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Incorporate link to WP:TFA nominations subpage

As I proposed in a former feature request, one of the primary purposes of this template is to centralize links to all subpages associated with a given article. One important subpage that is missing is the subpage for a Today's featured article nomination. Whenever an article is nominated for TFA, a subpage is created to discuss the TFA blurb and photo. We already link to the TFA appearance, so it should only be natural that we link to the page that discusses that appearance as well. This would require a new |tfanom= parameter. Taking the example of a former TFA, Thomas F. Mulledy, which currently reads:

This article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page as Today's featured article on September 14, 2019.

My proposal to incorporate this link would be for the TFA line in the template to read:

This article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page as Today's featured article on September 14, 2019.

This makes the links from dates (which are now bolded) more consistent with other usage throughout the template; the same is true for linking to WP:TFA, which currently has no link, unlike the link to e.g. WP:FA. Pinging @Mr. Stradivarius, Pppery, and Johnuniq:, who were helpful with the technical matters last time. Ergo Sum 05:47, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

BTW your ping did not work (it would have pinged only the first user) because you meant to use {{ping}}. Like last time, if there is some agreement, or at least no disagreement, I'll look at what is needed. Bear in mind that any change would work retrospectively, that is, old pages with this template would show the new format. Could that be a problem? What I'm getting at is, would the new links work in all the old pages? Johnuniq (talk) 06:50, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

@Johnuniq, Mr. Stradivarius, and Pppery: Woops; thanks for pointing that out. No, I don't see why it would be an issue. Nomination subpages exist for all noms going back to 2014 and for most back to at least 2011. For those that don't have subpages, the new parameter can be left blank. Ergo Sum 13:36, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

I'm not following (yet). Your first link (appeared) goes to a page that appeared at WP:TFAR, but most blurbs never appear there ... where would that link go for most blurbs? - Dank (push to talk) 13:40, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

@Dank: TFA is not my speciality; my motivation is mainly centralizing subpage links. For an article that appears on the main page as a TFA, but never went through TFAR (I assumed all went through TFAR), then there would simply be no wikilink for the word "appeared," because |tfanom= would be empty. Ergo Sum 15:34, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

Also, I realized that the param for TFA is currently called |maindate=, and there is the option for subsequent appearances through |maindate2=, etc. This strikes me as unintuitive; a more appropriate name would be simply |tfadate=. After all, TFA is not the only thing on the main page. I think it would be prudent to add an alternative parameter of |tfadate= and deprecate |maindate= on the template documentation. Maybe even have a bot swap out the param already used. Ergo Sum 15:37, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

Anyone: can you recall people saying they were confused by "|currentstatus=FA, |maindate=5 December 2019" (for example)? I don't recall that. It's more confusing to ask people to remember 2 wonky terms than 1 wonky term, but if people have actually been confused by "maindate", I have no objection to changing it. - Dank (push to talk) 15:49, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

@Dank: The concern is consistency. It wouldn't make sense to have one param be called |tfanom= and the other |maindate=, when they both refer to the same process. Ergo Sum 16:51, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

Either way, I am proposing whatever the narrowest consensus may be, which I think would be the initial proposal at the top. Ergo Sum 05:00, 22 November 2019 (UTC)

I want to give this a couple of days to see if anyone else wants to weigh in. - Dank (push to talk) 05:11, 22 November 2019 (UTC)

I'm going to recuse here. My only suggestion is that if people decide to change the name of the "maindate" parameter and replace it on all talk pages, it would be helpful to have an inline comment (for a year or two) reminding people that that's the parameter that used to be called "maindate". - Dank (push to talk) 00:05, 25 November 2019 (UTC)

@TFA coordinators Perhaps any of the other TFA coordinators would care to weigh in (primarily re: the addition of the subpage link, not the change in |maindate=, as that seems to have not gained traction). It would be good to have some input from the TFA crowd. Ergo Sum 00:19, 25 November 2019 (UTC)

@Dank: Just curious, when you say recuse, do you mean abstain? (i.e. I'm not aware of any conflict of interest). Ergo Sum 00:20, 25 November 2019 (UTC)

Recusing on WP means (I think): I'm wearing a hat and also have personal preferences which either might affect, or might be perceived as affecting, my judgment. - Dank (push to talk) 00:48, 25 November 2019 (UTC)

I don't have a view on the linking/subpage, but I do on the maindate field. I'll go along with whatever consensus is achieved, but I don't see why this is necessary. Only the coordinators ever use that field, so why not stick with the one we're used to?--Wehwalt (talk) 06:48, 25 November 2019 (UTC)

That's fair; I'll drop the maindate question, so we're just looking at the additional link now. Ergo Sum 13:44, 25 November 2019 (UTC)

I'd live to revive this discussion, since there hasn't really been any input as to whether the proposal should be done. I think it's sufficiently uncontroversial that if there is no opposition, I'll go ahead at perform the edit in a few days. Ergo Sum 21:43, 8 December 2019 (UTC)

RfC

I am opening an RfC to solicit more input on the proposal, which as I say, I think should be relatively uncontroversial. To reiterate: it is to add a parameter in which a link to TFA request subpages can be added and displayed. Ergo Sum 02:14, 17 February 2020 (UTC)

DYK discrepancy

Article history uses the parameter dyknom for the subpage link. The DYK process drops a template on pages, without integrating to ah, using the parameter nompage. I see many editors manually converting the DYK template to ah using the faulty nompage parameter, which does not display because his template does not recognize it. Can we get the DYK people to switch to dyknom, or have this template additionally recognize nompage? Since I Don’t Do DYK, maybe someone knows who to work with over there. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 11:21, 18 December 2020 (UTC)

@SandyGeorgia: WT:DYK is where the DYK folks hang out, feel free to start a conversation there! Switching to dyknom for future DYK templates is a straightforward tweak on my end with DYKUpdateBot. Renaming the parameter for previously created templates might be more challenging, though perhaps someone already has a bot for this. Shubinator (talk) 18:32, 27 March 2021 (UTC)

AfCs?

Would AfCs be good to include in the template? —  Melofors  TC 

I don’t see any benefit. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:15, 14 April 2021 (UTC)

I have always found it strange that AfC appears on talk pages in the form of a Wikiproject template. I think it makes much more sense to have the link to the draft article and date of acceptance of draft in the Article history template than in the wikiproject template. I would support as a general matter, which might require some modification of the AfC wikiproject template to reduce redundancy. Ergo Sum 23:53, 14 April 2021 (UTC)

The AFC template does provide a permalink to the draft at the time of acceptance (along with that date), along with categorization and other useful metrics that come with it being a Banner template. Given that all of that is already included automatically when a draft is accepted (via WP:AFCH) it's not impossible to change that functionality, but more hassle than "doing nothing". Primefac (talk) 13:10, 15 April 2021 (UTC)

How to handle a GAR that closed in an unconventional way

Here's an odd set of circumstances: an editor opened up a GAR on Mysteries of Isis while it was at FAC. Everyone except the nominator supported keeping the article, and ultimately the GAR was procedurally closed when the article was promoted to FA status. I'm not sure how to list this GAR on the article history template, because it wasn't "kept" (because articles lose GA status when promoted to FA), but it wasn't really "delisted" (because the review clearly wasn't trending toward demotion). A. Parrot (talk) 17:48, 25 April 2021 (UTC)

Template-protected edit request on 5 May 2021

Replace “elseif status == 'FFA/GA' or status == 'GA' then” with “elseif status == 'FFA/GA' or status == 'FFAC/GA' or status == 'GA' then“. As it can be seen for example on Talk:Kids See Ghosts (album) these articles are categorized in Category:Unassessed Featured topics articles, but they should be in Category:GA-Class Featured topics articles. Regards, Armbrust ^{The Homunculus} 17:31, 5 May 2021 (UTC)

 Done — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 02:31, 6 May 2021 (UTC)

Excess emphasis

Please remove the confusing and inappropriate italics from "identified" (such as is found in "Reception history of Jane Austen is a featured article; it (or a previous version of it) has been identified as one of the best articles produced by the Wikipedia community.") The word already links to the GA/FA record for the page in question, so it is already emphasized by being a link. I would just go do it, but I don't know these templates and modules well and am not sure where that text and its markup live.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  07:54, 10 May 2021 (UTC)

 Done ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 11:17, 10 May 2021 (UTC)

More specific "community" linking

For "Wikipedia community" (such as is found in "Reception history of Jane Austen is a featured article; it (or a previous version of it) has been identified as one of the best articles produced by the Wikipedia community."), it would probably make more sense to link to the process page (GAN, FAC, etc.) for the process in question, so people new to nomination procedures can find them faster. It will also be more accurate, in that these decisions are made entirely via those community-subset processes, not by a broad community vote.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  07:59, 10 May 2021 (UTC)

I'd be wary of introducing too many links (to that end, not sure Wikipedia community should be linked). "Featured article" is already linked, and I guess if they want to read more about the process and its selection criteria there's always links on that page. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 11:19, 10 May 2021 (UTC)

Agreed; if the bullet point is regarding the article and GA/FA/etc, then the links given should be to the FA/GA/etc criteria and to the nomination page and nothing else (i.e. cull the "community" link). Primefac (talk) 11:53, 10 May 2021 (UTC)

|collapse= parameter

In 2012 Lexein requested a collapse= parameter, and in 2019 czar seconded the requested. To the extent someone is willing able able to edit the template accordingly, I would like to add my voice to the chorus. Currently the template autocollapses if there are three or more article milestones (e.g., at Talk:Martin Rundkvist), and it would be nice to have the option to keep this from happening. Thanks, --Usernameunique (talk) 08:07, 5 June 2021 (UTC)

@Usernameunique: I've added this to Module:Article history/sandbox, along with some test cases at Template:Article history/testcases#Collapse argument. Is this what you had in mind? @Kanashimi, Hawkeye7, and Shubinator: Would this cause any issues with the bots? (I'm guessing it won't, but pinging just in case.) — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 10:10, 5 June 2021 (UTC)

It seems no problem for this parameter. Kanashimi (talk) 10:29, 5 June 2021 (UTC)

Thanks, Mr. Stradivarius. From what I can tell that looks perfect. --Usernameunique (talk) 16:57, 5 June 2021 (UTC)

It will not cause any problems for the FACBot or MilHistBot. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 19:17, 5 June 2021 (UTC)

Thanks all. I've added the |collapse= parameter code to the main template. Let me know if you see any problems. — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 06:49, 6 June 2021 (UTC)

Thanks, Mr. Stradivarius—tried it out on the Rundkvist talk page, and it works perfectly. Also pinging Lexein and czar to give them a heads up. --Usernameunique (talk) 06:52, 6 June 2021 (UTC)

Discussion at Wikipedia talk:Peer review § Finished reviews are not being integrated into Template:Article history

 You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Peer review § Finished reviews are not being integrated into Template:Article history. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 21:36, 24 October 2021 (UTC)

Adding URFA to article milestones

@Hawkeye7, Sdkb, Mathglot, SD0001, Headbomb, Shubinator, and Anomie: Sorry for the indiscriminate list, but I am really unsure who to ping here, and probably need feedback from all of you. I had hoped to wait for more consensus to develop, but Hawkeye was already pinged, so I wanted to bring in all of you.

WP:URFA/2020 was started to help sort through the older FAs that don't need to be sent to WP:FAR, while also providing a means of locating the most deficient that do need to be sent to FAR. So, we end up with some FAs defeatured or kept via FAR (which FACbot already processes into articlehistory), with others "marked satisfactory" (don't need FAR) based on at least three reviewers at URFA/2020.

There is a proposal to add URFA to the article history template. Please have a look at the general discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (idea lab)#URFA addition to article milestones, and the more specific detail and questions at Wikipedia:Village pump (idea lab)#If we were to ask. Also, please ping anyone who might be helpful, as I really don't know who all to ask. I would hope to hold an RFC before moving forward on the idea, but need to know how to design the new entry. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:18, 28 November 2021 (UTC)

Template-protected edit request on 2 December 2021

At Template:Article history/output, please remove the following syntax:

|farc=[[Category:Wikipedia featured article review candidates (closed)]]

This syntax categorizes certain pages into Category:Wikipedia featured article review candidates (closed), which is being deleted per the result of this CFD discussion. No replacement is necessary. Thanks! Extraordinary Writ (talk) 06:59, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

 Done, noting that more syntax needs to be removed than as requested to implement the category deletion: Special:Diff/1058238683. feminist (talk) 08:45, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

Avoid adding categories

Sometimes this template is used in talk pages for testing, and it adds those pages into the Featured Articles categories, example Template_talk:Article_history/Archive_5 (search on "currentstatus=FA" and see cats bottom of page). This then creates problems with other processes such as Wikipedia:Featured_articles/mismatches which is reporting a mismatch since the "Archive 5" page is not in other places one would expect a Featured Page. Would it be possible to add a flag to not add categories? -- GreenC 16:35, 4 December 2021 (UTC)

GreenC, do you meant to not add categories only when not used on article talk? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:39, 4 December 2021 (UTC)

Something like |nocat=1 -- GreenC 16:42, 4 December 2021 (UTC)

Template-protected edit request on 15 December 2021

Add special text for when an article is currently on Today's Featured article, ideally something like below:

This article is currently appearing on Wikipedia's Main Page as Today's featured article as of November 27, 2024. 172.112.210.32 (talk) 00:10, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

Really seems like overkill. – The Grid (talk) 00:18, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

It already has that. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:40, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

Good topics displaying as featured topics

Hello friends. Can someone take a look at Talk:NASA Astronaut Group 2 and investigate why it is showing as a featured topic? It is a good topic. I added GTC (not FTC) to the {{Article history}} template, and I purged the page, but it is still showing up as a featured topic when it should show as a good topic. Did I do something wrong, or is this a bug that needs fixing? Thanks. –Novem Linguae (talk) 14:52, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

Will look now, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:54, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

I found the issue. There's 5 FAs and 5 GAs in the topic. Module:FeaturedTopicSum#L-31 does numFeatured >= numGood. Let me double check that the >= should be a >= and not a >. Once I get consensus I'll come back if a change needs to be made. Thanks for the quick response. –Novem Linguae (talk) 14:58, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

Let me know if that does it, because I was otherwise striking out. I checked multiple similar good topics and they were fine, so you may have found the issue. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:04, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

After chatting with the featured and good topic folks, the module is correct as is. Thanks for looking into it, I appreciate your time. Happy holidays :) –Novem Linguae (talk) 15:59, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

Detect action/process type from link text

A thought: Couldn't the template detect the action/process type from the link text? E.g., |action#link=/GA1 and |action#link=Wikipedia:Peer review/.../archive1 make it easy to tell what kind of action is being described. czar 19:04, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

"There are suggestions below..."

The template says that there are suggestions below to improve the article but is that a given? Talk:Aurelio Voltaire has that template but below it there are no suggestions. This was what made me wonder. There can be countless of articles like this. Should we rephrase that to mean something like "There may be suggestions below..." or "Please check below as there may be... if not..."? - Klein Muçi (talk) 01:15, 8 April 2022 (UTC)

Easy enough to change "are" to "may be". Good catch. Primefac (talk) 07:25, 8 April 2022 (UTC)

@Primefac, I was thinking to do the change myself but I'm not too accustomed with article editing rules here and I was thinking that maybe I was misunderstanding the overall meaning of that template. Glad I was of help. :) - Klein Muçi (talk) 11:12, 8 April 2022 (UTC)

Maybe change it from "are" to "should be"? In the case of Talk:Aurelio Voltaire the suggestions are in the archives at Talk:Aurelio Voltaire/Archive 3#A good article review is needed here. — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 00:59, 9 April 2022 (UTC)

@Mr. Stradivarius, is that what always happens? If that's the case, and that's a standard procedure, maybe we can further technical tweak it so the suggestions are always available as a link be that when they're in the talk page and after they get archived? Maybe suggestions should be born in a different, separate place (subpage or subsection of something) of their own to begin with? - Klein Muçi (talk) 12:27, 9 April 2022 (UTC)

@Klein Muçi: If editors follow the procedure for delisting properly, then there should be suggestions on the talk page or in the archives somewhere, yes. The procedure is at Wikipedia:Good article reassessment. Of course, there is no guarantee that editors follow the procedures every time. (Strictly speaking, the comments should be on a subpage of Wikipedia:Good article reassessment, which is then transcluded onto the talk page. However, this wasn't done for Aurelio Voltaire, as there is no page at Wikipedia:Good article reassessment/Aurelio Voltaire/1.) — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 02:48, 10 April 2022 (UTC)

@Mr. Stradivarius: Hmm... Does the transclusion happen automatically? Maybe by a bot or by {{Article history}} being programmed to be on the lookout for it with an if exist condition?

Also, should we copy-paste the content from the archives into the link you mention? - Klein Muçi (talk) 03:02, 10 April 2022 (UTC)

There is no need to copy the content from archives to a GAR page; articlehistory can handle the link in archives, even though a GAR page was never created. 'Tis done now, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 03:38, 10 April 2022 (UTC)

Automatically linking to the review page, if it exists, seems like a good idea. — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 02:55, 10 April 2022 (UTC)

We wrote that at the same time apparently. :P - Klein Muçi (talk) 03:03, 10 April 2022 (UTC)

The article history template does link to the review when done properly; in the case under discussion, which is very old, there was not GAR listed on the talk page. When it is done properly the GA delist will outline the problems. Rejigging the entire template for one very old error should not be necessary; more useful would be to go find how/who the delist happened, and add that to the articlehistory. Then the template will be correct. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 03:07, 10 April 2022 (UTC)

@SandyGeorgia, so the automatic linking already exists? If that's true than most likely we shouldn't change its wording like we already did by adding "may". - Klein Muçi (talk) 03:10, 10 April 2022 (UTC)

Your efforts would be more productive if you locate a delisted GA that was done correctly and examine how the template handles that. I'm not engaged with GA, but my understanding is that delistings are very rare, so I can't point you to one. But the AH template should be replicating the GA delisting template; the problem at Aurelio Voltaire is no one added the delist correctly. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 03:15, 10 April 2022 (UTC)

I was going to suggest that maybe we could also make the template emit an error or do an automatic categorization of the talk page when a delisting has happened without its specific subpage being created to be able to query cases like this but you say that such delistings are very rare so... - Klein Muçi (talk) 03:18, 10 April 2022 (UTC)

Talk:Aurelio Voltaire is fixed. There is an automatic error cat for articlehistory at Category:Article history templates with errors that I check every day; I don't know what can be done about the laxity in the GA process. Also note in talk archives that older versions of Voltaire contained copyvio; it is unclear if that was corrected. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 03:23, 10 April 2022 (UTC)

Remove small

I'd like to make the suggestion that we remove the |small= parameter in the template. Given the content, it simply doesn't look pretty at "small" size. Furthermore, it's used by approximately 21 pages out of the 45k on which it appears. That's in the 15 years (since creation!) it's had the option to be small. Izno (talk) 05:56, 28 May 2022 (UTC)

Agree, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:39, 18 August 2022 (UTC)

shrunken width

For articles with only history items, why has the template now shrunken width-wise as at Talk:Cia Berg, Talk:Killing of Ashli Babbitt, and Talk:Linda Skitka? — Fourthords | =Λ= | 19:07, 17 August 2022 (UTC)

It might be recent changes to Module:Message box/tmbox.css by Izno (talk · contribs). --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 05:30, 18 August 2022 (UTC)

Not exactly, but thanks for the ping. Should be able to sort this shortly. Izno (talk) 06:00, 18 August 2022 (UTC)

Fixed. Shouldn't have any more of that particular issue pop up. Izno (talk) 07:23, 18 August 2022 (UTC)

Thanks so much, Izno! — Fourthords | =Λ= | 13:59, 18 August 2022 (UTC)

RM

Can this template be modified to include requested moves? Would help consolidate a lot of article history information on pages with contentious titles, e.g. Uyghur genocide — PerfectSoundWhatever (t; c) 18:34, 24 June 2022 (UTC)

Not the purpose (why not figure out how to collapse those requested moves); there are other things needed to clean up that talk page. The AFD can be merged to AH, and there is template overkill on the disruptive end. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:41, 18 August 2022 (UTC)

I mean, just in general, it would be useful and make sense since RM's are often part of the article's history; I don't want it added just to fix that page. — PerfectSoundWhatever (t; c) 14:58, 18 August 2022 (UTC)

Doing so would explode the template, and requested moves have nothing to do with article assessment. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:04, 18 August 2022 (UTC)

Copyedits, AFD, PROD, ITN, CSD, and OTD have nothing to do with article assessment either, yet they are all in the template. What do you mean by "explode the template"? — PerfectSoundWhatever (t; c) 15:08, 18 August 2022 (UTC)

Copyedits are certainly to do with assessment, it's one of the steps towards GA. AFD and PROD show that the article has been rescued in some manner. ITN and OTD show that it was good enough to be mentioned on the main page (they reject poor-quality articles). CSD isn't part of article history - if it is, I don't recall seeing it. Do you have an example? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:08, 18 August 2022 (UTC)

Well, I don't think GOCE should be there either; copyediting is a routine part of article development, not a "processs" like GA, FAC, ITN, AFD, etc.

What I mean by "explode the template" is that we no longer have what we had back when we designed this template (see Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2008-03-24/Dispatches), meaning, Gimmebot, which via User:Gimmetrow made sure that every process that used AH was processed by bot in to the template. We now have no single bot or person doing what GimmeBot did, and we have a hodgepodge of various bots not doing even a part of what GimmeBot did. With me running around behind a few of them to do cleanup.

Until we can maintain what we have, we shouldn't be adding to it; and adding Requested moves will give every crazy discussion a spot in AH, making it hard to find that which matters. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:21, 18 August 2022 (UTC)

@Redrose64: CSD and the rest of the deletion processes are listed at {{Article history}}'s documentation, under "Deletion processes". — PerfectSoundWhatever (t; c) 22:54, 18 August 2022 (UTC)

Re: Readership

Thinking out loud here, I'm curious if there's any interest in possibly folding Template:Annual readership into the "Article history" template. I don't mean a merge, I just mean a way to optionally display readership stats in the template. Thoughts? Concerns? ---Another Believer _(Talk) 16:45, 18 October 2022 (UTC)

Concern, per MOS:COLLAPSE things should not be collapsed by default. If we're thinking of collapsing information by default, I'd question the need for said template/info in the first place. It's not just from an accessibility point of view, but also thinking about UX >> Lil-unique1 (talk) — 19:28, 18 October 2022 (UTC)

Unknown icon

At Talk:COVID-19 pandemic, the article history template currently includes this icon in the upper left: . However, there's no tooltip, destination link (beyond the file page), or other indication of what it represents. The file is File:Nuvola apps kedit.svg, and looking at Module:Article history/config it seems like maybe it's for peer review or "NA"? Could the design please be adjusted, through adding either a tooltip or destination link or maybe something else, to make its purpose clear? {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 17:51, 27 October 2022 (UTC)

According to the module config, "Peer review is a valid current status, but it doesn't trigger a header row" (for PR). Same is true for NA. No comment on usefulness or what can replace it (just commenting from a technical perspective). Primefac (talk) 17:56, 27 October 2022 (UTC)

Soft deletions and refunds

Is there any way to apply this template to be used for outcomes such as WP:SOFTDELETEs and WP:REFUND? PROD deletions are essentially "soft deletions" and articles deleted via PROD can be "refunded" without needing to go to WP:DRV. Soft deletion is also an option for AfDs where there's been minimal participation per WP:NOQUORUM and these too can be refunded without needing to go to DRV. It seems like it would be helpful if such outcomes could also be somehow handled by this template. -- Marchjuly (talk) 03:49, 23 November 2022 (UTC)

Add topic parameter to the simple example

Many times when users convert article history to this template, they leave out the |topic parameter, which is needed for the GA text to work properly. As this template is often used to handle multiple GAN attempts, I have added it to the "simple use" below the |current_status parameter. CMD (talk) 01:44, 11 January 2023 (UTC)

I'm not sure that makes sense, as action1 (simple case) is rarely GAN, and topic isn't needed until GAN ... this may make editors think they have to navigate the GAN pages to figure out which topic to use even when there is no GAN. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 03:42, 11 January 2023 (UTC)

Forgot to @Chipmunkdavis: to be sure you see post above ... SandyGeorgia (Talk) 03:42, 11 January 2023 (UTC)

Can't the need to add the topic parameter be dealt with on the GAN end of things? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 03:43, 11 January 2023 (UTC)

The topic is already done in the GAN end of things, and is invariably in the GAN templates. For some reason many editors converting to Article History delete that field completely rather than putting it into the Article History template. CMD (talk) 05:07, 11 January 2023 (UTC)

@Chipmunkdavis Why are editors converting GANs to AH manually? GimmeBot used to do that for the GA process (in fact, for all processes) and FACbot does it for FACs ... I'm just worried that topic is really not needed for anything but GAN, so is not the simple case, and may confuse more people than it helps. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 05:14, 11 January 2023 (UTC)

I'm not sure why any editor does it individually, and don't wish to pick on specific examples as it is a common problem. I catch them due to having Category:Good articles without topic parameter on my watchlist. If the inclusion is misleading, are there alternatives that might help? Could the parameter be renamed "GA_topic"? CMD (talk) 05:25, 11 January 2023 (UTC)

@Chipmunkdavis Actually ... that may be a good solution. To my knowledge, no other process uses the topic parameter, so specifying that it's only needed for GAN may clear that up. I just don't want editors to think they have to go looking for GAN topics, as I find them impenetrable. I check the AH errors category every day, and fix about five a week, and missing topic is not a common error I find (maybe because you are getting all of them?). As to why no one has yet replaced what GimmeBot did, I wish I knew. GimmeBot processed *all* processes into AH every day; since Gimmetrow was chased off, no single bot has done for any individual process what Gimme did for all processes ... and we are back to having talk pages filled with unprocessed and incorrect templates. I correct every FAR, but gave up on correcting every FAC, and often see unprocessed ITNs, OTDs, AFDs, DYKs, and GANs. I don't know how to request changing the parameter to GA topic ... Gimmme used to do all this stuff. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 05:34, 11 January 2023 (UTC)

I do not want editors to have to go sift through the various archaic GA topics (although we can finally edit those now, after many years!), I want editors who have a GA template which already has the topic in the code to simply copy that code into the Article History template. Regarding the coding change, to my understanding it should theoretically be easy to add synonyms for |topic, but that would need someone more fluent in wikicode. CMD (talk) 05:51, 11 January 2023 (UTC)

Not sure who to recommend ... if I knew, we'd have a new gimmebot by now, and we wouldn't have to process GANs manually, and we wouldn't have the missing topic problem at all, and I wouldn't be spending hours and hours folding dozens of OTDs into AH :) :) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 05:56, 11 January 2023 (UTC)

I don't think I understand the issue. I don't see discussion of the GA topic on this template's documentation. In the "more complex uses" there's a topic field in the third group of parameters -- is that the GA topic? I found out in this discussion about Module:Good article topics and Module:Good article topics/data; does article history check against that list? I'm not yet ready for ChristieBot to take over GimmeBot's old tasks, if that's the question. So far all that ChristieBot does with regard to article history is check article talk pages when updating a pass or fail to see if the page has already been updated with the GAN result, so that it doesn't complain when e.g. adding oldids. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 15:47, 13 January 2023 (UTC)

Mike Christie I have found that what is most often missed is OTD, and it is VERY hard to convert, as they use a different format for the date and oldid than AH does ... in case you're looking for a task to add :) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:20, 13 January 2023 (UTC)

For example, see here, where I have to manually adjust 20 parameters. This is standard for OTD on talk pages. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:26, 13 January 2023 (UTC)

Maybe one day, but not yet! CMD, reading the above again, are you asking if it would be OK to add an alias "GA_topic" to the article history parameter "topic"? If so I'm the wrong person to ask; I don't do much template coding. Currently ChristieBot does not look at that parameter. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 16:46, 13 January 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for the input Mike, I wasn't asking you to take over GimmeBot! I'm looking for a way to prevent the GA topic being dropped when this template is created. Probably easier to find a template coding solution than to make a bot specifically do this. (Although if a new Article history bot is created, this would be one thing it should look at.) CMD (talk) 18:03, 13 January 2023 (UTC)

Ah, OK. I was being slow. Yes, an AH bot would want to look at this. I think the recently created GAN review tool is just a script; you might ask whoever wrote it if they could come up with a script that would fix it, though I'm not sure that's possible as they might have to go to a previous revision of the page to get the topic. At least that would make it a one-click solution on each page you have to fix it on. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 19:10, 13 January 2023 (UTC)

The FACBot folds in GA, AFD, ITN, OTD and DYK when an article is promoted to Featured. I did have a run that would do it more widely, but like Mike I ran into a lot of trouble with malformed (or oddly-formed) dates. On every occurrence I would have to instruct the Bot script on how to deal with them. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 19:25, 13 January 2023 (UTC)

Hawkeye7, when did you add OTD processing to FACbot ? As an example from November 19, 2022, here I merge OTDs on a recently closed FAR. I routinely find and do these on every closed FAR (I used to do every closed FAC, but it became too much work for me to do manually). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:34, 13 January 2023 (UTC)

Hmmm. The code is there alright. I will investigate why it did not work. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 21:15, 13 January 2023 (UTC)

Thx! I got very busy IRL and stopped pinging you when I noticed issues ... SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:30, 13 January 2023 (UTC)

Oh. Looks like I told the FACBot to do it for FAC but not FAR. Added to FAR. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 03:43, 16 January 2023 (UTC)

Automatic maindate

We now have a "database" of past and upcoming TFA appearances: Template:TFA title/data.json, so it should be possible to generate the maindate values based on that. Legoktm (talk) 01:45, 12 January 2023 (UTC)

Idea has potential. Could work by using the page name to look up the maindate from that list. One issue is that the data would need to be maintained for page moves, which it currently is not. Gimmetrow 05:06, 24 January 2023 (UTC)

Remove some styles to improve mobile version

Please remove the following fragment:

@media (min-width: 720px) {
	.article-history {
		width: 80%;
	}
}

These styles are not necessary on desktop (tmbox already has styles to set it to 80% width), and cause this template to display at an unusually narrow width in the new version of mobile talk pages (visit e.g. [1] on your desktop and click "Learn more about this page" to see). Matma Rex talk 09:54, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

That is actually the entire page. Pinging @Izno who created it — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 22:55, 23 January 2023 (UTC)

This new Vector thingie is so dismal that I can't actually figure out how to get the talk page, or the article history, to show when accessing Wikipedia logged out from my phone ... could someone fill me in, so I can see what the problem is? Right now, I can not even figure out what buttons to push on an article talk page to be able to see the talk page. AH is showing fine for me on an iPad and regular computer (Google Chrome), but I stuck with the Monobook skin. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:38, 23 January 2023 (UTC)

Hmmm ... I may (or may not) have pushed the right button, where I see that neither article history nor {{talk header}} are displaying correctly. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:24, 24 January 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, it sounds like you got to where Matma wanted you to go. Izno (talk) 00:26, 24 January 2023 (UTC)

So I think (??? Don't take my word for it, lost in space), there is also a problem at talk header and a problem with the FAQ at Talk:J. K. Rowling. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:27, 24 January 2023 (UTC)

 Not done for now: This was done because of #shrunken width. I don't remember why that fixed it but it did, and I assume that issue was being encountered on desktop. Izno (talk) 00:16, 24 January 2023 (UTC)

(Basically, mbox relies on some old hacky behavior that I'd really rather not have to care about, but that's in the "when I get around to fixing mbox to not use tables anymore" pile.) Izno (talk) 00:31, 24 January 2023 (UTC)

@Izno Hmph, can we use min-width instead of width then? Matma Rex talk 09:33, 24 January 2023 (UTC)

@Matma Rex, because I don't know better, how is min-width going to help here that width isn't helpful with? Izno (talk) 22:26, 24 January 2023 (UTC)

@Izno In the new mobile interface, where the margins are overridden to 0, it will allow the template to take the full width, instead of only 80%. Visit e.g. [2] on your desktop and click "Learn more about this page" to see the currently existing problem. Matma Rex talk 11:08, 25 January 2023 (UTC)

@Matma Rex, thinking about it a bit more thoroughly, I think this is an artifact of testing the mobile website on desktop. I don't see an issue if I make the resolution 719px on desktop (particularly using console), even under your requested testing condition. I don't think changing it to min-width is a big deal after some thought, but I think you're also definitely in edge case territory for most people.

Actually, I rather think the bug here is that the other tmboxes on the page at desktop resolution aren't taking the directed margin: 4px 10% from the TemplateStyles which Firefox console shows is the active margin (you seem to suggest otherwise with where the margins are overridden to 0). Every tmbox with ?dtenable=1 should be exhibiting the behavior of article history (and talk header, where I've just noticed Template talk:Talk header#Remove some styles to improve mobile version). I think this may be a happy misfeature given the fixed width of the modal, but something isn't jiving in the above story. Izno (talk) 22:26, 25 January 2023 (UTC)

@Izno I am testing the mobile feature on desktop, because that's how (I expect) Wikipedia editors will test it once it's released, and I don't want it to look half-baked like a certain other recently released feature. You're completely right that this doesn't matter for actual users, except a tiny group using tablets.

The margins are overridden with some !important rules in the Minerva skin: [3], as is the width below 719px: [4]. I would like tmbox not to rely on that (I think I saw you mention somewhere that you'd like to make it stop using tables, which will break this), but I don't think I dare propose that, given how much effort it is to get even much simpler changes approved. Matma Rex talk 23:27, 25 January 2023 (UTC)

@Matma Rex, oh no, using flex or grid is definitely an involved change that I'm not expecting to entertain exactly right now, as it's mixed up with changing it for all the kinds of mboxes as well as the handful of templates (mostly tmbox styles) that aren't using the relevant module today (really, the reason I haven't jumped on it is phab:T282588 because depending on the skin I get super different behavior even with the workaround I bump into regularly, never mind the !important that Minerva drops on it).

Yeah, never mind me about the margin-right/left, I was not parsing the existence of the strike out for the relevant rule at all.

I'll add min-width for the handful of templates of interest. Izno (talk) 00:08, 26 January 2023 (UTC)

@Izno I see you've changed a couple, thanks. Can you also do it for Template:Talk header/styles.css? Matma Rex talk 23:05, 26 January 2023 (UTC)

By the way, the T282588 issue affects the current templates with tables as well, not just flex layouts. Compare [5] to [6] – the images on "Doctor Who is a former featured article", "This article is of interest to multiple WikiProjects" and "This article is written in British English" are missing, because they get squished to zero size. Matma Rex talk 23:10, 26 January 2023 (UTC)

@Matma Rex, small comfort. :) Izno (talk) 04:44, 27 January 2023 (UTC)

Bot request

At least one small piece of talk page clutter: Bot request. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:52, 2 February 2023 (UTC)

HTML comments

The documentation includes "DO NOT put HTML comments inside this template". There are comments in this template at Talk:Holocaust and Talk:New York Yankees; I had to temporarily remove them to process those pages with a bot. Why are comments forbidden? What problems do they cause? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 22:46, 27 January 2023 (UTC)

Been a while, but comments might have affected matching parameter fields. I could see some issues parsing the parameters as well. Can't recall specifically what could happen, but my bot would renumber actions to put them in order, and action parameters inside a comment could result in duplicate actionnumbers if de-commented.Gimmetrow 01:57, 5 February 2023 (UTC)

It certainly makes it harder to parse the template. I went ahead and moved the comments in Talk:The Holocaust above the template. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 02:45, 5 February 2023 (UTC)

Optional nominator and nomination timestamp parameters?

I have been cleaning up old borked GA subpages, and running a bot to extract historical GA nomination information. As far as I can tell none of the various templates that store old GA information record the nominator or the timestamp of the nomination. I've spent quite a bit of time looking into other ways to get this information -- for example, going back through revision history to find the nominee template; or if that doesn't work (because the template often doesn't include the nominator parameter) looking for the user that added the template. Those methods work much of the time, but they run into special cases, user errors, deleted revisions, and other problems. Would it be possible to add optional actionNnominator and actionNnominationdate parameters? That way at least I can fix article history to record that information if nothing else works. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 23:14, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

Query maximum entries

Could someone who reads the code let me know if there is a maximum on the number of entries? Talk:Wikipedia is at n=18, with a peer review open that would be the 19th event. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:05, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

@SandyGeorgia: The documentation states a set of up to twenty parameters of the form |action1=|action1date=|action1link=|action1result=|action1oldid= produces a row in the history section at the bottom of the box but I've tested it up to thirty sets and they all displayed. I cannot find any limit in Module:Article history so it might be like infoboxes or the {{cite xxx}} templates which have no practical limit. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 14:47, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

Thanks, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:51, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

Edit request 16 February 2023

Description of suggested change: Please incorporate the change I made to Module:Article history/config/sandbox which will automatically link to the nomination page for pages that were featured on DYK, which will save gnoming thousands of pages manually. This should be uncontroversial because it would be extremely rare for a moved page where both the target and the title moved from have been featured through DYK. 0xDeadbeef→∞ (talk to me) 11:59, 16 February 2023 (UTC)

See this test that I made to ensure that the change works properly. (the link to DYK is still there) 0xDeadbeef→∞ (talk to me) 12:00, 16 February 2023 (UTC)

So this for cases that the article has been moved since its DYK nomination? The template will currently produce a link to Template:Did you know nominations/PAGENAME and you are trying to fix the ones where PAGENAME is incorrect? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 16:22, 17 February 2023 (UTC)

Often the page name is missing; there was a period when the DYK bot did not add the page name. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:28, 17 February 2023 (UTC)

Correction: the template currently makes no link unless the |dyk1nom= parameter is defined, and this change will make it "guess" what the correct page is, based on the PAGENAME? By the way, I simplified your code a bit. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 16:28, 17 February 2023 (UTC)

Yeah. The last sentence of my first comment was addressing a potential case where this would be wrong:

There is a DYK nomination for the current page title that applies to a different article. This means that we need to have a page titled "A" first getting a DYK nom, and then "A" must be moved somewhere else, and then another page is created or moved under the title "A", geting another DYK nom under the title "A" with its article history not having dyk nom set. 0xDeadbeef→∞ (talk to me) 04:50, 18 February 2023 (UTC)

 Done Sorry for the delay. I've made this live, please let me know of any issues — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 14:33, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

Date formats in output

Is it possible for the template to have a flag setting the format of dates in the output? It seems a bit incongruous for the template to always use MDY dates when a considerable number of its uses are on articles that are specifically flagged as using DMY, and in some cases the template's appearing in the same block as ENGVAR notices for which MDY dates are inconsistent (as at Talk:Channel Tunnel, for example). XAM2175 ^(T) 18:39, 27 February 2023 (UTC)

@XAM2175: It's certainly possible, but the code to amend is in Module:Article history, which being Lua is outside my knowledge area. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:35, 27 February 2023 (UTC)

Suggestion regarding move proposals

Hello! I was looking at this version of Talk:Death of Caylee Anthony, and it occurred to me that the talk page header is ... fairly large. One reason for its size is that there are three templates to capture (1) a prior deletion discussion; (2) an other-article deletion proposal that resulted in a merger; and (3) move requests.

This template can easily handle the first, and ... arguably, the second (a slight stretch but nothing huge). But I don't think it can handle move proposals, and I was wondering if that might be possible? I unfortunately have no experience with Lua, so I can't propose how it would work, but the only thing I could think of would be a "Move proposal" (mv) action. The downside, relative to the move proposals template, is that the proposed target couldn't be linked, but perhaps linking to the discussion would be enough?--Jerome Frank Disciple 17:08, 17 May 2023 (UTC)

Support splitting and afd-merge-from

I think that supporting the following two use cases would be good in helping reduce the size of the talk page banner. One example would be Talk:Reddit where the banner takes up an absurd amount of space. - nathanielcwm (talk) 15:00, 27 June 2023 (UTC)

The articlehistory template was not the problem at Talk:Reddit; there are much easier solutions. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:11, 27 June 2023 (UTC)

Articles for Improvement

Could support for WP:AFI be added? jlwoodwa (talk) 01:18, 29 July 2023 (UTC)

Template-protected edit request on 8 October 2023

I just marked these two pages as historical:

• Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Archived nominations/Index - Old list of unsuccessful FA candidates, alphabetically sorted;
• Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Featured log/Summary - Old list of successful FA candidates, sorted by month.

If an article is a former FA, like Algorithm, the template states: "(for older articles, check the nomination archive)".

If an article is a former FA *candidate*, like Pokémon, the template states: "For older candidates, please check the archive."

The link in these two sentences should be changed from Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Archived nominations/Index to Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Archived nominations, i.e. without the "/Index" bit. - Manifestation (talk) 14:32, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

Why? —Kusma (talk) 16:46, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

Because the page in question hasn't been updated for over a decade and is obsolete. The template links to that page. The "/Index" bit should be removed. That would be all. Thanks, Manifestation (talk) 16:58, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

But that is the correct place for pre-October 2004 nominations. It will never need to be updated and will never become obsolete as it is the archive of old nominations. For nominations newer than October 2004, the link is unnecessary because there is a direct link to the nomination. For older ones, you are suggesting to use a less helpful link. I could understand removing the sentence completely (although I might oppose) but I don't see any point in keeping it but making the link worse. —Kusma (talk) 17:13, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

I've reverted the historical tags -- they're not historical in the sense that tag indicates. They're an index page, like Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Featured log/September 2023 or a talk page archive. The reason these pages are never updated is because they are complete, with no data missing, not because they're irrelevant. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 19:45, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

@Kusma: ??!!?? Why would anybody want to read FA nominations from 2004? (Aside from Wikiarchaeologists.) - Manifestation (talk) 08:23, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

Why not? What is the cutoff date when they magically stop being interesting? 2022? 2018? 2010? 2006? 2004? We can just as well make sure there is good access to all of them. —Kusma (talk) 11:49, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

@Kusma: Whatever dude. I think we're finished here. If you want the template to link to an antiquated page from 2004, then go ahead. - Manifestation (talk) 16:30, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

I would prefer it if we display the link only when necessary (i.e. when there is a FA nom from 2004 or earlier for an article), but I'm not too bothered by the current state of affairs. —Kusma (talk) 16:32, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

@Mike Christie: [7][8] What do you think you're doing?! - Manifestation (talk) 08:23, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

Manifestation, Thanks for trying to sort this, but I agree with Kusma. Re your other questions at FAC, you won't get many useful answers there as there are almost no people these days there who follow or participate in or understand the whole process and its history. You are right about article vs. nomination, but on the successful/unsuccessful terminology, some feedback may help. Simply ... The (historical) reason we didn't use the term "unsucessful" or "failed" for archived nominations was that we didn't want an archived FAC to be stigmatizing. Similar for "promoted" vs. "successful"-- don't stigmatize ... if it takes six nominations for an article to be promoted, so be it. The older thinking was that quick identification of issues and a fast archive, with a return to FAC with improvements in a few weeks, was usually the fastest route to promotion. But these days, nominations are rarely archived, much less quickly; the "oppose" button has gone missing; nominations are pulled through even if takes months and the articles remain sub-standard; and nominations are allowed to hang around on the FAC page for months. In that environment, I suppose it doesn't much matter if you further stigmatize a close as an archived nomination by calling it "unsuccessful" or "failed", since the current regime views archives as a fail anyway. That's the history of archive vs. promote over successful vs. unsuccessful. I mention this here as I hope that this "Fail" terminology doesn't continue any further than it already has. But then I doubt anyone is paying much attention to that big picture anymore, so as you wish. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:13, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

@SandyGeorgia: That is one pile of pure, unmitigated nonsense. Ditto with this and this. - Manifestation (talk) 08:23, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

 Not done for now: please establish a consensus for this alteration before using the {{Edit template-protected}} template. P.I. Ellsworth , ed. ^{put'er there} 19:46, 8 October 2023 (UTC)