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Wikipedia:WikiProject Templates/Unused Templates Task Force

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Welcome to the Unused Templates Task Force of Wikipedia:WikiProject Templates. This task force is here to deal with the multi-thousand-page backlog of unused templates on Wikipedia. All are welcome to join and participate. Please read the Considerations section below to further understand how this task force operates.

Unused template pages can be a maintenance burden. When the MediaWiki software changes, or policies or guidelines change, or templates or modules are renamed or merged, editors often need to make maintenance edits to many pages, including template-space pages, in order to keep the pages from breaking, or to bring them into compliance with the changes. Maintaining pages that are not used in any way is an unnecessary maintenance burden for those editors.

Scope

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The Unused Templates Task Force goal is the following:

Participants

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  1. WikiCleanerMan (talk · contribs) (Founder)
  2. Jonesey95 (talk · contribs)
  3. Enterprisey (talk · contribs)
  4. Buaidh (talk · contribs)
  5. Mr. Guye (talk · contribs)
  6. SMcCandlish (talk · contribs)
  7. Elli (talk · contribs)
  8. Tom (LT) (talk · contribs)
  9. Q28 (talk · contribs)
  10. GKFX (talk · contribs)
  11. Pppery (talk · contribs)
  12. MrLinkinPark333 (talk · contribs)
  13. TenPoundHammer (talk · contribs)

Former

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  1. Newshunter12 (talk · contribs) (as of 13:30 November 20, 2021)

Todo

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  • Reduce the unused templates backlog.
  • To remove sandbox sub-pages from the list, add {{Template sandbox notice}} to the top of the relevant pages. Standard ending /sandbox pages should not need this as {{Documentation}} does this automatically. If that is missing, add that instead to the main template.
  • To remove testcases sub-pages from the list, add {{Testcases notice}} to the top of the relevant pages.

Considerations

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  1. Many unused templates are intended to be substituted only, and should not be transcluded. To prevent this sort of template from appearing on reports of unused templates, add {{Always substitute}} to the template's documentation. That template's presence will also result in a bot substing any stray transclusions. See this edit for an example of how to add documentation within a Template page's noinclude tags; you can also create a standard /doc subpage.
  2. Some unused pages in template space are used, but not intended to be transcluded. Examples include pages that are linked from template documentation pages. Those pages can be edited to add {{transclusionless}} to their documentation.
  3. Not all members should be notified which template from the database reports is being nominated as they were would be too many to go through. This will fall into violation of the Canvassing policy which is not and will not be tolerated nor is part of the purpose of this task force.
  4. If a template is listed as unused, but has a particular purpose, before nominating it for deletion at a Tfd, it may be best to check the purpose it was created for or to help determine a consensus with members here to avoid a potential screw up. For instance, I've created a few foreign relations templates (WikiCleanerMan), linked on my user page, that are listed as unused but have a particular purpose and I do intend to add them to articles in the future. So doing a Tfd for these would be counterproductive in a sense and instead, users should add it to the relevant articles. And it's also best to check if a template is part of a series of similar templates as templates under a specific category, but others are used on the relevant articles, so nominating it for deletion might not help with the backlog.
    • Please see the Unused Templates with potential section for templates that are unused but should be added to articles and will be removed once adding them to articles has been complete.
  5. Unused Stub templates are more of the concern of WikiProject Stub sorting and don't do any harm.
  6. Redirects to templates are often listed as unused are of minor concern and don't do any harm as well.
  7. Before nominating unused templates belonging to a specific project, it is best to ask the project to see if the templates will be used and if a Tfd will complicate things.

Unused templates with potential

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  • None

Unused templates of a set

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Resources

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The following pages will serve as a guide to better handle the backlog of unused templates:

Current most complete report

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Wikipedia Database Reports

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Filtered

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Misc

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Jonesey95

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Mackensen

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Zackmann08

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Tim.landschiedt

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