Forum:Categories spontaeously adding pages

Over on the d20 Advanced Wiki there is a problem with pages seeming to get added to categories of which they are not tagged for. Specifically, There is no "" tag on the page, and yet it appears to be listed as a member of that category. They can not be removed from the category.

It may be the case there is some sort of odd Category Inheritance, as the most glaring place this error occurs is the Templates Category. All pages of which use a template which is legitimately in the category. Any information to this matter would be greatly appreciated. --Ankhani 03:56, July 14, 2010 (UTC)


 * The categories seem to be added with the template, to fix this you should edit all the templates and put all the categories are in "noiclude tags" (e.g,  . This will prevent the categories from showing up on all pages that the template is used on. --Anon talk 04:21, July 14, 2010 (UTC)

The noinclude tags have succeeded in removing the category from the page, but not the page from the category. That is to say, the pages no longer list the erroneous category among their list; but the category page itself still lists the articles among it's members. This is a small issue in comparison, but nonetheless, for the sake of clarity, might there be anything to be done in this regard? Ankhani 16:33, July 14, 2010 (UTC)


 * If a template has category code inside  or , any page with that template will be added to those categories (assuming there are no conditionals). You need to look at templates on pages that unexpectedly appear in categories. The   wikicode will only make sure the templates themselves show up in the Templates category and won't affect other category adding code. --  Fandyllic  (talk &middot; contr) 9:36 AM PST 14 Jul 2010


 * To answer your question, Ankhani, when articles have been added to a category using a template and then the template is removed/changed (as was the case for your problem pages) there is a long time lag before the category is updated to stop showing those articles. It could take a week or even a month for the category to update. The only way I know of to make the categories stop showing those pages is to edit all the problem pages.
 * For example, I just did a null edit to the FX Feats page and now it no longer shows in the Category:Templates ~ Gardimuer { ʈalk } 18:50, July 14, 2010 (UTC)
 * I've always found doing a preview before a null edit save to be effective in refreshing the cache in regards to categories, but the preview may not be necessary. I also always mark null edits as minor edits, so people can filter them out. -- Fandyllic  (talk &middot; contr) 3:20 PM PST 14 Jul 2010