User talk:Butlerblog/Archives/2021/June

Westerns category

You should be aware that your activation of WP:Westerns means that you have put hundreds of articles into non-existent assessment categories in breach of WP:REDNOT (eg Category:WikiProject Westerns articles. I've created a Quarry list of article-category pairs, you may find it helpful to sort by the right column (categories). For the sanity of the editors working on the Special:WantedCategories backlog, please can you create the categories, or it may be necessary to just revert the WP:REDNOT-breaching activation of the project. TIA. Le Deluge (talk) 12:11, 30 May 2021 (UTC)

I'm aware, and I'm trying to track down what happened. I don't think it's from the activation of the project, but rather from the assessment template/bot. I'm trying to determine what actually went wrong there. For now I'll work to create the categories. You wouldn't happen to be familiar enough with the process (i.e. Category:Westerns articles by quality) to tell me where I went awry, would you? ButlerBlog (talk) 12:30, 30 May 2021 (UTC)

Addendum to the initial reply - I think I'm on track to resolution. It evidently was the banner template for the project, and I have removed some of the unnecessary assessment categories, which should clean up a bunch of the WP:REDNOT categories. I have created (or re-created) some of the other categories and am working on the remainder. Sorry about the screw up. (BTW - the Quarry was extremely helpful - thanks for that!) ButlerBlog (talk) 17:01, 30 May 2021 (UTC)

@Le Deluge: I copied your original Quarry as I worked through things, and it's now returning zero results, so I believe I have all redlink categories resolved. Could you give it a quick check and let me know if I might have missed anything? TIA ButlerBlog (talk) 14:23, 31 May 2021 (UTC)

Yep, looks all good now. I agree WPBanner is a nightmare! From memory the categories weren't showing up as deleted; without having looked at it in detail, one thing that might have happened is that non-standard category names were used in the past, whereas WPBanner is now more rigorous in imposing "standard" category names. Cheers. Le Deluge (talk) 15:32, 31 May 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for following up and confirming. It was a good learning experience for me all the way around! ButlerBlog (talk) 15:41, 31 May 2021 (UTC)

WikiProject Westerns membership

Except for an initial post by Karenthewriter, you and I are the only people participating in recent discussions about the project. I wonder if it would be a good idea to contact the other 10 members in case they are not aware that the project has been reactivated. I can create a form message and send it to each one to let him or her know. Eddie Blick (talk) 01:33, 1 June 2021 (UTC)

That's probably a good idea. I did look at the other members previously (you included ;-)) with the intent to reach out and mention trying to revive things. Some I think are now blocked for one reason or another, and some don't seem to be active accounts anymore. But there are a few that are still active editors. I was also going to list it as a related project in Wikipedia:WikiProject Television hoping that might generate some interest, depending on how many people actually look at that. I'm optimistic, and we're already double the number that I thought we'd be at at this point! ButlerBlog (talk) 02:29, 1 June 2021 (UTC)

List articles and transclusion for Maverick

Thanks, ButlerBlog, for the Maverick sites input! I realized what happened but couldn't easily fix it. I'm glad you had a look at it and presumably did so (haven't looked at it again quite yet, I went right to your comment). It felt like a Wikipedia whirlpool. I understood what was happening and momentarily blundered around trying to fix it, as you can see, but understanding a purpose and being able to fix it can occasionally be two different things. Of course I am very happy to hear from you regarding this. Thanks again, ButlerBlog! The Final Edict (talk) 00:48, 17 June 2021 (UTC)

No problem. I could have rolled it back, but I didn't want to lose your other edits. Even so, it wasn't a huge deal to fix. BTW, I can understand the feeling of being caught in a whirlpool. If you look above this about the Westerns category, you'll see I had my own disaster recently, only it was way bigger than this. ButlerBlog (talk) 04:58, 17 June 2021 (UTC)

Wow, that was a really impressive one. Hundreds of articles! And I momentarily thought I'd certainly made the most definitively inscrutable and far-reaching error of anyone within memory currently contributing to Wikipedia. The Final Edict (talk) 19:53, 17 June 2021 (UTC)

I think "hundreds" was probably ultra-conservative. It was more likely in the thousands since it affected the talk page of every article with the Westerns project banner (which at the time was probably about 5k). Fixing it required replacing the original project assessment categories (which had existed previously, but were deleted when the project went inactive), so it was possible to fix without touching every article. But yes, it was way worse than a transcluded table. ;-) ButlerBlog (talk) 20:34, 17 June 2021 (UTC)