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)