Category talk:Articles using infobox templates with no data rows

Categorisation

How do articles end up in this category? Jason Quinn (talk) 12:02, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

- Can anyone answer this question? It's hard to fix the issue when it doesn't seem to be documented. Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 02:10, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

WP:VPT is a better venue for this question. --Mdann52talk to me! 10:02, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

Maybe VPT is a more likely place to get an answer but it isn't a better place. Wikipedia works on a page/talk page model. This is a specific question about this category. It's answer will be relavent for as long as the category exists. The answer deserves to be here, not at the VP where it will soon be archived. The people creating these categories should be putting some effort into documenting these categories and actually caring about them once they are created. Jason Quinn (talk) 23:03, 22 February 2014 (UTC)

Same problem here. Many thanks. Llywelyn2000 (talk) 23:01, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

There is some more info on the category page now. I had the same problem and raised the issue at Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)#Category:Articles_which_use_infobox_templates_with_no_data_rows_-_how_does_an_article_get_into_this_category.3F. Robevans123 (talk) 23:17, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

Llywelyn2000's page is on the Welsh Wikipedia, not the English one; the underlying template is cy:Nodyn:Infobox. I'd assume something went wrong when that template was moved over from the English Wikipedia. The code that adds the category is at the very bottom of that template. This is not an issue with the category but with understanding a specific template. Huon (talk) 23:43, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

@Llywelyn2000: If you make this change to cy:Nodyn:Infobox building, it should fix it. --Redrose64 (talk) 08:26, 3 October 2014 (UTC)

That, my Red, Red Rose, completely resolved the issue, and tonight I shall sleep like a thousand logs! Many thanks. Llywelyn2000 (talk) 08:48, 3 October 2014 (UTC)

Discussion mentioned above is now archived at Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)/Archive_130#Category:Articles_which_use_infobox_templates_with_no_data_rows_-_how_does_an_article_get_into_this_category.3F

I would like to have answer for this problem of how articles are added to this category by looking at lines 269,226 and 79 of the Module infobox. Adithyak1997 (talk) 09:04, 23 August 2018 (UTC)

I'm disabling the helpme only because it doesn't seem to be attracting the "right sort of editors" (and/or editors who can help). Pinging previous participants (Redrose64, Mdann52, PrimeHunter, and Mandruss). For what it's worth, there seem to be a lot of templates in this category that shouldn't be (in particular, I've checked out ...Continued a half-dozen times now and can't figure it out). Primefac (talk) 21:27, 23 August 2018 (UTC)

Both ...Continued and 1st Step to Heaven use a template {{Extra album cover}} that I now suspect has a bug in the way it is written. It is an infobox template, even though the name doesn't say so. I experimented on 1st Step to verify that removing the template also removes the categorization. Only the cover parameter is required, according to the documentation. It triggers the categorization with all of the different parameter choices that I tried. — jmcgnh^{(talk) (contribs)} 02:37, 24 August 2018 (UTC)

Followup: Template_talk:Extra album cover#Edit request has a requested fix for this one template. I'm guessing that there is no "general" fix, but each template that has employed a similar child infobox approach will need a similar edit. — jmcgnh^{(talk) (contribs)} 05:56, 24 August 2018 (UTC)

Another way for an article to be placed in the category is to use a template like Template:Infobox information appliance with only title, image and caption parameters. All of the parameters are identified as optional, but if you don't use at least one of the data parameters, the tracking category is triggered. I found this at Women in Bletchley Park where it looked like the infobox from Colossus computer had been copied and stripped of all of its data parameters. I explained this in a note added to the template documentation. — jmcgnh^{(talk) (contribs)} 08:20, 24 August 2018 (UTC)

Did the same with {{Extra track listing}} (set |decat=yes), which will hopefully clear out a bunch of false positives. Already down to 53k from 62k yesterday! Primefac (talk) 13:02, 24 August 2018 (UTC)

@Primefac, Jmcgnh and other editors. I have found a solution to this category. Before telling my solution, I would need your help to edit the articles namely "1929-30 British Ice Hockey season" for which some value needs to be added to the attribute "country" and also to the article "1930 Women's World Games" in which you need to give some values to the attributes "leader type" and "leader name". Now, you will be able to identify two results. One thing is that the article is removed from the category "Articles which use infobox templates with no data rows". The second thing is that the specific data has appeared in the rightmost top section where in some cases you can see a sort of previous year and current year option. Therefore my conclusion/finding is that "an article is added to this category if some data other that the image is not present in the infobox section(or the topmost right section)". I need your replies to this solution and also from other users please(Sorry for lengthy comment and you can delete unwanted data included in this comment). Adithyak1997 (talk) 18:26, 24 August 2018 (UTC)

Actually I don't know what that decat means. I think the infobox could have been edited in such a way that only something needs to be present in that. I mean even if the year changing section is present, the page should not be added to this category. What is your suggestion?Adithyak1997 (talk) 18:32, 24 August 2018 (UTC)

I have one more suggestion. Let this category be considered backlog of next week. Adithyak1997 (talk) 18:35, 24 August 2018 (UTC)

@Adithyak1997: If you had been following me around the past day, you would see that I've been adding (or requesting that it be added) a {{{decat|yes}}} in various infobox calls. This "no data rows" is sort of a catchall for templates that use the infobox module but do not implement their own parameter checks.

Because WP and its templates are often written by people who aren't programming idealists, many new templates are created by copying (instead of, say subclassing other templates, then making changes to suit the new use. Many infobox-related templates take advantage of the module's flexibility to pass any number of parameters as data rows (tuples of numbered label and data fields) which the module can handle in a standard way. Piggybacking on this is a use of infobox-based templates as navigational aids, usually with a "previous" and "next" field only. That's what you are seeing with the 1929-30 British Ice Hockey season case. When used this way, naively, without knowing how the infobox module works, you often get a page tagged for "no data rows". If you look at my recent edits in Template: and Template talk: spaces, you'll see the kinds of changes to template definitions that I think are required to solve this problem. As bad as it is to go through the many different templates that call the infobox module, it's better than trying to fix the orders of magnitude greater number of articles using these templates and try to find a suitable parameter to add to each infobox just to suppress this categorization.

It looks like we've already knocked off somewhat more than 10K items from this category. Let us work on the templates a little while longer before we call in troops to try to make modifications to individual pages. — jmcgnh^{(talk) (contribs)} 20:55, 24 August 2018 (UTC)

After looking at bunch of pages in this category (though only a small fraction of the total), I'm beginning to wonder if this is a "garbage" category. I've only found one instance so far where the infobox was inappropriately empty and missing values for all of its parameters: 1884_Howard, South Dakota tornado Diff/856438639. In many cases, an infobox is simply used without data rows to place an image or for navigation (prev/next). Ping Primefac, you've followed me at least a little ways down this rabbit hole. What are your thoughts?

I've also been forced to defer any action on a number of classes of articles in this category where I can't see which template or sub-template is responsible for the categorization. Anything with buildings, or sites with designations, or maps – I've not found the key to fixing these. And what's going on with {{infobox Chinese}} is entirely beyond me. — jmcgnh^{(talk) (contribs)} 06:45, 25 August 2018 (UTC)

When I was looking at it I found 5 right at the top that were genuinely blank (or were just being used to post the image). I don't think it's completely a junk category; there's a discussion at the Infobox talk that might solve the majority of this issue. Primefac (talk) 15:48, 26 August 2018 (UTC)

@Primefac: I note that one of those used {{Infobox firearm cartridge}} which I had run across because 6mm Optimum used it only for an image. Which is better? Leave image-only infoboxes alone in the hope that they'll eventually receive more data? Or convert them into simple File calls? I've been leaning towards allowing image-only infoboxes because it's less disruptive overall; it's a lot more work to enforce an undocumented deprecation than to accommodate it as common usage. — jmcgnh^{(talk) (contribs)} 20:12, 26 August 2018 (UTC)

Well, I suppose the main question to ask would be "when do we want this category to be triggered?" As it's named, this category is being triggered exactly when it should, i.e. when no |dataX= is being used, but the description doesn't match that.

I could very easily see a category populated by infoboxes that truly had zero parameters, with subcategories for "no data" (i.e. this one), "only header-type params", and "only below-type params". I think that's a discussion to have at the {{infobox}} talk page and/or WT:WPT. Primefac (talk) 20:55, 26 August 2018 (UTC)

Somebody's efforts have had an effect. Down to 34K today from the 62K noted by Primefac on 24th. — jmcgnh^{(talk) (contribs)} 21:05, 27 August 2018 (UTC)

@jmcgnh,I think its your efforts that led to such a huge contribution. Adithyak1997 (talk) 18:39, 28 August 2018 (UTC)

@Adithyak1997: Thanks for the vote of confidence, but I don't think I got more than a few hundred. As I look at the templates, I find other people have been making changes, but there's still some discussion going on about some of these cases should be handled. I got some followup help from WOSlinker on {{Infobox skating event}}, but the pages are still showing up in the category and I can't figure out why, e.g. 1901 World Allround Speed Skating Championships. But progress is still being made. I see that someone has recently solved the handling of buildings with maps and designations that I was unable to figure out. The biggest impact, I think, would come from doing something about {{Infobox sportsperson}}, but I'm not clear on what the proper "something" would be. — jmcgnh^{(talk) (contribs)} 02:56, 29 August 2018 (UTC)

@jmcgnh, but why doesn't those article pages doesn't show that hidden category? Please check this article. I mean those articles present in this category are not showing it in those article pages.Adithyak1997 (talk) 03:09, 29 August 2018 (UTC)

@Adithyak1997: One of the things that makes this a bit hard is that some changes to templates take a while to propagate into changes in the category. At least, that's what I've observed. So I don't know if the change I just made to {{Infobox skating event}} to remove spaces around "yes" is what did the trick or if it was just a coincidence that the category finally caught up with changes made days ago. I don't think these changes to lightly-used infoboxes we are making should be taxing the job queue very much (but Primefac made a change to Module:Infobox a few days ago that had to have taken a while for the job queue to process).

So, I think skating is done, now to try hurling. — jmcgnh^{(talk) (contribs)} 03:26, 29 August 2018 (UTC)

Very very great work done to remove the error from 64k down to just 19k. And that too in 1 week timespan. I would like to congratulate the person(s) behind this great work. Adithyak1997 (talk) 18:49, 31 August 201

@Adithyak1997: I know Primefac and WOSlinker have been involved. As I go through the remainder, I'm running into more and more empty placeholder instances of {{Infobox medical condition (new)}}, similar to the original issue which got Primefac and Doc James involved at VPT#Blank infoboxes.

I'm also trying to keep better records of my "unsolved, skipped for now" cases so I can go look back to see how and by whom they were fixed. For example, I'm seeing that WOSlinker made a change to {{infobox sportsperson}} that has solved the initial cases I was seeing in this category. — jmcgnh^{(talk) (contribs)} 21:21, 31 August 2018 (UTC)