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To 1= or not to 1=?[edit]

While explicitly naming |1= is not required, it has been widely adopted for this template and the docs still prominently feature it. Since WP:PIQA conversions began a few days ago, I've noticed that two bots, User:Cewbot and User:Qwerfjkl (bot), are implementing competing formats, the former with and the latter without naming the parameter. Should we aim for consistency in this regard? If so, what is the preferred format? Yes, I realize that this is a completely comsetic question. Regards, IceWelder [✉] 14:33, 19 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

It doesn't make any difference. The times when it would make a difference are:
  1. when the presence or absence of leading and trailing whitespace is significant
  2. when the parameter value contains an equals sign that is outside of template transclusions
Of these, (1) doesn't normally apply when the template has a Lua core, as this one does; and (2) won't apply to WPBS because there are no situations when the parameter content has anything outside template transclusions. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 14:41, 19 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]
If there is no difference, it seems to me that the bots should not be "correcting" this particular syntax. In particular, edits like this, where "fixing" |1= is the only change, are unnecessary and are just clogging our watchlists.— TAnthonyTalk 15:24, 19 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]
This seems to have been raised at User_talk:Qwerfjkl#Cosmetic_edits. -Kj cheetham (talk) 15:27, 19 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]
I can't get worried about it either way, but I guess without the 1= is slightly tidier — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 15:56, 19 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]
I can eliminate |1= if there is a consensus. I will follow User:Qwerfjkl (bot)'s practice and not to add "1=". Also the discussion about whether to choose between |blp= and |living= seems to be expired. There seems to be no consensus? Kanashimi (talk) 23:11, 19 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]
 Fixed Kanashimi (talk) 02:41, 20 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]
I certainly agree this doesn't really matter, but if both of these bots are doing it without, is there any benfit of getting WP:RATER to go without too? -Kj cheetham (talk) 11:56, 20 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]
The |1= has kind of bugged me for a while since most templates don't request it. Support not using it.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  16:15, 20 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Prehaps also noteworthy: AWB actively adds |1= unprompted. IceWelder [✉] 00:09, 22 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Late the conversation, but FYI, that only happens if you run AWB with "apply general fixes" enabled (which a lot of users do). But you can turn that off if you didn't want it to be applied automatically. The genfixes setting is not always desirable. Depends on the use case. ButlerBlog (talk) 20:14, 7 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Now edits like this are real watchlist-cloggers. I'm going to call WP:COSMETICBOT on that. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:49, 24 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Absolutely. There must be a way to avoid edits like this @Qwerfjkl — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 21:52, 24 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]
MSGJ, it's because the page was edited before the bot, so it no longer had anything to do, leading it to make a cosmetic edit. This shouldn't happen much. — Qwerfjkltalk 07:05, 25 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]
So you need to build in some detection to check that the page actually needs editing. Otherwise this kind of thing will happen a lot. If you look at the history of Talk:Troon railway station (1839-1892), the bot already edited the page on the same day, so why is it revisiting the same page? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 08:39, 25 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]
MSGJ, I was running the job twice (once for testing purposes, the other as a regular bot run). These jobs overlapped, causing duplicate errors like this. User:Trappist the monk notified me of this at WP:BOTN so I killed the other job. This error should no longer occur. — Qwerfjkltalk 16:07, 25 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]
(please Reply to icon mention me on reply)— Qwerfjkltalk 16:08, 25 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Conflicting ratings[edit]

I was too scared to look in Category:Articles with conflicting quality ratings until today but now we have 125,864 pages in there, which is too many to manually review. Does anyone have any suggestions on how to process these? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:59, 29 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

@MSGJ: Some of those will have a stub rating and another rating. Would it be safe to presume that if the article has a stub tag that the ratings should be stub? Maybe with |auto=yes if the template supports it? GoingBatty (talk) 16:07, 29 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]
That's a good idea. We can use an edit summary like "rated as Stub-class because the article is using a stub template" to explain — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 16:10, 29 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]
@The Earwig, Anomie, Hazard-SJ, Legoktm, and Qwerfjkl: Since your bots are in Category:Autoassessment bots, could any of you please help with the pages in this category? GoingBatty (talk) 16:50, 29 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]
I suspect a fair few of these will be where an editor updated the class rating for one wikiproject but didn't do so for the others. We could perhaps just favour the higher ratings? — Qwerfjkltalk 16:58, 29 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]
@Qwerfjkl: I don't know what your bots have been approved to do and what the consensus is for handling conflicting quality ratings. GoingBatty (talk) 17:12, 29 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]
GoingBatty, my bot isn't really approved to handle anything that would help here, I'd need to file a new BRFA. — Qwerfjkltalk 17:13, 29 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]
I've seen using most recent suggested (rather than highest, though would tend to assume they are the same), but the only consensus I've seen so far is conflicting ratings should be reviewed by humans. With still 2 million in Category:Pages using WikiProject banner shell without a project-independent quality rating and 5 million in Category:WikiProject banners without banner shells I can forsee the number of conflicts increasing further though! -Kj cheetham (talk) 20:15, 29 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Kj cheetham, slightly less than appears at first. Actually, looking at the former category there, it seems it's being expanded by my bot. — Qwerfjkltalk 20:41, 29 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Good point about namespaces! Perhaps that category needs adjusting, or we need another tracking category just for what the bots are actually dealing with...? -Kj cheetham (talk) 20:46, 29 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]
My bot is using this query:
SELECT page_namespace, page_title FROM categorylinks
JOIN page ON page_id = cl_from
WHERE cl_to = 'WikiProject_banners_without_banner_shells'
AND page_namespace = 1
ORDER BY RAND()
LIMIT 100000
if that helps. If I was better at SQL i would probably refine it a bit more. — Qwerfjkltalk 20:49, 29 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]
I should probably take AnomieBOT out of the category. I haven't kept up with the changes to this template, I'd probably have to update my code. Anomie⚔ 22:32, 29 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]
@GoingBatty asked Would it be safe to presume that if the article has a stub tag that the ratings should be stub?
Unfortunately, the answer is no. In my experience, if something is tagged as a stub and as anything else, it's usually the other one that is correct. If you'd like a tie-breaker, consider using the ORES rating. Anything it declares to be a stub really is. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:05, 1 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]
I agree with WhatamIdoing. If anything conflicts between the article stub tag and the project ratings should be a tracking category if it's not already. -Kj cheetham (talk) 16:09, 1 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

A suggestion for people who do want to work on these is to work from the top of Special:RecentChangesLinked/Category:Articles with conflicting quality ratings. That way we can catch early the editors who are still causing the conflicts, and educating them will help in the long run — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 09:42, 30 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Question about documentation[edit]

The template documentation currently states "All parameters are optional. However, one or both of |class= and |1= must be given." However, the template on Talk:Kevin Conroy seems to display just fine without |class= or |1=. Is it OK to remove the "However,..." sentence from the documentation, or is there a requirement I don't understand? Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 21:07, 1 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

GoingBatty, that page does have the implicit 1= as the first unnamed paramter. That said, I believe WPBS can be used as just ((WPBS)) e.g. on redirect talk pages where no class is needed. — Qwerfjkltalk 21:14, 1 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]
@Qwerfjkl: Yes, but it doesn't have an explicit |1=. And if you were to change it to ((WikiProject banner shell|blp=no| with no |class= or |1=, it still seems to work OK. Based on your comment and my little testing, I'll remove the sentence. Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 21:27, 1 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]
GoingBatty, if you have ((foo|bar)) then the ((foo)) has 1=, because it's equivalent to ((foo|1=bar)). — Qwerfjkltalk 21:36, 1 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]
@Qwerfjkl: Yes, and that explains that we don't need the documentation to state that "|1= must be given". We don't need to add |1= to ((tl|foo|bar)) because it's already equivalent to ((tl|foo|1=bar)) even when we don't explicitly type the |1=. GoingBatty (talk) 21:43, 1 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]
GoingBatty, I take that to mean the parameter is required, not the 1= which is for the most part cosmetic. It's easier to say 1= is required than "the first unamed parameter" is required. — Qwerfjkltalk 21:44, 1 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Also you appear to have messed up your formatting. — Qwerfjkltalk 21:44, 1 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]
@Qwerfjkl: Guess we disagree on how "|1= must be given" can be interpreted, which is fine. What formatting have I messed up? GoingBatty (talk) 21:51, 1 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Any mechanism to have these changes be "silent" in terms of notification?[edit]

I've been flooded with email notifications from these edits on talk pages over recent weeks; I follow a lot of articles. Is there any means by which bot edits can be done without triggering notification emails? Just curious. cheers. anastrophe, an editor he is. 22:12, 2 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

@Anastrophe: You could set up your watchlist to exclude all bot edits or just those edits with the tag "Talk banner shell conversion". There are several more options at Wikipedia:Bots/Noticeboard#Flooding watchlists. GoingBatty (talk) 03:20, 3 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Aha! I wasn't aware of that option (obviously). Thanks, I will check it out. cheers. anastrophe, an editor he is. 03:58, 3 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Welp, I added the exclusion for "Talk banner shell conversion" to my watchlist filters, no change, and in my watchlist preferences 'Hide bot edits from the watchlist', also to no avail. Dunno what I'm missing, but it's a small enough issue, I'll just live with it. cheers. anastrophe, an editor he is. 23:35, 3 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]
I have the same problem, and I think it's a rather big issue. I don't remember ever having experienced it before in my 19 years on Wikipedia. I get email notifications, and in each email it says that "There will be no other notifications in case of further activity unless you visit this page while logged in." So this means that this bot will effectively mute all my talk page notifications, as I don't go to every page this bot changes. Also, I get hundreds of unnecessary emails due to this.
At the link Wikipedia:Bots/Noticeboard#Flooding watchlists I just see a wall of text, so I still don't know how to stop this specific bot's edits from triggering all these emails and effectively muting all my notifications of changes to talk pages I follow. As I said, I never had this problem before and don't know how to stop it.
I would be happy to just ignore this specific bot if possible so it doesn't trigger email notifications and doesn't mute my notifications of subsequent changes to the talk pages I follow. Is that possible? Jhertel (talk) 11:48, 5 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Yes it should be possible, and no I don't know why it is not working. I have just tried excluding the "Talk banner shell conversion" tag and it didn't work for me also. So I will post at WP:VPT to get advice — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:57, 5 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Not sure why it's failing for you as I've been using it for a few days now and haven't seen one page edited with it on my watchlist since. Gonnym (talk) 23:21, 5 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Add tracking categories[edit]

@MSGJ Can you help add some tracking categories of ((WPBS))?

  1. Disambiguation pages or redirect pages are assigned classes.
  2. Contains incorrect attribute values, e.g. living=no}.

If we already have such tracking categories, please let me know, thanks. Kanashimi (talk) 08:07, 6 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Hi Kanashimi
  1. It should be impossible to assign classes to non-articles. Or rather, the template will just ignore those classes. Do you mean you want to find these incorrect parameters to remove? Wouldn't that be classes as a cosmetic edit, if the parameter is being ignored anyway?
  2. Do you want me to track any values which are not valid as "yes" or "no"? That would be everything except yes, y, true, t, on, 1, no, n, false, f, off, 0. Yes that should be possible.
— Martin (MSGJ · talk) 09:24, 6 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]
  1. GoingBatty mentioned that for these type of articles, the robot needn't inherit the class. I think if there is a tracking category like this, the robot can just delete the class.
  2. Yes, Ipigott mentioned that wrong parameter values could cause template errors. If there is such a tracking category, I think the robot can help to correct them.
Kanashimi (talk) 09:38, 6 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

MSGJ Thinking of tracking categories, is there one like Category:WikiProject banners without banner shells but just for articles (well article talk pages), i.e. not userspace or draftspace, etc. Would it be useful...? I'm thinking partly to see how much the PIQA bots have left to do in that area. Thanks. -Kj cheetham (talk) 16:53, 15 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

living vs blp[edit]

Is everyone okay with migrating all uses of the living parameter to blp? At the moment living is an alias for blp, but there are some articles that are using both, and the bots could tidy these up. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 16:47, 15 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

No objections, though noting I believe WP:RATER uses living. -Kj cheetham (talk) 16:50, 15 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]
As long as AWB doesn't remove them all a la https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Suzanne_Deutsch_de_la_Meurthe&diff=prev&oldid=1207780075 :-) -Kj cheetham (talk) 18:30, 15 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]
True. We have not had a response to our request at AWB yet — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 21:40, 15 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]
@MSGJ: Per Wikipedia talk:AutoWikiBrowser#Request to change banner shell general fixes, did you (or anyone else) file a Phabricator task for the AWB developers? GoingBatty (talk) 02:48, 22 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]
I haven't, and have never used Phabricator before. MSGJ, please could you handle that? Thank you. -Kj cheetham (talk) 19:21, 23 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Would there be any WP:COSMETIC concerns here? Sdkb talk 21:49, 15 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]
I would hope this not be the only change, but if it could be done as part of PIQA then probably better to standardise. What we don't want is |blp=yes and |living=no which has happened — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 21:51, 15 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]
No objection then. Cheers, Sdkb talk 22:38, 15 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]
On a related note, I just modified the documentation slightly (https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template:WikiProject_banner_shell/doc&diff=prev&oldid=1209824156) to clarify this parameter should be used for all biographical articles, not just for living people. Please reword it if my change isn't clear. -Kj cheetham (talk) 18:59, 23 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]
I don't follow, @Kj cheetham. Is the idea that it should be used for non-living people? Or for non-person biographical articles of animals? The parameter is about WP:Biographies of living persons, which kinda spells out its scope in its title. Sdkb talk 19:05, 23 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Good point about animals! It should be blp=yes for bios of living people, blp=no for bios of dead people. Effectively if the article is tagged with WikiProject Biography and doesn't have the blp/living parameter set it ends up in Category:Biography articles without living parameter. I think it needs to be worded clearer than I put it... -Kj cheetham (talk) 19:08, 23 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Ah, the ability to use it but set it to "no" was what I was missing. I took a stab at clarifying. Thanks, Sdkb talk 19:37, 23 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Your wording is definitely clearer. I noticed you changed the TemplateData too to make it required - I wasn't sure about that because it's not required for all articles, and I don't know what impacts that change would have. -Kj cheetham (talk) 19:47, 23 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]
If the default is "no", and the parameter is marked as required and missing, I assume that's fine? -Kj cheetham (talk) 19:53, 23 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]
My brain is asleep today haha; self-reverted the TemplateData part. Sdkb talk 21:01, 23 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Just need some more coffee. :-) -Kj cheetham (talk) 10:39, 24 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Redirect[edit]

Having a problem with the article -izzle, which is a soft redirect. Tried tagging it as a redirect but this is not working. The banner shell said (incorrectly) that it was a redirect without a class parameter, but adding one has not removed it from Category:Unassessed articles. How do we tag it as a redirect. and remove it from this category? Hawkeye7 (discuss) 03:28, 21 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

@Martin? — Qwerfjkltalk 19:01, 23 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]
We now have the ability to detect soft redirects in Module:Pagetype so I was planning to use that to automatically rate such pages as Redirect-class. I assume that would solve this problem. (But why did you say that banner shell incorrectly detected it as a redirect?) — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 23:20, 23 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Two problems here:
  1. The Rater tool does not allow me to set the class=Redirect in the banner shell. Is it missing metadata?
  2. Setting class=Redirect did not remove it from Category:Unassessed articles when set manually, so automatically rating it won't work without changing the banner shell.
Hawkeye7 (discuss) 09:42, 24 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]
I assumed point 1 was intentional because Redirect detection was automatic, but point 2 seems like an issue. It seems odd to me use of the text This redirect has not yet been rated on Wikipedia's content assessment scale. I thought "redirect" was the assessment? -Kj cheetham (talk) 10:48, 24 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]
I think the template is using Module:Pagetype for some of its logic, but not the part where it actually sets the class. I will try and sort this shortly — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 14:14, 24 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]
 Done — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:45, 1 March 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]
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