Wikipedia talk:Talk page layout

Update?

@SilkTork, re this edit, it looks like this discussion hasn't received a close yet. Should we wait for that to happen before adjusting here? {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 21:29, 5 February 2022 (UTC)

I thought Mathglot's edit updating the "only where it's needed" instruction and subsequent comment on 28 December 2021 saying they had done so was the close. SilkTork (talk) 01:23, 6 February 2022 (UTC)

Ah, I see that now. Yeah, if that hasn't been challenged, looks fine. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 01:32, 6 February 2022 (UTC)

{{Talk header}} Usage

Headbomb and SilkTork, please stop reverting each other and come to the talk page to discuss the changes. SilkTork, you made a bold change, Headbomb reverted you, now let's all discuss. This page has attracted too much drama in the past to have two prolific editors engage in a slow-burning edit war on a minor instruction on template usage. « Gonzo fan2007 (talk) @ 14:11, 10 February 2022 (UTC)

Thanks User:Gonzo_fan2007. Headbomb, the documentation has been updated following a discussion. If you look at the documentation today, you'll note that User:Mathglot has amended it in line with the RfC, so that the documentation no longer reads "should only be used where it is needed". This matter was raised by User:Sdkb directly above. The wording you quote: "However, this is not an absolute rule, and editors should use common sense when deciding its placement", comes after " By convention, this template goes at the very top of the talk page, above WikiProject templates and other talk-page banners", and is referring to where on the talkpage it should be placed, not that it "should only be used where it is needed", ie, that it should only be placed on talkpages in certain circumstances. The RfC concluded that it could be placed on any talkpage, but that nobody should now go round mass placing the template. SilkTork (talk) 16:58, 10 February 2022 (UTC)

Thanks SilkTork, that was my read on the RFC and believe that the current reading on this Info page does not reflect that. Maybe there is a middle ground where we state {{Talk header}} may be placed on any talk page, but should not be placed en-masse on all talk pages or something similar? Headbomb, any thoughts on that? « Gonzo fan2007 (talk) @ 17:47, 10 February 2022 (UTC)

Yes, that would be fine. Given the functionality that is being added to the template, I can see that it would eventually end up on most talkpages, though historically we have encountered problems with people blindly adding templates en-masse, so a notice saying that doing such a thing would be regarded as unacceptable would both be useful, and in line with the consensus of the RfC. SilkTork (talk) 18:13, 10 February 2022 (UTC)

The RFC (which is also pretty close, 8-6 by my count, and it would be 8-7 had I known it was going on) is not a blanket approval on putting {{talk header}} on every page, and this page reflects that. Add {{talk header}} when it's needed. If it's not needed, don't add it. This is line with the existing documentation and the actual consensus on that page. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 19:22, 10 February 2022 (UTC)

As someone who commented but didn't feel strongly enough to !vote in the discussion (it was CENT-listed but not technically an RfC), what I gather here is that it was close enough that it should have a formal close from an uninvolved editor. I'll post a request at WP:CR and I'll ask Mathglot if they might be willing to restore the status quo ante until that happens. Cheers, {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 19:39, 10 February 2022 (UTC)

@Sdkb: No problem; to avoid misunderstanding, can you link the revision you want removed? Or, just feel free to do it. Mathglot (talk) 19:59, 10 February 2022 (UTC)

@Mathglot, it's Special:Diff/1062162289, I believe. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 20:03, 10 February 2022 (UTC)

Done. Mathglot (talk) 20:52, 10 February 2022 (UTC)

Reducing arbitrariness

Looking at the current layout, 16 items is a lot to take in at once, and the mind looks for order and it's hard to find. Trying to take a 40,000-foot view, it seems to me like there were some commonalities there, that I couldn't quite see with the current ordering. I attempted to analyze the list to see if imposing an additional level of abstraction above the current list of sixteen might reduce the seeming arbitrariness of the list. Here is what I came up with:

• Talk page nav (top): (T)
  • {{Skip to bottom}} (note: was 2. {{Skip to talk}}, but that takes up vertical space, whereas this floats and does not)
• Topic and article quality (A)
  • 1. Active nominations
  • 4. {{Vital article}}
• Header – {{Talk header}} (A/T)
• Article editing restrictions, warnings, and guidance (A)
  • 5. High-importance attention templates – {{Ds/talk notice}}, {{Gs/talk notice}}, {{BLP others}}
  • 7. Language-related talk page guideline banners, such as {{American English}} or {{British English}}
  • 11 (part). {{Connected contributor}}
  • 13. {{Reliable sources for medical articles}}
• Talk page advice and warnings: (T)
  • 6. Specific talk page guideline banners, such as {{Calm}}, {{censor}}, {{Controversial}}, {{Not a forum}}, {{FAQ}}, or {{Round in circles}}
• Article issues, collaboration, and improvement: (A)
  • 9. WikiProject banners, in a {{WikiProject banner shell}} template
  • 10. {{Image requested}}, {{Infobox requested}},
  • 12. {{To do}} or {{Consensus}},
• History and attribution (A)
  • 8. Article history and milestones: {{Article history}} but also {{GA}}, {{FailedGA}} etc
  • 14. Attribution history: Copy, split, merge, translate, etc.
• Stats, Metadata, and externals: (A)
  • 15. metadata: {{Annual readership}} and {{Section sizes}}
  • 11 (part). {{Press}}
• Talk page nav (bottom): (T)
  • 16. {{Archives}} and similar

Note that this gives five sections about the article and four about the Talk page. These are tagged '(A)' and '(T)', suggesting a further possible axis of abstraction. That's nine total sections, and somewhere I read that seven is the magic number for what most humans can hold in memory, so I'd love to abstract it down to seven, if possible. Mathglot (talk) 21:06, 10 February 2022 (UTC)

Vital articles should be with Wikiprojects, not active nominations. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 21:42, 10 February 2022 (UTC)

@Headbomb:, thanks for your comment. Currently at WP:TALKORDER, Vital articles are at #4, and WikiProjects at #9. The abstraction I was going for in grouping the two, was Quality. Clearly, "active nominations" are about recognizing article quality, and it seems to me that Vital articles are about topic quality, because even if the article is a plagiarized, unattributed, one-line stub, it's possible that the topic is a top-level vital one. (In fact, the term vital article is a misnomer; it's not the article that is vital, but the topic.) Hence, the grouping of the two, and the separation from WikiProjects, which seems to me more to do with collaboration and management within a subject area. You could, I suppose, say that WikiProjects are there to "improve the quality" of articles within their purview, but then again, so is the entire project and everything we do here, so that seems kind of meaningless. Anyway, that's why I tried grouping those two. Mathglot (talk) 03:17, 11 February 2022 (UTC)

The thing is vitality isn't about quality, it's about importance, and really this is more or less equivalent to {{WikiProject Vital Articles}} which is basically unused in favour of {{Vital article}}. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 03:58, 11 February 2022 (UTC)

For me, vital articles is a WikiProject (Wikipedia:WikiProject Vital Articles) and the template should go with other WikiProject templates. The decision as to which articles are listed as vital is done by consensus of those participating in the project. As such it has no more significance than any WikiProject deciding that a topic is important or not. We shouldn't be misleading readers into thinking there is any kind of authority in the decision to list certain articles as vital and not others. SilkTork (talk) 05:59, 11 February 2022 (UTC)

@SilkTork:, that's a really good point, and I have two thoughts:

• maybe {{Vital}} doesn't belong in a "quality" grouping, but rather in a "local consensus" grouping. I'm trying to think if there are other TP banner templates like that, or if this is a unique case.
• it suggests another kind of possible grouping, namely, the level of consensus or authority: we have banners with everything from Arbcom D/s notices and BLP notices, to policy/guideline-based, to purely informational, and they all have the same look-and-feel. I wonder if different shades of the current #F8EABA background color would help? Maybe, ArbCom & BLP, "medium"-level banners, current, and "informational"?

Mathglot (talk) 22:25, 11 February 2022 (UTC)

I don't see Vital as being essentially any different to a standard WikiProject banner in regards to giving a topic "importance", so it could sit inside {{WPB}}, where it is sometimes found, though I have also found it inside BannerHolder. Be interesting to see the thinking behind why folks feel it should take precedence over other WikiProjects, and be placed alone in a prominent location. It may be useful to readers to provide some information in the template - something like "Some Wikipedia editors feel this topic/article ranks as Level 3 on Wikipedia's Vital articles importance scale".

I like what you are doing as regards sorting out talkpage templates, and I like your idea of grouping templates by theme. Ideally what we need to do is reduce some of the clutter that appears on talkpages. However, people who create and use some of these templates would understandably like them to be kept, and would like them to be displayed. Perhaps we have got to the point where all talkpage templates should be reviewed to see if there is consensus to continue using them (though I suspect the default on that would be to keep all). An example of what I feel is a misplaced talkpage template is stuff like {{British English}}; far more useful is {{British English editnotice}} - ie, place the template where people are going to edit. SilkTork (talk) 10:27, 12 February 2022 (UTC)

@Mathglot and SilkTork: Please note that {{Vital}} and {{Vital article}} are not the same: the first is a redirect to {{WikiProject Vital Articles}} (and being built around {{WPBannerMeta}}, is a true WikiProject banner and may be placed inside {{WikiProject banner shell}} which will collapse it); the second is a non-WikiProject banner, built around {{tmbox}}, so is not collapsible - not even with {{Banner holder}}. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 12:53, 12 February 2022 (UTC)

I'm not seeing any value in {{Vital}}. It simply says that the article is of interest to WikiProject Vital Articles, but gives no ranking. It has been placed on Tetsuya Umeda, which is an oddity, as I doubt anyone would consider that a vital article. Indeed, some might consider that article has no notability. It was added by User:Mcampany; be interesting to know if they added it by accident; and, if not, why they added it. SilkTork (talk) 13:09, 12 February 2022 (UTC)

@SilkTork: It was definitely a mistake and I removed it. Thanks for the ping! Mcampany (talk) 19:06, 12 February 2022 (UTC)

Quite like this colour-differentiation proposal, and support the regrouping as proposed. DFlhb (talk) 14:48, 25 February 2023 (UTC)

@Mathglot: While I agree with your concept in general, I disagree with your placement of {{translate}}. See User talk:GoingBatty/Sandbox for an example of the problem created by placing the small {{translate}} template above large templates such as {{Annual readership}} and {{Section sizes}}. GoingBatty (talk) 04:16, 11 February 2022 (UTC)

@GoingBatty:, thanks for your comment. In the grouping above, I tried to retain some semblance of the original order on the project page, despite my own preferences. If I understand your objection from your sandbox, it's because it's a small, right-aligned box, and if that's the case, then I would agree with you. But two points here: there is no reason to use the {{translated}} template as a "small" template: it makes an ugly, fat squat box that takes up a lot of vertical space and pushes the page content down; it's much better to use the wide, horizontal version. Furthermore, they should be collapsed just like WikiProjects and some other banners. For examples, please see: Talk:War guilt question, or Talk:Liberation of France. (If it were up to me, I'd force that template to default to wide/thin, but that's a different topic.) As far as the fat/squat Archives box in your sandbox example, I'm opposed to that one, too, especially since it no longer has any function on pages that contain a Talk header. The main issue with {{translated}} for me, is that it should be kept with {{copied}}, since they are both about attribution advice; after that, whether they are placed near the top or near the bottom is less of an issue afaic. But if I could eliminate those fat, ugly banners in a stroke, I would. Mathglot (talk) 19:02, 11 February 2022 (UTC)

@Mathglot: You're right, my objection is because it defaults as a small, right-aligned box. I agree with your proposal of keeping {{translated|small=no}} with {{copied}}. GoingBatty (talk) 20:09, 11 February 2022 (UTC)

I'm seeing the germ of a topic worthy of a separate discussion here, namely, the issue of the fugly boxes. I'm mulling over starting one, as it seems like a sub-topic of the ongoing discussions about TP banner clutter. Mathglot (talk) 21:09, 11 February 2022 (UTC)

Vital tags should be placed with WikiProjects

I agree with both Headbomb and SilkTork that the Vital tags should be placed with WikiProjects. The Vital designation is no more than a WikiProject finding and we should not be cluttering the talk page unnecessarily with similar tags that can be added to a WP banner. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 05:18, 13 January 2023 (UTC)

There's been no opposition to that suggestion, and we now have at least three in favour. If there are no objections in the next seven days I will amend WP:TALKORDER to read:

1. Active nominations, when applicable – {{GA nominee}}, {{Featured article candidates}}, or {{Peer review}}
2. {{Skip to talk}} – should only be necessary on talk pages with several banners
3. {{Talk header}} – should only be used where it is needed; see documentation
4. High-importance attention templates – {{Ds/talk notice}}, {{Gs/talk notice}}, {{BLP others}}
5. Specific talk page guideline banners, such as {{Calm}}, {{Censor}}, {{Controversial}}, {{Not a forum}}, {{FAQ}}, or {{Round in circles}}
6. Language-related talk page guideline banners, such as {{American English}} or {{British English}}
7. Any "article history" (e.g., {{GA}}, {{FailedGA}}, {{Old XfD multi}}, {{Old prod}}) or "article milestone" (e.g., {{DYK talk}}, {{On this day}}, {{ITN talk}}) banner, preferably within an {{Article history}} template
8. WikiProject banners, including {{Vital article}}, in a {{WikiProject banner shell}} template when 3+ are present, such as {{WikiProject Elements}} and {{WikiProject Television}}

I am unclear on if there is actually a preference for {{WikiProject Vital Articles}}/{{Vital}} over {{Vital article}}, though I note that {{WikiProject Vital Articles}}/{{Vital}} will collapse in {{WikiProject banner shell}}, though cannot be adjusted to show importance or rating. SilkTork (talk) 10:19, 13 January 2023 (UTC)

There's been no opposition to that suggestion I thought that I had expressed opposition.

{{WikiProject Vital Articles}} (and {{Vital}}, which is its redirect) will collapse because it is a true WikiProject banner template built around {{WPBannerMeta}}. However, its doc does state ... pages that concern Wikipedia:WikiProject Vital Articles. It should not be used on the talk pages of vital articles themselves; use {{Vital article}} for this. The {{Vital article}} template, as I have pointed out before, is not a true WikiProject banner template - it is not built around {{WPBannerMeta}} but around {{tmbox}}, and won't collapse when used inside WPBS. The banner shall is not the place to put non-collapsing banners.

As I mentioned at User talk:Kanashimi#Placement of Vital article, the present advice to put {{Vital article}} earlier than the WikiProject banners has been in place since August 2014, more than eight years ago. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 11:01, 13 January 2023 (UTC)

"The banner sh[e]ll is not the place to put non-collapsing banners."

So let's convert it and make it collapse. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 21:10, 13 January 2023 (UTC)

YES. Let's solve one of the (many) problems with talk page clutter. The idea of 17 different things at talk before you get to talk is beyond absurd, as is the placement of one less-than-even-a-WikiProject (Vital articles) above so many other items or more relevance. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:42, 13 January 2023 (UTC)

There is {{Banner holder}} which is intended to enclose banners that are not WikiProject banners, but it doesn't cause the enclosed banners to reduce to a single line - they are either fully visible or entirely hidden, unless they are self-collapsing, as with {{Annual readership}}. See for example Talk:World War II. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 11:25, 14 January 2023 (UTC)

Just a quick note that the user script User:Evad37/rater currently inserts {{Vital article}} inside the banner shell. Without knowing about this discussion, earlier today, I filed a bug report to get it to stop doing that. I'll keep an eye on this discussion and amend my bug report if needed. Whatever is decided here, I think it's important that this page (WP:TALKORDER) contain the canonical rules, and user scripts should be modified to follow it when possible. –Novem Linguae (talk) 02:08, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

Sounds good. I generally put anything not covered by the above into {{Banner holder}}. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 17:15, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

Here's an example of how useful the Vital Project is:

• An obscure artist, William Utermohlen, is written by
• the same editor who adds it to Vital
• and when I inquire at the Project about this obscure person being "vital", and listed by the person who wrote it, I get no answer.

That's it; this has even less significance than one-person reviewer processes-- these designations can be added by anyone and are subject to no independent scrutiny. William Utermohlen is still listed as a vital article.

Vital should be either in the WikiProject Banner Shell, or in the regular Banner holder, and they do not warrant any other ranking on talk pages. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:45, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

• We have a consensus of five in favour of downscaling Vital article and one against in this rather slow moving discussion. I shall update the guideline. SilkTork (talk) 21:51, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

  As someone who is both vehemently opposed to talk page clutter and sees some potential for the vital articles system, I have a few thoughts here.

  First, I have to start on a process point, which is that this conversation is rather slow moving likely because WT:WikiProject Vital Articles was not notified of it. They deserve to have the opportunity to comment on a proposal that would significantly affect them, and the wider community deserves the chance to weigh in as well given the large-scale impact on talk pages. Also, there was a VPR discussion in the not-too-distant past on this exact question; it came to no consensus, which per WP:CONLEVEL overrules this. Therefore, I'm going to send out invites and keep the status quo until the invited folks have had a chance to comment. Sorry to delay the resolution, but it'll be worthwhile to achieve something that sticks as a non-local consensus.

  Moving on to the substance of the discussion, I think we need to zoom out a bit. The operating questions here are: What information will be helpful to talk page visitors, and how do we best concisely communicate it?

  SandyGeorgia, from your comments, I gather that have a dim view of the Vital Articles endeavor overall. I agree that the project has some significant issues, but I don't think it's useless. Wikipedia overall struggles to direct attention to broad-topic, high importance articles. It needs some way to identify those articles that isn't just pageviews (which are skewed by both recentism and systemic bias). That's the niche that Vital Articles fills. On vetting, the example you gave is for level-5, which is still under construction and indeed is not subject to significant scrutiny. But the higher levels do receive substantial scrutiny.

  So do vital article designations have utility to talk page viewers? I would say yes, since they can serve as signals to help direct attention. For instance, let's say an editor is gnoming and comes to an article like Mansa Musa and its talk page. Not knowing much about West African history, they haven't heard of Musa, don't bother to read the lead section, and aren't inclined to stick around very long. But on seeing the level-3 {{Vital article}} tag, they're alerted to the fact that Musa is a very important historical figure, and that the article on him ought to be prioritized for improvement beyond its current C-class status. This is also what differentiates the vital article designations from the information in project banners, which communicate only that the article falls within some (normally obvious) topic area.

  However, the information the talk page visitor actually needs is very small. It could be displayed as merely VA-3. They certainly don't need an entire banner composed mostly of filler.

  Given all this, I think what we should be discussing is where to move the condensed version of the information. To throw out some ideas, turning it into a topicon (an image at upper right near any protection icon, probably consisting of the level number superimposed on the VA logo), putting it in {{Talk header}}, or putting it in the header of {{WikiProject banner shell}} are all possibilities. If we can figure out something that looks good, I think it'll be a solution that satisfies both sides here.

  Cheers, {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 05:01, 21 February 2023 (UTC)

  If I'm understanding you right, I think the presence of a small notification that "this is a vital topic" would be better placed on the article itself (like it is for featured articles and good articles). I agree that the consensus-building process for which articles are "vital" is very flawed at the moment. There's just too many articles at levels 4 and 5 for a high level of scrutiny on all of them, so imo something like this should be restricted to levels 1 to 3 (if it was done, which would require its own separate consensus).

  Given that, I think this is separate to the talk page issue. I agree with above that the vital article template used on talk pages should be part of the condensed wikiproject grouping. OliveYouBean (talk) 07:54, 21 February 2023 (UTC)

  I have no objection to further talk, and drawing in more people. However, the current consensus is in favour of downscaling the importance of the Vital articles template in order to reduce talkpage clutter, therefore, until consensus is changed, the template is downscaled. Consensus must now be sought to upscale or return the template's importance. Each WikiProject would feel that they wish to draw readers' attention to their project - the question here is why is this WikiProject regarded as more special than all the others that their endeavours get singled out? I'm wondering if a general discussion on the importance and value of the Vital articles project is appropriate for this venue, and if the discussion should be at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals) where more people are likely to see it. SilkTork (talk) 08:45, 21 February 2023 (UTC)

  There was a proposal to abolish the project at VPR in 2020 which got snow-closed. But I do think it might be time to revisit it there, since some sort of reform is needed. The reason I stopped participating is that, sorta opposite SandyGeorgia's concerns, in my experience the project became consumed by debates over which articles to raise/lower to which level, which were already make-work tasks and became even moreso as participants failed to agree on precisely what constituted vitality and therefore went in circles. Since then, I know CactiStaccingCrane has overhauled the project pages and tried to refocus it toward improving the articles within its scope.

  Regarding the "special treatment" argument you and SandyGeorgia are making, most project importance ratings are very narrowly scoped: they're the importance to that project, and have essentially no worth to anyone outside of it (and dubious worth within it — if you think the VA list lacks oversight, I have bad news about project importance ratings...). The VA ratings, by contrast, are for the entire encyclopedia. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 16:07, 21 February 2023 (UTC)

  Elevating Vital to the level of FA ?? That is exactly the opposite of the direction I advocate. It has even less scrutiny than GA, which is a one-person review; I don't know why we feature one-person anything in mainspace. The Vital Project acts with no more scrutiny or authority than any group of editors who come together as in a WikiProject, and should be treated as one. It's an internal, talk page matter. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 11:48, 21 February 2023 (UTC)

  @OliveYouBean, I agree with @SandyGeorgia here. The vital article ranking lists themselves have some reader-facing value as they're a good link from WP:Contents, but whether or not an individual article is considered vital is information that should provided for editors, not readers. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 16:11, 21 February 2023 (UTC)

  Oh sorry for the poorly-worded comment, I wasn't trying to argue that something should be put on the article page, I think I just misunderstood the comment you were making as saying something should be reader-facing not editor-facing and was trying to understand that. If anything I was trying to emphasise that the lower levels don't provide anything useful to the readers. That's my bad.

  I agree with SilkTork and SandyGeorgia that the vital articles project shouldn't be treated any differently from any other project. It should have (at most) a wikiproject box on the talk page. OliveYouBean (talk) 03:59, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

  Sdkb, doubly reinforcing my view is this text from Wikipedia:Vital articles/Level/5:

  • The level 5 Vital Articles list is monitored by the WikiProject Vital Articles.

  Even they acknowledge it is a WikiProject (so why aren't we adding it to talk pages like any other), and they don't monitor Level 5 as they say they do. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 12:28, 21 February 2023 (UTC)

  It seems you're pursuing an impossible standard — there is no WikiProject that actively monitors with oversight everything within its scope. That said, I agree that level-5 has issues and was a questionable creation in the first place — I would very much consider a proposal to display only level-4+. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 16:15, 21 February 2023 (UTC)

  As a (semi-active) member of WikiProject Vital articles, I agree that the concept of vital articles is useful overall. I also agree that talk pages are often far too cluttered with banners (BTW, when are we going to make them mobile-friendly?). I'd support putting it in WPBannerShell and adding collapsibility; and also support adding a topicon on the article talk page. Most these articles are vital, despite scrutiny concerns; and most of them are severely neglected, so a topicon would be much appreciated to raise attention in a minimal and unobtrusive way. DFlhb (talk) 14:42, 25 February 2023 (UTC)

  • You all are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2023 May 4#Template:Vital article, where I have proposed displaying as just e.g. VA-3 as mentioned above. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 15:06, 4 May 2023 (UTC)

    There is now a follow-up discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Vital Articles#TfD follow-up: Fate of the vital article talk banner. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 19:42, 27 May 2023 (UTC)

  Agree that it's not helpful that {{Vital article}} currently appears above even contentious topic warning. Even if not collapsed into general project banner, it should at least go down right above projects. But not almost at the very top of banners. AncientWalrus (talk) 08:20, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

Language-related banners

SilkTork I would prefer to see 6. Language-related talk page guideline banners, such as {{American English}} or {{British English}} at the end, as they are so often obvious, and are also most often templated at the top of the article. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:43, 13 January 2023 (UTC)

I would go further and say that language-related guideline banners should only go on the edit notice. That's where it is most useful, and will be seen when the page is opened for editing. An editing guideline on the talkpage is less useful, and adds to clutter. SilkTork (talk) 22:56, 13 January 2023 (UTC)

Fully agreed, there, @SilkTork. I proposed that in 2021 and it unfortunately didn't achieve consensus. Perhaps we'd have more success looking at the lessons learned there and trying again. Cheers, {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 16:22, 21 February 2023 (UTC)

Consolidate templates

It's fine to consolidate the advice on this page into fewer groupings based on the responses above but I think the most impactful action would be to reduce the number of discrete "attention" templates into one that will actually be read and heeded. Having the relevant "attention" templates put succinctly in the same box would be more effective than any generic {{talk header}}. czar 21:54, 13 January 2023 (UTC)

I agree that the fewer templates on the talkpage the better, and if several templates can be merged into one, that would be better than organising them into groups that would still appear as a distracting cluster on the talkpage. If templates can be identified which could be merged, then a merge discussion could be had at WP:TFD. SilkTork (talk) 16:03, 14 January 2023 (UTC)

sidebar on former educational assignment templates

• While we're looking at this, could we specify where {{educational assignment}} fits? Perhaps within group 8, "article history and milestones", but it would be good to see it explicitly mentioned. Thanks. PamD 08:23, 11 February 2022 (UTC)

  @PamD:, I would've definitely included these, however they are no longer header templates since an Rfc decided to convert them all to individual talk sections instead, and Primebot has been doing the conversions. Mathglot (talk) 18:44, 11 February 2022 (UTC)

@Mathglot: Ah, thanks. So is there now a ruling which needs to be made about whether such sections go in a particular place (like just under the header templates) or get mixed in with general conversations? There's no mention at Template:Educational assignment or its talk page: Where was the RfC, out of interest? PamD 18:53, 11 February 2022 (UTC)

I see I asked about this in June 2020. I see the placement of the Women in Red project banners was also discussed in 2020, as it's not a standard kind of WikiProject and its banners aren's usually included in the banner shell. PamD 18:58, 11 February 2022 (UTC)

@PamD:, Here's an Educational noticeboard discussion which followed the Rfc and has a link to it. Mathglot (talk) 19:13, 11 February 2022 (UTC) And here's a page which has a couple of converted templates (and an empty banner shell): Talk:Transgender. Mathglot (talk) 19:15, 11 February 2022 (UTC)

To your point of "where they should go" I think the point of the Rfc (which I opposed, so I hope I'm fairly stating this) is that after conversion to "regular page sections" they would eventually get archived according to the archiving config on each page where they appeared; whereas as a template, they tended to stay around forever. I think PrimeBOT adds them near the top, i.e., right under the end of the header template section where they used to be, but I could be wrong. To the extent that the whole goal is to get them off the page, I don't know if the location on the page even matters that much, but others may disagree. Mathglot (talk) 21:04, 11 February 2022 (UTC)

Case study

Here's a case study for you all—what's the best way to organise Talk:Imelda Marcos? As above, and then one big {{Banner holder}}? ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 23:32, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

1. Merged OTD to AH (have a bot almost ready to do that)
2. Removed calm and controversial from a very quiet talk page
3. Moved old moves, merges, etc in to banner shell
4. And now if we could just move Vital in to the WikiProject shell, and language in to the banner, voila.

SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:46, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

Article history template

@JayBeeEll, what exactly is "dubious and prescriptive" about the edit you reverted? I've been reminded that it has been accepted for a year, so the talk page is the best place to make your case. czar 02:18, 18 August 2022 (UTC)

Multiple banners for the same project

Is there any advice anywhere concerning the use of multiple banners for the same project on the same talk page? WikiProject Women in Red places a new banner for every editathon that they organise and these are starting to build up on pages like Talk:Jana Amin. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 22:35, 5 July 2023 (UTC)