Template talk:US states missing

This template was designed to provide a list of US states which are missing a specific category which many states already have. For example Category:Actors from New York exists, but Category:Actors from Alaska does not.

By default it tracks people from states (and DC) but it will accept a second parameter to change "from" to something else. This is most often "in" - Category:Mountains in California or "of" Category:geography of Texas. With out a second parameter, it also links to Category:American <XXX> by state. Adding a second parameter changes it to Category:<XXX> in/of the United States.

Usage for people groups: {{ US states missing| "main subject" }}

Usage for other categories {{ US states missing| "state name |"in" / "of" }}

The "main subject" is the group the template is for. For people, this could be actors, athletes or singers. For other groups, it may be things like mountains, rivers or buildings and structures (in) or geography (of) with the correct second parameter.

Because of issues with Georgia, it checks both Georgia (U.S. state) (clunky and matching the main category) and Georgia (US) (slimmer and used in most people based category names). It also checks both "Washington" and "Washington (state)". Washington, D.C. has its own categories with the same name (ie. uses the ", D.C.")

The template works fine on the matching category pages (ie. Category:American actors by state or can be used on a person "tracking" page. When used off the category page, it supplies a link to the central category itself.

It was created to monitor which sub categories we do not have in the larger "by state" to make it easier to tell which categories we are missing and need to work on. It uses red links to the missing categories themselves for ease in creation and more importantly so popups can look at the categories and get a headcount of articles already there to know if the categories are ready to be created. It was too much effort to try and get it to check each missing cat and do a headcount automatically and flag the categories automatically. --Creol(talk) 00:10, 29 March 2012 (UTC)