Forum:Management templates

Based on idea by GhostAvatar, I'll start to roll out a change to the way the page management templates (delete, stub etc) work today or tomorrow. The idea behind the change is to allow editors to find pages they can contribute to more easily by placing pages in game-specific maintenance categories rather than dumping them into one category for all games; i.e. pages will end up in categories like "Category:Image needed (Fallout 3)" rather than in the generic "Category:Image needed".

Details of the change:
 * Currently, all management templates support one unnamed parameter which allows editors to specify details/reasons why the page was tagged (e.g. ).
 * In the future, all of them will support two unnamed parameters - one (the first) for specifying a game/multiple games via abbreviations and one (the second) for details/reason (e.g. ).
 * If the first parameter consists of one or more valid abbreviations, the page is added to game-specific maintenance categories. For example,  results in the page being added to "Category:Section needed (Fallout 3)" and "Category:Section needed (Fallout: New Vegas)".
 * If the first parameter is empty or contains no valid abbreviations, the page is added to the general maintenance category. For example, or  results in the page being added to "Category:Section needed".
 * If the first parameter contains text other than abbreviations, it is used for specifying the reason instead and the page is placed in the general category. For example, will still work as it did prior to the update.

Various maintenance templates might be "broken" in the hours after the update as the server catches up with the changes; please keep that in mind if you notice anything unusual. -- Porter21 (talk) 10:21, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

I think Category:Image Needed (gamehere) would be a better category name. Also, can't the abbreviation thing just do automatically by using the Games template? --Light Daxter 11:18, 1 February 2012 (UTC)


 * I'm still discussing the category names with GA. As for the management templates pulling game data from Games, that's not possible for technical reasons. For one, does not set any page-scoped variables for other templates to pick up - and even if it did, those would only be available to templates called after Games. Page management templates go above  per our general article layout, hence this wouldn't work.
 * Technical reasons aside, it wouldn't be very practical either as tagged issues do not necessarily extend to all games specified in Games. Let's say an article about a FO1 and FO2 character is missing the FO2 interactions section; it doesn't need to be in both the FO1 and FO2 "section needed" category but only the FO2 one. Putting it in the FO1 category as well even kind of defeats the purpose of making the maintenance categories game-specific in the first place. Same goes for characters/items/locations which only appear in one game but are mentioned in others - Games does not differentiate between "appears" and "mentioned only". Etc etc etc. -- Porter21 (talk) 12:43, 1 February 2012 (UTC)


 * I honestly cant see any logical reason to break from the normal naming convention for the majority of the templates. User avatar tag.gif Avatar talk.png 22:03, 1 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Discussion on category names resolved; I've updated the OP accordingly. -- Porter21 (talk) 13:12, 2 February 2012 (UTC)