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Archiving

Automatic archiving of this talk page does not seem to be working. Can anyone take a look because I can't see what's wrong? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 13:35, 19 April 2023 (UTC)

I don't suspect anything is wrong here. The archiving template specifies |algo = old(30d), meaning only threads with no new posts in the last 30 days get archived. By my count, #Move article quality rating into banner shell is the only thread that matches that criteria, but that thread was bumped so that it isn't archived until a later date. If you want archiving to take place, you'll need to make it apply faster, wait, or do it manually. Aidan9382 (talk) 13:43, 19 April 2023 (UTC)
Ah that explains it - thanks. We probably don't need to keep that thread hanging around because discussion has spilled to many other threads too — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 14:14, 19 April 2023 (UTC)

Inactive wikiprojects

Last December a long discussion started at Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous)/Archive 73#Improper handling of assessment for inactive WikiProjects. To summarize, when a wikiproject seems to be inactive, {{WPBannerMeta}} is replaced by {{WPBannerMeta/inactive}}, which redirects to {{Inactive WikiProject banner}}. This displays a banner saying "This template is within the scope of WikiProject name, a project which is currently considered to be inactive.". The quality and importance ratings are no longer displayed and are no longer used to create categories like Category:Start-class Ruritania articles. After a while the inactive wikiproject's categories get deleted.

The discussion strayed off into side issues, including discussions that led to the proposal for project-independent quality assessments, but there seemed to be no particular objection and general support for retaining the assessments. Basically {{WPBannerMeta/inactive}} would now redirect to {{WPBannerMeta}} passing all the regular parameters plus |inactive=yes. {{WPBannerMeta}} would add a note saying "(this project seems to be inactive)" but would otherwise treat the inactive project the same as an active one. The biggest issue is that several thousand redlinked categories would have to be recreated for the inactive wikiprojects.

Should we revived the discussion, perhaps with a formal proposal? Is this the right time? Aymatth2 (talk) 15:45, 17 April 2023 (UTC)

@Aymatth2, this seems reasonable, but it may be worth waiting until at least some of the work on the global class proposal is done, to avoid unnecessary issues arising. — Qwerfjkltalk 16:17, 17 April 2023 (UTC)
Their ratings will likely get stale, so I propose that inactive WikiProjects always inherit the article class, and ignore the class set in the inactive banner (including for categorization purposes) — DFlhb (talk) 20:28, 17 April 2023 (UTC)
Although it wasn't closed officially, I think there is a consensus in favour here: Wikipedia:Village_pump (proposals)/Archive 197#Display assessments on inactive wikiproject banners. —CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • {C•X}) 08:47, 18 April 2023 (UTC)

@CX Zoom: reading that discussion again, there does seem to be consensus, although not unanimity. Enough to move forward. I agree with User:Qwerfjkl´'s point that it may be best to wait a bit. We could perhaps quietly introduce the new parameter in {{WPBannerMeta}} so it could be tested thoroughly, but leave {{WPBannerMeta/inactive}}, unchanged. To User:DFlhb's point, we should assume that the inactive project opts in, and use its quality rating only as a last resort. That is, if other opt-in projects have adopted the article, use one of their ratings in the banner shell, and drop the rating in the inactive project banner. Only use the inactive project rating if it is the only opt-in project for the article. Aymatth2 (talk) 14:57, 18 April 2023 (UTC)

Agreed. —CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • {C•X}) 16:07, 18 April 2023 (UTC)
I was hoping that the implementation of project-independent quality ratings would obviate the desire to show ratings of inactive projects. The main valid concern was that some articles did not have any active projects and so were unassessed. This can now be done using a standalone instance of this template. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 10:59, 19 April 2023 (UTC)
There were concerns that legitimate projects were being correctly flagged as inactive, which caused their ratings and categories to be incorrectly dropped. If a project is useless it should be deleted. If not, the ratings may be moved up to the shell, but the categories should be retained. Aymatth2 (talk) 14:17, 19 April 2023 (UTC)
Do you mean INCORRECTLY flagged? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 14:22, 19 April 2023 (UTC)
Correctly flagged. These are projects where there has been no talk page activity for a year, and nobody objects to having it marked as inactive. But the ratings are valid and the categories may still be useful. It is not defunct or a candidate for deletion. Maybe it will be revived later. Aymatth2 (talk) 15:06, 19 April 2023 (UTC)
Examples of inactive projects include WikiProject Religious texts with 2,483 articles, WikiProject Celts with 1,910 articles and WikiProject Blades with 530 articles including Utility knife, which is assigned to no other projects. WP 1.0 bot still generates statistics by quality and importance for inactive projects, and provides lists for a given combination such as Religious_texts articles - Mid importance / Start quality. But the categories are a more familiar and convenient way to navigate. Aymatth2 (talk) 16:22, 19 April 2023 (UTC)
Definitely; the main use of inactive WikiProjects is to use their WP1.0 table as a task-list"; if their categories are deleted, they're useless. Far more useful to keep, but inherit article rating. DFlhb (talk) 15:07, 19 April 2023 (UTC)

Is it intended to use this banner to hide all the WikiProjects on the talk page?

There is a parameter that will make the projects invisible on the talk page. Is there a reason for this, since it seems to remove the purpose of having the projects listed on the talk page? I would like to ensure that we keep the list of project names visible, even as the project information themselves is abbreviated. Knightoftheswords281 is currently adding this banner to talk pages with "collapsed=yes" for high level articles such as Talk:Engineering and Talk:Health. StarryGrandma (talk) 00:54, 19 April 2023 (UTC)

I have now seen the autocollapse discussion, so I guess the answer is yes. I would still like the Engineering talk page to have the list of projects, so I have modified the collapse. I don't feel 5 projects is too many to show for the top-level article covering an entire field. StarryGrandma (talk) 01:14, 19 April 2023 (UTC)
Another step that's helping the decline of Wikiprojects. Moxy- 03:08, 19 April 2023 (UTC)
The result of that discussion was NOT to autocollapse, but to allow editors discretion particularly if the number of projects exceeds a number between 4 and 6. If there are that many then it is usually appropriate to collapse, otherwise the projects can dominate the talk page — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 10:56, 19 April 2023 (UTC)
Projects no longer dominate talk page headers as can be seen at the currently not collapsed Talk:Engineering and Talk:Health. Knightoftheswords281 was collapsing the projects in the banners for as few as 2 and 3 projects. It is fine to leave it to the discretion of editors - I take that to mean that the bot that does the migration won't be collapsing anything. The science projects are active and I'd like to see them visible on the talk pages. StarryGrandma (talk) 23:56, 19 April 2023 (UTC)

Couple of issues

A couple of issues I have just noticed:

  • Talk:Harry Oscar Arend - the Redirect-class is shown as a conflicting rating for Alaska
     Fixed Caused by an error in the custom class mask which was emitting a space after the rating. (Maybe should look at trimming spaces somewhere.)
  • Talk:Environmental Law (disambiguation) - importance should be automatically rated as NA for disambiguation page

— Martin (MSGJ · talk) 13:41, 19 April 2023 (UTC)

The second one is a more complex issue. The short answer is that Module:Pagetype needs to be updated to recognise disambiguation pages as non-articles. The longer answer is that importance should really be normalised after the class has been normalised. This currently does not happen at WPBM due to limitations of wikicode and performance (it desperately needs converting to lua) so it relies on the pagetype module to decide whether it's an article or not. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 09:33, 20 April 2023 (UTC)

See Talk:Étang de Palo. With this one, the presence of an inactive banner is suppressing the class categorization. Aymatth2 (talk) 14:51, 20 April 2023 (UTC)

That one seems to be behaving as expected. What categories do you expect it to have? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 14:58, 20 April 2023 (UTC)
Oh wait, it should be in Category:C-Class articles. I haven't actually implemented that yet. But I see what you mean - if there are banners then logically it does not need this category, unless there is a way to know if they are all inactive projects? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 15:04, 20 April 2023 (UTC)
Well, it should at least be in Category:C-Class articles, but I would prefer Category:C-Class Celts articles. WP 1.0 bot does not seem to work for the Celts. It just lists three categories: Category:Ancient Britons, Category:Celtic American and Category:Pictish art. I have no idea how it got those. It works for {{User:WP 1.0 bot/Tables/Project/Religious texts}} and {{User:WP 1.0 bot/Tables/Project/Blades}}. Aymatth2 (talk) 16:00, 20 April 2023 (UTC)
The bot seems a bit arbitrary with inactive projects. When I look at its table for WikiProject Blades, I find Cold Steel in the High importance / C quality list, but not Cold Steel (company). It does not reflect a page move on 26 September 2022, when Cold Steel was moved to Cold Steel (company) and Cold Steel (disambiguation) was moved to Cold Steel. I suspect the bot is showing articles that were in the wikiproject just before it was marked inactive, 19 May 2021‎ in the case of WikiProject Blades and 6 May 2021‎ for WikiProject Religious texts. But WikiProject Celts was active until 16 September 2021. Dunno. Aymatth2 (talk) 17:29, 20 April 2023 (UTC)
I proposed on Template talk:Inactive WikiProject banner#The template does not work well with xtools several months ago a solution that would get PageAssessments working on these pages, but no one replied — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 08:00, 21 April 2023 (UTC)
The obvious solution is to add a |status= parameter to {{WPBannerMeta}} taking values draft, active, semi-active, inactive or defunct to match Category:WikiProjects by status, and have {{WPBannerMeta}} display any value other than active, but otherwise just format parameters and generate categories as normal. We have consensus in favor of this. Let-s just do it. Aymatth2 (talk) 13:39, 21 April 2023 (UTC)

Sort key

Shouldn't the sort-key parameter, |listas= also be migrated into the new WPPbannershell? Currently listed in {{WPBIOGRAPHY}}. I would think this would make sorting easier for not just biographies "SURNAME, Givenname", but also for articles that start with "The" or "List of" -- 64.229.90.172 (talk) 20:32, 13 April 2023 (UTC)

Per the documentation, the |listas= parameter sets the sortkey for all categories. It doesn't matter how the category is set, the sortkey comes from the |listas= even if it's in a different banner. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:59, 13 April 2023 (UTC)
Except that that documentation only shows up with the WPBIOGRAPHY banner, and not other banners, and not all topics will have a WPBIOGRAPHY banner, for which one could conceivably read such documentation, nor is it at all clear if there is no WPBIOGRAPHY banner (or similar banner that documents such a param), that it would still work -- 64.229.90.172 (talk) 04:11, 14 April 2023 (UTC)
All WikiProject banners (except Military history, which has a number of variant features) recognise |listas=, and in most cases they are documented in the same manner as Biography. See for example WikiProject Biology; WikiProject Birds; WikiProject Bivalves - would you like more? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 18:19, 14 April 2023 (UTC)
That had not been my experience previously, such as at {{WikiProject Literature}}, {{WikiProject Civil engineering}}, {{WikiProject Lakes}}, etc -- 64.229.90.172 (talk) 06:20, 19 April 2023 (UTC)
All three of these respect the |listas= parameter, although it's not documented. I shall rectify the documentatation forthwith. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:40, 19 April 2023 (UTC)
All three are now documented. Do you know of any others? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:39, 19 April 2023 (UTC)
I agree. Now that every talk page will have a banner shell, it would make more sense to migrate |listas= out of individual banners and into the banner shell. This is because, setting |listas= for any one banner will set categorisation for all banners anyway as it works by supplying magic words. —CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • {C•X}) 13:10, 14 April 2023 (UTC)
I also support this very logical proposal and have added the code for this to the sandbox. Personally I have never understood why we use the listas parameter instead of just adding DEFAULTSORT, but perhaps it is slightly cleaner — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 11:04, 19 April 2023 (UTC)
 Done. This has now been added to the template — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 11:54, 24 April 2023 (UTC)

Making WPBS more functional: adding more parameters

Over time, I'd appreciate introducing a number of new parameters to make the banner shell more functional they are: |listas= (does not need passing onto child banners, just the magic word would do); |needs-infobox=, |needs-image= (these will need passing onto child banners, as is current practice); |assessment-date= (this one is new, the though process is that a bot can find articles with way too old assessment ratings and compile report for potential reassessment, based on |assessment-date= and the number of revisions of article since then). —CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • {C•X}) 18:34, 21 April 2023 (UTC)

Please let me know your opinion. —CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • {C•X}) 18:35, 21 April 2023 (UTC)
All of those are great, especially |assessment-date. DFlhb (talk) 19:08, 21 April 2023 (UTC)
Oh, assessment-date sounds very useful. SilverTiger12 (talk) 17:35, 23 April 2023 (UTC)
These ideas look good. I think they should probably be discussed in a more prominent place (e.g. WT:COUNCIL or a village pump) rather than on this talk page which is probably not watched by many people. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 11:31, 24 April 2023 (UTC)
|assessment-date might not be such a bliss that it sounds like at first. While it may be useful to go through particularly old assessments to see if they need to be updated, the only way to make such a process effective so as to not run through the same set of articles every time is by updating the assessment-date on articles even if the assessment itself stays the same. I cannot imagine the watchlist clutter this will bring. And while assessment-date might sound like a good heuristic, we have far better ones. An article is likely to be in need of re-assesment if it has changed a lot, particularly in terms of byte-size, rather than been sitting around for years with no edits but with an old assessment-date. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 11:35, 24 April 2023 (UTC)
Perhaps |review-date= would be clearer, as it means the last time the assessment was reviewed by an editor — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 11:37, 24 April 2023 (UTC)
I had foreseen that, which is why I said "based on |assessment-date= and the number of revisions of article since then" —CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • {C•X}) 13:25, 24 April 2023 (UTC)

NA classes

Some projects support the "extended quality scale" which includes things like Template-Class, Project-Class, File-Class, etc. Other projects use the standard quality scale, which bunch all these into NA-Class. It would not make sense for the banner shell to advertise classes which the individual nested projects may not support, and the focus of everyone here seems to be on the quality of articles (rather than the classification of different types of pages). So my proposed solution is as follows.

If any of the extended classes are used, the banner will say NA-class (or simply this page is not an article and does not require a rating). However, the individual project banners will continue to use the extended rating and categorise as they do currently. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 21:49, 21 February 2023 (UTC)

The new banner shell does not advertise the individual non-NA extended classes, so does not tell editors that such things exist. That is a problem. It will appear as if the projects that support non-NA extended classes are assessing it as NA, as the individual banners no longer advertise what setting they are set at. One would need to read the list of categories to determine if any single project supports such extended classes, which is bad practice. If the project supports extended classes, then when the extended class is used, its banner should show that it is at variance with the banner shell set class -- 65.92.244.249 (talk) 22:28, 28 March 2023 (UTC)
Well not all projects use the extended classes, so we have to use the lowest common denominator for the article class. From above, "It would not make sense for the banner shell to advertise classes which the individual nested projects may not support". It seems to me that the best we can do is to advertise NA (which is not false) for all projects. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 22:32, 28 March 2023 (UTC)
It now just makes it appear that no wikiproject supports extended classes, and that such things do no exist. Perhaps it should show both NA and the extended class in the bannershell indicator box. That would be also correct, as the projects that do not support them will have NA and those that do will have the extended class (ie. "NA/Category" or NA   Category) -- 65.92.244.249 (talk) 22:39, 28 March 2023 (UTC)
Or ... we could find a way display the type of page in a different way to the quality of a page. This would be a better long-term plan. In any case, I think it will need more thought and discussion, so not a quick-fix — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 22:56, 28 March 2023 (UTC)
Separating type also allows standard assessment more granular than "list" and "good list" (as some projects already allow anyway), as one discrete benefit. It is something I've wanted this system to do for a while. Izno (talk) 22:58, 28 March 2023 (UTC)
Yes, that is a better concept that the current bannershell resolving to NA regardless. IIRC that was suggested when extended classes were introduced, that pagetype should be separate from class. A quality class and a page type would then be displayed where the current banershell class would be displayed. Perhaps the WPBANNERMETA should be updated to have a |type= and move "category" / "redirect" / "list" / "project" / etc to it. Per Izno, we could then just assess lists with standard quality classes. -- 65.92.244.249 (talk) 23:01, 28 March 2023 (UTC)
Sounds like an excellent idea. I don't even know how good lists are managed now ... Do you mind if we let the dust settle on these new changes first? I think we should set up an assessment work group, because there are so many improvements we could make — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 10:19, 29 March 2023 (UTC)
I don't know of any WikiProjects that have a "good list" class. Featured list, yes - it's part of the standard bundle; Milhist also has AL, BL and CL - but not GL. Indeed, I recall discussion almost eight years ago (Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 123#Good Lists) plus at least two follow-ups (Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 131#Good lists; Template talk:WPBannerMeta/Archive 11#And old idea, revisited, part 2). Izno, where have you come across a "good list" assessment? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 17:37, 29 March 2023 (UTC)
Yes, I meant featured lists. Izno (talk) 18:02, 29 March 2023 (UTC)
I was assuming that Izno meant a list article which has gone through WP:GAN, because I guess that lists are eligible. But then they would lose their "list" status if the rating is changed to GA. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 21:03, 29 March 2023 (UTC)
Lists can be run through GAN and even FAC if they tend more prosey than listy, but those end up as either GAs or FAs. There are or at least were a few such in the land of video gaming.
I just simply have totally forgotten what content is of late. :) Izno (talk) 23:47, 29 March 2023 (UTC)
Once we're done with this transition, an assessment work group would be ideal, and after the assessment work is done, I think we should follow it with a template work group (enwiki is a sorry sight compared to frwiki; lots of improvements to be made to accessibility, consistency, and of course mobile compatibility). DFlhb (talk) 17:55, 29 March 2023 (UTC)
(potentially of interest: fr:Projet:Charte graphique, which the French WikiProject Templates is in charge of inplementing.) DFlhb (talk) 16:55, 30 March 2023 (UTC)
I had originally proposed somewhere that disambig, redirect, etc. classes be passed globally as a standard rating. Projects that do not recognise it default to NA-class during categorisation. I bring this up because it seems that the changing in categorisation of redirects to NA-class has been quite disruptive so far. —CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • {C•X}) 19:09, 4 April 2023 (UTC)
I add my voice to those asking that redirect, disambig, template, etc. class be used as a standard global rating- doesn't WPBannerMeta already have the ability to detect & auto-class for those? Surely it can be implemented in banner shell easily enough. SilverTiger12 (talk) 19:31, 4 April 2023 (UTC)
MSGJ — as a compromise, we could standardize all FQS classes now (into the Shell), and then hold an assessment workgroup? Though I don't know if the Shell can show "Redirect" and still be compatible with banners that don't enable FQS. DFlhb (talk) 19:42, 4 April 2023 (UTC)
@SilverTiger12: Autodetection works for redirects, plus the namespace-specific classes like template, category and file; but disambiguation pagea are not autodetected, which is why I had to make a pile of edits like this earlier today. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:02, 4 April 2023 (UTC)
I think we can use Module:Disambiguation to auto-detect disambiguation pages. That should help a lot — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:17, 9 April 2023 (UTC)
Auto-detection of disambiguation pages is now deployed for all projects using the standard FQS scale (and no custom mask) — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 11:33, 17 April 2023 (UTC)
Is it acceptable to classify pages using classes which not all projects support? I don't feel comfortable with it, personally. Bear in mind that Redirect-class is not even in the FQS group of classes, so if you accept that one then you are basically opening the door to all other non-standard classes like Future-class, User-class or Merge-class. Is there a possible way to have the banner shell show NA-class (which covers every project) but have individual project banners show their more specific rating? Or shall we start to explore ways to show the type of page on the banner shell, as well as its quality class? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:23, 9 April 2023 (UTC)
Is anyone interested in exploring how the banner shell template could display the type of page in addition to quality? My feeling is that templates, files, redirects, etc. should still be classified as NA for quality, but we could (separately) show what type of page it is. That would seem to alleviate most people's concerns in this thread. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 11:39, 17 April 2023 (UTC)
As a start, perhaps we should highlight non-articles and use the wording "does not require a rating on the content assessment scale" similar to how WPBM currently does? Example below — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 13:39, 25 April 2023 (UTC)

I am very comfortable with the idea of showing the type of page on the banner shell (but not for articles). It is hard to see a redirect having quality other than NA, but a list, file, template or set index certainly could. Perhaps even a disambigation page could. Aymatth2 (talk) 14:48, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

This idea's grown on me a lot. For example, this pic is Featured, but doesn't get recognized as such by the shell (or by projects); would be nice if it was. DFlhb (talk) 20:08, 9 April 2023 (UTC)
Except that this idea wouldn't really help that picture. The best we could do is recognise it as a file and then quality would be NA-class. FM-class is not a standard class so I don't think we'd be able to show that in the banner shell — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 20:50, 9 April 2023 (UTC)
Isn't that the point, if we separate type and quality? Instead of "FA" or "FL" (or nonstandard "FM"), the standard class would just be "F", and it could apply to any page type. And "List" would no longer be a quality rating, but an article "type", so a list could be rated Start, C, B, or "G" (GA). The default ratings for all pages (except redirects) would be "Unassessed" rather than NA. I thought I was agreeing with both you and Aymatth2, but maybe I misread you both. DFlhb (talk) 23:41, 9 April 2023 (UTC)
Projects may be interested in articles (normal, current or future event, redirect, list, set index etc.), files, templates, categories and perhaps portals and users. Most of these, but not all, could be assessed for quality. For a list or set index, there are surely levels of quality between stub and FL. The criteria for some types may be different from regular articles. A file could have high quality resolution, composition, information value etc. Separating type from class makes sense to me, but is out of scope for this project, I think. Aymatth2 (talk) 16:33, 10 April 2023 (UTC)
I think we are all in agreement of where we would like to be one day :) — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 20:18, 10 April 2023 (UTC)

Unassessed or NA

If the banner shell is unassessed (i.e. blank or empty class parameter) and project banners are also unassessed, do we want to consider this as matching and so hide the redundant unassessed rating on the project banner?

The passed proposal says "If no article-level class value is found, the wikiproject banner will be processed as at present" which seems to answer this question, but if we are using namespace detection to detect non-article classes, then an empty class parameter will produce a rating of NA. (We don't want to have to go round and tag each banner shell as class=NA in this case.) So I need a little clarification on what "If no article-level class value is found" means. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 07:52, 24 March 2023 (UTC)

To answer my own question, this is how I think we should proceed. We will use the resolved article class (which will use namespace detection, redirect detection, etc.) and if this is not blank then we will consider that an article-level class is present (regardless of whether the class parameter is defined or not). If the resolved class is not defined then the article really has no article-level rating and each banner will then display its own assessments.
It could be a future initiative to add unassessed article-level ratings to articles (e.g. by using a blank parameter |class=) but that is out of scope at this stage. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 13:26, 24 March 2023 (UTC)
I made this edit, and the page is correctly categorised into Category:Disambig-Class law articles and Category:Disambig-Class Environment articles, but (a) the WPBS says "This article is rated NA-class", even though it's not in any "NA-Class Foo articles" categories; (b) there is nothing within the first or third enclosed banners to say that the page is dab-class, even when they are all expanded. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 13:33, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

Migration timeline

Over time, quality assessments will be migrated up to {{WikiProject banner shell}}, and your project banner will automatically "inherit" any changes to the general assessments for the purpose of assigning categories

Is any mass migration planned to this new format and on what timeline? There are some fixes I would like to see included, such as removing parameters no longer supported by the child banners, if an WP:AWB job is planned.

I.e., the anarchism project deprecated the "importance" parameter and it looks like the code needs to be removed from hundreds of templates for the quality table to render correctly. I'd like to combine the jobs if possible, but if no communal jobb is planned anytime soon and we run our own job for this task, is there anything we should be modifying in consideration of the banner shell migration? czar 12:48, 17 April 2023 (UTC)

Instinctively I would say these should be done as separate jobs. Combining them may confuse things, and we are not yet ready for the mass migration anyway — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 14:09, 17 April 2023 (UTC)
I agree with MSGJ. The proposal that kicked this off said "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 Wikipedia:Content assessment approach. That is outside the scope of this proposal.". We need more time for these changes to settle down. Aymatth2 (talk) 15:10, 17 April 2023 (UTC)
@Czar, I'd be interested in doing the bot work for this (it could include the cleanup fixes at User:Magioladitis/WikiProjects). However, as Martin says, that is a project for the future. — Qwerfjkltalk 16:20, 17 April 2023 (UTC)
Thanks, all. Follow-up question: If the anarchism "importance" task were to run as a separate job, what would be the proper scope? Would it be appropriate to add |class= to the banner shell and remove both |class= and |importance= from the anarchism WikiProject banner? Or does the individual WikiProject banner still need to include |class= for some reason? czar 18:55, 17 April 2023 (UTC)
I would limit the bot to just removing the |importance= parameter from all the talk page instances of {{WikiProject Anarchism}}. The bot that migrates |class= from the opt-in project banners up to the shell will have logic for handling conflicts between project assessments. Best not to anticipate it. Aymatth2 (talk) 15:23, 18 April 2023 (UTC)
Occasionally I find stub articles without any Talk page WPs. With Rater, if I add 3 Wikiprojects (for example, Talk:Gurumalleshwara, here) it creates without the Class on WPBS. After I manually add the Class, my question is - Should I remove the individual WP class? JoeNMLC (talk) 15:47, 29 April 2023 (UTC)
It may be safer not to remove the individual classes at this stage. Some projects have chosen to opt-out of the new system, and their ratings should be left in place. Unless you are aware of which ones, you could risk losing information. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 20:55, 29 April 2023 (UTC)

Update the documentation to show how |class= parameter is used

Can the documentation be updated to show how the new |class= parameter is used? - Cameron Dewe (talk) 00:09, 2 April 2023 (UTC)

Will do ... — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 08:32, 3 April 2023 (UTC)

yes, please update the documentation. I've started seeing this recently and wasn't sure what was going on.

This talk page: Talk:Konrad_Zöllner_von_Rotenstein

shows the class in the banner shell but does not show it in the actual WP Biography project, which is where I expected to see it; it makes it look empty or unassessed. I made a change to a different article thinking it was an error; I will change it back, but would like a fuller explanation about the update. Thanks for your understanding and patience. I have changed Talk:House_of_Habsburg back but again the biography tag shows the assessment as empty. --FeanorStar7 (talk) 22:47, 28 April 2023 (UTC)

Documentation was updated a while ago. Please let us know if anything is unclear. The behaviour you are seeing is intentional. Assessments will not be duplicated in each banner. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 06:23, 29 April 2023 (UTC)
ok, thank you very much. I appreciate it. I am reading through this talk page also to get a better understanding. --FeanorStar7 (talk) 10:40, 29 April 2023 (UTC)
I have added some more background and a link to the archived discussion where consensus was established — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 21:16, 29 April 2023 (UTC)

Template-protected edit request on 30 April 2023

Please correct the capitalization in this template. Specifically change this:

Wikipedia's Content assessment scale.

to this:

Wikipedia's content assessment scale.

WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:36, 30 April 2023 (UTC)

 Completed. P.I. Ellsworth , ed. put'er there 22:46, 30 April 2023 (UTC)

Add category for articles without an assessment on the banner shell?

This would be very useful if we want every article to have one class assessment and for prospective editors to add an assessment. Aaron Liu (talk) 19:28, 3 May 2023 (UTC)

That would be pretty much every article in the encyclopedia right now. We are yet to do any mass editing with bots, so the only articles that are using the new system have been manually added for a few editors — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 22:35, 4 May 2023 (UTC)

Standalone version

Moved from Wikipedia talk:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Work via WikiProjects

Since WPBS now has the ability to have syntax such as {{WPBS|class=C}} which produces:

do we still need to use {{WP1.0|orphan=yes}} to tag articles without WikiProjects or can we just use WPBS? I've advertised this on Template talk:WikiProject banner shell & Template talk:WP1.0 as this talk page seems dormant. {{ping|ClydeFranklin}} (t/c) 01:51, 2 April 2023 (UTC)

(Hope you don't mind but I moved your thread to this page.) Yes, you are correct. The conclusion of the big discussion was "{{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" so we should work on this. I will create a mockup of what this could look like — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 18:10, 2 April 2023 (UTC)
@ClydeFranklin just in case you hadn't seen the replies — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 07:18, 3 April 2023 (UTC)

Option 1

More of less similar appearance to at present, but without the collapsed box. I think we should lose the bold though.

"Variant", "not yet" bolded too:

Option 2

Something more similar to a typical project banner.

WikiProject iconWPBS
WikiProject iconThis article is not yet within the scope of any WikiProject.WPBSWikipedia:WikiProject WPBSTemplate:BANNER NAMEarticles

Discussion

  • Option 2 I like it more, but won't lose sleep on this either way. LGTM! ~ 🦝 Shushugah (he/him • talk) 00:19, 3 April 2023 (UTC)
  • I think I prefer option 1 because (a) it better matches existing appearance of the banner shell, (b) the greater width of the class and icon has better visibility, and (c) the WikiProject icon is not needed because the article does not have any WikiProjects. But I do think it would look better without the boldface — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 07:13, 3 April 2023 (UTC)
  • Love option 1, per MSGJ. Looks far better, and the Council icon is purely decorative and distracting (changed my mind on that). I also like the bold; consistency above all. Do we have a programmatic way of listing all non-redirect talk pages without a project banner, that we could add this to with a bot? DFlhb (talk) 07:30, 3 April 2023 (UTC)
    @DFlhb: This thread by The Anome: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Council#Articles without Wikiprojects might have what you are asking for. —CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • {C•X}) 09:20, 3 April 2023 (UTC)
  • Option 1 feels more consistent and I love to see it. However, I would've liked to see the two sentences concerning two different aspects in two separate lines using <br> tag, not just in this case, but in all cases. —CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • {C•X}) 09:16, 3 April 2023 (UTC)
    I've added br to the sandbox. Personally I prefer to leave people's browsers to break the line where they want. On widescreen monitors this uses two lines unnecessarily. What do you think about bold/unbold? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 09:20, 3 April 2023 (UTC)
    Boldface is mostly used to separate the important stuff from surrounding prose, but here is no such separation, so I think it looks better without boldface, but I'd let others decide on that. —CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • {C•X}) 09:24, 3 April 2023 (UTC)
    I agree - unbolded in sandbox How about we bold the rating, but unbold the next sentence? In that case perhaps the br is not needed, as the two aspects are separated by bolding? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 09:32, 3 April 2023 (UTC)
    True that bold should only highlight important info, so people can skim. I've added one variant (now my favorite). DFlhb (talk) 09:43, 3 April 2023 (UTC)
    Not sure if "not yet" needs bolding. I'm happy with just the class being bolded though. I've added a collapsed example below. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 09:56, 3 April 2023 (UTC)
    I bolded "not yet" under the premise that all articles should have an associated project, and that "no project" is therefore actionable info (though maybe that premise isn't always true! but likely almost always true) DFlhb (talk) 10:01, 3 April 2023 (UTC)
    I suspect there will be some articles that really are not in scope of any project (haven't got any examples though!) Any opinion on whether the line break is appropriate or not? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 10:02, 3 April 2023 (UTC)
    Line break looks cleaner, I guess. For me, both use two lines regardless of browser window size, since the huge class icon on the left takes up two lines (and I do like the big class icon) DFlhb (talk) 10:05, 3 April 2023 (UTC)

With line break:

and without:

  • 1 w/ line break. I won't lose sleep either way, but I concur 1 is more consistent with the banners with WikiProjects & I think the line break is a lot cleaner. {{ping|ClydeFranklin}} (t/c) 15:46, 3 April 2023 (UTC)
  • Option 1 deployed per consensus — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 08:45, 4 April 2023 (UTC)
    Can we please get the line break in the actual template, per consensus above? We can revert if opposition or technical issues arise. —CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • {C•X}) 18:54, 4 April 2023 (UTC)
    I believe I did add the line break — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 16:03, 5 April 2023 (UTC)
  • See Talk:Phileas and Philoromus. This may become a common form. Maybe {{WikiProject banner shell}} should scan for the characters "{{WikiProject" in the page, and if found skip the message "It is not yet within the scope of any WikiProject.". I see us drifting to a style where the quality rating banner is completely detached from the project list,. Aymatth2 (talk) 20:29, 4 April 2023 (UTC)
    Hmm, that is unexpected behaviour and at odds with the whole purpose of the banner shell template. What makes you think this may become common? Your suggestion would work in some cases but might not be foolproof — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 16:07, 5 April 2023 (UTC)
    Why don't we just remove that sentence in all cases? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 16:17, 5 April 2023 (UTC)
    • Simplest to always remove that sentence. The style may become common. The first reviewer of a new article uses {{WikiProject banner shell}} to record quality, but does not assign any projects. Then someone else adds a project banner, but does not put it inside {{WikiProject banner shell}}. It looks ok and works fine. Aymatth2 (talk) 17:09, 7 April 2023 (UTC)
      I'm not sure that was raised at any point of the past discussions. So far, both have worked fine in conjunction with each other and most likely will continue to do so. Scanning for the characters "{{WikiProject" in the page may also raise a number of issues/false-positives. —CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • {C•X}) 20:20, 7 April 2023 (UTC)
      • I don't know if the Talk:Phileas and Philoromus arrangement was discussed. It soon became clear that the |class= value had to be extracted by scanning the page source, so it makes no difference if the project templates are embedded in the shell or not. The proposal leaves it open. I think editors will quite often leave project banners outside the shell, and cannot see any harm in it. Is there a catch? Aymatth2 (talk) 22:50, 8 April 2023 (UTC)
        • @Aymatth2, you won't be able to collapse the banners. — Qwerfjkltalk 15:03, 14 April 2023 (UTC)
          • That is true. I am more thinking of what is likely to happen rather than what should. A lot of articles would be assigned to no projects but have a shell, or to one project, where collapsing is not useful. And some have several projects, which probably would get grouped inside the shell and maybe collapsed. Aymatth2 (talk) 18:33, 14 April 2023 (UTC)
            Why would anyone do that though? No one did that for so many years, and even the existing rater script automatically assigns banners inside the shell. If shell is devoid of banners, it gets categorised, and someone will fix that. —CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • {C•X}) 20:23, 14 April 2023 (UTC)
            • Time will tell. The difference is that in the past the shell was just a way to group multiple project banners, reducing the space they took up on the talk page. it would only be added when there were multiple project banners, and would always wrap round them. Now the shell can be used where there are no projects at all, just showing the quality assessment. We may find editors using it in this way for new articles, which may then sit without projects for a long time. When eventually a project is assigned, the banner could easily be placed outside the shell. Or the reverse sequence could happen. Someone assigns a project with no assessment, and then someone adds the shell with the assessment, but does not wrap it round the (single) project banner. Aymatth2 (talk) 13:44, 15 April 2023 (UTC)
            • I see quality assessment and project assignment as very different tasks. One editor works through articles on rivers making sure they are assigned to WikiProject rivers, while another works through articles that have just grown by over 2000 characters checking to see if they should be reassessed. Both will add or update the templates they are interested in without paying much attention to the other templates on the talk page. If it turns out to be common to have banners outside the shell, it is best to accommodate that rather than fighting it. We will find out over the next few months. Aymatth2 (talk) 14:06, 15 April 2023 (UTC)
              That could be a task for bots to fix. Find disjoint shells and banners and merge them inside the shell. We already have bots doing a wide variety of maintenance jobs. —CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • {C•X}) 15:59, 15 April 2023 (UTC)
              I always prefer consistency. Either all uses of the shell be converted into independent assessment banner or the status quo. But, I think the earlier would be disruptive due to current number of transclusions. —CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • {C•X}) 16:00, 15 April 2023 (UTC)
              • I suppose I am less concerned about consistency, but I would have no problem if a bot ran periodically through the talk pages putting project banners inside the shell. Often there would be just one banner in the shell's list. Aymatth2 (talk) 18:05, 15 April 2023 (UTC)
                I have fixed an issue at Talk:Mason Fowler where the WPBIO banner was outside the shell and so the BLP warning was displayed twice. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 20:34, 16 April 2023 (UTC)
      I have removed that sentence from the template. Regardless of whether the separation of banner shell and banners is good practice or not, this sentence is unnecessary. So your example at Phileas and Philoromus looks okay now — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 18:54, 9 April 2023 (UTC)
      It, however, continues to populate Category:Pages using WikiProject banner shell without banner templates. —CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • {C•X}) 13:14, 14 April 2023 (UTC)
      True - do we need that tracking category? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 20:44, 14 April 2023 (UTC)
      Yes, because it would help in finding what articles are unassigned to wikiprojects while the quality assessor can assess the quality and not assign wikiprojects. If, it is determined that banners may be placed outside shell, then that category should be applied only when there is no banner in the whole page and not just inside the shell. —CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • {C•X}) 21:00, 14 April 2023 (UTC)

Categorization

In the sandbox version, the standalone use of this article will populate categories like Category:B-Class articles and Category:Unassessed articles. Is this okay or would people prefer to use a subcategory like Category:B-Class articles without a WikiProject or Category:Unassessed articles with unknown topic? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 13:59, 4 May 2023 (UTC)

How 'bout Category:B-Class articles contain Category:B-Class articles without a WikiProject, and Category:B-Class articles by WikiProject, and all the current subcategories of Category:B-Class articles get moved to Category:B-Class articles by WikiProject, and then same for "Unassessed"? — DFlhb (talk) 16:26, 4 May 2023 (UTC)
Possible - could be achieved in the main by adjusting Template:Category class. I'm not sure how many such articles there will be the end or whether the big change is warranted? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 16:33, 4 May 2023 (UTC)
We can have "Category:Articles without a WikiProject" and "Category:B-Class articles" and use petscan to find the union of the two sets. I don't think there would be enough articles in "Category:B-Class articles without a WikiProject" to warrant a creation. Almost all articles, even stubs and start class fall into some WikiProject. —CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • {C•X}) 20:05, 4 May 2023 (UTC)
Also, "Articles without a WikiProject" itself is a bad category name, because it is insufficiently descriptive. This will only categorise if the talk page has a WPBS. If the talk page does not have WPBS, or if the talk page itself does not yet exist, then it will not categorise. It would be a forever incomplete category under that name. —CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • {C•X}) 20:08, 4 May 2023 (UTC)

Template is currently using Category:Start-Class articles, etc. unless/until there is consensus to use another naming scheme — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:52, 5 May 2023 (UTC)

Slight change to unassessed ratings

I would like to propose a slight change to how unassessed articles are dealt with. If there is no project-independent rating in the banner shell, and rating in any project banner, then the article will be assumed to be unassesed globally. This will be shown in the banner shell with the usual 3 question marks (???) and this line removed from each separate banner. Technical details:

  • Change to Template:WikiProject banner shell: if no class parameter is passed to the banner shell, and class is not automatically detected as NA, and no |class= is defined anywhere within the project banners inside the banner shell, then the banner shell will show unassessed.
  • Change to Module:WikiProject quality assessment: if article_class is blank or does not exist and local class is blank then add prefix 'H' to hide the quality assessment on each project banner.

— Martin (MSGJ · talk) 06:51, 26 April 2023 (UTC)

Isn't this the one we had all already agreed upon? —CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • {C•X}) 07:28, 26 April 2023 (UTC)
No this is a slight change from the conclusion of the RfC, but I think it is logical and definitely will be needed at some stage — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 07:54, 26 April 2023 (UTC)
I think this is now implemented in the sandbox, if anyone would like to check. It made the logic much more complex!, unfortunately — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 14:32, 2 May 2023 (UTC)
Example below showing a "globally unassessed" article. I think the display could be improved, perhaps by adding a background colour and changing the 3 question marks. Any suggestions? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 21:34, 2 May 2023 (UTC)
I think a light grey color background will be appropriate. The question marks may be replaced by the literal word "Unassessed". I think what would be more consistent and better looking. —CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • {C•X}) 21:40, 2 May 2023 (UTC)
Can try, but will probably not fit unless we increase the width of that column somewhat — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 22:12, 2 May 2023 (UTC)
"Unassessed" would be two characters wider than "Template", but then there is the icon beside it. So, would it be possible to drop the "Unassessed" part below the icon, both centered in its box? Width increase remains an option though. —CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • {C•X}) 23:57, 2 May 2023 (UTC)
Not sure how that template works. I tried on Module:Class/sandbox by changing Module:Class/sandbox/styles.css and Module:Class/sandbox/definition.json but there has been no effect above — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 10:05, 3 May 2023 (UTC)
Fixed, how's that colour? Still working on the text — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 11:48, 3 May 2023 (UTC)
"Unrated" is a much shorter word that means the same thing — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 11:54, 3 May 2023 (UTC)
Agreed, it is a good idea. But, would it require renaming the "Category:Unassessed Foo articles" to Unrated? —CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • {C•X}) 17:53, 3 May 2023 (UTC)

Given the increased complexity of this template I have written Module:Banner shell — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 23:26, 3 May 2023 (UTC)

@MSGJ: As someone who had been very active in the RM area in the last year, I'd suggest that module and its template be named the same. —CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • {C•X}) 11:46, 4 May 2023 (UTC)
Don't really mind, but I was thinking that in the future we might be able to merge the functionality in Template:Banner holder and that might be a name which encompasses both — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 11:49, 4 May 2023 (UTC)

Okay, I believe this is now deployed. Some quite tricky logic to get this right! Let me know if you see anything untoward — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 22:32, 4 May 2023 (UTC)

Notes — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:23, 5 May 2023 (UTC)
  1. Accept |living= as alternative to |blp=  Done
  2. Better trimming of parameters needed Not sure
  3. Only categorise talk pages  Done
These are now fixed in the template. Somehow I couldn't reproduce the issues I was having with 2, but if anyone else notices anything odd, then please report here — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 11:37, 9 May 2023 (UTC)

Removing custom assessment pages

It is almost one month after the notifications were sent round to WikiProjects, so we will be able to safely assume that any project which has not opted out will be using the standard scale for quality assessment described at Wikipedia:Content assessment. I suggest that, for these projects, we change the wording on the project banner from

This article has been rated as C-Class on the project's quality scale.

to

This article has been rated as C-Class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale.

which will match the wording used on the banner shell. The wording and link for the importance scale will, of course, will remain unchanged. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:06, 11 May 2023 (UTC)

+1 —CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • {C•X}) 17:18, 11 May 2023 (UTC)
 Done — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 07:36, 15 May 2023 (UTC)

Next steps

Well the new system is up and running and there were a few teething problems, but judging from the absence of complaints, it looks like it's working. I'm going to jot down here, thoughts on the next steps to take — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 20:17, 28 March 2023 (UTC)

  1. Get inherited classes working with taskforces hooks (necessary before local parameters can be removed)  Done
  2. Advertise the new feature to WikiProjects and advise on steps required to opt-out using the QUALITY_CRITERIA parameter. (I think Aymatth2 was going to do this.)  Done
  3. Start with some low hanging fruit. The majority of pages currently in Category:Articles with conflicting quality ratings are redirects. The banner shell is detecting they are redirects but there are conflicting ratings in the WikiProject banners (usually because the article has been redirected and the banners have not been updated). Would it be at all controversial to remove all these erroneous ratings?
  4. Look at converting the non-WPBM templates so they can benefit from this.
  5. For any project that does not opt-out, their assessment scale should be modified to match Wikipedia:Content assessment. This could be achieved by dropping in {{Grading scheme}} in place of any custom scale.

@MSGJ, for the third one, Enterprisey's bot is approved to remove classes from redirects. — Qwerfjkltalk 20:44, 28 March 2023 (UTC)

Great. I guess that could start straightaway then? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 20:51, 28 March 2023 (UTC)
  • Does this support the extended class system or does everything extended resolve to NA? -- 65.92.244.249 (talk) 22:23, 28 March 2023 (UTC)
    Currently we are only using the standard scale and all non-article classes are resolved to NA. This is by design - see section #NA classes above — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 22:25, 28 March 2023 (UTC)
    It appears like all projects that support extended classes are set to NA, since none of the banners for those projects show anything that would indicate differently. That is a problem. It should show that if the project is set differently from the bannershell, that the project banner should show the difference. -- 65.92.244.249 (talk) 22:31, 28 March 2023 (UTC)
    That would effectively remove the whole benefit of moving the rating to the shell, because we would never have one identival rating for all projects. They would be tracked as conflicts, but those conflicts could never be resolved. (I've thought about this a lot, and I think this is the only viable option.) — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 22:35, 28 March 2023 (UTC)
Enterprisey's bot seems to be going very slowly; is it set to work on all pages? DFlhb (talk) 19:41, 29 March 2023 (UTC)
That's the way it usually works for large bot runs. You're limited to 12 bot edits per minute per m:Bot policy per global policy which gives you 17000 edits a day. Enterprisey is doing other bot tasks than this which significantly eats into that quota and there may some overhead when switching between tasks. The actual moving of assessment information to the banner holder may take months since millions of pages are affected. --Trialpears (talk) 20:10, 29 March 2023 (UTC)
I see that there appears to be actual problems here as well with it being even slower, but expect this to take days and not hours. --Trialpears (talk) 20:12, 29 March 2023 (UTC)
@Trialpears, that policy is not relevant here as that page is for meta, global, and local policies that opt in to that page's policy statements. Our local policy has no such limit. The only limits which we observe pertain to those forced on us by technical measures such as maxlag (which even then must be opted into by a bot; of course the usual frameworks respect it) or if a sysadmin should shut off access to that bot. See also WP:BOTPERF. Izno (talk) 20:50, 29 March 2023 (UTC)
EnterpriseyBot seems only to be currently processing pages which are classed as |class=redirect, which does not help our particular situation with class conflicts. It also seems to be working only on pages beginning with the letter A. Considering this task was approved in 2017, I am surprised it has not got further through the alphabet :) — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 07:52, 30 March 2023 (UTC)
Thanks for the ping. I originally set it to go ridiculously slow to get all the bugs out. I figure I should now bump it up by a factor of 10 or 100. I will look over the bot's code - in particular I think there are a few wikiprojects it may currently be mishandling - and then make that change. Please ping me in a couple days if I haven't responded here saying I've made the change. Enterprisey (talk!) 05:49, 1 April 2023 (UTC)
It's currently doing 3 edits every 6 hours. I think you could safely bump it by a factor of 1000 actually! — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 17:27, 1 April 2023 (UTC)
I think I see what you mean by "a few wikiprojects it may currently be mishandling". In this edit the {{HorrorWikiProject}} was ignored by the bot — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 17:31, 1 April 2023 (UTC)
@Enterprisey, any update on this? — Qwerfjkltalk 16:37, 5 April 2023 (UTC)
Still doing 3 edits every 6 hours ... — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:14, 9 April 2023 (UTC)
Enterprisey is barely active. Perhaps you could take over this task Qwerfjkl? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 20:43, 16 April 2023 (UTC)
@Qwerfjkl? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 15:46, 18 April 2023 (UTC)
@Martin, sorry, didn't see the question. I might be able to take over the task; I'd have to find Enterprisey's code or write it myself. I'll look into it. — Qwerfjkltalk 15:48, 18 April 2023 (UTC)
I'll send them an email to ask if they are planning to do this or not — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 21:11, 18 April 2023 (UTC)
Enterprisey replied to my email and said they are too busy to do this, but would be happy to support you to continue this task. Do you want to ask for the source code? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 09:36, 11 May 2023 (UTC)
@Qwerfjkl did you manage to contact Enterprisey yet? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 07:38, 15 May 2023 (UTC)
@MSGJ, sorry, didn't notice the message above. Yes, it would be helppful if you can get Enterprisey to send the source code. — Qwerfjkltalk 11:22, 15 May 2023 (UTC)
I think it is easier if you Special:EmailUser/Enterprisey and then they can reply directly — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 11:25, 15 May 2023 (UTC)
About point 5: I assume this would involve checking all projects with a custom ASSESSMENT_LINK manually. It would be nice to modify WPBannerMeta to add project banners to a category if they a) don't opt out with QUALITY_CRITERIA and b) have a custom ASSESSMENT_LINK set. DFlhb (talk) 07:45, 3 April 2023 (UTC)
Yes we could add a tracking category for this easily. Aymatth2 wants to go super slowly with the roll-out, and he will send out notifications to all active wikiprojects. Then we'll have to leave a reasonable amount of time for any to choose to opt-out — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 08:04, 3 April 2023 (UTC)
Notifications were all sent out by 13 April. A month should be ample for projects to opt out. After that we could start replacing custom grading schemes by {{Grading scheme}}. The one comment I saw, at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Nigeria#Project-independent quality assessments, relates to that. The project has what seems to be a copy of an older version of the grading scheme, but it is very hard to see how WikiProject Country could have any special criteria. Aymatth2 (talk) 21:32, 16 April 2023 (UTC)
We can now track these at Category:WikiProjects using the standard quality scale and a custom assessment link. I think it would be preferable to remove |ASSESSMENT_LINK= parameter from the template and at the same time stop WPBM from automatically using WikiProject {{{PROJECT}}}/Assessment if it exists. Then the link will change to WP:Content assessment#Quality scale — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 11:15, 17 April 2023 (UTC)
Also, it would be really nice for the shell to automatically behave as if its |class= was set, if all project banners have the same rating; it'd improve visual consistency across talk pages as well. Thoughts? DFlhb (talk) 07:45, 3 April 2023 (UTC)
Might be worth exploring, but it could be horribly complex! I guess you could capture all the wikitext inside the {{WPBS}} template, then extract every |class= parameter and then normalise each one, and then check if they are all the same. The problem is that the project banners will not behave differently until the class parameter is put inside {{WPBS}} — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 08:02, 3 April 2023 (UTC)
As a start, we could probably implement the following. If all the project banners are unassessed (have blank or unrecognised class parameters) and the class parameter is also blank in the banner, then we regard the article as globally "unassessed" and move that to the shell instead of showing it in every separate banner. This is a slight change on the closure of the discussion, but I suspect uncontroversial? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 09:41, 3 April 2023 (UTC)
Would support that DFlhb (talk) 09:52, 3 April 2023 (UTC)
@MSGJ, this might be better done with a bot. — Qwerfjkltalk 10:32, 3 April 2023 (UTC)
Agreed — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 16:20, 5 April 2023 (UTC)
@MSGJ, I presume there's no reason for me not to file a BRFA then? — Qwerfjkltalk 20:41, 11 April 2023 (UTC)
I guess you could make a start on filing the BRFA, yes. It will be a while before we can actually start the work because we will need to give time for WikiProjects to opt out if they wish. They have all been notified now, so a month from now might be the earliest start time — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 21:11, 14 April 2023 (UTC)
@MSGJ, I think Talk: -insource:/\| *class *= *[^ \|]+ */ hastemplate:"WikiProject banner shell" works for this. Around 8000 pages (though the search timed out). — Qwerfjkltalk 11:56, 15 April 2023 (UTC)

Erroroneous output in some /class pages

I'm taking an educated guess that recent changes to this page or a related page has led to the erroneous output currently visible at some Template talk:.../class pages, such as Template talk:WikiProject Dance/class. Can someone please take a look? Thanks. – Jonesey95 (talk) 02:11, 30 March 2023 (UTC)

It appears {{Class mask/doc warning}} is getting transcluded onto the page via Module:Class mask / Module:WikiProject quality assessment. The message is expected to appear on Template:XYZ/class pages, but not Template talk:XYZ/class pages, however it seems Module:Class mask auto-converts the current title to its subject page (see Line 180), which brings in the banner.
@MSGJ: Is there any reason for this change, or is it safe to revert/modify? Aidan9382 (talk) 07:02, 30 March 2023 (UTC)
Can't remember why I did that now, but should be safe to revert, which I have just done — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 07:45, 30 March 2023 (UTC)
Thank you, issue looks to be resolved from what Jonesey95 and I were seeing. Zinnober9 (talk) 16:43, 30 March 2023 (UTC)
So I remembered why I made this change, but too late! When I reverted that change I unintentionally removed redirect detection from all pages. It was fixed shortly after, but there will be some pages lingering in the unassessed categories until the job queue catches up. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 18:06, 2 April 2023 (UTC)
Is this change also responsible for this issue? Nikkimaria (talk) 13:19, 30 March 2023 (UTC)
Checking — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 13:34, 30 March 2023 (UTC)
Should be fixed now, sorry. Don't know how I missed that one — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 13:41, 30 March 2023 (UTC)

Canvassing projects

WP:Village pump (proposals)/Archive_198#Project-independent_quality_assessments said: "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." I can take on the job of canvassing the projects, but would prefer not to rush it. When would be a good time to start? Aymatth2 (talk) 14:42, 7 April 2023 (UTC)

I propose the following wording for the project talk pages.

==Project-independent quality assessments==

Quality assessments define how close we are to a distribution-quality article in terms of completeness, organization, prose quality, sourcing, wikilinks etc. Most wikiprojects follow the general guidelines at Wikipedia:Content assessment, but some have specialized assessment guidelines. A recent Village pump proposal was approved and has been implemented to add a |class= parameter to {{WikiProject banner shell}}, which can display a general quality assessment, and to let project banner templates "inherit" this assessment.

No action is required if your wikiproject follows the standard assessment approach. Over time, quality assessments will be migrated up to {{WikiProject banner shell}}, and your project banner will automatically "inherit" any changes to the general assessments for the purpose of assigning categories,

However, if your project decides to "opt out" and follow a non-standard quality assessment approach, all you have to do is modify your wikiproject banner template to pass {{WPBannerMeta}} a new |QUALITY_CRITERIA=custom parameter. If this is done, changes to the general quality assessment will be ignored, and your project-level assessment will be displayed and used to create categories, as at present.

Could the wording be improved? Aymatth2 (talk) 14:42, 7 April 2023 (UTC)

The only part I struggle with is the "distribution-quality", because I don't know what it means. I would simply say something like Quality assessments are used by Wikipedia editors to rate the quality of articles in terms of completeness, organization, prose quality, sourcing, etc. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 20:57, 7 April 2023 (UTC)
OK. I think I was quoting something but don't know where "distribution-quality" came from or what it means. Will tweak the wording as suggested. Are we in good enough shape otherwise to broadcast this to all the projects? Aymatth2 (talk) 22:29, 7 April 2023 (UTC)
Looks fine to me — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:13, 9 April 2023 (UTC)
I have put this notice on the lalk page of wikiprojects 20th Century Studios thru Azerbaijan. An amazingly diverse set of topics! I will plug away at it over the next few days. Aymatth2 (talk) 14:55, 9 April 2023 (UTC)
Done. Notice on all the active wikiprojects. Aymatth2 (talk) 22:45, 13 April 2023 (UTC)
Many thanks — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 21:06, 14 April 2023 (UTC)
I think I will add a tracking category to WPBM for Category:WikiProjects using a non-standard quality scale identified by |QUALITY_CRITERIA=custom — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 20:41, 16 April 2023 (UTC)
The tracking category is populated and I see we have a few projects in there already. I would be interested in knowing how many of these are as a result of consensus formed on the project talk page, and how many are as a result of a lone editor's decision. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 10:57, 17 April 2023 (UTC)
Looks like WP Middle Earth uses normal FQS (+ Redirect-class), not sure it needs to opt-out. DFlhb (talk) 14:13, 17 April 2023 (UTC)
The Roads ones are expected. Military History also, but seems undecided. Middle Earth and the video games are less expected. Perhaps at some point we should ask for a rationale on the wikiproject page, explaining why they have decided to opt out. That would have to be handled very carefully, but it is conceivable that we could address their concerns and eliminate the opt-out altogether. No hurry though. In a few weeks we will have the complete picture. The priority for me would be tidying up the opt-in projects, making sure they all point to Wikipedia:Content assessment or use {{Grading scheme}} (which will take some grunt work), and maybe moving all their |class= assignments up to the banner shell. There will probably be a fair number of exceptional ratings that need to be reviewed and adjusted (e.g. most projects think it is a C but this one thinks Start). I would prefer to focus on that before revisiting the opt-outs. Aymatth2 (talk) 14:52, 17 April 2023 (UTC)
For the video game projects, it seems to be because they do not support A-class that they have opted out — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 14:56, 17 April 2023 (UTC)
A-class is not used much. Latest stats are A:2,408 FA:8,101 GA:42,859. I would vote to eliminate A-class. I also think world peace would be a good idea. Aymatth2 (talk) 15:05, 17 April 2023 (UTC)
Being discussed at Wikipedia_talk:Content_assessment#Remove_A-class?, which you may have missed DFlhb (talk) 15:12, 17 April 2023 (UTC)

Bot processing

Below is the list that I had posted here of bots I'm aware of, currently "live" and in production. As stated there, my concern is that these will continue running correctly during & after implementation.

  1. Rater software (JS), to add/change/delete WP assessments, User:Evad37/rater
  2. Daily Wikiproject assessment WP 1.0 bot
  3. Monthly Popular-pages, Community tech bot
  4. WP:AWB
  5. User:CleanupWorklistBot bot operated by Bamyers99 that generates article cleanup listings for WikiProjects.

There may be additional bots, so feel free to add to this list. Regards, JoeNMLC (talk) 19:35, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

Thanks, we will confer with bot operators and test everything as much as possible before deploying — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 20:05, 15 February 2023 (UTC)
@MSGJ: - Today I added above, CleanupWorklistBot as that one may need to be tested also. JoeNMLC (talk) 18:25, 7 March 2023 (UTC)
Um... that bot hasn't edited since 2014. I don't think it needs to be included. Primefac (talk) 12:49, 8 March 2023 (UTC)
@Primefac: - The bot runs weekly (Tuesdays), for example here for WP Association football. The bot results HTML has columns for "Class" and "Importance" derived from those article's WP Banner. While the bot may not be updating anything on the Wikipedia side, it uses that info. so editors can view (and work on) selected types of errors/updates. JoeNMLC (talk) 13:43, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

Just to note that I have left messages to inform bot/tool operators from the list above — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 08:09, 3 April 2023 (UTC)

Is there a way to poll for (beg?) someone to take over a script or bot? Last activity for Evad37 (talk · contribs) was October, and 2 edits before that was Jan. 2022. Mathglot (talk) 02:01, 23 April 2023 (UTC)
Ofcourse, you can personally ask anyone if they are willing to, or if you have no one specific in your mind, ask at VPT or somewhere. —CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • {C•X}) 14:03, 23 April 2023 (UTC)
@CX Zoom and Mathglot: - fyi, at WikiProject JavaScript there is list of participants and JS programmers, so maybe ask for help there too. JoeNMLC (talk) 14:35, 23 April 2023 (UTC)

Notice - Popular pages Bot

ω Awaiting Popular pages bot progress - after May 2023 Bot job is finished (soon, as it's nearing completion), there may be some WPs that were skipped from April's 2023-04 last successful processing. Further investigation is needed when Bot is done. JoeNMLC (talk) 12:53, 11 May 2023 (UTC)

I did leave a message at User talk:Community Tech bot but no one has replied — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 15:42, 11 May 2023 (UTC)
@MSGJ: - fyi - At the Bot user page the contact is User:MusikAnimal (WMF). From the past, it's not unusual for a long response time. JoeNMLC (talk) 16:43, 11 May 2023 (UTC)
Thanks for the ping. I've read @MSGJ's message and I don't think there's anything to do on our end, unless you're seeing something that suggests otherwise in the reports? I see there are a number of WikiPprojects that don't have updated reports. These are tedious to investigate, but usually you should be able to resolve the issue by trying the troubleshooting tips. I.e. the fact that so many of the U.S. Roads WikiProjects didn't populate is suspect – I checked U.S. Roads/Alabama for example and sure enough the articles don't appear to be in the database anymore. There are a lot of recent changes over at Template:WikiProject U.S. Roads, something done there is likely to blame. MusikAnimal (WMF) (talk) 00:30, 16 May 2023 (UTC)

Name of template

See also: Template talk:WikiProject banner shell/Archive 6 § Banner shell naming

Now that we allow standalone instances of this template (i.e. without any project banners nested inside it) then it is no longer purely a banner shell, and we should perhaps start considering a name change. To test the waters I have created a redirect Template:Article assessment which would allow us to place {{Article assessment|class=stub}} on an otherwise blank talk page to assess the article. I think this would be clearer than {{WPBS|class=stub}} or {{WikiProject banner shell|class=stub}} — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 11:46, 19 May 2023 (UTC)

I had always been supportive of name change. Though many others wanted the features first (before name change). Now that the features are there, I do not see others opposing it. —CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • {C•X}) 20:58, 19 May 2023 (UTC)
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