Template talk:Article history

DYK Image?

While implementing my bot I noticed some talk pages have a DYK image (e.g. Talk:2022 United States infant formula shortage) and article history doesn't seem to have (at least a documented) way to include that in its DYK parameters. We should probably preserve the image in the template, so is it desirable to add a functionality for that? Also ping SandyGeorgia. 0xDeadbeef→∞ (talk to me) 08:41, 20 December 2023 (UTC)

Add the "hide" button

Please add the "hide" button to collapse this template. Most of the large banner groups have this option other than this, which leaves this sticking out. See Talk:Marvel Cinematic Universe as an example. Gonnym (talk) 13:43, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

Add lines for merges/splits to the chronological history list

It would be nice to be able to roll the information from {{merged-from}}, {{merged-to}}, {{split article}}, or {{copied}} into this "article history" list. Otherwise those banners end up taking up space at the top of talk pages indefinitely, even when, a decade later, they are largely irrelevant and unnecessary. If they could just be one (collapsable) line in a list of other "history", it would make the talk page easier to navigate for readers. This was previously proposed in Template talk:Article history/Archive 8 § Merges from other pages but did not garner any discussion. –jacobolus (t) 20:04, 13 January 2024 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure this was suggested and rejected in the last month or two, but don't recall where. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:32, 13 January 2024 (UTC)

To add on here:

I would also love to see some other possible 'milestones' that could remove more cruft and clutter. For example, it would be great if we could take out vestigial {{EB1911}} templates from pages where nearly no EB 1911 text remains, but keep a record of the fact that the article's history included such text by putting a line into {{Article history}} explicitly stating so with a link to the diff where the EB1911 material was added.

It might further be nice to have some free-form milestones, so I could add e.g. "User ABC fixed all of the citations" or "User XYZ did a complete rewrite of the 'applications' section" or "after discussion following a controversial title change, the article was moved to Blah", or "the 'history' section tripled in size and then was split into a separate article", etc.

It's too bad that the so-called "Article milestones" are limited only to a few particular types of entries built on formal bureaucratic processes, rather than letting us include the most reader- or editor-relevant page milestones significantly affecting the page. 01:00, 13 March 2024 (UTC) –jacobolus (t) 01:00, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

I would not support functionality for users to add those kinds of custom milestones. The purpose of this template is to record related pages to an article and processes undertaken by the entire WP community in relation to an article. That means ones that are subject to community scrutiny and follow rules set up by the community, such as GA or TFA. Parameters for custom milestones like individual editors' work would clutter the template and severely undermine its usefulness. In any event, it is redundant, since that information is already captured by the edit history. Ergo Sum 02:37, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

Why do you think it would "clutter the template"? We're talking about a relatively small number of default-hidden rows describing a very rough timeline summary for the benefit of readers who want to quickly understand the history of the article. Also: "undertaken by the entire WP community"? Hardly. Most of the rows currently expressed in this template are discussions between ~2–4 participants that aren't really fundamentally more interesting than other discussions on the talk page beyond having a blue rather than white background and sometimes resulting in adding/removing little badge symbols. Finally, "already captured by the edit history" – the edit history is usually a firehose of vandal fighting and minor tweaks, punctuated by long strings of weakly summarized edits by someone doing more significant work. It is not at all easy to make sense of at a glance. –jacobolus (t) 02:50, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

Because of experience. Just like poorly constructed infobox templates, this would be subject to bloat and abuse. Also, who is to say that a particular set of edits belongs in this template? All the formalized, established processes have clearly defined rules and criteria that are approved and updated when necessary by the WP community. So, even if it is just one GA reviewer, they are applying rules for which their is established consensus. Not so in the case of a single editor who is particularly smitten with their own work and thinks it should be in the template. Even if they mean well, those are two very different circumstances. Ergo Sum 13:57, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

What I like about the current version is that it is reasonably compact and declutters the talk page by taking a bunch of entries that would otherwise be separate eyesore banners and condenses them into one collapsed list. What I don't like about it is (a) there are still many obtrusive vestigial banners that are independently not that valuable to readers but take up a lot of space, and this template doesn't give any mechanism for folding them into the collapsed summary, and (b) it effectively says: "these are the most important things to know about the history of the article: here's when it wasn't deleted, here's when it got a little badge, here's when it lost the little badge, here's when it was reviewed and decided to keep the badge off, ..." But really these are not usually the most important things about the article's history, but just a timeline of some miscellaneous bureaucratic processes the article was involved in.

There's plenty of other information about the article's history that could be helpful to include in some kind of collapsed compressed summary to give context for readers, but it's impossible to discover them without making significant effort to wade through the full history of the article and its talk page. –jacobolus (t) 15:58, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

Those are all objective judgments. Adding a bunch of references or expanding a section are not: how many references should be added? What degree of expansion is the threshold? That makes them subjective calls: what one person decides would qualify for a milestone might be considered insignificant by another. In no time we would have people editwarring on what to put into the article history. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 16:22, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

Can the text for failed/ex GA/FA be made more concise?

It would be great to make this template as compact as possible in its collapsed form. The current failed GA text says:

XYZ was a Topic good articles nominee, but did not meet the good article criteria at the time. There may be suggestions below for improving the article. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake.

This text takes up a lot of space. I wonder if it can be shortened. Possibly the text could be cut down to just 1 sentence in the 'collapsed' state, or perhaps it could be shortened to e.g.

XYZ was a Topic good articles nominee, but did not meet the good article criteria at the time. If editors believe there was a mistake or if it has been improved since then it can be renominated.

–jacobolus (t) 20:14, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

I would support this; in particular, the line "There may be suggestions below for improving the article" at the very least is problematic. GANs may have been archived since then so there's a good chance they're not "below". Aza24 (talk) 21:17, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

maindate1

Could someone familar with modules create the parameter maindate1 as an alias for maindate please, so that edits like this keep the relevant page in Category:Featured articles that have appeared on the main page twice. Thanks. — Voice of Clam (talk) 07:18, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

Pinging @Mr. Stradivarius: as the main editor of the module. — Voice of Clam (talk) 07:21, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

Topic for GAs

A change was recently made to the GA topics, and now "football" (among other things) is a valid topic for GA. The sports section at GAN is now divided into football and other sports. GARs are listed at GAN under the relevant topic, so when Australian rules football was GARed recently, it appeared in "Other sports reassessments" because the topic was taken from article history. I changed the topic to "football", which has corrected the placement of the GAR on the GAN page, but now the talk page AH banner says "has been listed as one of the good articles" instead of "has been listed as one of the Sports and recreation good articles", so it appears AH is aware of the GAN topic list. What needs to be done to make it aware of the new key words? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 23:00, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

This is now fixed. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 12:05, 23 March 2024 (UTC)

Requested move 17 May 2024

• Template:Article history → Template:Page history
• Module:Article history → Module:Page history

– This is not just for articles; it is for pages of various sorts (for example, it has parameters for old TFDs, MFDs, and featured portals). Thus, the current name is actively misleading.

{{Page history}} does currently exist as a redirect to {{history}}. However, the redirect has only 11 uses which can easily be adjusted, and in general it is a silly redirect. I am not sure why you would want to use a "shortcut" which is literally the target page with additional text stuck on the beginning. HouseBlaster (talk · he/him) 16:35, 17 May 2024 (UTC)

Could you provide an example of any page that is not the talk page of an article on which this template is used? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:17, 17 May 2024 (UTC)

This search gets all of them. (Most uses are on article talk pages, but a non-insignificant number are not.) Examples include Wikipedia talk:List of Wikipedians by number of edits, Template talk:Tom Hanks, and Portal talk:The arts. HouseBlaster (talk · he/him) 17:49, 17 May 2024 (UTC)

All three of those examples are poor uses of this template and for which other templates are available (as I suspected). The template has been misused in the three examples given. Since changing this template would mess up ALL kinds of things everywhere, I suggest instead repairing the instances where the original purpose of this template has been distorted by misuse. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:40, 17 May 2024 (UTC)

I would be happy if the result of this discussion is to remove the parameters for non-article pages (and therefore use different templates as appropriate on non-article-talk pages). I still think that if we are going to advertise this as a template for non-article pages in the documentation by providing parameters for TFD, MFD, etc., it should be reflected in the title. HouseBlaster (talk · he/him) 01:15, 18 May 2024 (UTC)

HouseBlaster I don't know how to read the code or understand how (or even if) the template got altered from its original intent and design, but I don't see where we are "advertis[ing] this as a template for non-article pages in the documentation" and I'm unsure how or when it came to be used that way. Where on the page do you see it is advertised for non-article pages (you may have to give it to me in dummy 101 language :) I suspect the template is simply being misused on certain pages, as it was originally intended to track articles through different assessment processes, and I fear that having it grow beyond that use is asking for problems. (I could be wrong-- technodummy.). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:05, 18 May 2024 (UTC)

@SandyGeorgia: I have no idea about the history of this template, but I can certainly see that it has become a very feature-rich. If I may be philosophical for a minute, sometimes being an all-purpose template is beneficial: nobody complains that {{citation}} is trying to be too many things at once. There are also times that trying to be an all-purpose template is harmful: "jack of all trades, master of none" and all. This template might very well be trying to take on too many "responsibilities", in which case splitting it out into separate templates would be a good idea.

To answer your question: there is no place in the documentation that says HEY GUESS WHAT DID YOU KNOW THAT YOU CAN USE THIS ON ALL TYPES OF TALK PAGES!!!!!. I was referring to the fact that this template contains parameters documented in #Syntax which only apply to non-articles. For instance, under the "Deletion processes" header, you can see that this template currently takes |TFD= and |MFD= parameters. (Obviously, mainspace articles don't go to TFD or MFD.) It also has parameters (see the "Featured content process" header) for featured portals. HouseBlaster (talk · he/him) 02:22, 18 May 2024 (UTC)

HouseBlaster thanks for all that -- most helpful. I was involved in establishing this template on every then-extant FA way back in 2007 or 2008, although Gimmetrow handled all the technical stuff. So I'm not in a position to say whether we have now turned in to a "Jack of all trades, master of none" situation by extending beyond the original intent, or whether it has become a helpful all-purpose template that needs renaming. But I hope we've raised the right questions at least, for the six bots that use this template. I shall keep watching to see if a direction develops! Thx again, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 03:25, 18 May 2024 (UTC)

I made an example conversion of Wikipedia talk:List of Wikipedians by number of edits, a page already on my watchlist, to show how {{Old XfD multi}} may be used. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 12:13, 18 May 2024 (UTC)

Yes to that; I'm wondering how many of them can be cleaned up (since it appears to be only a few hundred per Novem), and if we could then adjust the documentation here to avoid further misuse? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:02, 18 May 2024 (UTC)

@SandyGeorgia: and thank you for taking this seriously! I am certain—no matter what happens with this rename—the template, and thus Wikipedia, will be better off than it was in no small part from your insistence on getting this done the right way. :) HouseBlaster (talk · he/him) 14:23, 18 May 2024 (UTC)

My pleasure ... thanks for bringing forward the problem. Not many people have been around long enough to remember how bad talk pages were before Gimmetrow undertook this effort, and Maralia and I did the grunt work, so I keep an eye on it. Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2008-03-24/Dispatches, Taming talk page clutter, March 2008. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:05, 18 May 2024 (UTC)

• Support per nom. Crouch, Swale (talk) 17:38, 17 May 2024 (UTC)
• Comment. Perhaps not a reason to oppose the move, but I suspect there is bot code that depends on the current name. There's certainly code in ChristieBot that expects "article history" (including capitalization variants); it wouldn't be that big a job to change it but I'd prefer not to unless the move is actually needed, rather than just tidying. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 20:25, 17 May 2024 (UTC)

  It will also mess up FACbot; @Hawkeye7:. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:41, 17 May 2024 (UTC)

  Yes, it would require a change to the FACBot and MilHistBot as it depends on that name. Not a major change; everything runs through a single module that deals with the Article History template. It would need to be coordinated though. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 21:59, 17 May 2024 (UTC)

  Novem Linguae do you need to look at this? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:33, 17 May 2024 (UTC)

  Also, @0xDeadbeef: SandyGeorgia (Talk) 03:28, 18 May 2024 (UTC)

• Looks like theres 48518 article talk transclusions and 242 non article talk transclusions. 48518 is a lot of template names to change, and also multiple bot and user script code. Looking pragmatically at this, is it really worth the effort? –Novem Linguae (talk) 14:39, 18 May 2024 (UTC)
  • A redirect would still be left—WP:NOTBROKEN would apply. I don't know about bot/user script code, though. If it would be a royal pain in the rear to update scripts/etc., we shouldn't rename. If it is a matter of adding/updating a line or two of code, I think it is beneficial for template names to reflect what they do (see WP:TPN). HouseBlaster (talk · he/him) 14:46, 18 May 2024 (UTC)