Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Guide/Technical notes

The recommended method to create WikiProject banners is using the {{WPBannerMeta}} meta-template. Full documentation for this template can be found at Template:WPBannerMeta.

As a WikiProject grows and adopts various processes, it becomes necessary for its project banner template to do more than merely marking an article as being within the project's scope. For example, article assessments and peer reviews all generate metadata about an article; the most obvious place to store and display such information is in the banner of the relevant project.

Browsing through Category:WikiProject banners shows that there are a variety of different optional features that are added to banners by various projects, This section aims to present an annotated example banner that, while relatively simple, demonstrates the most common and useful coding options for such templates. It is not, of course, an exhaustive overview of all the possibilities; some extremely complicated banners (such as {{WikiProject The Beatles}}, {{WikiProject Military history}}, or {{WikiProject Biography}}) include dozens of optional fields and other advanced features, and projects that need them are advised to peruse existing banners for ideas. The case presented here, however, should be sufficient for the majority of WikiProjects, at least initially.

The banner is constructed for the hypothetical Tulips WikiProject, and includes a number of features:

• Variable-size display
• Article assessment support, including auto-assessments
• A show/hide block for additional fields
• Optional fields for a peer review department

The full syntax of the resulting banner when used on a talk page is:

{{WPTULIPS
|class=
|small=
|nested=
|auto=
|peer-review=
|old-peer-review=
}}

Thus, to display a small banner on an article rated as "B-Class" with a current peer review, an editor would add

{{WPTULIPS
|class=B
|small=yes
|peer-review=yes
}}

to the talk page. It is considered polite to trim any blank fields when including the banner, as, for very complicated ones, the large number of unused fields tends to be rather messy.

This section discusses internal navigation templates for WIkiProjects; for navigational templates used in articles, see Wikipedia:Navigational templates.

As a WikiProject grows, it begins to acquire large numbers of subpages for various specialized purposes (such as assessment and peer review work or task forces); the largest projects can have dozens of subpages. The best way to ensure that all of these subpages can be easily located is to create a navigational template linking to them.

Most projects follow a fairly standard design for the template. It is placed as a right-floating bar, listing subpages (and usually corresponding talk pages), one per line. Here, for example, is part of the code for the navigational template used by the Lithuania WikiProject:

{| cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" style="float: right; clear: right; border: 1px solid #aaa; 
padding: 5px; margin: 0em 0em 1em 1em; max-width: 300px; background: white;" 
! style="background: #99FF66; padding:5px; text-align: center;" | 
[[Image:Lietuvos-Lithuania 5.png|left|50px]] 
[[Wikipedia:WikiProject Lithuania|Lithuania<br/> WikiProject]]
|- 
|
{| cellpadding="3" cellspacing="0" style="font-size: 90%; width: 100%; background: ivory;"
|- style="background: #CCFF99; "
! colspan="2" style="text-align: center; border-top: 1px solid black; " | 
General information
|- 
| [[Wikipedia:WikiProject Lithuania|Main project page]]
| [[Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Lithuania|talk]]
|- 
| [[Template:WikiProject Lithuania|Project banner]]
| [[Template talk:WikiProject Lithuania|talk]]
|-
| [[Wikipedia:WikiProject Lithuania/Tips|Top 10 tips]]
| [[Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Lithuania/Tips|talk]]
|-
| [[:Category:Extremely short Lithuania articles|Extremely short articles]]
| [[Category talk:Extremely short Lithuania articles|talk]]
|- 
! colspan="2" style="text-align: center; border-top: 1px solid black; background: #CCFF99; " | 
[[Wikipedia:WikiProject Lithuania/Assessment|Assessment]]
|- 
| [[Wikipedia:WikiProject Lithuania/Assessment/Summary|Summary]]
| [[Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Lithuania/Assessment/Summary|talk]]
|}
|}

Another common feature for on navigational templates can be seen at the bottom of the navigational template used by the Military history WikiProject:

...
|-
| colspan="2" | 
<small class="editlink noprint plainlinksneverexpand">
[{{SERVER}}{{localurl:Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Navigation|action=edit}} edit] · 
[[Special:Recentchangeslinked/Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Navigation|changes]]
</small>

The key is the "changes" link; when the template is properly constructed, Special:Recentchangeslinked can be used to view, at a glance, any changes made to any of a WikiProject's pages.

The visual layout of project navigational templates tends to vary by project, with three stripe colors, two stripe colors, or colored boxes being common.

The simplest way of creating separate task lists is {{todo}}, which can be placed directly on any WikiProject page to generate a /to_do subpage whose contents can be separately edited (via the "edit" link at the top right of the box); this subpage can contain an arbitrary list of tasks. One example is the subpage used by the Melbourne WikiProject. Once the subpage is created, the to-do list can be placed onto any other page using the template {{todo|target=Talk:Foo}}.

A more sophisticated approach is to create a separate, custom template for the WikiProject's open task list. For example, the Tulips project could create {{WikiProject Tulips Tasks}}, which could then be transcluded where needed. Common places to include the template are the project pages themselves, and sometimes inside of a show/hide block in the project banner. Interested project participants can also transclude the template on their user pages.

In many cases, the premade {{tasks}} template can be used inside the custom template to efficiently organize a WikiProject's open task list:

{{tasks
|requests= 
|copyedit=
|wikify=
|merge=
|cleanup=
|expand= 
|verify= 
|disambiguation=
|stubs= 
|update=
|npov= 
|other= 
}}

Each parameter can be filled with a list of the relevant articles for each type of work needed; for examples, see the lists maintained by the Israel WikiProject.

The open task templates can become arbitrarily complex, including features such as sub-templates for particular task forces; see, for example, the template used by the Military history WikiProject.

• WPAssessmentsCatCreator, an AutoWikiBrowser plugin can be used to create the assessment categories.
• User:Kingbotk/Plugin is an AutoWikiBrowser plugin that helps with article assessments. Simple projects can use the generic template. Complex projects can request for customization.

• Igor, a WikiProject management tool, can be used to easily maintain the often tedious and laborious tasks of managing a medium to large WikiProject.

• User:HotArticlesBot creates lists of the most edited articles during the last week.

• Category:Generic WikiProject templates
• Talk page templates
• Wikipedians who understand ParserFunctions
• Extension:DynamicPageList
• Extension:ParserFunctions
• Extension_Matrix
• Help:Magic_words
• Parser functions