Deletion

Nominate for deletion any categories that are no longer used. Currently pending confirmation:

• Category:Incorrectly tagged Anarchism task force articles - creator reply pending
• Category:Incorrectly tagged WikiProject European Microstates articles - creator checking
• Category:Incorrectly tagged WikiProject Melanesia articles - creator checking
• Category:Incorrectly tagged WikiProject Philosophy articles - creator disavowed
• Category:Wikipedia pages containing incorrect parameters - creator disavowed

Standardization

• Determine a naming scheme
• All categories should use:
  • ((hiddencat))
  • ((emptycat))
  • ((Wikipedia category)) and/or ((tracking cat)) (is there a standard anywhere?)

Documentation

All categories should list at minimum:

• Which template(s) put articles in it
• Why articles are placed there
• If the articles there should be fixed (or if they are just being tracked)
• How to fix listed articles (if needed)
• Which bots (if any) patrol the category

Expansion

• All templates should check if they were passed any extra unnamed parameters they don't need.

• For a template that takes no unnamed parameters:

((#if: (({1|))} | [[Category:Articles using extra parameters]]))

• For a template that takes 2 unnamed parameters:

((#if: (({3|))} | [[Category:Articles using extra parameters]]))

• Templates accepting date parameters should:

• Verify day is between 1 and 31 inclusive

((#ifexpr: (({day))} > 0 and (({day))} < 32 | | [[Category:Articles with invalid day parameter]]))

• Verify month is between 1 and 12 inclusive

((#ifexpr: (({month))} > 0 and (({month))} < 13 | | [[Category:Articles with invalid month parameter]]))

• Verify year is sane. For example, a template tracking last access date of websites could use:

((#ifexpr: (({year))} > 1990 and (({year))} <= ((CURRENTYEAR)) | | [[Category:Articles with invalid year parameter]]))

• When a template parameter is depreciated, any articles using the old parameter should be flagged

((#if: (({depreciated|))} | [[Category:Articles using depreciated parameters]]))

• Every #switch should have a default

((#switch: (({importance))}
| high = [[Category:High-importance articles]]
| low = [[Category:Low-importance articles]]
| [[Category:Articles with invalid importance]]
))

• If a template should only be used in a particular namespace it should check where it is being used

((#ifeq: ((NAMESPACE)) | Category | | [[Category:Category templates used outside categories]]))

samsubit TASCIIAC (talk) 08:00, 21 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Shouldn't "depreciated" be "deprecated"? ~ MD Otley (talk) 09:33, 30 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

sbitpelling TASCIIAC (talk) 07:59, 21 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

This category has developed an awful lot of subcategories, and is looking pretty unstructured at the moment. How about splitting it up into parameter issues of different types? I'm thinking of:

• Category:Wikipedia template parameter issues by template - this will house all categories that are specific to one template. If a single template outputs multiple categories, we can either put all them into a subcategory, or just use the sort keys to display them together. (I guess which one we choose will depend on the number of categories.) Or perhaps this category would still be too big? We could split it up further if desired, e.g. infoboxes and non-infobox templates.
• Category:Wikipedia templates with missing parameters
• Category:Deprecated parameters - already widely used but some categories in here still need to be diffused into it
• Category:Wikipedia templates with invalid input - for input that is present but invalid, i.e. errors
• Category:Wikipedia template tracking categories - for categories that are only used for tracking purposes, i.e. the pages in it don't need to be fixed

I'd love to hear people's thoughts on this. Feel free to suggest different schemes and names, etc. — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 12:58, 17 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

• I support the idea, but I'm not sure how some of those are technically feasible. How do you create a category that lists the categories a template is in? Wouldn't each template need to have its own category page and wouldn't all of the errors need to be tagged with categories for which templates are in them? Wouldn't that result in categories with hundreds or thousands of template categories? It's all quite confusing. Seems almost recursive and redundant to me. Isn't it just easier to visit the template page and see what categories it is actually in? — ((U|Technical 13)) ^{(e • t • c)} 16:27, 17 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

  @Technical 13: Category:Wikipedia template parameter issues by template wouldn't list the categories a template is in, it would list the error/tracking categories that it uses. For example, Template:Wikipedia ads is in the categories "Lua-based templates", "User namespace templates" and "WikiProject banner templates", but they are irrelevant to this proposal. The relevant category is Category:Wikipedia ads templates with errors, which the template populates, and which is a subcategory of Category:Wikipedia template parameter issues. I should have made that clearer above, sorry. — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 16:59, 17 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]