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Further problems with {{Astronomy}}

When placed in {{WPBS}} only the class is shown (importance is left out)

What gives? Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 21:37, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

Because you are using a custom importance scale. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 21:40, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

The other issue is that you shouldn't be using importance with a capital I. -- WOSlinker (talk) 22:20, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

Well there should be a way recognized importance when the custom hooks (whatever hooks are) are used. It's only adding "no" and "bottom". I could write some proto-code, but I cease to be able to understand the metabanner whenever the word hook is involved. Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 02:29, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

As always, the functionality that goes into the meta banner is a balance between providing functions that are useful to a lot of banners without adding too much complexity for the sake of a few banners. It was decided in this case that implementing "native" support for custom importance scales was not justified because

• there are relatively few projects which use a different importance scale, and
• it is fairly easy to add the functionality using a hook (alas without the nested importance feature).

On reflection I still think this decision is right. The astronomy banner is not broken in any way, it just lacks a feature which is available to projects using the standard importance scale. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 09:49, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

Nested banners get the class rating from custom masks, right? Presumably it's not as straightforward for custom importance... ? PC78 (talk) 10:41, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

It wouldn't take too much to add a HOOK_IMPORTANCE_NESTED hook though. (Similar to HOOK_NESTED for taskforces.) -- WOSlinker (talk) 12:50, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

Category:WikiProject banners with formatting errors

Does anyone know how to remove /monobook.js pages from this category?

Also, does anyone know what's going on with {{WPBiography}} at Wikipedia:WikiProject Musicians/Infobox? PC78 (talk) 01:50, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

Something odd with the bullet points. Works if I remove them. -- WOSlinker (talk) 07:03, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

 Fixed the monobooks. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:05, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

Idle thoughts about category opt-out

It appears that the category opt-out can be enabled with so much as a blank |category= parameter. Is that wise? Would it not be preferable to do this with a more explicit |category=no or something?

Also, would it necessarily be a good idea to use something like |category={{{category|{{#ifeq:{{NAMESPACE}}|User talk|no|¬}}}}} in a banner's code? I recently removed a number of {{WPBiography}} banners from user space, and the main culprit appeared to be userfied articles. I was thinking it would be nice force the opt-out in that namespace. PC78 (talk) 11:30, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

Regarding your first point, this is intentional and a lot of work has been put into it (e.g. the whole changing µ to ¬ - see Template talk:WPBannerMeta/Archive 2#Category optout transition). I must admit that the reason for doing this has always escaped me. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 11:49, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

Why did we transition, you mean? Because μ != µ, and that was totally impossible to test for. At least there is only one character that looks anything like ¬. Happy‑melon 22:28, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I know why we did the transition. But I don't know why we use ¬ or μ at all. Why don't we just pass category={{{category|}}}? That's what I have never got my head around. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 07:30, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

It's just a more rigorous way of doing it, it preserves the greatest amount of information about what's been set at the other end. We are able to do all that cool stuff with {{yesno}} and enabling things simply by passing parameters, because we preserve the distinction between undefined and defined-as-blank. We don't have to use the distinction if we don't want to, but it's very useful to have it there. Happy‑melon 14:27, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

Yes, but all that functionality can be achieved by putting the ¬ on Template:WPBannerMeta rather than each banner template. The only extra thing we gain is by being able to distinguish between an undefined and a defined blank value of category on template instances, correct? And as PC says, it may not be desirable that |category= should supress categories (as it may have just been copied from the documentation or something). — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 15:22, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

I was talking about the general case. |category= is the only use of the system where the 'end' of the chain is on the individual banner instances, not on the banner template pages themselves. The prerequisites for the system are that every step in the chain between the place where the switch occurs, and the final code that uses it, have to have the same default value, and that value is indistinguishable from the undefined parameter. For, say, |importance=, it is important that that value not be the empty string, because that's a legitimate value for the parameter that we need to account for. For |category=, I agree that it might be beneficial to treat blank as equivalent to undefined, but I think it would be a bad idea to lose the consistency of "all parameters where we care about the defined status use default ¬" that we currently have. It's fairly easy to change the behaviour of |category= by replacing all the {{#ifeq:{{{category|¬}}}|¬|...}} we currently have with {{#switch:{{{category|¬}}}||¬=...}}; it's only three extra bytes. Happy‑melon 16:42, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

I agree that using ¬ to determine the defined status of parameters is a good idea. I still don't understand why |category= is used differently to other parameters (i.e. the "end of the chain" is on banner instances). Would there be any disadvantage in making it more consistent and not requiring it on the banner templates? (I'm not proposing a mass removal of them, but we could simplify the syntax for new ones at least.) — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 11:12, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

Not sure what you're saying here. The reason "the end of the chain is on banner instances" is that we want to set the category optout for individual instances, not for every instance of the banner. |category= is more similar to |listas= than |importance=. You mean that, on banner templates, we ask users to set |note 1={{{note 1|}}}, but |category={{{category|¬}}}?? Happy‑melon 12:08, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

Correct, we don't care whether |category= is undefined or defined blank, just as we don't care whether |listas= is undefined or defined blank. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:29, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

So back to this ... would there be any opposition to treating a blank category parameter the same as category=¬, and to stop requiring the use of |category={{{category|¬}}} in favour of |category={{{category|}}}? I don't propose we mass-change them, but we could make things a simpler for future banner templates and reduce the work for PC78 going through the tracking category removing instances of blank category parameters. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:54, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

 Review There is a version on the /sandbox which does this. I also think we should probably treat |category=yes the same as the blank parameter (it ought to mean "yes, I want categories!"). What do others think? A couple of other proposed changes as well:

• Moved the code for the warnings back onto the main template, and put the actual message boxes on separate subpages. This is how it used to be, and on reflection I think this is better. We don't need to transclude /warnings on every instance of the template.
• Removal of the FULL_QUALITY_SCALE parameters as they are not used now.
• Tweak so that if neither priority nor importance parameters are passed then the scale name (for task force use) is "Importance".

Comments invited. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 10:28, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

Anyone? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 19:00, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

I've implemented this now. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 14:33, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

Another thought

When I implemented a category opt-out for {{Film}} I added (and not without a sense of irony) a tracking category so it was possible to keep tabs on where and how |category= was being used, basically to guard against any potential misuse of the parameter. I was wondering if something similar might be of value here? Martin suggested elsewhere that demonstration banners shouldn't be used on article talk pages and I'd say that's about right, so perhaps a category to pick up any that are or might be? Just a thought. PC78 (talk) 17:58, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Sounds reasonable. Are you volunteering to sort through this category? :P — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 08:07, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

If it's just looking for banners of article pages then [1] would be able to find them all without the need for a category. -- WOSlinker (talk) 10:48, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

No, what PC is suggesting is a tracking category for instances of |category=no in article talk space, i.e. where there should probably be no demonstrations of templates. We already have Category:WikiProject banners with formatting errors which tracks down banners in subjectspace without category=no. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:18, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

Can we do this then? I'm not adverse to a bit of cleanup... :) PC78 (talk) 17:29, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

You mean "averse" :) I've added it to the to-do list. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 07:19, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

I've put the code in /sandbox. At the moment it will include blank definitions category. Can you check this is what you want? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:21, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

What does one do if a talk page banner, for whatever reason, is supposed to be displayed in those circumstances with |category=no?? :P Happy‑melon 12:40, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

Lol, you've got me stumped there. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:42, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

You talkin' to me? Yeah, it seems to. If it's trivial to implement then it's also trivial to undo, so I say do it and see what it throws up (if anything). If it throws up any false positives then we can worry about it later. Should Category:WikiProject banners with formatting errors not be a hidden category, though? PC78 (talk) 21:50, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

 Done. I think originally that category was intended for errors just to banner templates. In those cases, it's probably better to draw attention to an error condition. Now it's being used for all sorts of purposes; probably should have a separate category for banner instances ... — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 22:03, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

I've already fixed banners seven or eight pages; main culprits so far have been {{GOCE}} (I've ammended the template documentation, but this doesn't strike me as being something that needs to use this meta) and {{WikiProject Marine life}}, where someone has been using the parameter for something completely different. PC78 (talk) 23:41, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

I notice that WOSlinker did quite a bit of work on Template:WikiProject Marine life in March, probably to do with this category parameter. (And then it seems that I "tidied" messed up his work in July.) — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 09:32, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

Yikes, there are now around 150 pages in the category! A lot of this appears to be the work of a single editor who has unwittingly copied some bad code from another talk page and pasted it en masse. I've already raised the issue with him. PC78 (talk) 20:00, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

Well done for clearing this out. Do you want to continue this tracking permanently, or shall we remove it? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 18:52, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

Keep it. It may be a recurring problem. PC78 (talk) 18:59, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

Signpost article, redux

Lest anyone think I've forgotten...

I've put together a few questions at Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Newsroom/WikiProject report/Meta banner; any responses, both from the developers of the template and from anyone else with insight into the topic would be very appreciated. Thanks! Kirill ^[talk] [pf] 02:51, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

Just to follow up, if everyone could get their answers in by Sunday, that would be great! Kirill ^[talk] [pf] 12:33, 16 October 2009 (UTC)