2023 (UTC)
 * If anyone is knowledgable on CSS and TemplateStyles, then please take a look at Template talk:Class and help out if you can! &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 21:59, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

Move article quality rating into banner shell
There is quite a detailed proposal at Village pump (idea lab) which allow class ratings to be placed into this template and then to be hidden inside the individual project banners. You might like to review and comment there &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 13:13, 3 February 2023 (UTC)


 * This is now a formal proposal at Village pump (proposals). Please come along and comment! &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 18:19, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

Recap of approved proposal
Quality assessments define how close we are to a distribution-quality article in terms of completeness, organization, prose quality, sourcing, wikilinks etc. Most projects follow the general guidelines at Content assessment, but some large projects have specialized assessment guidelines. This is to propose adding a |class= parameter to WikiProject banner shell, which can display a general quality assessment, and letting project banner templates "inherit" this assessment. WPBannerMeta will look after the details, so the project banner templates will not have to change.

Projects with specialized quality assessment approaches, which will be recognized by WPBannerMeta using a new custom parameter, can continue to record these assessments on their project banners and link to their specialized quality assessment scales.

Importance assessments are project-specific, showing how important the article is in providing complete coverage of the project subject area. An article may be high importance for one project, low importance for another, and irrelevant to most projects. This proposal does not affect importance assessments.

Banners using article-level general quality assessment are illustrated below:


 * [[File:Article-level assessment example.jpg]]


 * WikiProject banner shell may now accept, validate and display an optional |class= parameter as shown above.
 * WikiProject banner shell may be added to an article talk page with no wikiproject banners, in which case it will populate a general category like Category:C-Class articles
 * If a new WPBannerMeta parameter QUALITY_CRITERIA has the value "custom", the project class will be displayed and used to create categories as at present. The project class will be displayed even if it is the same as the article class. Projects will be canvassed to set this parameter if they want to use custom quality assessment criteria.
 * Otherwise, the project is assumed to follow the general assessment approach, which is true of most projects today
 * WPBannerMeta will retrieve the article-level |class= value (if present) using:
 * If no article-level class value is found, the wikiproject banner will be processed as at present
 * If the wikiproject banner does not supply a |class= value to WPBannerMeta, or if it supplies a value the same as the (non-blank) article-level class, the class will not be shown in the project template, since that would be redundant. The article class will be used to form categories like Category:C-Class Linguistics articles
 * If the wikiproject banner supplies a class value that differs from the (non-blank) article class value, the talk page will be placed in a tracking category and the project class will be used to form categories like Category:C-Class Linguistics articles
 * A future project may consider bulk change to remove |class= values from wikiproject banners where the value is the same as the article level class, and where the wikiproject uses the general Content assessment approach. That is outside the scope of this proposal.} — Preceding unsigned comment added by Aymatth2 (talk • contribs) 14:21, 13 February 2023 (UTC)
 * A future project may consider bulk change to remove |class= values from wikiproject banners where the value is the same as the article level class, and where the wikiproject uses the general Content assessment approach. That is outside the scope of this proposal.} — Preceding unsigned comment added by Aymatth2 (talk • contribs) 14:21, 13 February 2023 (UTC)

Technical discussion on implementation
As it looks like the proposal is going to pass easily, myself, and any other interested parties can start to discuss the implementation details &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:48, 11 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Qwerfjkl was working on an adaptation to Template parameter value. It was clever but I'm not sure if it will work efficiently because there are so many redirects to this template and each one needs to be checked separately. So I have an alternative suggestion: can we use a different name of parameter to hold the global quality assessment. For example C means the article has a project-independent rating of C. The advantage is that we can just parse the wikicode for  which no other template will be using. Of course we could expand this to   or some other name. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:52, 11 February 2023 (UTC)
 * If we need to edit all the talk pages anyway I don't feel like the number of redirects is necessarily a deal breaker since we could easily bypass the redirects at the same time. While we do have 29 names for this template they are quite regular and far from all of them are heavily used. With a simple regex such as (WikiProject we could match all but Bannershell, Scope shell, Project shell and Multiple wikiprojects. Scope shell, Project shell and Multiple wikiprojects alld have under 100 uses and could be deleted in my opinion. That just leaves Bannershell (1690 transclusions) which could either be worked into the regex or retargeted to Banner holder so we have consistency with Banner shell and logic in our names.
 * I know this can't be adopted into a lua pattern directly, but I'm sure it's solvable by splitting it up into 3 more light weight parts.
 * I'm not thrilled with using gclass since that isn't what people would expect and would probably result in a ton of people using class anyway and wonder why it was broken. --Trialpears (talk) 13:33, 11 February 2023 (UTC)
 * For what it is worth, Template talk:WikiProject banner shell/Redirects lists the redirects sorted by number of talk pages using each. Aymatth2 (talk) 17:32, 13 February 2023 (UTC)
 * My current implementation is here. As all of the pages will need to be edited anyway, we could probably bypass the redirects. I'm not sure there's really a problem, though. The parser report for User:Qwerfjkl/sandbox/WPclass gives: CPU time usage: 0 205 secondsReal time usage: 0 272 secondsPreprocessor visited node count: 7368/1000000Post‐expand include size: 76328/2097152 bytes<li>Template argument size: 35621/2097152 bytes</li><li>Highest expansion depth: 35/100</li><li>Expensive parser function count: 12/500</li><li>Unstrip recursion depth: 0/20</li><li>Unstrip post‐expand size: 17226/5000000 bytes</li><li>Lua time usage: 0.050/10.000 seconds</li><li>Lua memory usage: 2461053/52428800 bytes</li><li>Number of Wikibase entities loaded: 0/400</li></ul><span id="Qwerfjkl:1676124973083:Template_talkFTTCLNWikiProject_banner_shell" class="FTTCmt"> — Qwerfjkl  talk  14:16, 11 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Honestly I have no idea if that is bad or not when multiplied by a few million. Pinging as they probably do know if we should care. --Trialpears (talk) 14:35, 11 February 2023 (UTC)
 * I don't really have enough context here, but I think it would be more useful to compare it to the existing performance stats instead of looking at it in isolation so we have a sense of how much faster/slower this is.
 * While we're on the topic, my understanding (and please correct me if I'm wrong!) is that this set of templates are pretty complicated because of historical reasons and some edge cases. If we need to edit every page that uses this template anyways, are there any other simplifications we could do at the same time? Legoktm (talk) 00:17, 13 February 2023 (UTC)
 * @Legoktm Makes a lot of sense! So I've taken Talk:Sweden as a representative medium sized talk page and put it at User talk:Trialpears/sandbox/1 (the patterns performance seems to be dependent on talk page size). Before implementing the change the parser report was for me as follows:
 * DiscussionTools time usage: 0.046 seconds
 * CPU time usage: 0.527 seconds
 * Real time usage: 0.674 seconds
 * Preprocessor visited node count: 10,285/1,000,000
 * Post-expand include size: 190,591/2,097,152 bytes
 * Template argument size: 87,995/2,097,152 bytes
 * Highest expansion depth: 32/100
 * Expensive parser function count: 34/500
 * Unstrip recursion depth: 0/20
 * Unstrip post-expand size: 39,674/5,000,000 bytes
 * Lua time usage: 0.115/10.000 seconds
 * Lua memory usage: 3,747,438/52,428,800 bytes
 * Number of Wikibase entities loaded: 0/400
 * After the change it was
 * DiscussionTools time usage: 0.044 seconds
 * CPU time usage: 0.608 seconds
 * Real time usage: 0.765 seconds
 * Preprocessor visited node count: 10,301/1,000,000
 * Post-expand include size: 190,628/2,097,152 bytes
 * Template argument size: 87,995/2,097,152 bytes
 * Highest expansion depth: 32/100
 * Expensive parser function count: 34/500
 * Unstrip recursion depth: 0/20
 * Unstrip post-expand size: 39,674/5,000,000 bytes
 * Lua time usage: 0.145/10.000 seconds
 * Lua memory usage: 3,905,822/52,428,800 bytes
 * Number of Wikibase entities loaded: 0/400
 * This indicate a slight increase in CPU time usage, Real time usage and Lua time usage, but not a lot when compared to the rest of the talk page. My feeling is that this is fine.
 * Regarding these templates being very complicated I believe your right and I've given up on editing them for that reason in the past, but I'm very unsure what should be done. I created Template talk:WPBannerMeta to discuss this possibility. --Trialpears (talk) 05:55, 13 February 2023 (UTC)
 * If that is 0.2 seconds time usage then that could quickly mount up. I've seen pages with 10-15 different banners on them. The other stats don't seem too bad. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 13:59, 12 February 2023 (UTC)
 * The trouble with the redirects is that editors will keep adding them to new article talk pages. A possible approach would be to replace them with transclusions, so:
 * becomes
 * The redirectfrom, if present, would make WikiProject banner shell display a red error message when in edit mode and put the talk page in a tracking category. A bot could periodically work through pages in the tracking category replacing the redirect with WikiProject banner shell. This would eliminate the need to find the redirects, train editors to use the correct name, and keep the number of pages with redirects manageable. Would that work? Aymatth2 (talk) 14:48, 14 February 2023 (UTC)
 * @Aymatth2, you don't need a tracking category. A bot could just check the transclusions of the redirects, though that would be needed for the error.<span id="Qwerfjkl:1676389303934:Template_talkFTTCLNWikiProject_banner_shell" class="FTTCmt"> — Qwerfjkl  talk  15:41, 14 February 2023 (UTC)
 * I'm still unconvinced that checking for redirects is actually noticeably more expensive.<span id="Qwerfjkl:1676389357094:Template_talkFTTCLNWikiProject_banner_shell" class="FTTCmt"> — Qwerfjkl  talk  15:42, 14 February 2023 (UTC)
 * The redirectfrom, if present, would make WikiProject banner shell display a red error message when in edit mode and put the talk page in a tracking category. A bot could periodically work through pages in the tracking category replacing the redirect with WikiProject banner shell. This would eliminate the need to find the redirects, train editors to use the correct name, and keep the number of pages with redirects manageable. Would that work? Aymatth2 (talk) 14:48, 14 February 2023 (UTC)
 * @Aymatth2, you don't need a tracking category. A bot could just check the transclusions of the redirects, though that would be needed for the error.<span id="Qwerfjkl:1676389303934:Template_talkFTTCLNWikiProject_banner_shell" class="FTTCmt"> — Qwerfjkl  talk  15:41, 14 February 2023 (UTC)
 * I'm still unconvinced that checking for redirects is actually noticeably more expensive.<span id="Qwerfjkl:1676389357094:Template_talkFTTCLNWikiProject_banner_shell" class="FTTCmt"> — Qwerfjkl  talk  15:42, 14 February 2023 (UTC)

Here's my results for testing using tmpv, with 15 banners:


 * DiscussionTools time usage	0 024 seconds
 * CPU time usage	0 513 seconds
 * Real time usage	0 607 seconds
 * Preprocessor visited node count	23,937/1,000,000
 * Post-expand include size	300,872/2,097,152 bytes
 * Template argument size	139,910/2,097,152 bytes
 * Highest expansion depth	25/100
 * Expensive parser function count	32/500
 * Unstrip recursion depth	0/20
 * Unstrip post-expand size	71,089/5,000,000 bytes
 * Lua time usage	0.120/10.000 seconds
 * Lua memory usage	3,433,044/52,428,800 bytes
 * Number of Wikibase entities loaded	0/400


 * DiscussionTools time usage	0 030 seconds
 * CPU time usage	0 475 seconds
 * Real time usage	0 565 seconds
 * Preprocessor visited node count	23,290/1,000,000
 * Post-expand include size	317,020/2,097,152 bytes
 * Template argument size	144,154/2,097,152 bytes
 * Highest expansion depth	24/100
 * Expensive parser function count	32/500
 * Unstrip recursion depth	0/20
 * Unstrip post-expand size	71,089/5,000,000 bytes
 * Lua time usage	0.093/10.000 seconds
 * Lua memory usage	3,015,193/52,428,800 bytes
 * Number of Wikibase entities loaded	0/400

So about 0 05s slower. Qwerfjkl talk  16:36, 14 February 2023 (UTC)
 * If a bot ran through all the talk pages adding WikiProject banner shell if missing and replacing synonyms with WikiProject banner shell, then where there were one or more project banners with the same class value, adding class to WikiProject banner shell, that would probably get WikiProject banner shell with class onto most talk pages. A check using a version of TMPV that stopped after finding WikiProject banner shell with or without class, then checked for synonyms in descending order of frequency, should be quite efficient. But I have a nagging feeling that new redirects are going to start creeping in. A solution that somehow automatically spotted and resolved redirects would be more robust... Aymatth2 (talk) 19:17, 14 February 2023 (UTC)

Pointless split notice in the header
Can we now drop the split notice regarding Template:SplitfromBannerShell in the Talk header above? The split-off was deleted in 2011 per this discussion. There is no longer any reason to keep that notice, as no attribution is required for a page that isn't there, must less a notice about not deleting this page because of it. Mathglot (talk) 18:24, 13 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Done, thanks. Mathglot (talk) 00:52, 28 March 2023 (UTC)

Redirects becoming Unassessed
I am struggling to deal with about 80 redirects that have become unassessed for WikiProject Crime and Criminal Biography over the last couple of days. When I visit the talk pages of these articles, I find that the pages have not been edited recently, but appear to have been recategorized since this banner shell was changed. This WikiProject does not have a "Redirect" category, as all redirects are categorized as NA-class. This used to happen automatically if no class attributes were included in the individual projects. Now, it seems that I need to explicitly specify both the class=NA and the importance=NA attributes to put these articles into the correct class category. - Cameron Dewe (talk) 00:25, 2 April 2023 (UTC)
 * The number of unassessed articles has now risen to over 140 and now the individual WikiProject banners have ceased displaying their redirect assessments even when I explicitly specify them like |class=Redirect|importance=NA. Also, while the correct categories are displayed at the bottom of the talk page, there is no unassessed category being displayed. - Cameron Dewe (talk) 11:54, 2 April 2023 (UTC)
 * @Martin, is this related to your work?<span id="Qwerfjkl:1680438238733:Template_talkFTTCLNWikiProject_banner_shell" class="FTTCmt"> — Qwerfjkl  talk  12:23, 2 April 2023 (UTC)

Mockup
I have created Module:WikiProject quality assessment to do the complex logic tests that will be used by WPBannerMeta. The first mock up is at Template:WikiProject banner shell/testcases. The categories work but are not displayed out of main talk space. It's using the  parameter mentioned above, but will change this when we have agreement &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 14:12, 12 February 2023 (UTC)


 * I have put a mockup of the latest sandboxed version on Talk:George Wilson (safety). You'll notice the class being displayed in the banner shell, and the classes being hidden in each individual banner template. Suggestions are sought on the layout and appearance of the banner shell &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 22:25, 18 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Imo, the text should be "This start-class article is of interest to the following WikiProjects:" The block below it should not exist. In the event that no WikiProject banner exists inside it, it becomes "This start-class article has not been added to any WikiProjects." The class should be color coded using the colors already in use, and should link to the global assessment page. I think this will be the most concise version. &#8212;CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • {C•X}) 08:22, 19 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Since the new assessment criteria is global and independent of WP:WikiProject Council, you may also remove the COUNCIL logo from the leftmost part of the banner, and replace it with quality icons. The star for FA, the plus for GA, the orange disk for Start and so on. &#8212;CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • {C•X}) 08:26, 19 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Thanks. These both seem like good suggestions. The color and icon should already be supported &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 13:28, 19 February 2023 (UTC)
 * I'd rather we keep the Council logo for recognizability (and since this is still a shell for WikiProject banners), but support the other suggestions. DFlhb (talk) 13:54, 19 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Although if we keep the Council logo, and move the color/icon after "...is rated" and before "-class on Wikipedia...", that leads to a  within a   and breaks stuff. DFlhb (talk) 14:27, 19 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Trivial copy edit to highlight the assessment guideline:
 * This article is rated start-class using Content assessment. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects:
 * If a project has a non-standard quality assessment, the expanded wikiproject banner would say something like:
 * This article has been rated as Start-Class using WikiProject U.S. Roads/Assessment.
 * Something like that. Aymatth2 (talk) 15:49, 19 February 2023 (UTC)
 * I supported removing the council logo because it would emphasise that we are moving away from WikiProject assessment to a central Wikipedia assessment. We also have an additional item to display in the shell now. To accommodate both the council logo and the class rating, we would either need to use two rows - and in that case what text would you have in each row? - or to put both on the same row. I'll put a mockup below. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 21:51, 21 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Those demos look neat. I prefer the one-row, but it leaves no logical place for the "[more]" expand link (people won't look for it in the middle cell). We can either keep the logo, or deprecate  (I favour deprecation, don't like when the projects aren't visible; wonder if anyone would miss that parameter?)
 * The two-row is interesting too. We could move WPBannerMeta's |MAIN_TEXT to the shell (but more concise), and remove it from WPBannerMeta. The French Wikipedia does it, see example here, and it reduces redundancy. One problem with the two-row is that "[more]" would intuitively go in the bottom row, but logically belongs in the top row. There again, deprecating |collapsed=yes isn't strictly necessary, but might be optimal. DFlhb (talk) 05:32, 22 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Yes, the French template is neat. I'm happy to move more text into the shell, but grouping the importance ratings should wait for a later discussion. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 21:58, 23 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Absolutely. How would the banners look in your example? Would their quality ratings be displayed in the first column too, if it differs from the global one? And if so, is it possible for the project banners to take up the whole width when expanded, rather than just occupy the second column (hope this makes sense)? Would at least make it more colourful than the current one. DFlhb (talk) 03:51, 24 February 2023 (UTC)
 * The current proposed version can be seen at Talk:George Wilson (safety). It is an adaptation of the current banner shell template rather than the complete redesign that would be needed for the French style. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 09:52, 24 February 2023 (UTC)

Update
As far as I am concerned, the coding for this has now been completed. I need to do some thorough testing and at the moment this is impossible on Template:WikiProject banner shell/testcases because the namespace detection kicks in and classifies everything as a template. I need to disable this feature on /testcases somehow. The only example I had on a live article (Talk:George Wilson (safety)) was reverted, which is fair enough. There will almost certainly be some edge cases that need resolving. Then we need to consult tool and bot operators to make sure all existing tools will continue to function properly. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 13:08, 1 March 2023 (UTC)
 * @MSGJ, User:BrandonXLF/TestWikitext allows you to test wikicode on a given title, allowing you to change the namespace, which might help with testing.<span id="Qwerfjkl:1677689341284:Template_talkFTTCLNWikiProject_banner_shell" class="FTTCmt"> — Qwerfjkl  talk  16:49, 1 March 2023 (UTC)
 * I assume this is still ongoing, but can someone give a status update? No rush, but I'd like to use the sandbox for something simple, and I'm trying to decide whether to just wait, or shift to sandbox2 or something. Mathglot (talk) 18:16, 13 March 2023 (UTC)
 * You can take your time; I forgot what it was I wanted to try out. Lol... Mathglot (talk) 23:36, 23 March 2023 (UTC)

Template talk:WikiProject banner shell/test1 and Template talk:WikiProject banner shell/test2 are set up and seem to be working correctly. Feel free to add Template talk:WikiProject banner shell/test3 to test further examples. (Unfortunately these all need to be on separate pages otherwise the article class parameter will be picked up from a different example!) &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 22:24, 23 March 2023 (UTC)
 * No comments, so I am planning to deploy the new system from tomorrow or the next day. This has passed all my tests and I can't think of any more tests to try. While I am confident there will be something I've neglected, the best way to find out what may be to implement and wait for the complaints to pour in :) &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 22:57, 25 March 2023 (UTC)
 * @MSGJ, as I've said previously, I'm willing to do any bot work necessary.<span id="Qwerfjkl:1679926459424:Template_talkFTTCLNWikiProject_banner_shell" class="FTTCmt"> — Qwerfjkl  talk  14:14, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

Deployed
New system is deployed and the results are visible on Talk:Albert Camus and Talk:Ada Lovelace. Before rolling this out further, we need to check in with bot and tool operators to make sure this will not cause any issues. This is next on my list, but I would appreciate any help!

I will mention now that this required significant changes to several highly used templates/modules and while I have tested as well I am can, there are likely to be some unforeseen consequences, which I will attend to as quickly as possible. Please bear with me. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 09:45, 27 March 2023 (UTC)


 * The new "version" are removing class B from Wikiproject Japan which uses the b1=yes, b2=.... system. see Category:B-Class_Japan-related_articles, and its adding categories for projects which do not use class-categories e.g. Category:NA-Class_Disambiguation_articles. Christian75 (talk) 15:20, 27 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Thanks. Fixed the second hopefully. Checking the first issue now &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 16:20, 27 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Fixed Japan articles I think (and any other project using subpage mask). Still looking at other setups. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 17:13, 27 March 2023 (UTC)
 * I see that WP:MILHIST still shows the GA status in Talk:Albert Camus, I understand that the B-ratings are complex, but couldn't we remove GA if the article is marked as GA on the banner shell level? ~ 🦝 Shushugah (he/him • talk) 00:23, 3 April 2023 (UTC)
 * The Milhist banner is not yet using WPBannerMeta so does not have the logic coded to do this. If you remove the parameter now, the categorisation will be lost. There is some discussion ongoing about conversion &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 08:08, 3 April 2023 (UTC)

Show that class applies to all projects
Next proposal: extend the class rating down the side to make it visually apparent that the class applies to all projects.
 * (Example removed from sandbox)

But this will not really work if we have project banners which are not using the global quality assessment inside the same banner shell &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 09:26, 4 April 2023 (UTC)


 * Eh, I think it looks better without transferring the class to every individual parameter. SilverTiger12 (talk) 14:20, 4 April 2023 (UTC)
 * That's only happening because the banner templates are picking up on a different shell template higher up this page. It will only read the first one it finds &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 16:11, 5 April 2023 (UTC)
 * I like it; nice and prominent. DFlhb (talk) 18:25, 4 April 2023 (UTC)
 * I also find this very nice-looking and prefer this over earlier versions. However, I would not like it if, for example, the Arab World WikiProject had opted out and chose C-class, as the huge B-class is shown to its left. So, something would have to be done about that. &#8212;CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • {C•X}) 18:58, 4 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Okay, agreed. Perhaps something to consider in the future if this form becomes ubiquitous &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 16:16, 5 April 2023 (UTC)


 * It looks nice but does not work for projects that have opted out and assigned a different class value. Also, though,class will usually be project-independent. In the example, the article is not really B class for wikiprojects Africa, Countries and Arab World. It is B class and it is of interest to wikiprojects Africa, Countries and Arab World. Aymatth2 (talk) 15:09, 5 April 2023 (UTC)

Visual confusion for projects that use custom criteria but don't use importance
When a project has a custom quality rating, but doesn't use importance ratings, it fails to stand out visually, since most banners will only display importance ratings, and e.g. MILHIST will just display quality. Demonstration here if needed. This is a minor problem; just lack of visual prominance. DFlhb (talk) 18:33, 4 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Switched to permalink; sorry about that. DFlhb (talk) 15:36, 7 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Seems to be working correctly. What do you suggest? &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:12, 9 April 2023 (UTC)
 * It does work, but there's no visual distinction between "(Rated X-importance)" and "(Rated X-Class)", which is IMO not ideal.
 * But maybe we should put this on ice for now, to be discussed more thoroughly later. I like the approach of making small incremental changes as a series of first steps. DFlhb (talk) 19:52, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

Submission to Signpost for standardized article ratings?
Hey, the conversion to standardized grades is a big change. As I understand, the current system is from Version 1.0 Editorial Team in 2004 and this seems to be the most significant update since then.

Is there anyone here who would be willing to speak for the project and draft some sentences of explanation to publish in The Signpost? If so, please either stage text at Wikipedia Signpost/Newsroom, or if you are feeling bold, make a section in Wikipedia Signpost/Next issue/News and notes.

If anyone involved is sure that they would like Signpost journalists to document this without further input, then just say so, and I will arrange a write up myself. If I coordinate this, then anyone here can just watch the news and notes section for development. Thanks.  Bluerasberry  (talk)  16:20, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

something like the following? Aymatth2 (talk) 18:13, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

===Project-level quality assessments===

When Wikipedia was launched, each WikiProject was expected to assess the quality of articles independently. We assumed that different projects would have different views on what was required for a quality article. However, over time most projects have converged on the generic quality guidelines at Content assessment. An article is assessed in terms of completeness, organization, prose quality, sourcing and so on, and these are the same for all projects.

Recently a proposal was approved and has been implemented to support general quality assessments that can be shared by all the projects that have adopted an article. WikiProject banner shell has a new class parameter, and WPBannerMeta lets project banners "inherit" this assessment for the purpose of assigning categories like  A project can opt out, and continue to assign its own quality ratings. The effect is shown below. WikiProject Highways has opted out, and has assigned its own "Future" quality rating.


 * Project-independent quality ratings example 2.jpg

The change will make it easier to update standard quality ratings and reflect the changes across all the projects that have adopted the article, apart from projects that still have unique approaches to assessing quality. Aymatth2 (talk) 18:13, 11 April 2023 (UTC)
 * This is great! Added to Wikipedia Signpost/Next issue/News and notes. I and others will edit. Thanks a lot!  Bluerasberry   (talk)  15:34, 12 April 2023 (UTC)

Tracking category links for individual WikiProjects
At first, I feared this change spelt the end for WikiProject-specific class tracking categories, but fortunately I was wrong. However, they are considerably less accessible from the same talk pages, appearing only in page categorization at the bottom of the page. Why not include links to them within WikiProject boxes in their expanded state? –Vipz (talk) 01:49, 15 April 2023 (UTC)
 * That was discussed when the proposal was being prepared. It was agreed that, the general quality rating should very visible in the header to the list of projects, and should be used to make categories like  But the general quality rating  is not repeated in each project banner. It applies to them all. Aymatth2 (talk) 17:57, 15 April 2023 (UTC)

B-class checklist
Should the banner shell incorporate the B-class checklist? If so: I think my opinion is "NO" at this time, just for simplicity, and maybe consider it later. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 18:43, 15 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Should the b1 - b6 parameters could be migrated at the same time, if they have been set in any of the non-opted-out project banners?
 * Should the checklist automatically display if the class=C or B (default behaviour on WPBannerMeta)
 * Should this template auto-classify based on the inputs of the checklist?


 * My opinion would be YES to avoid loss of vital information. &#8212;CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • {C•X}) 18:47, 15 February 2023 (UTC)
 * The alternative would be requiring the projects that want to use it to keep it local like now. Not loss of information. --Trialpears (talk) 19:59, 15 February 2023 (UTC)
 * That would certainly be nice. The criteria are reasonably objective, and I can't think of any reason why projects would disagree on whether these criteria are fulfilled. However, this would need to be passed into the project banners, since some projects use different B-criteria class masks. MILHIST only uses criteria b1-b5, and automatically rates an article Start-class if b3, b4 or b5 are failed, C-class if b1 xor b2 are failed while b3-b5 are met, and B-class if b1-b5 are met. DFlhb (talk) 19:07, 16 February 2023 (UTC)

Inquiry, will the B-class checklist be incorporated into banner shell (with or without auto-assessment like how MILHIST does)? I think it'd be useful either way, if only to see where an article is considered deficient. IMO, including MILHIST's method of auto-assessing the B-class checklist by bot and then generating the article class from that would be even better, but that's probably a pipe dream for now. SilverTiger12 (talk) 15:59, 29 March 2023 (UTC)
 * I'd strongly support that last idea, and that would probably be a good idea for a content assessment work group to consider, as proposed in #NA classes. DFlhb (talk) 19:43, 29 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Hope you don't mind but I moved your comment into the relevant thread. I agree this would be a nice idea to discuss. But there are several barriers., which means this would be a major task.
 * Getting agreement to implement this checklist effectively on all articles/WikiProjects. Currently only a small subset of projects make use of the B-class checklist which might suggest that there has been little uptake. (But on the other hand most of the active projects do use it, so that points the other way.)
 * Deciding which exact checklist to use, because there are a variety out there. The most common ones are the standard 1-6, and 1-5 with 6 omitted. I would expect to bias this decision heavily towards the projects who are most actively using them. But unless we could find agreement, any projects wishing to do this their own would have to opt-out which would be a shame.
 * Getting agreement on exactly what criteria would mean the article is automatically demoted. We have projects that automatically demote to C or even Start-class depending on which criteria have been met. We also have projects which auto-promote to B if all criteria are met (probably uncontroversial).
 * Unless this is done carefully, you run the risk of demoting thousands of articles from B-class to C-class. I assume that existing B-class articles would be "grandfathered", i.e. we would consider that they pass all of the separate criteria, and so we would need to bot to go around and auto-assess these. This could be controversial because a bot would be stating that an article is "suitably referenced" without human review.
 * There is some related discussion at Wikipedia talk:Content assessment &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 21:01, 29 March 2023 (UTC)
 * All great points; I'd like to build on them/brainstorm further:
 * True, though a content assessment workgroup could bring sufficient scrutiny and consensus.
 * Couldn't we have all six criteria in the Shell, determining the Shell's class; and add a BannerMeta parameter so projects can choose if they prefer B1-B5, in which case they'd be autoassessed based on the shell's B1-B5?
 * (skip, you already know my proposal on that)
 * In my experience, human review rarely goes beyond a quick skim to check for end-of-paragraph citations; if we had a bot, it could theoretically take Headbomb's User:Headbomb/unreliable.js database into account, or rely on reading grade level for B6 (imagine the possibilities!). The WMF could also add reinforcement learning to ORES, making it "learn" from recent human ratings (not out of date ones) to adjust its own algorithms, which would remove the need for grandfathering.
 * DFlhb (talk) 21:38, 29 March 2023 (UTC)
 * My concern with #2 is that you would be building in a conflicting rating which could not be resolved. If b1-b5=yes and b6=no then MilHist would be rating it as B-class and other project would be rating as C-class. The whole point of the new system is all projects will be using the same rating, unless they choose to opt-out. So it's an all-or-nothing choice &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 10:44, 30 March 2023 (UTC)
 * I would like to see the B-class criteria checklist become available in the general case, but I otherwise agree with some of those concerns (mass demoting every B class article overnight save MILHIST's seems rough :).
 * I would be leery of MILHIST's C class use of the B class criteria checklist (I do know there are other projects but I actually can't name any of the others; for example video gaming does not use the checklist though it certainly could). If we really want to add a checklist into the template that assesses multiple classes like MILHIST does in this case, I'd almost rather tend toward a scheme like B and A and then the banner could categorize based on the lowest class of the parameters provided rather than our b1-6 world that MILHIST (and the others) employ. Izno (talk) 23:53, 29 March 2023 (UTC)
 * I do know there are other projects but I actually can't name any of the others made me check...
 * 16 out of top 100, and 60 of the top 1,000 most active project templates transclude the default bchecklist. I checked a few to see which percentage of articles had completely unfilled B-criteria: Comics: 81%, Aviation: 79%, Film: ~90% (only counting articles eligible for B-criteria, so no stubs, etc.) Basically, very few projects use B-criteria, and of those that do, none manage it well except MILHIST thanks to their bot. Two conclusions: (1) this isn't worth it without a bot; and (2) so few projects use B-criteria that we could easily get rid of them altogether and come up with better alternatives that achieve the same goals (like your  and   ideas, or alternatives). DFlhb (talk) 02:46, 30 March 2023 (UTC)
 * I've said it elsewhere, but I'd support auto-assessment against the B-class checklist via bot. It'd certainly make quality assessments more reliable, and if you also have the bot re-assess article periodically, more up-to-date. And, as has been pointed out by others, a more objective criteria makes improving articles more game-like and gives clear goals to go after- which is itself helpful for newer editors. SilverTiger12 (talk) 16:31, 17 April 2023 (UTC)

Is their a plan for mass implementing this?
Hello folks. I just found out about this change yesterday (from Talk:2023 Dadeville shooting) and I've spent a large chunk of time since then changing the parameters on various talk pages. I proposed this idea at Village_pump_(idea_lab), to which @Thebiguglyalien redirected me to here. There seems to be some talk about doing bot work to implement an automated conversion, but that doesn't seem to be officially set in stone yet, merely just talk. Should we develop a taskforce dedicated to the migration or leave the work up to bots? - Knightoftheswords281  (Talk-Contribs) 00:18, 18 April 2023 (UTC)


 * I'd think we can safely leave this to bots, when we're ready for mass migration. We are not there yet. &#8212;CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • {C•X}) 08:44, 18 April 2023 (UTC)