By "listas=", I'm referring to the template parameter used by (possibly all) WikiProject banner templates (for example, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:WikiProject_Biography#Listas). Asute readers can legitimately ask "since somebody fixed MediaWiki years ago to use the sortkey assigned to the mainspace article when sorting its corresponding talk page, why are you picking on AWB when you really should be campaigning for the deprecation of listas"? I acknowledge your concern, but the "listas=" sortkey assignment is an entrenched feature that would take enormous amounts of time and energy to convince people to drop. AWB has the opportunity to help educate editors that:
- assigning sortkeys that are identical to {{PAGENAME}} means introducing unnecessary complexity and
- the "ideal for which to strive" is to have exactly one sortkey per article and to prefer the implicit sortkey {{PAGENAME}} and if that can't be done (as is the case with biographies in the English language Wikipedia), prefer the sortkey assigned by DEFAULTSORT on the article page.
Per https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:DEFAULTSORT, "It is not necessary to use DEFAULTSORT at all if the article or page should be alphabetized according to its title"
AWB apparently allows or encourages the explicit assignment of "listas=" when the target of "listas=" is identical to {{PAGENAME}}.
Examples:
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Seyler_family&curid=36714899&diff=823917660&oldid=798746819
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Mugar_family&curid=12977510&diff=823917598&oldid=758729706
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Lindner_family&curid=52564723&diff=823917554&oldid=801031001
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Getty_family&curid=27237309&diff=823917490&oldid=806090948
The same goes for nontrivial prefixes of {{PAGENAME}}
Example:
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Seagram_(rapper)&diff=prev&oldid=823743537
The request is to have AWB disallow such superfluous assignments (or at least discourage them) and present the user a warning message as to why the assignment could (or should) not be done.