Wikipedia:Creating a dated maintenance category

Dated maintenance categories, listed at Category:Wikipedia maintenance categories sorted by month, are used to coordinate cleanup of various issues in articles on Wikipedia. The process of creating a new dated maintenance category is not difficult, but requires editing several pages.

Before you begin
You will have to decide three things:
 * The name of the page describing the issue. You'll also have to create it.
 * The name of your maintenance category. Try to follow the naming style of other maintenance categories.
 * The name(s) of your issue template(s). You might create a message box template, an inline template, or both.

The examples below will use the maintenance category "Articles in BIG TROUBLE", and templates and.

Categories
There are several categories and support templates that must be created.

Base category
The base category holds the dated subcategories, as well as articles that have not been dated yet. The category page should contain wikitext something like this:

"All" category
The "all" category contains all articles with the issue, to make it easier to get a count or listing of all pages with the issue and to test whether a page has an issue. The name should be derived from the base category by adding the word "All" to the front, e.g. "Category:All articles in BIG TROUBLE". The category page should contain wikitext something like this:

Counter category
The counter category is used by Progress box to count the number of dated categories. The name must be of the form "Monthly clean-up category (base category name) counter", e.g. "Category:Monthly clean-up category (Articles in BIG TROUBLE) counter". The category page should contain wikitext something like this:

Current month's dated category
If you plan to test the issue templates, you may want to create this category page manually instead of allowing the bot to do it. The name is formed by appending "from Month Year" to the base category name, e.g. "Category:Articles in BIG TROUBLE from July 2024". The wikitext should be:

Progress box template
The progress box template is used on the base and dated monthly categories to display a correct invocation of Progress box. The name must match the base category name, e.g. "Template:Articles in BIG TROUBLE progress". The wikitext of the template should be: Note that the base category name must be filled in the appropriate location in the wikitext.

Monthly instruction template
The monthly instruction template is used to display category-specific instructions on the dated subcategories. The name is constructed by creating a subtemplate under Template:Monthly clean-up category/Messages/ with the base category name, e.g. "Template:Monthly clean-up category/Messages/Articles in BIG TROUBLE". The template will probably use Monthly clean-up category/to add, something like this:

Issue templates
The issue templates are used on articles to indicate the issue to other editors, and to invite readers to become editors by showing them something they could fix.

After creating an issue template, be sure to add it to AutoWikiBrowser/Dated templates so that bots will know to start dating it.

Message box
Message box templates are displayed at the top of an article or section when the issue is endemic in the article. The general format of a message box template is: Note that the name of the template itself as well as the base and "all" categories are inserted in appropriate places. Keep in mind that issue is the bit of text that shows up in multiple issues, so don't make it too long. Don't forget to also create a documentation subpage for the template.

See the documentation for Template:Ambox for more details.

Inline
Inline templates are used to mark a specific passage in the article as having an issue. The general format of an inline template is: Note that the name of the template and the names of the base and "all" categories are inserted in appropriate places. Don't forget to also create a documentation subpage for the template.

See the documentation for Template:Fix for more details.

Testing
You may want to try the following in a sandbox:
 * View all the category pages and make sure the display is correct.
 * Make sure the base category is showing up in Category:Wikipedia maintenance categories sorted by month.
 * Add the issue template and see that it applies the "all" and base categories.
 * Add the issue template including a correct date and see that it applies the "all" and monthly categories, but not the base category. Note that this requires that the monthly category already exists.
 * If you have a message box template, use it inside multiple issues and make sure it displays the appropriate text.
 * Double-check that all the issue templates are listed at AutoWikiBrowser/Dated templates so that bots will know to start dating them.