Hello,

So, WP:COLLAB has been chugging through working on cleaning out a lot of maintenance categories. However, a thing we often run into is that some of the templates have been left on pages for over a decade in some cases; leaving those who stumble on it trying to figure out what a user meant, as the reasoning is, nine times out of ten, not on the talk page or the edit history.

In this CT and its preceding Senate Hall, we made it so that when {{Expand}} is added with no reason, it displays an error. This was done because the template was often being added everywhere…but it wasn't specified what needed expanding, leaving the template to kinda just idle there until/if an article was taken to status. This is done by {{Expand|insertreasonhere}}.

I'd like to propose we do the same for the following templates:

• {{Merge}}
• {{Mergeto}}
• {{Mergefrom}}
• {{Merging}}
• {{NPOV}}
• {{Disputed}}
• {{Contradict}}

If a reason isn't provided of course folk would still attempt to figure it out, but if it can't be, then it should be fair game to remove. We have been making pretty steady headway on all of these, but there's often a bit of back-and-forth of figuring out with other editors what is the part disputed, or what part is not written neutrally, and especially—what the reasoning for a page merge is (especially if someone from 5+ years ago put it on and they're no longer here to ask). Or in some cases, the issue may get solved by a meandering editor who forgets to remove the template, so an editor looks at the page and sees nothing wrong, but can't confidently remove it, and so the template just idles there.

Would ideally like to bring this up, see if there's any reasons it'd be bad to have a reason provided for the above, and then move it forward to CT. Hopefully, as well, we'll be able to empty these maintenance categories by year end.—spookywilloww^talk 05:02, 8 June 2024 (UTC)

Discussion[]

• Good idea. NanoLuuke^{Cloning Facility} 19:42, 12 June 2024 (UTC)
• Makes sense to implement the same reasoning request on all the others as well, will help to eventually lose the tags on pages that way Lewisr (talk) 01:20, 5 July 2024 (UTC)
• I agree; nothing frustrates me more than a template being put on a page with no clarification where the problematic portion of the page is. - Thannus (DFaceG) (he/him) (talk) 03:12, 5 July 2024 (UTC)
• Makes sense. Rsand 30 (talk) 01:04, 9 July 2024 (UTC)