Template talk:WikiProject banner shell

Conflicting quality ratings

Hoping we can coordinate efforts to eliminate all conflicting ratings. We currently have this number left:

B	C	Start	Stub	List	Total
0	0	0	0	0	0

— Martin (MSGJ · talk) 13:41, 10 June 2025 (UTC)

It might be helpful to classify these more narrowly so we know what rating they conflict with. For example we could have categories like Category:B-Class articles conflicting with project-independent quality rating C-Class — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 13:45, 10 June 2025 (UTC)

There shouldn't be anything wrong with conflicting ratings - if an article is covering one topic well but another less well, then this is a perfectly reasonable reason for difference.Nigel Ish (talk) 17:40, 10 June 2025 (UTC)

This is incorrect. We have switched to a common quality assessment scale which is independent of the project. Except for a very small number of projects which have opted out, which are not identified as conflicting, all projects should be using the same quality assessment. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 09:18, 11 June 2025 (UTC)

Code is now on sandbox. Demo below:

— Martin (MSGJ · talk) 14:38, 11 June 2025 (UTC)

Looks good, my only concern being the inconsistency in the capitalisation of "class" for the new category. All other cats use uppercase C. —CX Zoom[he/him] ^{(let's talk • {C•X})} 00:29, 12 June 2025 (UTC)

Changed to uppercase C, for consistency — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 09:24, 12 June 2025 (UTC)

You can use Petscan to filter the list by WikiProject to focus on topics that interest you. See this list for an example. Just change the "WikiProject Australia articles" cat to your project of choice. Unfortunately, I don't think Petscan can do a talk page cat & article cat comparison, but you can do that in the AWB list comparer tool. The-Pope (talk) 00:52, 12 June 2025 (UTC)

New categories are still populating, but this is the table so far: — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 10:43, 12 June 2025 (UTC)

Next steps

I think that a lot of these articles will need reviewing by human, but there are some we could deal with more efficiently.

Firstly, I propose that all articles in Category:Stub-Class articles conflicting with Start-Class project-independent quality rating be resolved to Start-class. It is most likely that the article has grown beyond a stub but one of the projects is still rating as Stub-class. Does anyone disagree? I will put a request for a bot to remove the out of date rating — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:57, 16 June 2025 (UTC)

Yes, that sounds like a good idea. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 19:35, 16 June 2025 (UTC)

Not totally sure. The first one I clicked on, Alruna, should indeed be a stub. A bot should either (a) check for stub tags or (b) just remove all ratings and invite humans to rate again. Another interesting thing is that Talk:Agogô shows that the Musical Instruments project uses |quality= instead of |class=, which seems to not work well with bots and Rater. —Kusma (talk) 21:03, 16 June 2025 (UTC)

You are overlooking the fact that humans have already looked at these and come up with conflicting ratings; Alruna is clearly a border case. Clearing the ratings would create more work than humans can take on. I would suggest that nobody cares about starts or stubs anyway, and that, as in the MilHist Project, the humans only be tasked with looking at articles machine-rated as B class. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 21:56, 16 June 2025 (UTC)

Liftwing rates Alruna as a stub. What if we use it to determine which of the start/stubs should be starts or stubs? I can easily create a bot that can do that. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 00:25, 17 June 2025 (UTC)

I don't know what Liftwing is, but I would be happy with a bot that uses ORES or some AI or whatever to make stub/start/C decisions. —Kusma (talk) 07:30, 17 June 2025 (UTC)

Liftwing is the replacement for ORES. It can make stub/start/C decisions with a high degree of accuracy. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 10:23, 17 June 2025 (UTC)

Sounds great! —Kusma (talk) 12:22, 17 June 2025 (UTC)

I agree this might be the best way to deal with these articles — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 13:12, 17 June 2025 (UTC)

@Hawkeye7: would you need additional approval to run your bot on these pages? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 08:58, 18 June 2025 (UTC)

Yes, I would need to file at WP:BRFA. The good news is that the Bot is ready to go, so approval should be straightforward. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 10:50, 18 June 2025 (UTC)

I have filed the required approval request. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 11:04, 18 June 2025 (UTC)

@MSGJ: I have run off a Bot run - it hasn't updated anything - just running in a debug mode.

This is what the Bot thought

ram900@hawkeye7:~/Projects/Conflicts/Conflicts$ bin/Debug/net8.0/Conflicts -n=10 -v
14:16 17 June 2025 started
Entered: Stub-Class articles conflicting with Start-Class project-independent quality rating 
Page: 1972 US Open (tennis) - Prediction: Start
{{WikiProject banner shell|class=Start|
{{WikiProject Tennis|importance=mid}}
{{WikiProject New York City|importance=low}}
{{WikiProject Women's sport|importance=low}}
}}
Page: 1976 Nigerian coup attempt - Prediction: Start
{{WikiProject banner shell|class=Start|
{{WikiProject Military history|African=y|Cold-War=y|b1=no|b2=no|b3=no|b4=yes|b5=yes}}
{{WikiProject Africa|importance=low|Nigeria=yes|Nigeria-importance=low}}
}}
Page: 1985 Zolochiv mid-air collision - Prediction: Start
{{WikiProject banner shell|class=Start|
{{WikiProject Soviet Union|importance=Low}}
{{WikiProject Ukraine|importance=Low}}
{{WikiProject Aviation|Accident-task-force=yes|Soviet=y}}
}}
Page: 1995 Shali cluster bomb attack - Prediction: Start
{{WikiProject banner shell|class=Start|
{{WikiProject Military history|b1=y|b2=n|b3=y|b4=y|b5=y|Russian=y|European=y|Post-Cold-War=y}}
{{WikiProject Russia|importance=low|mil=yes|hist=yes}}
}}
Page: 1997 Aisin fire - Prediction: Start
{{WikiProject banner shell|class=Start|
{{WikiProject Business|importance=mid}}
{{WikiProject Japan|importance=mid|pref-photo= Aichi}}
{{WikiProject Occupational Safety and Health|importance= low }}
}}
Page: 1997 Kamchatka earthquake - Prediction: Start
{{WikiProject banner shell|class=Start|
{{WikiProject Russia|importance=low|hist=yes|physgeo=yes}}
{{WikiProject Earthquakes|importance=low}}
}}
Page: 2004 Grozny raid - Prediction: Start
{{WikiProject banner shell|class=Start|
{{WikiProject Military history|Russian=yes<!-- B-Class-1. It is suitably referenced, and all major points have appropriate inline citations. --> 
|b1=no|b2=no|b3=no|b4=yes|b5=yes}}
{{WikiProject Russia|importance=Mid|hist=yes}}
}}
Page: 2005 European Sevens Championship - Prediction: Stub
{{WikiProject banner shell|class=Stub|
{{WikiProject Rugby union|importance=low}}
{{WikiProject Russia|importance=Low|sports=yes}}
}}
Page: 2006 Duramed Futures Tour - Prediction: Start
{{WikiProject banner shell|class=Start|
{{WikiProject Golf|importance=low}}
{{WikiProject Women's sport|importance=low|golf=yes}}
}}
Page: 2006 European Sevens Championship - Prediction: Start
{{WikiProject banner shell|class=Start|
{{WikiProject Rugby union|importance=low}}
{{WikiProject Russia|importance=Low|sports=yes}}
}}
14:16 17 June 2025 done

It might be helpful if other people could comment at Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/AussieBot 2 to show their support or otherwise for this bot job — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 09:45, 25 June 2025 (UTC)

Results from the bot's trial are now in. Please see Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/AussieBot 2 — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 11:56, 11 July 2025 (UTC)

@Hawkeye7 any chance you could run this bot now it has been approved? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 00:28, 12 August 2025 (UTC)

It is already running. See User:AussieBot/Conflicts/2025/August. I was limiting the daily run so it did not flood people's watchlists. But no one has complained, so we can step it up. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 02:16, 12 August 2025 (UTC)

I see, that's great. What's your current throttle? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 07:24, 14 August 2025 (UTC)

@Hawkeye7 it seems to be running at 400-500 per day. Any chance you could pick this up a bit (suggest 2000-3000)? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 06:33, 27 August 2025 (UTC)

I expected that the bot would drain them all away over time, but numbers keep going up. There is also stuff like this. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 03:14, 12 August 2025 (UTC)

Seems to be going down by about 2000 per day. It's getting through them, but I think you could increase the rate a bit more — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 08:29, 23 August 2025 (UTC)

Will do! Hawkeye7 (discuss) 08:48, 27 August 2025 (UTC)

Progress

Thanks to steady work by the bot, we have just 0 conflicts still to be resolved — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 22:28, 1 October 2025 (UTC)

Discussion at Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2025 July 2 § Template:WikiProject Disambiguation

 You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2025 July 2 § Template:WikiProject Disambiguation. Rotideypoc41352 (talk · contribs) 05:15, 5 July 2025 (UTC)

This template should not ever be used on the main talk page for a wikiproject

It makes absolutely no sense to wrap the banner on the main page of a wikiproject in this "banner shell". These pages only ever have one Wikiproject banner, and reducing its content and wrapping it in generic irrelevant text serves no purpose. –jacobolus (t) 23:57, 21 July 2025 (UTC)

Alternatively, the banner shell should have an option to display the full project banner, which should be used on pages that have exactly one project banner. I still stand by this edit that was reverted soon after. —Kusma (talk) 12:17, 22 July 2025 (UTC)

I frankly don't want to see any more of these banners than necessary on most talk pages; they are basically a waste-of-space distraction from the main content of the page, often piled among a heap of other distracting and only marginally useful banners. But on the Wikiproject's main page it's pretty pointless to show the content "It is of interest to the following WikiProjects:" and hide the material about the specific wikiproject whose page we are on. –jacobolus (t) 12:32, 22 July 2025 (UTC)

I support your change to surface "Department of Fun" banners though. The banner shell provides no value on Wikipedia talk:Bilorv's Challenges. –jacobolus (t) 12:34, 22 July 2025 (UTC)

Suggestions for tracking categories

• Category:Articles with WikiProject banners but without a banner shell - I don't think we need this category because we have the more general Category:WikiProject banners without banner shells, which is processed by Cewbot.
• Category:Pages using WikiProject banner shell with invalid parameters and Category:Pages using WikiProject banner shell with unknown parameters - suggest these could be merged into the former title. There is little need to track these separately.
• Category:Pages using WikiProject banner shell with invalid parameters - I think we should stop tracking uses of |collapsed=no. These are not "invalid", as they indicate that an editor has made a valid choice not to collapse the shell. They are at best "redundant" values, but I don't see the value in removing them.

— Martin (MSGJ · talk) 10:03, 18 October 2025 (UTC)

1. I'm fine with the articles category being merged into its parent category - people can filter category lists by namespace if they want (e.g. with AutoWikiBrowser). I am interested if you have any metrics for the percentage of pages that Cewbot doesn't automatically handle and needs manual editing (i.e. because the Wiki syntax is messed up).

2. If you are going to merge them, please use the latter Unknown parameters category instead as this is much more widely used (Category:Unknown parameters and Category:WikiProject templates with unknown parameters. The distinction for the categories seems to be between calls that use parameter names that are not supported by a template, verses supported parameter names but the parameter value isn't supported (e.g. invalid class rating).

3. Fine with this. Harryboyles 23:05, 18 October 2025 (UTC)

As above sounds good. Aluxosm (talk) 01:01, 20 October 2025 (UTC)

1. Done on sandbox. Messed up syntax is tracked on Wikipedia:Database reports/WPBS syntax error pages. I would say there are 1 or 2 per day on average that end up in there.

2. I will comment below.

3. Done on sandbox. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 11:50, 20 October 2025 (UTC)

As Harry has correctly identified, the distinction between invalid and unknown parameters is illustrated below.

• |foo=yes is an unknown parameter because the parameter "foo" is not recognised by the template.
• |collapsed=foo is an invalid parameter because the value "foo" is not recognised by the collapsed parameter.

I think it would be misleading to call both of these "unknown parameters" because only the first one fits this. If you can think of a suitable category name that works for both of these, we can merge. (Does Category:Pages using WikiProject banner shell with invalid parameters work?) Otherwise we can leave them separate. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 11:53, 20 October 2025 (UTC)

Suggest something like Category:WikiProject banner shell parameters needing attention — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 16:30, 21 October 2025 (UTC)

Added this to the sandbox as no one has provided an alternative idea — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 11:47, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

All of the above now  deployed — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 13:41, 17 November 2025 (UTC)

Cricket

Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Cricket is currently in Category:WikiProject banners without banner shells but there is a banner shell on the page — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:27, 18 November 2025 (UTC)