Template talk:Backlog

What is this template for?

I know full well that this is not going anywhere but I'm gonna try anyway. To me the template serves no purpose if it is added to every maintenance category since nearly all of them are backlogged (please think first before disputing). Therefore to me it only makes sense in special cases where a maintenance category can although not beein empty actually not be backlogged. This would be for example the "no license" since here we give the people seven days so only if there are more than 14 day categories than this would be backlogged. I would then remove the template from certain categories for example the "need categories" since although this is backlogged marking it has not made any difference and will not make any difference in the future. from the revert of Multichill I can already see that he is not going to like that idea but putting a template into a category does not do anything. --Cwbm (commons) (talk) 15:32, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

Template malfunctioning

Krinkle This template used for "Backlog Notice" at Category:Copyright violations is malfunctioning — it's not hiding as it should when this category and subcategories have fewer than 150 items. Could you fix?  JGHowes  ^talk 23:58, 8 October 2019 (UTC)

@JGHowes: I see what you mean. From what I can see, however, it is not the Backlog template at fault:

• If you try to edit Category:Copyright violations and add the text {{PAGESINCAT:{{PAGENAME}}|R}} to it, and preview. It currently renders 175 – this is why the template is visible, because it is being told that there are 175 pages in it (above 150 threshold).
• In that very same preview it also says "100 copyvios" in the sidebar template. Strange, I guess that template uses a different way to calculate it. Maybe check over there?
• In that very same preview, it also says "'19 files and 6 subcategories in this category". No idea where the other 75 (or 150) are coming from in the counts.

I do not know why these are all different, but I hope this helps a little! --Krinkle 00:23, 9 October 2019 (UTC)

@Krinkle: When I use {{PAGESINCAT:Copyright violations|files}}, there is a miscount while pages and subcats appear to be showing correctly. Do you think there’s a problem with the {{Copyvio}} template itself to be causing the miscount? 1989 (talk) 03:30, 26 January 2020 (UTC)

Maybe it’s because the parser function counts deleted files? There is some quite serious lagging in Commons, e.g. Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:Information/author processing shows more than 28M pages while at most a few dozens of pages should use it. —Tacsipacsi (talk) 12:04, 26 January 2020 (UTC)

@Krinkle: If what’s said above is the case, is there a way for that to be fixed? 1989 (talk) 23:12, 26 January 2020 (UTC)

@1989: I do not think that a template can be causing problems with page counting. It is however known that the MediaWiki software has had some growing pains in the counting functionality for category memberships, which particularly affects the use case of frequently-changing maintenance categories where the count itself is of particular interest (to display elsewhere on the wiki). This feature was created many years ago and is overdue for reevaluation to better understand how it fits in with how the software has evolved and to perhaps improve how it works. This work is tracked on Phabricator under T221795 but is not currently on the roadmap for upcoming year. --Krinkle 00:13, 27 January 2020 (UTC)

I really don't understand your explanation, Krinkle. The problem is not with accurate counting of category memberships, but the false triggering of the backlog template despite an accurate count. For example, as this is written, there are 64 files populating Category:Copyright_violations and the category display correctly states, Media in category "Copyright violations" – The following 64 files are in this category, out of 64 total. So the problem remains, why is backlog being erroneously triggered when the specified parameter is "150"? This discrepancy just started around August or so, prior to that it was OK. If it can't be fixed, {{Backlog}} display should be disabled, it seems to me.  JGHowes  ^talk 01:07, 27 January 2020 (UTC)

@JGHowes, The text {{PAGESINCAT:Copyright violations}} currently evaluates to 222 (e.g. when previewing an edit, or when using Special:ExpandTemplates). --Krinkle 01:27, 27 January 2020 (UTC)

Redesign using Template:Mbox

this template should be redone so that it can float along other boxes. RZuo (talk) 10:32, 20 October 2022 (UTC)