Template:Orphan/doc

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

This template is used on approximately 55,000 pages and changes may be widely noticed. Test changes in the template's /sandbox or /testcases subpages, or in your own user subpage. Consider discussing changes on the talk page before implementing them.

Any breaking changes to this template, including moving it or nominating it for deletion, must be communicated in advance to Twinkle's users and maintainers at Wikipedia talk:Twinkle. The standard installation of Twinkle relies on this template. Thank you.

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

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 52,988 orphaned articles.

Use

To add this template to an article, copy and paste {{Orphan|date=July 2026}} to the top of the article. 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. Instead of using this template, please make an effort to de-orphan the article yourself.

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 July 2026 or June 2026). 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

There are 52,988 orphaned articles in the WikiProject Orphanage-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, 2010^{[needs update]} AutoWikiBrowser (AWB) restricts orphan tag addition to linkless pages as a default option.
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=July 2026}} 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=July 2026}}, 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=July 2026|incat=July 2026}}

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 for this template used by TemplateWizard, VisualEditor and other tools. See a monthly parameter usage report for Template:Orphan in articles based on its TemplateData.

TemplateData for Orphan

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

Template parameters
Parameter		Description	Type	Status
Date	`date`	The date this template was added to the page. (Input: Monthname Year) Auto value `{{SUBST:CURRENTMONTHNAME}} {{SUBST:CURRENTYEAR}}`	String	required
De-orphan attempt	`att`	If you have made an unsuccessful attempt to de-orphan the article, please fill in this field to record the attempt. (Input: Monthname Year)	String	optional
In Category	`incat`	If the article has no link and probably never will, but is well categorised this option can be used.(Input: Monthname Year)	String	optional

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