Template:Orphan/doc

This is a documentation subpage for Template:Orphan.
It contains usage information, categories and other content that is not part of the original template page.

This template is used on a very large number of pages.
To avoid large-scale disruption and unnecessary server load, any changes to this template should first be tested in its /sandbox or /testcases subpages or in your own user subpage. The tested changes can then be added to this page in a single edit. Please consider discussing any changes on the talk page before implementing them.

Template:Twinkle standard installation

This template is used by the standard installation of AutoWikiBrowser (AWB). If you are planning to make changes to this template, how it should be used, or nominate it for deletion, please notify AWB's user base and maintainers beforehand at Wikipedia talk:AWB as a courtesy.

This template should not be substituted.

Template:Orphan is used on pages with no incoming links from other articles or lists. The template is responsible for populating sub-categories of Category:Orphaned articles. There are currently 3,057 orphaned articles.

How to use

The simplest way to add this template to an article is to copy and paste either {{Orphan|date=November 2024}} or {{Orphan|{{subst:DATE}}}} at the top of the article.

Please do not subst: this template.

When to use

This template should only be put on articles which meet the orphan criteria.

Use your judgment about whether to add this template. Do not add this template to articles that you honestly believe will be impossible to de-orphan.

Visibility

The template message is visible on all pages where the date parameter is set to either the current month or the previous month (currently November 2024 or October 2024). It is also visible on all pages where it is used inside the {{multiple issues}} template. Older-dated orphan templates used outside of the {{multiple issues}} template are invisible by default, but are still categorized. To override the default and make the message visible on all pages where it's placed, put the following line in your common.css file (create the file if you don't have one yet):

.ambox-Orphan{display: table !important;}

This may not work in some older browsers - if it doesn't work, use

.ambox-Orphan{display: block !important;}

instead.

Alternatively, to never see this tag, you could instead add to your common.css:

.ambox-Orphan{ display: none !important; }

The orphan message box is invisible on this page by default. If you have correctly installed the above common.css the orphan message box is visible here.

Rationale

With over 100,000 orphaned articles in the project, WikiProject Orphanage has an extreme backlog. The tags on newly created articles are visible for a month or two, in hopes that the article's creators or reviewers will tend to the issue. After a couple of months it's assumed that the WikiProject will need to take on the task, and project members use their common.css files to keep the templates visible. The community consensus is that this issue is insufficiently critical to merit notifying general readers of the issue for more than a couple of months, unless the article has {{multiple issues}}. Please review the discussions related to this on Template talk:Orphan and its archives.

Automated placement and adjustment

Several semi-automated tools and bots facilitate orphan-tagging. Some notes on tool implementation:

Per Another tweak for orphans, as of March 9, 2010Template:Needs update AutoWikiBrowser (AWB) restricts orphan tag addition to linkless pages.
Per Move orphan (and some more) tags on the top, AWB moves incorrectly positioned orphan tags to the correct location for orphan tags, at or near the top of the article.

Parameters

date

You may use a date parameter with this template, for example {{Orphan|date=November 2024}} to help with the categorisation of articles requiring links. If you leave it out, a bot will fill it in (but this will result in more edits and watchlist alerts, so adding the date right away is preferred).

att

If you have made an unsuccessful attempt to de-orphan the article, then please add the month/year of the attempt to the template, like so, {{orphan|date=Month Year|att=November 2024}}, where the |date= parameter is the date the template was originally placed on the page, and the |att= parameter is set to equal the current month and year. This places it in Category:Attempted de-orphan for that date and also hides the article message box. The "att" is an abbreviation for "attempt", as in "I attempted to de-orphan this article but failed".

incat

If the article has no link and probably never will, but is well categorised the incat option can be used. For example, {{Orphan|date=November 2024|incat=November 2024}}

Per the discussion at template talk:Orphan/Archive 2#"Few links" template?, this parameter was, but is not currently, used in the template itself.

TemplateData

This is the TemplateData documentation for this template used by VisualEditor and other tools.

Orphan