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{{WPBM}} supports the |auto= parameter for indicating that an article has been automatically assessed by a bot. Do people think it would be good to support some kind of parameter like that in this template? We could use |auto=yes or something more specific like |auto=stub. Then we would need to decide how to display this information. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 16:06, 23 May 2023 (UTC)
Unlike |listas= (which is used by all WikiProject banners except Milhist) and |class= (which is used by a majority), |auto= is used by a minority, perhaps around 10% ± 5%. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 19:43, 23 May 2023 (UTC)
Yes, true. So do you think such a parameter in this template is not desirable? We will be using a bot for some stages of the roll-out of project-independent quality ratings, and an extra task for such a bot may be to auto-detect stubs. Would it be a good idea to indicate somehow that such a rating has been bot-assessed? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 07:02, 25 May 2023 (UTC)
@Martin, I don't think it's woth noting that an article has automatically had WPBS added. It doesn't really mean much; for WikiProjects it suggests that the WikiProject may be incorrect / needs review, but there's not really that problem with the banner, because it's just added on talk pages that don't have it. — Qwerfjkltalk 17:28, 7 June 2023 (UTC)
Perhaps you have misunderstood. It is not to show that WPBS has been added automatically, the purpose would be to indicate that the quality rating has been automatically deduced. If you are using ORES to predict the class parameter then I think that it worth recording, because it will indicate to editors that it might not always be reliable — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 20:55, 7 June 2023 (UTC)
@MSGJ, ah right. In that case it seems reasonable to me. — Qwerfjkltalk 07:21, 10 June 2023 (UTC)
I think the best use of the parameter is to set for example |class=C|auto=C and then if someone changes the class to |class=B then the auto note will no longer apply because it's not the same class as the auto parameter. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 22:27, 10 June 2023 (UTC)
Suggestion: Visual improvement of article quality rating
The new article quality ratings that appear in the shell header currently take the form e.g. C, with the image linking to the file page for the C symbol, and both rather small. I would suggest that this be fixed, at least for the ratings whose icons include text, by having only the icon, made large enough that the letter is easily visible (and of course with alt text for screen readers), linking to the category the same as the text currently does. {{u|Sdkb}}talk 03:13, 28 May 2023 (UTC)
Sounds interesting, can you mock up an example? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 05:39, 28 May 2023 (UTC)
@MSGJ: Sure, here you go. {{u|Sdkb}}talk 07:16, 28 May 2023 (UTC)
I like it - what do others think? Have you settled on 35px as optimum size? You may need to propose changes at Module:Class because I don't think icon-only is currently an option. My only slight criticism: we now have a yellow/brown icon on a yellow background, so there isn't much contrast. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 10:22, 28 May 2023 (UTC)
35px is what looked nice in the mockup, but that could be changed. There is also the (rarer) use case to consider where a talk page doesn't have projects assigned yet, and where the header is therefore only one line; a smaller icon might be appropriate for that. And yeah, the contrast issue isn't ideal, but at least the icon has a strong border, and the contrast scheme is very well-established within the entire content assessment area, so modifying it would be a bigger change. Cheers, {{u|Sdkb}}talk 15:43, 28 May 2023 (UTC)
@Sdkb, that use case only applies to a few pages currently; it's probably not worrying about. — Qwerfjkltalk 16:50, 28 May 2023 (UTC)
It's something which could become more common, so we should definitely take those uses into consideration. I've added an example below. 35px seems to work fine in these cases too. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 11:33, 5 June 2023 (UTC)
I think we made a mistake removing that sentence. If it doesn't reference the lack of WikiProjects, people might not know they can add WikiProjects to it (especially if we rename this template in the future). They might add banners beneath it instead, or might not add WikiProjects at all. On that last point: I think fewer pages have the banner shell that don't belong to a WikiProject, than have the shell and do belong to one. DFlhb (talk) 11:52, 5 June 2023 (UTC)
What about using the icon without the background colour? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 22:51, 1 June 2023 (UTC)
Hmm, I'd be interested to see a mock-up of that! {{u|Sdkb}}talk 23:27, 1 June 2023 (UTC)
@Sdkb, @Martin, I've added a mock-up of that below (just by removing the assess-c class). — Qwerfjkltalk 15:10, 2 June 2023 (UTC)
I've changed it to try Start-class. In this case, the version without the background is the clear winner. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 11:24, 5 June 2023 (UTC)
Love it, much better. I'd apply it for ratings whose icons don't include text as well, since the text will still be in bold and in high-contrast, with the bold drawing readers' eyes, preventing any confusion. DFlhb (talk) 17:01, 28 May 2023 (UTC)
Good point. And for any editors who don't know what e.g. means, they're probably not looking for Category:FA-Class articles anyways. {{u|Sdkb}}talk 17:49, 28 May 2023 (UTC)
This change (icon only, 35px, no background) is now implemented on the sandbox for anyone who would like to test it — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:20, 5 June 2023 (UTC)
This is now deployed — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 08:30, 6 June 2023 (UTC)
Perhaps the horizontal spacing (currently 60px) can be reduced now we only have the icon? Any suggestions? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 09:10, 6 June 2023 (UTC)
It currently doesn't match {{Article history}}, which is supposed to be right above it. None of our talk page templates are consistent, so I suggest we fix that en-masse, rather than just here. Or at least, that we pick paddings & spacing here that will work well later for every other template. DFlhb (talk) 11:06, 6 June 2023 (UTC) edited for clarity 11:45, 6 June 2023 (UTC)
I don't think the width is actually specified in article history which uses mbox styles. We could just remove our 60px stipulation and that might look better. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 11:59, 6 June 2023 (UTC)
None of our talk page templates are consistent - they're a lot more consistent now than they used to be. There's a page somewhere that nicely demonstrates that, by showing a number of common banners before and after a massive standardisation drive about fifteen years ago. I can't find it now though. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 12:59, 6 June 2023 (UTC)
This article is rated Stub-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale.
Progress icons
I've noticed some nice progress icons, that we might like to use — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:35, 6 June 2023 (UTC)
This looks really nice and informative, but takes much horizontal space. —CX Zoom[he/him](let's talk • {C•X}) 13:20, 6 June 2023 (UTC)
I really like how it communicates visually how many different ratings there are and where an article falls on that spectrum. Newcomers don't know that e.g. Start-class is the second lowest rating, but this would help with that. That'd be worth the extra horizontal space, imo. The main issue I see is that it doesn't seem like it'll play well with e.g. A-class, Draft-class, and other non-standard ratings. {{u|Sdkb}}talk 19:49, 6 June 2023 (UTC)
Can we use different shapes for pages not falling in the spectrum? Hexagons for Stub to FA class (including A-class); Pentagons for other mainspace types: lists, dabs, SIAs, etc.; Squares for non-mainspace items. —CX Zoom[he/him](let's talk • {C•X}) 16:08, 13 June 2023 (UTC)
I'd suggest the 3rd option is better in long term, though any of them works for the time being. —CX Zoom[he/him](let's talk • {C•X}) 17:49, 3 May 2023 (UTC)
Would recommend we go directly for 3 with a prototype in the sandbox. The goal at TfD and WT:Talk page layout is to reduce the amount of talk page templates so they take up less vertical space. For VA, the switch to Meta was only invoked as a way to collapse the VA banner. But collapsing it would hide the only valuable information (the level designation) under a "show" button (possibly two "show" buttons, if the shell is collapsed), which would be a bit silly. It also doesn't actually help us reduce the amount of banners, which is a worthwhile goal. The prototype Shell could take a |vital=X parameter (X = number 1-5) and a |topic= parameter (with the same function as current VA template), and the shell could set the vital categories. The display could follow Sdkb's suggestion: This level-3 vital article is rated C-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale. Then the sandbox prototype could be discussed at TfD — DFlhb (talk) 10:55, 8 May 2023 (UTC)
This shows how this template would look in practice — DFlhb (talk) 11:55, 8 May 2023 (UTC)
You said option 3 but what we have done in the sandbox is option 1. Option 3 might be a possibility in the future, but option 1 would be quick and easy, and get the inherited classes working straightaway — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 16:12, 8 May 2023 (UTC)
Indeed it's option 1: the link right above was meant to illustrate the level designation being hidden behind a "show" button — DFlhb (talk) 18:49, 8 May 2023 (UTC)
I agree that option 3 would be preferable if anyone can code it nicely. It'd be nice to implement that along with the broader changes; please let me know if I can help with that. Cheers, {{u|Sdkb}}talk 03:18, 11 May 2023 (UTC)
It looks like consensus is forming to merge the template into this banner shell. We could start discussing the details of this now. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 22:55, 1 June 2023 (UTC)
@Tcr25 would you like to sandbox your design, which seems to be attracting most support? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 09:13, 6 June 2023 (UTC)
Hi Martin (MSGJ), I think that would be a bit above my skill set. I'm happy to help refine, but I wouldn't know where to start. —Carter (Tcr25) (talk) 20:01, 6 June 2023 (UTC)
I'll have a go if I get some more details. It looks like we are deprecating the "topic" parameter, is that correct? Which of the following categories should be retained?
Wikipedia level-4 vital articles in Science N
Wikipedia C-Class vital articles in Science N
Wikipedia C-Class level-4 vital articles Y
All Wikipedia vital articles - maybe not needed?
All Wikipedia level-4 vital articles Y
All Wikipedia vital articles in Science N
All Wikipedia C-Class vital articles Y
Someone also suggested that we only include certain levels - is there any consensus on that? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 10:58, 8 June 2023 (UTC)
That has been Sdkb's bailiwick. My only suggestion was to make sure the Vital Article icon was included in the line. So far the discussion has been about the display of Vital Article status viz-à-viz the banner shell, not changing the parameters or scope of the Vital Articles project. I don't think there's consensus at this point to bundle in changes to what counts as a vital article or how they are categorized. —Carter (Tcr25) (talk) 12:24, 8 June 2023 (UTC)
@MSGJ, thanks for the follow-up! The recent discussion has been about the display, not about changing categories or other functionality, so I think the best approach is to implement the display change but leave everything else intact. So retain |topic= because it impacts the categorization, even though it no longer has a visual effect. Deciding whether or not to change the categorization would be a separate discussion for another time. Similarly, whether to display level-5 (or deprecate it, since retaining it without display seems like a bit of a sidestep) would have to be a separate discussion — one person mentioning it here certainly isn't consensus for a change.
I'm not a Lua coder, so I appreciate the help. This sandbox diff from the old talk header proposal shows what copying the categorization would look like; merging to the banner shell should be fairly similar. {{u|Sdkb}}talk 17:15, 8 June 2023 (UTC)
Break
There's one issue I hadn't thought about: if we merge, Vital's parameters will clutter WPBS. Here's an example of typical {{Vital article}} parameters:
|class=Start|level=5|topic=People|subpage=Writers
There are several issues with this: (1) no one should change these, since they're maintained by Cewbot, (2) their relevance to WPBS is non-obvious; many people might remove them thinking they're erroneous, (3) they're clutter, and we're already discussing adding more parameters to the shell like needs-photograph, B-criteria, etc.
I propose we do a pseudo merge: keep {{Vital article}} separate so it can hold these parameters, but never display it. The Vital bot can make sure it's always placed within WPBS, and {{Vital article}} can pass-through its level-rating to the shell so it can be displayed. The RfC is fulfilled because it's not shown and takes no vertical space. DFlhb (talk) 19:01, 8 June 2023 (UTC)
Nice idea, but ... I regard the method of reading another template's parameters as extremely hacky. It is prone to slow processing and immense confusion by uninformed editors! I know we have done this for the reading of |class= from WPBS/WPBM but I would prefer to keep this practice to a minimum. In general, parameters ought to be stored in the template that is actually using them. That said, I do agree that we do not want to move lots of extra parameters into WPBS unless we are really going to use them. My personal first choice is still to keep this template as nested within the banner but I seem to be outvoted on that. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 19:34, 8 June 2023 (UTC)
I agree with Martin's reasoning on this, picking up an unrelated template's parameters will be very confusing to editors who intend to work with these templates. —CX Zoom[he/him](let's talk • {C•X}) 16:13, 13 June 2023 (UTC)
My suggestion to address this would be to rename the parameters as part of the merge, e.g. |vital_level=, |vital_topic=, etc.
The TfD follow-up has now been formally closed, so @MSGJ or anyone else interested in sandboxing this should feel free to proceed. {{u|Sdkb}}talk 04:51, 15 June 2023 (UTC)
I agree with |vital-level= but perhaps hyphen is better than underscore? I'm not convinced we should support the topic parameter unless this is somehow displayed in the template. All the topics are listed on WP:Vital articles anyway so no information would be lost. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 07:40, 15 June 2023 (UTC)
Pinging @CactiStaccingCrane and @Kanashimi (maintainer of Cewbot). Can we maintain the lists at WP:Vital articles without the |topic or |subpage parameters in the template? Perhaps we could set the topic & subpage for all vital articles on a central config page, though that would be a bit messy. DFlhb (talk) 09:19, 15 June 2023 (UTC)
I need more clarity on how to implement this before I can comment. Will we discard this template? What do we want it to look like? Kanashimi (talk) 10:21, 15 June 2023 (UTC)
I think the idea is to implement something like the mockup below. I'm putting forward option 2 which will allow the current display and functionality to be retained — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 11:00, 15 June 2023 (UTC)
We can discuss appearance after we've worked out the technical details, but option 2 is basically "placing within" and hiding it, so I don't think that matches the consensus. DFlhb (talk) 14:17, 15 June 2023 (UTC)
How will we call the template? Like this? {{WikiProject banner shell|vital-level=A}}, and need the robot to read-in the list in the settings pages? --Kanashimi (talk) 11:15, 15 June 2023 (UTC)
We're merging {{Vital article}} into {{WikiProject banner shell}}. We could merge everything, which would look like {{WikiProject banner shell|class=C|vital=3|topic=People|subpage=Writers}}. But hopefully we can find a way for Cewbot to maintain the Vital lists without "topic" and "subpage", to make this template's code look cleaner on talk pages. At minimum, we'll have {{WikiProject banner shell|class=C|vital=3}}
"vital" and "vital-level" would be aliases of each other, in other words: {{{vital|{{{vital-level|}}}}}}) DFlhb (talk) 14:07, 15 June 2023 (UTC)
There is a problem. The template itself must add categories, so if these two parameters are omitted, not only must the robot automatically generate them, but the template itself must also automatically generate the data for these two parameters. There seems to be no good solution to this? Kanashimi (talk) 22:40, 15 June 2023 (UTC)
Inquiry: does it need all three parameters, or would just |vital-level and |vital-subpage work, omitting |vital-topic? On the other hand, I don't see three relatively short parameters as being that messy. SilverTiger12 (talk) 16:35, 16 June 2023 (UTC)
I'm not very well-aware about the workings of JSON, but it seems that if the vital articles list is provided in JSON format, a module could parse the JSON when |vital= is provided, and auto-apply relevant categories. But, I think that just two more parameters should be okay. In which case, I'd suggest that vital parameters be used on a separate line from other parameters, i.e., the second line be reserved for vital parameters, and internal banners coming after that. —CX Zoom[he/him](let's talk • {C•X}) 16:48, 16 June 2023 (UTC)
I need a working case before I can judge how the robot should be modified. Also, some articles only have `topic` and not `subpage`. Kanashimi (talk) 22:30, 16 June 2023 (UTC)
Yes, this is a really good suggestion. If all the information was in the JSON file, then we could just use |vital=yes or similar — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 14:51, 20 June 2023 (UTC)
I am worried that in this case the JSON will be so large that it will have to contain all the VA pages. Kanashimi (talk) 22:31, 20 June 2023 (UTC)
The first 1000 articles in JSON is at User:CX Zoom/Vital.json for 39,404 bytes. There are a total of 50,000 articles, which should be well within the 2mb limit imposed by MediaWiki. Although I'm not sure that module would be able to handle such a large file properly. —CX Zoom[he/him](let's talk • {C•X}) 22:59, 20 June 2023 (UTC)
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Biomes, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Biomes on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.BiomesWikipedia:WikiProject BiomesTemplate:WikiProject BiomesBiomes articles
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Biomes, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Biomes on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.BiomesWikipedia:WikiProject BiomesTemplate:WikiProject BiomesBiomes articles
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Biomes, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Biomes on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.BiomesWikipedia:WikiProject BiomesTemplate:WikiProject BiomesBiomes articles
We already emit span class="metadata wpb-metadata" span class="wpb-project"{{{PROJECT}}}/span - can you use this? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 11:09, 5 June 2023 (UTC)
OK that worked. It just needs a category name and to attach the category text to the final string. Since this module does a lot of things (and I didn't want to read through all that code) I'll leave that to you if you don't mind :) Gonnym (talk) 12:55, 5 June 2023 (UTC)
Is this intended to be a one-off find and fix, or do you want this code left in indefinitely? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:56, 5 June 2023 (UTC)
It can work both ways, but I don't see a reason not to leave this permanently as a maintenance category. Gonnym (talk) 12:58, 5 June 2023 (UTC)
It works on your category talk page, but for some reason it didn't work at Old revision of Talk:Samite — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 13:27, 5 June 2023 (UTC)
I think I fixed it. PROJECT parameter had a space in it, and you were testing for letters/numbers only. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 13:38, 5 June 2023 (UTC)
Ah, good catch! Gonnym (talk) 13:40, 5 June 2023 (UTC)
Yeah, I had a feeling it was from back then. I'm sure this isn't the only one which is why I requested the maintenance category. Gonnym (talk) 20:55, 5 June 2023 (UTC)
I'll ask at the project talk page. It may be that they only need the most recent reviewer and date. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 18:07, 22 June 2023 (UTC)
So far I've come across one page with three uses (Talk:1974 Jackson State Tigers football team), but two of them are identical except for different values in |oldid=, not sure what that is for.— TAnthonyTalk 18:52, 22 June 2023 (UTC)
For the specific example,Talk:14 regions of Constantinople, an editor manually created the talk page while it was still in draft and added the List class banner which they did not need to do (and really should not have done) as the AfC script adds the banner automatically if a draft is accepted. When the reviewer accepted it they chose C-class for the article assessment which automatically added the C-class banner. There is no need for two. S0091 (talk) 18:58, 22 June 2023 (UTC)
The first few entries in the maintenance category are all talk pages I skipped because of the AfC template, can someone assess these as well?— TAnthonyTalk 19:54, 22 June 2023 (UTC)
Pinging @Zoozaz1: given they were the editor who added the AfC banner manually in case there is a reason (they are still active). Zoozaz1, is there a reason you added the AfC project banner to Talk:14 regions of Constantinople manually? S0091 (talk) 20:04, 22 June 2023 (UTC)
Looking at the article history, it seems that I accepted the article (which automatically created the banner through the tool), it was moved back to a draft along with the associated talk page, and was re-accepted by another editor. It seems that when it was re-accepted, the tool automatically added another AfC project banner. The reason for the different oldids is that they are referencing separate versions of the article, one the original draft and the other the re-accepted draft. Zoozaz1 (talk) 20:23, 22 June 2023 (UTC)
Thanks @Zoozaz1. That's what I get for only looking at the talk page. I made a bad assumption so please accept my apologies. With that, I imagine there are many talk pages with more than one AfC banner. S0091 (talk) 20:59, 22 June 2023 (UTC)
No problem at all. Yes, I would assume that there are a significant number of articles in the same situation. Zoozaz1 (talk) 21:20, 22 June 2023 (UTC)
@Gonnym: could we do something like this to add a sort key which would group all the same project together? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 21:35, 22 June 2023 (UTC)
OK I'm also seeing multiple uses of the {{WIR}} improvement banner templates on more than a few talk pages (see Talk:2016 New York State Assembly 65th district special election). It's a bit odd to me that they designed these as individual templates for each "event" rather than just parameters in a single template.— TAnthonyTalk 00:21, 23 June 2023 (UTC)
That should probably be taken to TfD to a merge discussion. Gonnym (talk) 07:08, 23 June 2023 (UTC)
Last time I tried to improve Template:WIR I was met with severe intransigence on the template talk page ... — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 09:49, 23 June 2023 (UTC)
Which is why I said TfD :) Usually editors in their local settings don't really like changes... Gonnym (talk) 09:52, 23 June 2023 (UTC)
I like your thinking — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 11:55, 23 June 2023 (UTC)
Yeah that sounds like a good idea. Gonnym (talk) 07:07, 23 June 2023 (UTC)
Done — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 09:42, 23 June 2023 (UTC)
Duplicate AFC banners
(Replying to MSGJ's post at WT:AFC, where they asked us to reply here). Howdy. In my opinion, it'd be fine to boldly consolidate duplicate AFC banners on article talk pages. You can just use your best judgment on which one to save. In the example Talk:14 regions of Constantinople, I would save the "list" one because the article is a list. Hope this helps. –Novem Linguae (talk) 23:50, 22 June 2023 (UTC)
Agreed. I saw the sandbox code and think it should work okay. As indicated above these will likely need manual checking, but for the case of multi-accept drafts, the new code will handle that, and otherwise (for actual duplicate banners) the "better" one can be kept. Primefac (talk) 10:22, 26 June 2023 (UTC)
When should projects opt-out?
Am I misunderstanding why projects would opt-out through |QUALITY_CRITERIA=custom? Custom non-FQS classes defined in a class mask (like Future-class) work without opting out. Standard ratings that differ from article class (e.g. article rating is C-class, project rating is Start-class) also work without opting out.
My understanding is that projects only need to opt-out when they use different criteria for the standard grades. Right? For example, project-specific requirements for a C-class rating. I think only MILHIST and Roads do this.
I'm asking because I don't understand why WP:VG opted-out because they don't support A-class. It requires them to maintain ratings for every single article, when they could achieve the same result by only setting a project rating when the article-class is A-class, without opting-out. Same for WikiProjects Square Enix and Middle-Earth. DFlhb (talk) 16:48, 2 July 2023 (UTC)
I think that unless projects opt out they should be using the standard quality scale, otherwise it will not work correctly. The idea is that all projects (except those which have opted-out) will eventually use a single harmonised quality rating, and any conflicts are tracked via Category:Articles with conflicting quality ratings. But if a project is using Future-class then there will be perpetual conflicts which cannot be resolved. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 20:06, 2 July 2023 (UTC)
Visual glitch when uncollapsing project banners
Uncollapsing project banners shifts the banner shell's text slightly to the right. Tested on Blink, WebKit and Gecko, adblock off. The shift is inconsistent; on Talk:Ronald Reagan, you can see that some WikiProject banners do it, some don't. DFlhb (talk) 14:52, 1 July 2023 (UTC) updated 14:57, 1 July 2023 (UTC)
This is the standard behaviour with collapsed tables, see the table at Special:Permalink/1162864615. If you click "show", the text in the same cell as [show] button will shift to the right, because it is center aligned, and "hide" takes less space than "show" leaving more space for content. —CX Zoom[he/him](let's talk • {C•X}) 15:03, 1 July 2023 (UTC)
Yes, but I'm talking about the shell's text shifting (by 10+ pixels) when I uncollapse WikiProject banners, not when I uncollapse the shell itself (that shift is only 1-2 pixels). DFlhb (talk) 15:09, 1 July 2023 (UTC)
Thanks, I now understand what you're referring to. It's weird how uncollapsing WP California shifts the shell text a lot, WP Chicago shifts it a little, and WP Intl Relations does nothing. Most of them, however, shifts the text by a ot. —CX Zoom[he/him](let's talk • {C•X}) 15:13, 1 July 2023 (UTC)
The ones that shift the text mostly have portal boxes (Milhist doesn't, but it does have that great big FA star on the right); the ones that don't shift mostly don't have portal boxes. WikiProject Chicago does have a portal box however I see no shift with that one. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 19:04, 1 July 2023 (UTC)
Is it related to the width of the image on the project banner perhaps? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 20:11, 2 July 2023 (UTC)
It probably needs a {{trim}} somewhere. — Qwerfjkltalk 17:26, 5 July 2023 (UTC)
Fixed in sandbox. Thanks for the report — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 21:28, 5 July 2023 (UTC)
Icons and text overlapping
Icons that exceed the standard width (like those of Wikipedia:WikiProject Internet culture and Wikipedia:WikiProject YouTube for example) overlap the fixed text to the right, making WikiProject names unreadable in some cases. Perhaps change it so the position of the name of each WikiProject adjusts automatically according to the icon width? I don't know how to do that, so posting here in hopes that someone else does. Throast{{ping}} me! (talk | contribs) 20:58, 6 July 2023 (UTC)
Fixed, thanks to you and Sdkb for reporting.
Icons are now set to 25px max width (no minimum width), so both very large and very narrow icons look fine. This allows us to keep project name alignment too, because non-alignment with super-wide icons like YouTube's would make the shell look pretty bad. DFlhb (talk) 21:48, 6 July 2023 (UTC)
Do you mean 35px width? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 10:01, 7 July 2023 (UTC)
Not sure if this has been brought up before, but is there a reason why this template does not display icons for non-standard grades like redirects and disambigs, or non-mainspace content like drafts? I feel like it would be much more helpful to see relevant icons for each of these, rather than the default NA-class message and icon. —TechnoSquirrel69 (sigh) 05:59, 3 July 2023 (UTC)
We pinned our hopes on separating quality & type, but didn't take this into account. May be worth revisiting?
FWIW, looks like 1,410 projects/task forces out of 1,987 support Redirect-class. I've extracted the non-intersecting set with Petscan and it looks like many (most?) are TFs. DFlhb (talk) 20:42, 6 July 2023 (UTC)
Came to post a similar question/query. It feels odd to have the banner show an "NA class" (which is defined as A page that does not fit into any other category. Used as a "catch-all" by all WikiProjects.) when projects do categorize them as Redirects, Categories, Drafts, etc. which are applicable categories. If it is possible to separate out these quality without regard to type, it would be much appreciated. - Favre1fan93 (talk) 17:08, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
Related to #Rating tool above, does anyone know how mw:ORES work? It seems to be used quite a lot in management of WikiProjects. Does it get affected by shift in how we do things? —CX Zoom[he/him](let's talk • {C•X}) 06:05, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
ORES just takes a look at the article and spits out what it thinks a human would've rated the article as. It *shouldn't* be affected, AFAIK. Though, if you want, you can talk to someone in the machine learning team. – MaterialWorks 11:12, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
How project banners should look
If anyone wants to code a working version, have at it. {{u|Sdkb}}talk 20:57, 29 May 2023 (UTC)
Expanding on my design rationale a bit, the first thing I did was to remove "WikiProject" in front of each project name. Users already know from the shell header that we're talking about projects, so it's redundant clutter. The next thing I did was grouping by priority. Currently, we have no standardized way to order WikiProject banners, and the importance ratings are just written out as text, which makes them hard to parse. The grouping addresses both of these issues by helping make it clearer which projects an article is most important to and further reducing the amount of text. {{u|Sdkb}}talk 21:05, 29 May 2023 (UTC)
Nice ideas. An intermediate step would be to list projects separately on each line with the importance on the left as you have suggested. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 21:59, 29 May 2023 (UTC)
Whatever happened to "if it ain't broke, don't fix it"? LilianaUwU(talk / contributions) 13:43, 6 July 2023 (UTC)
The fact that the old design was cluttered and poorly organized, contributing to banner blindness, was the "broke" aspect. {{u|Sdkb}}talk 20:04, 6 July 2023 (UTC)
Looks like we're slowly inching ever closer to the French design; but I still have no idea how to reach a similar design while still supporting task forces. DFlhb (talk) 05:12, 2 June 2023 (UTC)
Task forces could be in parentheticals, e.g. Medicine (Ivermectin). But from a broad angle, wrangling the projects into this format would necessitate some amount of standardization, which would almost certainly tick off some projects that have particular banner customizations they like. {{u|Sdkb}}talk 06:07, 2 June 2023 (UTC)
Yeah, either we'd have to try to shorten those or we'd just deal with them as is. {{u|Sdkb}}talk 14:57, 2 June 2023 (UTC)
I think we should invite projects with long names to either devise their own short names, which we'd store in a data template someplace to retrieve the values, or we'd define them, and then we'd be able to derive them here: Altered States of Consciousness ⟶ Altered States; Correction and Detention Facilities ⟶ Correction/Detention; Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy ⟶ Hitchhiker's Guide; Indigenous peoples of North America ⟶ Indigenous peoples (N.Am.); and so on. Mathglot (talk) 00:41, 21 June 2023 (UTC)
Made a mockup. We should avoid losing functionality at all cost, so it should also list custom quality ratings in the collapsed header for projects that opted out. And would be very nice if the banner shell could display project banners sorted by importance; would that be possible? DFlhb (talk) 16:59, 2 June 2023 (UTC)
I agree the mockup looks nice. I can see some potential confusion with NA (meaning non-article) vs N/A (neaning not applicable). It would be nice if the columns lined up when expanding the templates, but this is a small matter. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 11:18, 5 June 2023 (UTC)
I added another mockup that solves the first problem and eliminates the second. Also enabled me to get rid of my new "Imp, WikiProject" header that took up precious vertical space.
I used a uniform shade of pink for all importance levels because all current importance colors have poor contrast at 14pt font size. The text is enough to differentiate them. I have a good reason not to worry about inconsistency with the WP1.0 tables that use the old colors, but that's beyond the scope of this discussion. DFlhb (talk) 15:58, 5 June 2023 (UTC)
Maybe simplest just to leave it blank if no importance is used? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 18:25, 5 June 2023 (UTC)
Yes, much better edit: done, mockup changed DFlhb (talk) 18:40, 5 June 2023 (UTC)
I don't think I like the idea to depart from the default talk banner background colour to white in the lower exhibit. Further, the idea to show the importance level only a space apart from project name is not ideal. Let's say an article is Mid-importance for WP India, but High-importance for Delhi taskforce-- it'll show up as Wikiproject India / DelhiMid-importance which, in my opinion, is not ideal. In the first exhibit, I do not like the addition of the "Imp. Wikiproject" row. —CX Zoom[he/him](let's talk • {C•X}) 13:56, 6 June 2023 (UTC)
And in both the cases there also needs to be the space for WPs opting for independent quality assessments. —CX Zoom[he/him](let's talk • {C•X}) 13:59, 6 June 2023 (UTC)
Great feedback.
Hmm. Hope I can convince you otherwise, I really prefer the white background! (Though I won't badger you beyond this, I promise.)
Gives useful depth and hierarchy, to visually hint at a "shell" that transcludes separate elements rather than being a single element, and make it clearer that the project banners can be interacted with.
Gives much better visual separation and hierarchy than the 4px padding and dotted border around the project-banner area, and IMO looks much better than that padding + dotted line.
Prevents the long text inside each project banner from all being black/blue on yellow, which is unnecessary and less readable.
I believe it's more coherent, more meaningful, and more visually appealing to have only the outer shell be colored, and all inner elements be white, across all TP templates (though I believe very few, maybe none, have "inner elements" like this one).
WikiProjects having a different background color gives them higher prominence without increasing visual overwhelm, which makes up for the inherently lower prominence caused by collapsing them to just their header; that's pretty neat. The project banners would still be yellow when outside a banner shell, of course.
Very true. Added "margin-left:0.5em" before each importance bubble
Will keep later replies short, sorry for this one's length. Permalink to previous mockup is here for future reference. DFlhb (talk) 19:50, 6 June 2023 (UTC)
@DFlhb, I really like the second mock-up. I agree with you that white looks better, and I also really like the rounded corners, which seems more modern and less harsh. {{u|Sdkb}}talk 20:37, 6 June 2023 (UTC)
I'm also coming round to mockup 2 as a clear and attractive design. The curved corners look nice, but would look odd with all the other banners which do not have curved corners. Better take that idea to a village pump and then we can change this template, tmbox, article history, ... in one go. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 11:50, 7 June 2023 (UTC)
Beyond rounded corners, I want to propose a number of changes to talk page & article cleanup templates, to improve accessibility, readability & recognizability (sneak peek of just one, here). For these redesigns to have credibility, we'd need all of us (and hopefully others) to hash them out and refine them before ever bringing them to the understandably-conservative WP:VPR; just like we'll need to do for the "article type-article quality split". We can drop the roundness until then. Redrose64 mentions a harmonisation drive 15 years ago; we're overdue for a new one. DFlhb (talk) 12:19, 7 June 2023 (UTC)
I suppose the place to hash out these ideas would be Wikipedia talk:Talk page templates but drop a note here because that page is barely used — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:56, 7 June 2023 (UTC)
A harmonization drive is absolutely overdue. Just please ensure that the resulting standards are documented as thoroughly as possible, with pointers from tons of relevant pages to make sure they're easily findable. Otherwise there's no way they'll stick, and we'll just get standard proliferation. {{u|Sdkb}}talk 16:00, 7 June 2023 (UTC)
Thanks for making the relevant changes. I actually like the second style. However, can we see a mockup that right-aligns the importance and custom-class data, with the custom-class to the left of importance. And one mockup that uses a taskforce banner with a separate importance rating than its parent? Thanks! —CX Zoom[he/him](let's talk • {C•X}) 22:20, 7 June 2023 (UTC)
First one now done on mockup 3. I don't understand the second one; the current shell doesn't show TF importance in the header, even when it conflicts with project importance; are you saying both should be shown? DFlhb (talk) 22:49, 7 June 2023 (UTC)
Personally, I don't like having some of the information thrown to the right (Design 3). My laptop screen isn't that big, but it just looks too far away from the rest of the information when it's over there. —Carter (Tcr25) (talk) 22:53, 7 June 2023 (UTC)
No, that would be too much for the header. I just want to see how the new design gets along with taskforce shown. Basically, the issue I already said above, I just want to see it in practice. —CX Zoom[he/him](let's talk • {C•X}) 11:57, 8 June 2023 (UTC)
Done here. I reverted it because the medicine icon isn't spaced out correctly. Nothing is changing about banner contents except background color; the removal of the pink boxes is just a carry-over from mockup 1. DFlhb (talk) 20:11, 8 June 2023 (UTC)
Thanks for the mockup. I'm afraid that "High-importance" right beside "Pulmonology" doesn't look good. I think that right-alignment of importance would look better in these cases. —CX Zoom[he/him](let's talk • {C•X}) 14:30, 13 June 2023 (UTC)
They are effectively next to each other in the current design anyway:
Can't say that I like the current version, but even that has all the importance ratings hanging from the same line which, like mockup 3, makes it look somewhat different from mockup 2 where rating sticks with the last taskforce. —CX Zoom[he/him](let's talk • {C•X}) 15:50, 13 June 2023 (UTC)
We may allow projects to optionally choose a header picture which will override the default picture if projects choose. So, they can keep a large picture as default, and a small different picture in header. —CX Zoom[he/him](let's talk • {C•X}) 15:56, 13 June 2023 (UTC)
I really like these mockups, but I have a complaint about designs 2 and 3: the background colors for the importance and class data are too close to the background white. There's not a lot of contrast in there, and that could be against accessibility guidelines. – MaterialWorks 12:56, 9 June 2023 (UTC)
The contrast guidelines are about the contrast between text and background, so I don't see any issue there. We could try a slightly brighter background though. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 13:01, 9 June 2023 (UTC)
I see. I think using the colors used in design 1 (or a slightly lighter version of them, if they're too dark) would make the information clearer and easier to understand at a glance. – MaterialWorks 13:13, 9 June 2023 (UTC)
Is that better? What about the quality? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 13:54, 9 June 2023 (UTC)
Yeah, that's way better. For the quality, I thought about using the colors used inside the class symbols (i.e. the lighter blue on the A-class symbol, as an example). So, the colors would be #d7eef4 for A-class, #c8fb7c for B-class, etc. – MaterialWorks 14:02, 9 June 2023 (UTC)
New one has insufficient contrast for both blue links & purple (clicked) links; the lighter pink is accessible against both. DFlhb (talk) 14:34, 9 June 2023 (UTC)
Okay I see what you mean about the clicked links. Please revert then. But if there is a slightly darker version of the pink which would still be accessible then let's try it. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 14:39, 9 June 2023 (UTC)
Found #FFE6FF, accessible and slightly darker than before. Tested a few class colors, those aren't great for contrast either — DFlhb (talk) 14:49, 9 June 2023 (UTC)
Good compromise. I'm been struggling to find class colors that both:
Fit with their icons;
Conform to level AA of WCAG's color requirements. (AAA would be preferable, but Vector 2022's link colors can't pass that, even on an #FFFFFF background).
If you prioritize the first point, you get bad contrast; if you go for the second point, FA, C, Start and Stub all get roughly the same color. – MaterialWorks 15:48, 9 June 2023 (UTC)
RE quality, are we talking about the icon colour, or the blue background on the class in each banner? Bear in mind that most banners will no longer display the class inside the banner, so I don't think this is worth worrying about. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 14:49, 20 June 2023 (UTC)
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@DFlhb: Thanks for the mockup — that's looking very nice! I do think that being able to list multiple projects per line will be an important step in reducing the vertical height, particularly for the highly active pages most at risk of banner bloat. I wonder if there is any way to retain the show/hide functionality while doing that — any ideas?And yeah, sorting by importance level is definitely a key part of it (and something that we could potentially implement even without the fuller overhaul). {{u|Sdkb}}talk 19:41, 2 June 2023 (UTC)
Sidebar on sorting
Split off into subsection; some initial discussion above. {{u|Sdkb}}talk 20:12, 6 June 2023 (UTC)
N/A importance should be last, not at the top. SilverTiger12 (talk) 19:22, 5 June 2023 (UTC)
WP:TALKORDER says WPBio should be at the top ... — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 19:33, 5 June 2023 (UTC)
Okay, so to lay out the preferred order, we have this sorting:
WP Biography
Importance: Top -> High -> Mid -> Low -> Bottom -> N/A
Alphabetical
If that looks good, anyone who knows how can mock it up and implement. {{u|Sdkb}}talk 20:16, 6 June 2023 (UTC)
I supported this above, but only because my first mockup made the importance the most prominent part of WikiProject banner headers, and it was jarring for them not to be sorted. But with the second mockup, importance is no more prominent than the current template, so there's less need to sort. I'd now oppose it, since it would make projects like MILHIST or Film always go to the bottom, yet on many of their articles it makes sense for them to be towards the top (they're the most active, after all, and for many of these pages, they're also the most relevant). Probably best to keep letting people control the order manually. DFlhb (talk) 20:43, 6 June 2023 (UTC)
Icon for importance rating?
Just a suggestion: Can we use arrow icons for importance ratings? I couldn't find any, so here's one that conveys what I'm thinking of. We can have icons with progressively darker colors for higher importances as is current practice, with number of stripes denoting importance level. 1 for low, 2 for mid, 3 for high, 4 for top. All arrows would be pointed upwards. Bottom importance also exists, never seen it beyond WP:DOF pages, but it exists, so it would have one arrow oriented downwards. —CX Zoom[he/him](let's talk • {C•X}) 16:21, 16 June 2023 (UTC)
Might be worth doing a mock-up if you think this would be good. It would not be as clear as just writing "top-importance" though. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 14:46, 20 June 2023 (UTC)
Yes, I like the idea, too. I'm thinking something more like something stacked, like a Tower of Hanoi (File:Hanoi 10Ring 3D Small.jpg), or a stepped pyramid like File:INES pyramid.jpg, for which we'd request six new image variant based on it from the Graphics Lab folks, one (lowest importance) would just show the bottom step, and then one each showing different numbers of stacked cross sections, up to "top" which would show the whole pyramid, up to and including the point at the top. (I'd probably change the colors either to match Template:Importance scheme, or use some other hue with increasing saturation for each step up, and I'd make it 2-D, so a stepped triangle, not a pyramid). A simpler, and perhaps more natural image would be a two dimensional Tower of Hanoi cross section, so, basically just stacked horizontal bars which get narrower towards the top (somewhat like figure #1 at the left of File:Hanoi1.png but without the spindle); in this scheme, a color gradient might not be necessary, and they could all be stacked, horizontal black rectangles. For more ideas, try searching 7-level Likert scale icons. If you use chevrons, keep in mind that you may need to distinguish 7 levels. Mathglot (talk) 01:25, 21 June 2023 (UTC)
Moving ahead?
Do we have consensus to move ahead with any parts of the designs above? In particular it would be helpful if you could show your support for the following features:
Include a small image in collapsed version - Clear support
Change the background to white in collapsed banners - Rough consensus, let's trial it
Adjust alignment of quality and importance assessments to left (or right) - Yes, slight preference for left-aligned
Include a pale background colour on quality and importance assessments - Yes but exact colours need further discussion
Remove word "WikiProject" from each banner - Support implied/assumed
Suggest we hold off on the curved corners until a more general discussion on message box harmonization takes place — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 09:11, 29 June 2023 (UTC)
Agreed! But I think we could use curved corners as a fairly small/easy change as a test case to start establishing a strong system for message box standardization (see my comment above re "standard proliferation"). {{u|Sdkb}}talk 14:18, 29 June 2023 (UTC)
Thanks to everyone for comments so far. I have updated list above with my summary of where editors stand. I have also added #5 which I forgot but I believe to be uncontroversial? @Mathglot, DFlhb, and Redrose64: you took part in the earlier discussion but have not yet added your vote. I will try and get this coded at the weekend. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 11:38, 30 June 2023 (UTC)
1. Yes; 2. Yes; 3. Right; 4. [bgcolor: Yes, pale: unsure] - I like the idea to have bgcolor for importance and quality, but I'm not sure that having the same color for low and top-importance is good or if we should have a spectrum for it. —CX Zoom[he/him](let's talk • {C•X}) 09:14, 29 June 2023 (UTC)
I support right-alignment because that way importance isn't stuck close to taskforces (if exists) as individual task forces might have different importance from its parent. This alignment also ensures that the pink box of importance appears neatly in a column, instead of being scattered across the shell, depending on the length of project and its taskforces name. To @Tcr25: The distinctive strips for each project adequately connect the project and its ratings together. —CX Zoom[he/him](let's talk • {C•X}) 12:11, 29 June 2023 (UTC)
Sorry @CX Zoom, I appreciate the idea of keeping the pink boxes aligned, but to my eye the strip doesn't suffice to connect the importance/rating with the project because I have to scan too far over to see them. Keeping the information together is more efficient for the reader (even if it sacrifices some cleanness in the design). —Carter (Tcr25) (talk) 12:29, 29 June 2023 (UTC)
1. Yes; 2. Yes; 3. Left (but happy with Right also); 4. Yes. Not sure about the idea of a spectrum but accessibility is the more important consideration. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 10:04, 29 June 2023 (UTC)
1. Yes; 2. No (inconsistent with other talk page banners and boxes); 3. Left; 4. Yes, but I don't think we should use pale colors. A spectrum like what the French Wikipedia uses would be good too. – MaterialWorksping me! 10:12, 29 June 2023 (UTC)
Are you happy with the colour that you said was "Good compromise" above? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 11:39, 30 June 2023 (UTC)
Yes, I think it would work well for low or mid-importance. Still need to find good colors for the other imp. ratings. – MaterialWorks 11:49, 30 June 2023 (UTC)
I assumed we were just discussing the change to the header in the nested version, and I have added the standard colours back in the expanded version in Design 3 above. However it is essential that we comply with MOS:ACCESS so if these do not meet the contrast guidelines then we should make them paler. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:02, 30 June 2023 (UTC)
I agree. We'll definitely have to change them, since the standard top-importance color just barely passes WCAG AA against Vector 2010's unclicked link color.
PS: For posterity, the nested assessments with the standard colors would look like this:
I like this more than I do a constant pale color. Although, each could be made a shade or two paler if proper contrast with text isn't acheived here., —CX Zoom[he/him](let's talk • {C•X}) 18:14, 30 June 2023 (UTC)
It seems to me that if we use pale colours there simply will not be the range of colours available to make a visual distinction between different shades. And if don't use pale colours it will fail WCAG. I agree a visual distinction would be nice, but I don't think we can do it with background colours. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 07:22, 1 July 2023 (UTC)
Just a thought. Could we use some shade of colour between #F9E9BA and #FFFFFF as a compromise? Please check design 3 above? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 07:28, 1 July 2023 (UTC)
Oppose the cream background; I don't think it looks good or serves a semantic purpose, and the cream you picked is roughly what I planned to suggest as the default tmbox colour (since the current yellow is a contrast fail for both blue & purple links, on every Wikipedia theme, and most tmboxes are chock-full of links). DFlhb (talk) 10:16, 1 July 2023 (UTC)
Oppose, I have to squint really hard to even notice the background color. If you can't see the color well, what's the point of using it? Plus, like DFlhb said, it doesn't serve any semantic purpose. – MaterialWorks 10:49, 1 July 2023 (UTC)
1. Yes; 2. No (agree with MarterialWorks' point); 3. Left (pushing to the right disconnects it too much from the WP name on standard-sized screens); 4. Indifferent (slightly opposed because too many colors and things going on starts to look cluttered, but this is a more an aesthetic concern than a UX one). —Carter (Tcr25) (talk) 11:28, 29 June 2023 (UTC)
1. Yes; 2. Yes (banner collapsing is unique enough that I don't think there's really a pool for it to be consistent in); 3. Yes (prefer right, but fine with either); 4. Yes. Thanks for all the design efforts! {{u|Sdkb}}talk 14:15, 29 June 2023 (UTC)
Yes to all. Thanks for your work on this. Hopefully the text in each sub-banner can be combined or reduced next. czar 13:40, 30 June 2023 (UTC)
@Czar: Just for clarity, on #3, you mean left or right alignment? —CX Zoom[he/him](let's talk • {C•X}) 14:06, 30 June 2023 (UTC)
Yes to all (so, design 2). Design 3 places semantically-related elements far apart, not ideal. White background for both project headers and project banner contents helps establish visual hierarchy, so I prefer that (and see the other reasons I listed earlier).
Accessibility is better than I said previously, since I'd forgotten that WCAG 2.0 defines "Large Text" as either normal 18pt+ or bold 14pt+ (and here, it's bold). Mea culpa. But Top-importance still has insufficient contrast on Vector 2022, Timeless, and Minerva. We could fix that by shifting each color slightly. New colors: #FFE6FF for Low, #FFCFFF for Mid, #FFB8FF for High, #FFA3FF for Top. For the class bubbles, here are some new colours with improved contrast: #FFB477 for Start, #FFAFAF for Stub, #CDB9FF for List, #A8C4FF for FA, FL and FM. For non-standard grades: #E9AFFF for Current-class, #B9C0FF for Future, #FFAFAF for Stub List, #E7BBA6 for Draft, #DDBCC4 for Portal, #C7C795 for Project. The rest should be fine. Tried to change each color as little as possible to just meet the minimum contrast ratio.
The coloured bubbles look a little overbearing to me with those colours, so I've added design 4 for consideration & refinement. Still support design 2, whether we go with pale colours or the normal gradation. DFlhb (talk) 10:16, 1 July 2023 (UTC) Rewrote second paragraph: changed my mind, I'm fine with the full gradated colours, and that's a minor aspect that can be refined later. I don't want that to hold-up the other changes. 16:50, 1 July 2023 (UTC)
How important is it that we have the importance and quality linked in the nested version? We don't currently link these, and the links are readily available in the uncollapsed version — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 09:54, 3 July 2023 (UTC)
Fine to remove. Visual simplicity is good. DFlhb (talk) 14:39, 3 July 2023 (UTC)
I too support removal of links, it is present in uncollapsed version already. —CX Zoom[he/him](let's talk • {C•X}) 16:23, 3 July 2023 (UTC)
I support the above changes; however, does this proposal also include the suggestion of auto-sorting WikiProjects' position by importance? Because I currently oppose the suggested implementation for that. --SilverTiger12 (talk) 00:05, 3 July 2023 (UTC)
No, that suggestion is not part of this proposal. We are confirming support for points 1-5 at this stage — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 07:33, 3 July 2023 (UTC)
Test3 is basically unreadable for me. Test2's yellow and light green on white are not friendly. And test1's black on yellow contrast is not nice to read either. The colors are what they are, so maybe look and see what else can be done on the point. Test3 might work for me with black borders or black text. Test1 is probably the best in the general.
As for rounded corners, it's not a terrible thing inline as in these cases (though it may be part of the cause for the inline issues I'm having here), but doing a full banner rounded corner I am strong not in favor of. One, because it breaks from general style that was set down 15 years ago after a whole lot of discussion, and two, let's not follow the apparent web trend that has put rounded corners back in our lives after they had fallen out of favor by the time border-radius finally got standardized 15 years ago. Izno (talk) 18:16, 4 July 2023 (UTC)
Any ideas on how you'd adjust test1? I was about to remove the code for test2 and 3 anyway to finalize the code for testing DFlhb (talk) 18:22, 4 July 2023 (UTC)
I'm almost thinking you don't need the color at all in the summary line. I don't see a lot of discussion of that above. You'd have to adjust whitespace some. (And, I've always thought the priority color scheme of various pinks and purples was ugly, but that's besides the point.)
Alternatively, could just put the colors in that are high quality like A, GA, and FA, and then the absence of color indicates stuff to work on?
It really is just the B and C class colors that are an issue here, the others are coming out fine.
Speaking of importance, some projects use "priority", does this module take that into account when using the word "importance"? Izno (talk) 18:33, 4 July 2023 (UTC)
Yes, takes into account "priority" vs "importance" (lines 337 and 362).
B and C might be bothering you because they've got the lowest contrast against the background (though it means those two also have the highest contrast against text, which is what counts for accessibility). Tested both of your suggestions in Dev Tools and IMO, without some/all colours, something feels missing; and somehow it feels more verbose and busier with the same amount of text. DFlhb (talk) 21:18, 4 July 2023 (UTC)
We could go back to using a nice pale background Design 2 ... — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 21:24, 4 July 2023 (UTC)
MSGJ: design 2 is based on using the same pale pink for all importances, and the same pale blue for all classes; don't thing it look good, but I could make a testcase if you'd like. If you're suggesting something else, I'd appreciate specific colour values.
Izno: what B-class colour do you suggest? And keep in mind that if B and C are the only issues, that'll go away in 99% of cases after the article-class conversion bot run, since they won't appear. Also, in the test cases, I've unbolded the bubbles; do B and C look any better like this?
Also, feel free to use User:Jackmcbarn/advancedtemplatesandbox.js on the sandbox module (with "Template name" set to "Module:WikiProject banner") to test how it looks on any talk page without modification. DFlhb (talk) 10:38, 5 July 2023 (UTC)
Well Design 2 is still the best in my opinion (without the linking inside the bubbles). But I'm happy to go with the majority and proceed on current basis as I don't want to hold up progress — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 11:44, 5 July 2023 (UTC)
Let's see if we can't balance the fore-background and the white background better. We have some room to play with I would guess. Izno (talk) 22:24, 4 July 2023 (UTC)
Check #FFEB00 as the C-class background & border in browser Dev Tools; is it better? DFlhb (talk) 23:17, 4 July 2023 (UTC)
That's good for C, but now it's not pretty next to B. Izno (talk) 00:03, 5 July 2023 (UTC)
And yeah, I can take or leave the no-colors suggestion. Izno (talk) 22:24, 4 July 2023 (UTC)
And yeah, rough consensus on the white feels right; not sure I'm a fan but pretty sure I could get used to it. Izno (talk) 18:19, 4 July 2023 (UTC)
Coding complete in sandbox
Thanks to DFlhb for his help, we now have this coded in the sandbox. There are two sets examples at Template:WPBannerMeta/testcases. They are aligned right, but this could be put back to left if people prefer. Personally I prefer the paler backgrounds that were proposed earlier. Waiting for final comments from people — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 14:30, 3 July 2023 (UTC)
Any reason why #5 wasn't implemented? – MaterialWorks 14:45, 3 July 2023 (UTC)
Haha, totally forgot. Will do it now! — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 14:46, 3 July 2023 (UTC)
Done — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 14:48, 3 July 2023 (UTC)
Also, do we have a consensus on rounded corners? Seems like a quite a controversial change to do without a discussion first. – MaterialWorks 14:54, 3 July 2023 (UTC)
Agreed and removed. I would like to see this developed in conjunction with other talk page message boxes — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 15:03, 3 July 2023 (UTC)
I think I also prefer the pale icons. The full colors don't look great. DFlhb (talk) 15:12, 3 July 2023 (UTC)
RE [1], no it might be my eyesight but I really can't discern the different colours at 0.12em thickness. And most icons are wider than they are long, so x25px or x30px might be better than 20px in many cases. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 15:12, 3 July 2023 (UTC)
The inspiration for the x20px project icon sizes was {{Article history}}, which also sets its miniature icons to x20px, and the goal was to keep the height of the banner unchanged. But we can change it of course. And isn't there a rough consensus for left-aligned? DFlhb (talk) 15:25, 3 July 2023 (UTC)
mockup5/test3 is an accessibility nightmare, its nigh-impossible to read the importance ratings against the white background. – MaterialWorks 15:24, 3 July 2023 (UTC)
Absolutely; the colors were supposed to be #D67A7B for Stub, and #FF00FF for Top (#D5803C for Start, #9A9A00 for C) but it's a bit difficult (for me anyway) to implement custom colors now that the bubble code is a separate function and shared among all bubbles; I'll try. DFlhb (talk) 15:31, 3 July 2023 (UTC)
My preference: test1 > test2 >> test3. But, here's a little issue. If I reduce the width of the browser window to the lowest possible width, the one with both "Stub" & "Top" tag overflows out of the banner, even though there's white area to its left. —CX Zoom[he/him](let's talk • {C•X}) 16:35, 3 July 2023 (UTC)
To be clear, if there is space deficiency, it should line wrap like normal tables (or it might be made more dynamic, flexbox?), but not overflow. —CX Zoom[he/him](let's talk • {C•X}) 17:06, 3 July 2023 (UTC)
edit: now fixed DFlhb (talk) 17:00, 3 July 2023 (UTC) updated 18:17, 3 July 2023 (UTC)
The color on N/A is practically invisible to me in test3 and it gets worse when I run it through a color blindness simulator. I'd favor test 2 over test 1 because the more subtle use of color makes things look less busy to my eye (test three the colors wash out the text too much). I still strongly prefer having those elements to the left, not the right. —Carter (Tcr25) (talk) 19:11, 3 July 2023 (UTC)
test3 is now finished, and I've put all the standard classes on the testcases page so people can see how they look. My preference is test 1 > 3 > 2, and strongly prefer left alignment. The full colours look better than I thought now that the blue links are removed. DFlhb (talk) 20:09, 3 July 2023 (UTC) updated 20:54, 3 July 2023 (UTC)
I suggest we go with option 1, as this more closely matches the design we have been developing and not many people have supported option 2. I have put the alignment back to "left". Any last comments on the testcases? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 07:32, 4 July 2023 (UTC)
DFlhb: I am aware you have made changes to a number of templates and style sheets to implement the new design and also fix the spacing glitch. Would you mind listing them here so I can be sure I update them all? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 07:56, 4 July 2023 (UTC)
Will do. I'm running more tests now. I'd like to understand the page purging behaviour better. CSS, modules, and likely non-module templates will need to be changed; will all three reverberate instantly, without purging? Just the first two? Just CSS? None? DFlhb (talk) 11:55, 4 July 2023 (UTC)
Apologies if I missed it earlier in the discussions, but how will something like Talk:Louisiana Purchase present when you have a lot of child projects present, some with different ratings. Louisiana Purchase is part of WikiProject United States and the nested WikiProjects Arkansas, Franco-Americans, Louisiana, New Orleans, and History with importance ranging from High to Top. Will just WikiProject United States show up in the collapsed state? Will WikiProject United States / Arkansas, WikProject United States / Louisiana, etc., appear on separate lines? Or will it show WikiProject United States / Arkansas / Franco-Americans / Louisiana / New Orleans / History like the current display does with just the highest priority rating showing? —Carter (Tcr25) (talk) 13:26, 4 July 2023 (UTC)
This is unchanged; it shows all nested task forces, and the importance rating defined for the project overall (not the highest priority among its task forces). DFlhb (talk) 13:38, 4 July 2023 (UTC)
The new version seems to only show up in pages where the class parameter of the shell is filled (example: Talk:Biboy Enguio), is this intended? – MaterialWorks 13:00, 6 July 2023 (UTC)
It'll show up everywhere; that page just wasn't purged yet. DFlhb (talk) 13:05, 6 July 2023 (UTC)
@MaterialWorks: The new style is showing now. Considering the huge number of impacted pages, it would take time for the changes to carry over completely. In the meantime, you can WP:NULLEDIT the page (or make any edit to it) and the changes will show up. —CX Zoom[he/him](let's talk • {C•X}) 13:05, 6 July 2023 (UTC)
Fixed — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 14:07, 6 July 2023 (UTC)
Some of the icons for projects are too wide, overlapping with the text. See e.g. the higher education icon at Talk:Haverford College. Could that be fixed? {{u|Sdkb}}talk 20:32, 6 July 2023 (UTC)
My only gripe with the new design is the white background. I hope there's consensus to change it back to yellow. SWinxy (talk) 21:50, 6 July 2023 (UTC)
Cream background colour now visible at Template:WPBannerMeta/testcases. Picked the same color as the background to the shell's |BLP=yes banner, which'll look nicer on pages like Talk:William Gibson. DFlhb (talk) 23:12, 6 July 2023 (UTC)
Yeah I like this. There's also an edge case for when non-WPBM templates are inserted into WPBS, e.g. Talk:Family of Donald Trump, where the inner banner is a different color. SWinxy (talk) 23:32, 6 July 2023 (UTC)
Tbf, Top25 report really shouldn't have been there. This is "WikiProject banner" shell after all. Those should go under {{Banner holder}}. —CX Zoom[he/him](let's talk • {C•X}) 23:36, 6 July 2023 (UTC)
Improved it hopefully.. DFlhb (talk) 23:53, 6 July 2023 (UTC)
Would appreciate more people weighing in on the background colour. DFlhb (talk) 08:52, 7 July 2023 (UTC)
Happy with either. I did previously suggest using a creamy colour. It's closer to the original colour and so will probably cause less surprise. I think people will get used to white but it is just such a sudden change. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 09:59, 7 July 2023 (UTC)
Cream looks good to me. I'd say I have a slight preference for it over white. {{u|Sdkb}}talk 14:50, 7 July 2023 (UTC)
I'm also cool with cream background, alongside V4 pale colors exhibited below. —CX Zoom[he/him](let's talk • {C•X}) 15:09, 7 July 2023 (UTC)
I think that the quality colors could be made a little paler. Imo hese are too bright, so much that it distracts me from the global rating that should've been more prominent on the banner. —CX Zoom[he/him](let's talk • {C•X}) 11:11, 7 July 2023 (UTC)
Perhaps this question of colours should be asked in a more visible forum rather than just here? -Kj cheetham (talk) 11:21, 7 July 2023 (UTC)
I agree - design 2 was the best with subtle paler colours — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 11:25, 7 July 2023 (UTC)
I like "v4" the best, in the testcases (link). DFlhb (talk) 13:12, 7 July 2023 (UTC)
I also liked the open circled version used in the (early on #2 in the test cases) and similar to design 4 above. It incorporates the color without being as overwhelming as when the color fills the full background. —Carter (Tcr25) (talk) 13:36, 7 July 2023 (UTC)
OOoooo yeah I like those pale pastels. SWinxy (talk) 13:42, 7 July 2023 (UTC)
I have never participated in technical discussions on WP, as it is far outside my wheelhouse, but I would respectfully ask that you stop this deployment until you have input from the wider community and have checked with experts on disability. I was unable to continue working on a GA review on Maria Mies yesterday because I inadvertently looked at the new banner shell. All of the bright colors and icons caused my sensory vertigo to kick in rendering me unable to see anything on the page. Bottom line is that now I question if I will be able to look at any talk page with a banner shell without it triggering nausea, headache, dizziness and seeing spots. Unfortunately, the only way to know that is to look at a talk page and I am not willing to risk that. This cacophony of colors has rendered article talk pages off-limits for me, which impacts my ability to work. I am not here to discuss this to death or be bullied, simply to tell you that there are actual consequences for people with sensory issues that must be addressed before you launch changes like this. I am not watching this page and do not intend to participate further. SusunW (talk) 14:33, 7 July 2023 (UTC)
Sorry to hear this. You're very welcome to the discussion. Before you go, can you just let us know if the paler background colours on version 4 are an improvement? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 15:03, 7 July 2023 (UTC)
I am sorry, but I am not going to look at it and risk being sick. If there are colored icons, bright screaming highlighted colors (Mies's talk had neon green, yellow, orange and purple) and a brilliant white background, it will trigger my problem even if I have the filtering glasses I wear on. Words and the beige background it used to have were fine. All of these additional colors are not. SusunW (talk) 15:13, 7 July 2023 (UTC)
I apologize. For version 4, the saturation of each color was lowered ~60% to be equal to, or lower than, the old beige, so I really hope that fixes the issue. DFlhb (talk) 15:38, 7 July 2023 (UTC)
I respectfully point out that this is a serious issue and again ask that you refrain from making changes without consultation with the wider community and disability experts. Tweaking it and continuing this path without broader consultation makes all editors "test subjects" for these experiments and runs the risk of causing real difficulties for some editors. I have no idea what lowered ~60% means, but if multiple colors are still there, I may have an issue, as will others. This isn't about a "preference" it is about not causing harm. Please hear me, I am not going to look at a talk page to see if it triggers me. Please put the old system back, which wasn't causing issues, until you have had a real consultation. If after consultation, disability experts and the community at large give a pass to this, I'll have to make a decision as to whether I can continue editing. SusunW (talk) 15:57, 7 July 2023 (UTC)
SusunW, I know we're collectively sorry that this update has impacted you so strongly. I believe the changes comply with all current Wikipedia accessibility guidelines but I understand how they adversely affect your individual experience. MSGJ and DFlhb, I really like version 4 and we should deploy it, but I don't think that will solve SusunW's issue. Where would we start the process of creating a tool that allows editors to "opt out" of the upgrade and view the old shell as part of their custom user settings? Thanks.— TAnthonyTalk 16:06, 7 July 2023 (UTC)
Thank you TAnthony, that would be a start. For those of you who may think this is not a real issue, [2], [3]SusunW (talk) 16:17, 7 July 2023 (UTC)
An "opt out" seems a bit insufficient to me, as you've already exposed it to people like SusunW by then. Why not a more public consultation somewhere? -Kj cheetham (talk) 16:30, 7 July 2023 (UTC)
Ideally these could happen simultaneously. Stop the deployment, have a consultation, and work on an opt out. SusunW (talk) 16:35, 7 July 2023 (UTC)
As an immediate fix, the colors can be fully reverted to the old ones by creating a user-specific style sheet (link), and copy-pasting everything here into it verbatim, then clearing or bypassing your cache so the new style sheet gets used. Though I'm aware that's not an optimal solution DFlhb (talk) 16:48, 7 July 2023 (UTC)
Are you suggesting that I do something technical to reverse the changes you have made? I have no idea how to do that and looking at those links you provided means absolutely nothing to me and isn't instructional or intuitive for me. As I said before, I do not understand WP technology. A more logical immediate fix would be to undo the deployment and wait for a wider weighing in. It is beginning to feel as if I am wasting time that I could be contributing to building the encyclopedia to continue this discussion because the deployment is just plowing ahead without regard for the harm it may cause. SusunW (talk) 17:01, 7 July 2023 (UTC)
@SusunW, if you're okay with it, @MSGJ as an admin could edit your CSS page for you to restore the old colors. Again, that's only as a temporary fix while we figure out a more permanent solution. {{u|Sdkb}}talk 17:12, 7 July 2023 (UTC)
Ah, I misread the "editusercss" permission. In that case, @Izno, would you mind lending a hand if you're around? {{u|Sdkb}}talk 17:54, 7 July 2023 (UTC)
Happy to make the changes if someone will tell me what to change. @SdkbIzno (talk) 17:57, 7 July 2023 (UTC)
Should be done. Izno (talk) 18:01, 7 July 2023 (UTC)
Will someone go to the talk page on Maria Mies and tell me specifically that it is beige and has text. No tiny colored icons, no screaming highlights? Thank you. SusunW (talk) 18:03, 7 July 2023 (UTC)
The only one who can test that is you, unfortunately. You can try closing your eyes and when you get there press (all three together) Ctrl + Shift + R, which will hard refresh the page, but you'll have to open them to check. Or if you have another able-bodied person lying around. Izno (talk) 18:04, 7 July 2023 (UTC)
Every color and highlight is gone and replaced with beige; though the icons remain. Give me a second and I can take them out too. DFlhb (talk) 18:05, 7 July 2023 (UTC)
I checked it by copying the css code to my stylesheet, and the bright bgcolors are gone. Should be the same for you too. Don't worry. —CX Zoom[he/him](let's talk • {C•X}) 18:06, 7 July 2023 (UTC)
Really afraid to look, but I did. The icons are there, but larger, more space keeps them from being jumbled into a mass of color and there are no highlights. I am able to see it without it causing the problem. Thank you! SusunW (talk) 18:11, 7 July 2023 (UTC)
Really sorry to hear of this. I'm a bit confused about what specifically in the change triggered the reaction, though, as there are lots of templates on Wikipedia that use bright colors and icons (as part of the overall 2000s-ish design). If we can figure that out more specifically (and I totally understand you not wanting to look at it again, SusanW), it'll be easier to resolve. I'll leave a note at WT:ACCESS to hopefully bring in some more accessibility-minded editors. {{u|Sdkb}}talk 16:58, 7 July 2023 (UTC)
I wish I knew specifically and then I could avoid it. Various times computers caused me issues, but when we bought a new television 8 years ago, nightly I was projectile vomiting and dizzy. After consulting with a physician, he ran a bunch of tests and diagnosed me with cyber sensitivity. My issues are related to both color and backlighting. I can tell you that the previous text with larger icons did not cause a problem. The many small icons and brilliant colors on Mies's talk yesterday triggered the problem, so my guess would be overload. Too many images, too many colors. SusunW (talk) 17:07, 7 July 2023 (UTC)
I checked that talk page- the banner shell is supposed to collapse once it contains a certain number of WikiProject banners yes? To limit/avoid banner blindness and fatigue? But there were five or six there and I had to add the collapse=yes parameter. SilverTiger12 (talk) 18:23, 7 July 2023 (UTC)
It's not, the shell doesn't autocollapse as far as I know. There was a discussion for it, but there was no consensus for autocollapsing. – MaterialWorks 18:52, 7 July 2023 (UTC)
@SilverTiger12, @MaterialWorks, yeah, I thought for a while that there was some threshold for autocollapsing, but then I found that failed proposal. As I see it, the core issue is that, even with the new design, we still devote an entire line to every project. This means that on highly active pages (the ones most at risk of banner bloat) with many projects, the uncollapsed banners can sometimes occupy 10+ lines. If we changed it so that all projects at a given importance level are listed on the same line (as in the mockup at the very beginning of this section), it would never go onto more than a few lines and we wouldn't really need to worry about collapsing. {{u|Sdkb}}talk 20:52, 7 July 2023 (UTC)
I very much appreciate SusunW's reactions here. As she is one of Wikipedia's most constructive and successfull editors, I am devastated by the problems this small group of technical editors are causing her. If any administrators are reading this page, I would urge them to revert the entire deployment as soon as possible. Changes like this without appropriate consultation should not be allowed.--Ipigott (talk) 18:10, 7 July 2023 (UTC)
I appreciate you Ipigott. This has been very difficult for me to work through, as even broaching a technical issue is hard for me. I honestly think it should not have to be an individual fix for "certain" editors. We need to be more aware that our collective actions may impact others. SusunW (talk) 18:14, 7 July 2023 (UTC)
Personally, I found both the bright colors and white background very useful. And I have a [different] sensory issue. So I oppose reverting the deployment, because you're not going to be able to satisfy everyone. Happy editing, SilverTiger12 (talk) 18:21, 7 July 2023 (UTC)
I agree that if a deployment is done it may not satisfy everyone, but would argue that a deployment should rarely (possibly never) be done without an opt out having been created and a wide consultation. SusunW (talk) 18:28, 7 July 2023 (UTC)
For the record, I do want to note that this update was deployed in good faith by editors who engaged in detailed discussion, performed adequate notification and considered accessibility guidelines. Editors in this discussion have been talking about "consultation" as if we run every template change by a committee of accessibility experts before updates are made, and we just don't. And shouldn't need to in most cases. I think we can agree no one involved could have anticipated the terrible and unfortunate impact that the nature of this template update has had on SusunW, and potentially other editors. Nothing "wrong" has occurred here, and I for one am impressed at the speed at which the team was able to address the issue, at least temporarily. Thanks to all. — TAnthonyTalk 18:56, 7 July 2023 (UTC)
Concur. In the #Moving ahead? section above, we had input from nine editors and fairly clear agreement, which seems a reasonable level of consensus on a template's talk page to make a change to that template. In retrospect, it's really unfortunate that we didn't discover the sensory vertigo issue during that phase, but we know of it now.
As for where to go from here, given that the white banners seem to have been at least part of the issue, and that overall reaction to the cream option @DFlhb mocked up in the testcases has ranged from neutral to highly positive, I think we should go ahead and deploy that to reduce the risk anyone else has a similar adverse reaction. As always, we can continue to refine the design from here — the iterative process applies to article work the same as it does to content work. Best, {{u|Sdkb}}talk 19:01, 7 July 2023 (UTC)
Giving heads up to design changes to WT:ACCESS (or a new noticeboard) to invite discussions on design would be good for pointing out accessibility but very bad because nothing will ever get consensus. SWinxy (talk) 19:28, 7 July 2023 (UTC)
I generally notify WT:UX of discussions like this, so feel free to follow that page. (In this case, it was missed because this section started out as more of an early stage idea brainstorming and only later turned toward implementable changes.) {{u|Sdkb}}talk 20:54, 7 July 2023 (UTC)
Cream background now deployed. Hopefully that's a better middle-ground between various accessibility needs. edit: bubbles are now much paler too, and none are more saturated than the previous beige shell colour (many are less saturated). DFlhb (talk) 20:36, 7 July 2023 (UTC)
That seems much less garish and distracting to me (that means, much better; banners are not supposed to be a distraction). I hope it is also less problematic for the bright-color-sensitive. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:07, 7 July 2023 (UTC)
Why is this local consensus allowed to deploy changes to all of Wikipedia without wider community involvement?
Simple question. The local consensus of 10 people above should not be allowed to make such a massive change to all Wikipedia articles without broader community involvement through a general RfC decision. I find it rather telling that there wasn't a plain option in the discussions above to oppose any changes happening at all. So I suppose I should state it here, even with the beige changes made above after having to be actively prodded by other editors about the really obvious visual accessibility problems with the forced through design change, I oppose all design deployment without a community RfC on the change. SilverserenC 06:22, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
I also welcome the beige shading but I agree with Silver seren that a drastic change like this should first be submitted to wider consultation.--Ipigott (talk) 07:06, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
I concur. Absolutely shouldn't be a wider consultation for all template changes, but banner shell is incredibly widely used and this is a significant visual change. -Kj cheetham (talk) 10:05, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
Indeed. The recent changes make Wikiprojects and importance ratings extremely prominent on about 2,880,000 pages. I see no discussion above as to whether that prominence is desirable or appropriate on article talk pages, let alone discussion with the wider community, a good number of whom will be utterly mystified as to where this change has come from, why or what to do about it. NebY (talk) 17:29, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
Would a post to a VP or on the centralized discussion template be desirable? 2.9 million pages affected is a large number. Should changes to templates with 1m+ transclusions require alerts to discussions to VPT, VPP or VPM? SWinxy (talk) 00:34, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
Using a template's talk page to suggest changes to that template is the way we generally do things. 2.9 million is certainly a sizeable impact, but it's also talk pages rather than article pages, so I'd say it's considerably less impactful than a change to that number of articles. In retrospect, there should have been more notices sent out, but as TAnthony pointed out above, there was nothing invalid about the process used, and the overall reception has been fairly positive by design change standards. More discussion is always welcome, so feel free to post at the pump (VPT would probably make the most sense) if you'd like, but post-deployment the change itself is probably going to be the main way most editors find out about this. {{u|Sdkb}}talk 01:41, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
This is the sort of (unhelpful) response I expected. So, what's the best community process then to get the deployment completely reversed? Because that's what I'm planning on doing, Sdkb. It was inappropriate to do this sort of change without broader community involvement and I plan to see it undone. SilverserenC 01:51, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
WP:IDONTLIKEIT applies to changes (to templates) as well. Please provide substantive concerns which can perhaps be addressed and then we might attempt to address them. Izno (talk) 02:13, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
How about WP:CONLEVEL, does that apply as well? Do changes pushed through on a template talk page that affects all Wikipedia talk pages in a significant manner deserve any form of respect when the community wasn't involved even at the Village Pump level, which is where the RfC for such a change should have occurred? No substantive problem was even given at the top of this discussion for the change in the first place, it was just assumed that everyone agreed. Local consensus to the extreme. SilverserenC 02:19, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
Sure, CONLEVEL applies, but there is no pre-existing higher level of consensus here, which is what CONLEVEL is about. It is not a card to use to veto a change that the users involved in a specific discussion think was a good change unless that veto can point to specific pre-existing policy or guideline (or commonly these days, a large RFC) on the matter.
You've got roughly a dozen users above who think the change was a good one. One person came forth and said "this breaks talk pages for me", and the dozen users said "ok, we can fix that [even if we would prefer otherwise]". That's how WP:Consensus works.
Anyway, the discussion above follows from this February 2023 RFC that said that ratings should be a "global" to all WikiProjects question. The primary question following the RFC regardless is "how do we reflect "global" assessments best in WPBS?" That leads to discussion for the past several months, starting from this section in archive 6 (and I trust you can navigate to archive 7). The further discussion eventually led to "we like how this looks". So from that perspective and after review, the CONLEVEL question supports this change, even if you might prefer the aesthetics of another, so you will need to identify specific aesthetic points that you think are insufficiently considered in the discussion(s) above and in the archives to be taken seriously. Izno (talk) 02:37, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
Discussion about new design
I'm uncomfortable with the new colour scheme, and like others here I'm looking for where the consensus was sought for making these changes. I've looked at your links Izno (and navigated to Archive 7), but couldn't see where the consensus was achieved for moving from this File:Article-level assessment example.jpg to the Baskin Robbins / Hello Kitty situation we have now. I see a consensus for merging assessments into the banner, but not for the colour scheme. It's the colour scheme we are concerned about, as it is too distracting and also somewhat inappropriately primary school. SilkTork (talk) 12:01, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
It follows from earlier discussions in the archive, but the discussion and consensus on the design changes are all to be found in this very thread starting at #How project banners should look. You'll probably find there was more discussion about these changes than there was for the original design in 2007 actually! Personally I would be more interested in your constructive comments about further improving the design than side discussions about process. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 16:07, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
Because to address the process would be to address the fact that the local consensus done on this side template talk page to make changes to all Wikipedia articles was wrong from the beginning? The fact that this has been "the way it's always been done" makes it even worse. Reminds me of issues we've had with Wikiprojects in the past trying to have strict control over articles in their areas and the general community has had to step in and knock them down. The fact that you've gotten so many editors that disagree with these changes both here and at Template talk:WPBannerMeta and seemingly at random places across Wikipedia because basically no one knows where these changes came from shows you that maybe y'all made the wrong decision. SilverserenC 16:16, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
I have left a notification at WP:VPR asking people to comment here — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 16:18, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
I think it's fine for now, it's definitely not as garish as some people are making it out to be. The only change I'd make is removing the icons, they clash a lot when theres many banners and don't convey much information at such a small size. If there's a consensus against the bubbles, we could always just use normal text without the background colors, like it was before. – MaterialWorks 16:49, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
Not just WP:RATER, but a number of other scripts too. I made a list of them at Template talk:WPBannerMeta/to do#Scripts needing update. Since the conversion isn't completed yet, I guess we will ask for an update to the scripts at a later date because a lot of things are being modified, added, removed on a frequent basis. If you come across other scripts that might need updates, feel free to list them there. So that we have a complete list of affected parties. —CX Zoom[he/him](let's talk • {C•X}) 10:26, 7 July 2023 (UTC)
CX Zoom, thanks for the reply, and good to know it's on the radar. I'll keep an eye out, thanks. -Kj cheetham (talk) 10:38, 7 July 2023 (UTC)
@GoingBatty: If you think the changes hit AWB also, feel free to add it to the list, if you are unsure add it anyway with the suffix "(potential)" which I'm using for scripts that may or may not be affected. —CX Zoom[he/him](let's talk • {C•X}) 06:03, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
Posting this here because I assume people who know what they're doing are more likely to be here (if I'm wrong please tell me where to go). The lists at WP:VA have somewhat broken, with many non-good/featured articles being listed without their class ratings (diff of the bot removing them). I assume that this is because of the banner shell changes causing the bot to not find the information where it thinks it should, but any help/fixing would be appreciated. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 10:03, 17 July 2023 (UTC)
Okay this was me, as part of the temporary conversion to WPBM which does not support the old category naming scheme. I've left a message with Kanashimi to ask if they can update the bot's code — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 10:20, 17 July 2023 (UTC)
I’m sorry for the robot malfunction that resulted from renaming the categories. I have fixed the code and it should be updated by tomorrow or the day after. Please kindly remind me what the new name of the categories are if this occurs again in the future. Kanashimi (talk) 11:07, 17 July 2023 (UTC)
Factor out 'listas'
Similarly to what was done to factor out param |class= from the individual WikiProjects, I think we should factor out param |listas= in the same way and let the projects inherit the value (if they use it), and for essentially the same reasons. The only thing is, I'm much less familiar with this param, and I'm not sure if the situations of class and listas are completely analogous or not. My understanding is that listas functions as a kind of {{DEFAULTSORT}} operator, and offhand, I can't think of why we'd want to sort something one way for one project, and another way for another one, but I may be missing something. Even if that were the case in some exceptional circumstances, it would still be useful to have the banner version, with the possibility of override in the projects, if they needed to. Mathglot (talk) 00:20, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
Yes, it is only for default sorting.
I see no utility to moving it myself in the sense that I think WP:BIO is the only project that uses listas. Most others don't see a need to spend time on sorting talk pages. Izno (talk) 00:49, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
Personally, I'd oppose moving listas= into the banner shell, because to my knowledge only WP:BIO uses it and thus passing it onto the others could, likely would, disrupt them. SilverTiger12 (talk) 01:23, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
Currently, |listas= uses {{DEFAULTSORT}} magic word. So, when a single project uses it, all categories on the talk page inherit it. For example, at Special:Diff/1164178803, I used |listas=-A for WPBIO, but it gets also inherited by WPUSA, which categories it under the - section. Since, one listas affects the whole page, I'd support moving it to the shell, as this will also help from potential conflicting DEFAULTSORTs. —CX Zoom[he/him](let's talk • {C•X}) 06:55, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
Moving it to the shell sounds sensible to me. Out of interest, what currently happens if multiple projects on the same page use it but with different values? Something like the first or last one sets it for the entire page?
SilverTiger12, are there any specific examples of possible disruption? -Kj cheetham (talk) 10:02, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
Template:DEFAULTSORT#Understanding_DEFAULTSORT says that the last occurring DEFAULTSORT is applied for the whole page. Did it practically, at Special:Diff/1164215717 and its true. I supplied three "listas" in three of the four banners: -A, *B, #C; all four WikiProjects inherited the last occurring "listas", i.e., #C. —CX Zoom[he/him](let's talk • {C•X}) 10:36, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
Which also means that WPBIO's "listas" comes at the last in the order of precedence, because WPBIO is always the topmost banner on the page. —CX Zoom[he/him](let's talk • {C•X}) 10:41, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
I don't really have any specific example in mind, just the possibility that if a WikiProject has things categorized without using listas, but then it is mass-implemented, that could disrupt any background processes or categorization. SilverTiger12 (talk) 19:26, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
@SilverTiger12: No categorisation will change. As explained elsewhere in this section, all WikiProject banners (that I have checked) provide the |listas= parameter, and if a talk page has two or more banners, only one of them needs to have the listas set for it to be effective for all of the other WikiProjects on that page. As an example, consider Talk:The Deer Hunter: it has eleven WikiProject banners, but only one of them has |listas=Deer Hunter, The. In virtually every one of the 62 categories listed at the bottom (excluding Category:Former good article nominees, where Module:Article history forces an override sortkey) the page is sorted under D, not under T. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:21, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
listas – This parameter, which is the equivalent of the DEFAULTSORT sortkey that should be placed on all biographical articles, is a sortkey for the article talk page (e.g. for John Smith, use |listas=Smith, John so that the talk page will show up in the S's and not the J's of the various assessment and administrative categories; similarly, for topics with titles beginning with an article such as "the" or "a" - e.g. for The Example, use |listas=Example, The so that the talk page will show up in the E's). This is important because it is one source used by those who set DEFAULTSORT on the article; consider also setting the DEFAULTSORT for the article when setting this parameter. For more information about this, please see Wikipedia:Categorization of people § Ordering names in a category. If the article is using {{WikiProject banner shell}} then it is preferable to add |listas= to that template instead of a project banner template. Putting the parameter on more than one template is not required.
Its behaviour has changed recently: in the pre-Lua version of {{WPBannerMeta}}, using |listas= on two or more WikiProject banners on the same talk page, with at least two different values for that parameter, would throw the error Warning: Default sort key "Bar" overrides earlier default sort key "Foo". and put the page in hidden Category:Pages with DEFAULTSORT conflicts. It seems that this no longer occurs (see this sandbox), although the override referred to in that error message certainly takes place, even though no error is shown.
I think WP:BIO is the only project that uses listas - the |listas= parameter is recognised by almost all WikiProject banners, and the only exception that I am aware of is milhist I know of no exceptions. I don't see any evidence that WikiProjects other than Biography don't use it (see e.g. Category:B-Class core film articles where several films beginning with the word "The" are not listed under T), but AFAIK {{WikiProject Biography}} is the only one which complains when there is no listas set. Even if Biography were the only one to make proper use of this parameter, I don't see any reason why |listas= should not be added to the banner shell. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 11:50, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
It may be moot now given comments above, but plenty of other projects use it (or, to be more accurate, plenty of editors *believe* other projects use it), such as Bridges, Christianity, India, Ireland, Pornography, United States and others (see advanced search). Mathglot (talk) 03:55, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
Probably the better search for a rough order of magnitude, about 70k uses (to your 150k) outside of pages that already have BIO on them. Which is not a very big number given that we're in the realm of 6.6m pages right now (well, subtract the biographies and that'd be about 5m, or about 1.4% of those pages). Izno (talk) 03:58, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
Maybe in addition to factoring out |listas= to the banner, we can also let the banner automatically handle this with titles that start with "A", "An", "The"? No reason to have to do manual work when the module can easily handle this. |listas= should in this situation be a manual override for the automatic work. Gonnym (talk) 16:24, 19 July 2023 (UTC)
Not a bad idea. We could be clever and for people get the family name (P734) and given name (P735) and automatically generate the lastname, firstname format from that — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 17:02, 19 July 2023 (UTC)
Following is a copy of a comment left by Liz in my talk page, with my reply. . Aymatth2 (talk) 16:43, 23 July 2023 (UTC)
Hello, Aymatth2,
I have a question about Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 198#Project-independent quality assessments closure. Not a complaint about the closure but how this change might affect pages that I monitor. Semi-regularly, I look over WikiProjects and sometimes change the status of the project to reflect an increased or decreased level of activity. Over the years, I've discovered that marking a WikiProject as "inactive" can affect or remove the quality assessment categories from articles. Occasionally, when all of the assessment categories for an inactive WikiProject are emptied, they are sometimes deleted.
Recently, I've noticed a new phenomena that I wonder might have something to do with the quality assessment banner change. To be upfront, I'm not well-versed on the article assessment process and even less so on banner templates, my interest in this subject has to do with the categories. But now I'm coming across WikiProjects where the some previously full categories are now emptied but others have been left alone. I think this will be better explained with an example, Wikipedia:WikiProject Insects/ant task force. Right now, all of the categories in Category:Ant task force articles by quality have been emptied but not the categories in Category:Ant task force articles by importance. And there are a large number of uncategorized by partially assessed articles in Category:Ant task force articles. These "by quality" categories were not emptied before now or I would have run into this issue months ago when I was last reviewing WikiProject categories. Over the past few months, I've run into other examples of where the "by quality" categories were emptied but not the "by importance" ones are not.
Could this be a problem localized to Task Forces of WikiProject? Or is this emptying of categories due to changes in the Talk page banners? Sometimes the status changes can take months to affect the emptying of categories but this doesn't seem to be the issue with the Ant task force or Bangladesh cricket task force. What do you think might be causing the emptying out of these categories, especially when other assessment categories haven't been emptied? Thanks for any insight you can provide or a pointer on whom I should talk to about this or where I might go. I'm really a neophyte when it comes to understanding the ramifications of templates. LizRead!Talk! 19:51, 22 July 2023 (UTC)
Hello Liz. That looks like a serious issue. I think the problem is that these projects have special logic in their talk page banners, e.g. in Template:WikiProject Insects, which has not been fixed to "inherit" |class= values from the banner shell. But I am guessing. I am going to copy your note to Template talk:WikiProject banner shell, where people with the right expertise can check it. Aymatth2 (talk) 16:43, 23 July 2023 (UTC)
I do not know what is causing it. In the ants case, most talk pages "show" correct categories but these pages are not listed at the respective category. A null-edit to the talk page fixes it, but this not ideal. For example, Category:Category-Class Ant task force articles shows two members (at the time of writing), now go to talk page of any assessment category of this taskforce, you would find Category:Category-Class Ant task force articles at the bottom, but the actual category page does not show this. A null edit to the cattalk page fixed this. But it is still very weird. —CX Zoom[he/him](let's talk • {C•X}) 17:46, 23 July 2023 (UTC)
Thanks for reporting this Liz. I have fixed the ants one (which is why CX Zoom noticed that null edits work). I think I will add some tracking to find similar errors because it has happened before. Category:Monotremes and marsupials articles by quality and Category:Jupiter articles by quality were other ones with a different value to "yes" in TF_QUALITY, now fixed. Regarding the other ones:
Tracking now added for the TF_n_QUALITY issue in Category:WikiProject banners with errors under "Q" and I fixed another 7 with the same issue yesterday — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 07:52, 24 July 2023 (UTC)
Tagging this VPT discussion for attention, though it involves importance, not quality. DFlhb (talk) 22:41, 24 July 2023 (UTC)
C
means, they're probably not looking for Category:FA-Class articles anyways. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 17:49, 28 May 2023 (UTC)
I've noticed some nice progress icons, that we might like to use — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:35, 6 June 2023 (UTC)
This level-3 vital article is rated C-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale.
Moved from User talk:MSGJ
level-4 vital article is rated B-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale. 
that conveys what I'm thinking of. We can have icons with progressively darker colors for higher importances as is current practice, with number of stripes denoting importance level. 1 for low, 2 for mid, 3 for high, 4 for top. All arrows would be pointed upwards. Bottom importance also exists, never seen it beyond WP:DOF pages, but it exists, so it would have one arrow oriented downwards. —CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • {C•X}) 16:21, 16 June 2023 (UTC)
Done — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 14:48, 3 July 2023 (UTC)
— Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:23, 6 July 2023 (UTC)
