Module talk:WikiProject banner

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Assessment issue with "inactive" WikiProjects

Relevant discussion at

→ Module talk:WikiProject banner/Archive 15#PROJECT_STATUS parameter

If I understand this correctly, when you set a project as "inactive" (by replacing main in the template), most of the the arguments from child templates are discarded (around line 900). This means that if you mark a WikiProject as inactive, then it and all of its task-forces will lose their assessments, as the assessment categories are ignored and not applied.

I know that having a load of seemingly useless categories around isn't great, but the problem is that it's a bit of a death sentence for further collaboration if they disappear; mark a template as inactive and the project page ends up looking like this (lots of empty/broken templates due to unpopulated/deleted categories). If someone wants to revive a WikiProject then they'd likely have to go through the process of recreating the assessment system, assuming they made it that far.

Ideally, I think it'd be good to have two levels: Inactive where assessments are kept, and Defunct where the categories aren't added. Pretty sure that'd be a huge change though. In the meantime, or as a fix entirely, could a check be added so that existing categories are populated so they don't get deleted?

This is quite relevant due to a recent discussion at the WikiProject Council where they discuss labeling a load of WikiProjects as inactive using {{WikiProject status}}; this itself won't effect the assessments, but if anyone sees it then changes the status on the talk page banner, bad times. One of the comments on that thread from Psychastes says, Inactive projects still retain all the assessments and article alerts, it's not like an inactive project goes away! If that's not actually the case, it needs to be made clear with a big ol' warning in the docs.

...again, assuming I've got this right. Cheers, Aluxosm (talk) 06:56, 9 July 2025 (UTC)

You have understood the situation pretty well. There is a |PROJECT_STATUS= parameter, which accepts values like "inactive" and "defunct", but currently the only effect is a slight change in wording and a microformat. Yes it would be possible to change in the way you suggested, if there was consensus for this. The current situation rests on rough consensus from 2022; please see Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous)/Archive 73#Improper handling of assessment for inactive WikiProjects for more — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 08:26, 9 July 2025 (UTC)

Good stuff, cheers for the link! Fun to see the origins of WP:PIQA, and thanks again for all of your work on it. Thinking about it, a more resilient fix (and one that is beneficial in all cases) would be to make the creation of the assessment categories easier; I might take a look at rewriting this bot, as well as fixing the templates so that they display a warning about running the bot instead of just erroring out. Aluxosm (talk) 03:43, 13 July 2025 (UTC)

For reference, there are only 54 templates using the |PROJECT_STATUS= parameter, and all of them have defunct as the value. Aluxosm (talk) 05:03, 24 October 2025 (UTC)

Do you still want to change |PROJECT_STATUS=inactive to mean that assessments are kept? What about other features of the banner? What should the wording be? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 13:41, 24 October 2025 (UTC)

I think so, in order to bring it more in line (or ideally somehow in sync) with {{WikiProject status}}. Before that though, it would be good to at least go through the templates in this list and add |PROJECT_STATUS=defunct to the properly defunct ones (see my comments at the end of this thread first), as well as work out a way to make the assessment category creation easier, otherwise Special:WantedCategories will be flooded with entries and the people who frequent it will be quickly overwhelmed. I plan on making my way through the unprotected templates first (hence my question about the #QUALITY_SCALE param) before potentially heading over to WP:RFP/TE.

Note to self: Wikipedia:Inactive WikiProjects needs updating/deleting. Aluxosm (talk) 15:26, 24 October 2025 (UTC)

If it helps consensus-wise, I concur with not messing with assessments for inactive projects. Reactivating an inactive project (as opposed to a defunct one) shouldn't be made to be difficult. Stefen 𝕋ower_{'s got the power!!1!} ^{Gab • Gruntwerk} 18:59, 24 October 2025 (UTC)

I would also support not messing with any inactive project's assessments. sjones23 (talk - contributions) 06:54, 25 October 2025 (UTC)

Deprecating the class parameter

The number of conflicts between project class and PIQA is rapidly approaching zero, thanks to Hawkeye7 and his bot. When these have been cleared, I would like to deactivate the class parameter for all banners except for projects which have opted out. In other words, setting |class= in these banners would have no effect, and it will be impossible to set a class locally and also impossible to create any more conflicted ratings. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 22:19, 3 October 2025 (UTC)

Do we want that? I thought PIQA came with a promise that groups would always be able to disagree with the overall rating and use their own.

Side note: If we're going to make changes that are not strictly necessary, one of the things I'd like to see is |importance and |priority being aliases/interchangeable, and for both the rating scripts and the text of the banner to prefer 'priority' over time (but not necessarily the categories, because what a mess that would be). Nobody loves having the subject of their article declared to be "unimportant". WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:34, 3 October 2025 (UTC)

Groups can disagree and use their own scale by setting the |QUALITY_CRITERIA=custom parameter in their talk page template. Martin's suggesting we deactivate the class parameter for all banners except for projects which have opted out. Reading through the the proposal, and searching for the word "own" in the comments, it seems like this tacks with the consensus. It does go against one of the statements in the proposal:

• If the wikiproject banner supplies a class value that differs from the (non-blank) article class value, the talk page will be placed in a tracking category and the project class will be used to form categories like Category:C-Class Linguistics articles

but that kinda goes against the whole idea of PIQA. Also the last statement in the proposal says:

• 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.

My vote is

Agree, I think the class parameter should be deprecated where a project hasn't opted out.

Side note: Would you mind moving your notes about the importance ratings to their own topic? I don't think I agree with them and would like to discuss them separately. Cheers, Aluxosm (talk) 01:58, 4 October 2025 (UTC)

As long as we're not breaking any promises, then I think it'd be great. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:50, 4 October 2025 (UTC)

Comment moved to new section below. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 10:45, 4 October 2025 (UTC)

@MSGJ: I assume this edit is part of testing implementing what was discussed in this thread. It's causing errors when testing with {{WikiProject Military history/sandbox}} (category at Line 412 is undefined), specifically when there's a Talk: demo_page specified and the template is being tested from outside article space (e.g. try previewing {{WikiProject Military history/sandbox|demo_page=Talk:World War II}} on a user page). Aidan9382 _(talk) 15:52, 17 October 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for letting me know. I have not started testing it yet so will definitely check that out — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 07:24, 18 October 2025 (UTC)

Code is now in the sandbox (testing still in progress). Changes include:

Class parameter ignored in non-opt-out projects
Class conflicts are not tracked or categorised (local class is simply ignored). Category:Articles with conflicting quality ratings can therefore be deleted.
Category:WikiProject banners with class parameter that needs moving to banner shell is no longer populated. Adding a local class parameter will simply be ignored.
Proposal to rename Category:WikiProject banners with redundant class parameter to Category:WikiProject banners with ignored class parameter as this will now also include conflicting values (so not strictly redundant). In future we could stop using this category and instead use the tracking of unknown parameters in Category:WikiProject templates with unknown parameters which will be processed in the usual way.
Quality rating will never be displayed in project banner (only in banner shell).

Please check and make any comments — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 09:54, 18 October 2025 (UTC)

Done. Please let me know if you see anything unexpected. One thing I have noticed is that when a banner is added to a redirect page (example) it populates a NA-class category. When the banner shell is added (example), it then correctly populates the Redirect-class category. I will look at this in more detail — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 21:44, 19 October 2025 (UTC)

The issue on non-articles without a shell should now be resolved — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 20:07, 16 November 2025 (UTC)

Importance and priority

If we're going to make changes that are not strictly necessary, one of the things I'd like to see is |importance and |priority being aliases/interchangeable, and for both the rating scripts and the text of the banner to prefer 'priority' over time (but not necessarily the categories, because what a mess that would be). Nobody loves having the subject of their article declared to be "unimportant". WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:34, 3 October 2025 (UTC)

This is certainly technically possible. Also there are no projects which use both importance and priority, so I can't see any likely confusion or clashes that this could cause. Personally I agree that "priority" is a much better word than "importance" for this — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 10:49, 4 October 2025 (UTC)

@Aluxosm: did you want to comment on this? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 11:33, 7 October 2025 (UTC)

While I do also prefer 'priority', I think that ship has sailed; WikiProject Mathematics seems to be the only one using this identifier (Quarry 97858). I know the suggestion here is to leave the categories alone, but I think that even adding it as an alias would end in confusion and make maintenance trickier; I'm not sure how transitioning to 'priority' as the primary variable, while having those articles end up in a category that doesn't have the word in the title really serves anyone. Sorry, especially if I've misunderstood. Aluxosm (talk) 05:44, 8 October 2025 (UTC)

So we all seem to agree that the word "priority" is preferable over "importance". We can take baby steps in that direction, and who knows we might one day make a full transition. By template and bot, big categorisation changes are not impossible (see Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2024 December 7#Category:Category-Class articles for a good example.) — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 10:36, 18 October 2025 (UTC)

Very good point! Okay, sold haha. Aluxosm (talk) 01:06, 20 October 2025 (UTC)

Changes made to the sandbox:

Change of wording from "importance" to "priority" in all cases, while retaining current category names for now
Accept priority parameter in all banners that currently support importance
Remove link to Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Release Version Criteria. If a project does not have its own scale, then unlinked "priority scale" will be used

— Martin (MSGJ · talk) 16:09, 21 October 2025 (UTC)

On the wording part, I would suggest a wider community discussion before changing. WikiProjects have used the term 'importance' for a very long time, and one project I'm involved with uses both terms (importance in the template as usual, priority for articles being focused on to move to good/featured), meaning different things. Stefen 𝕋ower_{'s got the power!!1!} ^{Gab • Gruntwerk} 19:18, 24 October 2025 (UTC)

To be fair, that is exactly what I said in 2015 (see previous discussion linked above) and here we are in 2025 still discussing the same thing. Whenever the topic comes up everyone seems to agree that "priority" is a better term than "importance", but the change has never been made. If you like I can start a discussion at WikiProject Council to make sure we have consensus. and we can certainly look at your project to make sure there will not be any confusion — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 08:38, 27 October 2025 (UTC)

Per the results of that module talk and at any rate per process expectations, there should be a discussion at the WikiProject Council since this may be seen as ultimately affecting any WikiProject infrastructure and reports (not to mention the database) that refer to the term 'importance', which in order to avoid potential confusion would ultimately have to be changed to use 'priority'. I think we should prefer that WikiProjects are not surprised by a change but instead are in on it.

As for terminology confusion within a project I'm involved with, we should not assume that I'm the only one who would raise that kind of concern. In the galaxy of WikiProjects, there could be others that use both terms.

In adapting projects to use 'priority' internally, I submit that the effort would be largely straightforward but also tedious, with many WikiProjects (esp. those with little participation) slow to adapt, which could cause some confusion. (A lot of WikiProjects have yet to adapt away from the membership model to the new participation model, which I believe was also a consensus change.)

Last, to get in the weeds a bit, that previous module talk refers to a guideline I have been unable to locate. But what I could find is a lot of Council guidelines that still use the term 'importance'. At any rate, I vaguely understand the reason for a change, although I honestly can't recall a complaint of a biography subject complaining they were being labeled as "low importance" by a non-Biography project. Stefen 𝕋ower_{'s got the power!!1!} ^{Gab • Gruntwerk} 16:32, 27 October 2025 (UTC)

I think it refers to which has since been updated — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 17:01, 27 October 2025 (UTC)

That is probably why I can't find it in currently existing guidelines. :) Apparently someone wanted to trim and say "find this elsewhere". After some additional poking around, I realized we also have to contend with the Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team and their current unquestioning inclusion of 'importance' in their deliverables.

I certainly will accept a community decision, but I hope there is strong evidence of "a problem" that we're fixing. What you link to really just makes assertions toward that end, you know, that editors/readers may be upset with this word we've been using for quite a long time. Stefen 𝕋ower_{'s got the power!!1!} ^{Gab • Gruntwerk} 22:14, 27 October 2025 (UTC)

Sounds fair. @WhatamIdoing: would you like to start the discussion at Council, as this was your proposal? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 06:56, 28 October 2025 (UTC)

I'd be happy to leave it to someone else. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:50, 29 October 2025 (UTC)

Please see Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Council#Priority vs importance — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 16:21, 1 November 2025 (UTC)

I see we are still linking to Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Release Version Criteria for the importance/priority scale when a project does not have their own. This is an obsolete page and it would be good to have a link to somewhere more appropriate. I will mention this on WT:COUNCIL in case anyone has ideas — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:00, 20 October 2025 (UTC)

Update. I have changed the default link to Wikipedia:Content assessment#Priority assessment. And the banner will now recognise priority as an alias for importance. All other ideas suggested above are pending consensus — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 20:10, 16 November 2025 (UTC)

Category:WikiProject banners with ignored class parameter

This category contains a number of pages in userspace. The bot apparently does not process pages in userspace, so should we filter out these pages or should we change the bot's settings?

It seems that no user pages are looked at except from a few select bots listed below.

I can't remember why these exceptions were coded — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 14:50, 20 October 2025 (UTC)

The configuration page also specifies PIQA_page_filter as /^User talk:(?:WP 1\.0 bot|AlexNewArtBot|InceptionBot|SDZeroBot|TedderBot|UBX)/. @Gonnym: can you give any background to this, why these users were specifically included, and why we cannot process all pages in this namespace? Thank you — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 16:31, 22 October 2025 (UTC)

As Gonnym did not reply, I have removed the PIQA_page_filter so that these pages will be dealt with. If there are unforeseen consequences then please revert — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 08:41, 27 October 2025 (UTC)

Those pages are not user pages but project pages. So having the bot fix those instances is in the interest of the project. Unclear why you removed as it everything was working correctly. Was there any issue posted somewhere regarding this? Gonnym (talk) 14:56, 7 November 2025 (UTC)

As I explained, there were user pages being caught by the tracking category but the bot was not dealing with them and I wanted to understand why. By removing the filter, I have not stopped the bot working on any pages but actually extended its use across the user talk namespace. Is there anything wrong with this? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 15:30, 8 November 2025 (UTC)

QUALITY_SCALE

Relevant discussion at

→ Module talk:WikiProject banner/Archive 7#More on QUALITY_SCALE

The |QUALITY_SCALE= parameter was seemingly removed in Special:Diff/1181725872. I just want to double check that this parameter can safely be removed when updating/working on templates that use this module (standard and custom)? There are currently 1,351 uses of this parameter, broken down like this:

standard - 98
extended - 858
subpage - 231
inline - 59
yes - 82
empty/misspellings/other - 23

Aluxosm (talk) 13:08, 24 October 2025 (UTC)

Yes it is completely redundant now. (Can explain more if needed.) — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 13:39, 24 October 2025 (UTC)

Module talk:WikiProject banner/Archive 14#Deprecation of QUALITY_SCALE parameter might help — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 13:48, 24 October 2025 (UTC)

Ooh, missed that. Thanks! Aluxosm (talk) 15:27, 24 October 2025 (UTC)

Link to quality scale

There's something weird going on at Wikipedia talk:"There's no such thing as objectivity". It should really be classified as a redirect not a project page. And the link to the quality scale is wrong. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 09:16, 17 November 2025 (UTC)

The conditional at Template:WikiProject Articles for creation uses Template:WikiProject Articles for creation (admin) if the page is a Wikipedia talk page, which Template:WikiProject Articles for creation (admin)/class sets as Project. Gonnym (talk) 13:35, 17 November 2025 (UTC)

Automatic doc

Is the automatic documentation in a state that it can be globally applied? If so, we should change the way it's set. From |DOC=auto needing to be added to being the automatic default state and |DOC=manual (or something) needed when for some reason someone wants to use the /doc sub page. Gonnym (talk) 08:35, 18 November 2025 (UTC)

I think it's pretty stable but perhaps there are a few of the more intricate features which are not yet documented. How will you ensure that it will not be displayed if manual documentation is already shown? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 08:55, 18 November 2025 (UTC)

In the module code, before adding the documentation, check if |DOC= is set to manual. If it is, do not add the automatic documentation (just like now when it isn't set to auto. Gonnym (talk) 08:57, 18 November 2025 (UTC)

Not quite what I meant! How will you know whether <noinclude>{{Documentation}}</noinclude> is on the template or not? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 22:14, 19 November 2025 (UTC)

Ah, maybe set for now a check if a /doc exists and if it does don't show the autodoc. Once the switch happens and we delete the docs, that check can be removed from the code. Gonnym (talk) 22:47, 19 November 2025 (UTC)

Two questions. My memory is hazy, but I seem to remember reporting that DOC=auto does not work on templates for inactive wikiprojects. See Template:WikiProject Dartmouth College for an example. I think we may need to fix that. Also, is DOC=auto documented anywhere? I don't see it on Module:WikiProject banner. I might be looking in the wrong place, and I'm a little sleep-deprived today, so my apologies if I'm just missing something. – Jonesey95 (talk) 22:44, 20 November 2025 (UTC)

That's also correct. We need to either add the full doc to inactive projects or add something there and not leave it blank. Gonnym (talk) 09:35, 21 November 2025 (UTC)

I have written a bit at Module:WikiProject banner/doc#Automatic documentation. For the inactive project documentation, I think the last time this was brought up I said that if someone would write the text then I would code it up, and this offer is still open! — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 10:44, 23 November 2025 (UTC)

Edit request 15 December 2025

It is requested that an edit be made to the fully protected module at Module:WikiProject banner.
(edit · history · last · links · sandbox · edit sandbox · sandbox history · sandbox last edit · sandbox diff · test cases · transclusion count · protection log)

This template must be followed by a complete and specific description of the request, so that an editor unfamiliar with the subject matter could complete the requested edit immediately.

Edit requests to fully protected pages should only be used for edits that are either uncontroversial or supported by consensus. If the proposed edit might be controversial, discuss it on the protected page's talk page before using this template. Consider making changes first to the module's sandbox and test them thoroughly here before submitting an edit request. To request that a page be protected or unprotected, make a protection request. When the request has been completed or denied, please add the |answered=yes parameter to deactivate the template.

To be consistent with other pages using Module:Check for unknown parameters please update the preview message to say "unknown" parameters instead of "unexpected" parameters. This would need to be done in the config file on line 147: Module:WikiProject_ banner/config#L-147.

Diff:

Zackmann (^{Talk to me}/_{What I been doing}) 19:33, 15 December 2025 (UTC)