English Wikipedia @ Freddythechick:Creating a dated maintenance category

Dated maintenance categories, listed at Category:Wikipedia maintenance categories sorted by month, are used to coordinate cleanup of various issues in articles on Wikipedia. The process of creating a new dated maintenance category is not difficult, but requires editing several pages.

Before you begin

You will have to decide three things:

• The name of the page describing the issue. You'll also have to create it.
• The name of your maintenance category. Try to follow the naming style of other maintenance categories.
• The name(s) of your issue template(s). You might create a message box template, an inline template, or both.

The examples below will use the maintenance category "Articles in BIG TROUBLE", and templates {{BIG TROUBLE}} and {{BIG TROUBLE inline}}.

Categories

There are several categories and support templates that must be created.

Base category

The base category holds the dated subcategories, as well as articles that have not been dated yet. The category page should contain wikitext something like this: <syntaxhighlight lang="wikitext" style="white-space:pre-wrap">

This is a maintenance category, used for maintenance of the Wikipedia project. It is not part of the encyclopedia and contains non-article pages, or groups articles by status rather than subject. Do not include this category in content categories.

This is a hidden category. It is not shown on its member pages, unless the corresponding user preference (Appearance → Show hidden categories) is set.

Administrators: Please do not delete this category as empty!
This category may be empty occasionally or even most of the time.

Random subcategory

Wikipedia articles that are in BIG TROUBLE belong in this category.

Adding {{BIG TROUBLE}} to an article or {{BIG TROUBLE inline}} after a troublesome statement will add the article to this category. </syntaxhighlight>

"All" category

The "all" category contains all articles with the issue, to make it easier to get a count or listing of all pages with the issue and to test whether a page has an issue. The name should be derived from the base category by adding the word "All" to the front, e.g. "Category:All articles in BIG TROUBLE". The category page should contain wikitext something like this: <syntaxhighlight lang="wikitext" style="white-space:pre-wrap">

This is a maintenance category, used for maintenance of the Wikipedia project. It is not part of the encyclopedia and contains non-article pages, or groups articles by status rather than subject. Do not include this category in content categories.

This is a hidden category. It is not shown on its member pages, unless the corresponding user preference (Appearance → Show hidden categories) is set.

This is a tracking category.

It is used to build and maintain a list or lists of pages—primarily for the sake of the lists themselves and their use in article and category maintenance. It is not part of the encyclopedia's categorization scheme.

More information:

• This category is hidden on its member pages—unless the corresponding user preference (Appearance → Show hidden categories) is set.
• These categories are used to track, build and organize lists of pages needing "attention en masse" (for example, pages using deprecated syntax), or that may need to be edited at someone's earliest convenience.
• These categories also serve to aggregate members of several lists or subcategories into a larger, more efficient list (discriminated by classifications).
• Typically, tracking categories are automatically populated by templates invoked in pages or by the MediaWiki software (see Special:TrackingCategories for an overview of the latter).

Administrators: Please do not delete this category as empty!
This category may be empty occasionally or even most of the time.

This is a category to help keep count of the total number of articles with the {{BIG TROUBLE}} or {{BIG TROUBLE inline}} templates. They should all be in one of the dated categories. See also Category:Articles in BIG TROUBLE. </syntaxhighlight>

Counter category

The counter category is used by {{Progress box}} to count the number of dated categories. The name must be of the form "Monthly clean-up category (base category name) counter", e.g. "Category:Monthly clean-up category (Articles in BIG TROUBLE) counter". The category page should contain wikitext something like this: <syntaxhighlight lang="wikitext" style="white-space:pre-wrap">

This is a counter category. It contains items specifically for the purpose of counting them, in order to assist with maintenance. It is not part of the encyclopaedia; do not include it in content categories.

Administrators: Please do not delete this category as empty!
This category may be empty occasionally or even most of the time.

This category is not shown on its member pages unless the appropriate user preference (appearance → show hidden categories) is set.

</syntaxhighlight>

Current month's dated category

If you plan to test the issue templates, you may want to create this category page manually instead of allowing the bot to do it. The name is formed by appending "from Month Year" to the base category name, e.g. "Category:Articles in BIG TROUBLE from May 2025". The wikitext should be: <syntaxhighlight lang="wikitext" style="white-space:pre-wrap">

0% completed (estimate)

   

This is a maintenance category, used for maintenance of the Wikipedia project. It is not part of the encyclopedia and contains non-article pages, or groups articles by status rather than subject. Do not include this category in content categories.

This is a tracking category. It builds and maintains a list of pages primarily for the sake of the list itself. They are not part of the encyclopedia's categorization scheme.

• This category is hidden on its member pages—unless the corresponding user preference (Appearance → Show hidden categories) is set.
• These categories can be used to track, build and organize lists of pages needing "attention en masse" (for example, pages using deprecated syntax), or that may need to be edited at someone's earliest convenience.
• These categories also serve to aggregate members of several lists or sub-categories into a larger, more efficient list (discriminated by classifications).

This category combines all from 00 gory (gory-00) to enable us to work through the backlog more systematically. It is a member of [[:Category:]].
Here are the message pages.

Some may be {{Null}}

Note that Type messages will be used if they exist, whereas Main messages will be used if there is no message parameter. This is because it is always possible to create a default type message, and it is never possible to create a default (non-null) main message.

Type messages have the parameters month name , year and cat available to them.

Main messages have month name and year.

Messages are called from Template:Monthly clean-up category/core

Main messages

</syntaxhighlight>

Progress box template

The progress box template is used on the base and dated monthly categories to display a correct invocation of {{Progress box}}. The name must match the base category name, e.g. "Template:Articles in BIG TROUBLE progress". The wikitext of the template should be: <syntaxhighlight lang="wikitext" style="white-space:pre-wrap"> </syntaxhighlight> Note that the base category name must be filled in the appropriate location in the wikitext.

Monthly instruction template

The monthly instruction template is used to display category-specific instructions on the dated subcategories. The name is constructed by creating a subtemplate under Template:Monthly clean-up category/Messages/ with the base category name, e.g. "Template:Monthly clean-up category/Messages/Articles in BIG TROUBLE". The template will probably use {{Monthly clean-up category/to add}}, something like this: <syntaxhighlight lang="wikitext" style="white-space:pre-wrap"> To add an article to this category add {{BIG TROUBLE inline|date={{{month name}}} {{{year}}}}} or {{BIG TROUBLE|date={{{month name}}} {{{year}}}}} to the article. If you omit the date a bot will add it for you at some point. </syntaxhighlight>

Issue templates

The issue templates are used on articles to indicate the issue to other editors, and to invite readers to become editors by showing them something they could fix.

After creating an issue template, be sure to add it to Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/Dated templates so that bots will know to start dating it.

Message box

Message box templates are displayed at the top of an article or section when the issue is endemic in the article. The general format of a message box template is: <syntaxhighlight lang="wikitext" style="white-space:pre-wrap">

</syntaxhighlight> Note that the name of the template itself as well as the base and "all" categories are inserted in appropriate places. Keep in mind that |issue= is the bit of text that shows up in {{multiple issues}}, so don't make it too long. Don't forget to also create a documentation subpage for the template.

See the documentation for Template:Ambox for more details.

Inline

Inline templates are used to mark a specific passage in the article as having an issue. The general format of an inline template is: <syntaxhighlight lang="wikitext" style="white-space:pre-wrap">

</syntaxhighlight> Note that the name of the template and the names of the base and "all" categories are inserted in appropriate places. Don't forget to also create a documentation subpage for the template.

See the documentation for Template:Fix for more details.

Testing

You may want to try the following in a sandbox:

• View all the category pages and make sure the display is correct.
• Make sure the base category is showing up in Category:Wikipedia maintenance categories sorted by month.
• Add the issue template and see that it applies the "all" and base categories.
• Add the issue template including a correct |date= and see that it applies the "all" and monthly categories, but not the base category. Note that this requires that the monthly category already exists.
• If you have a message box template, use it inside {{multiple issues}} and make sure it displays the appropriate text.
• Double-check that all the issue templates are listed at Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/Dated templates so that bots will know to start dating them.