Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Categories/uncategorized

message: since all articles are now dated when needing a category, it is no longer usefull to have an undated section. Mephiston999 (talk) 12:44, 29 August 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Not all articles are dated when needing a category.  If a user tags an article by adding only  to it, it will put it in the undated category :Category:Category needed until a bot or user dates the tag or removes it.  I often see a few articles in the undated category.  Also, it is a parent category with a lot of useful information, so it shouldn't be removed even if it didn't contain any articles directly.  --Mysdaao talk 16:09, 30 August 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I see that a bot always adds a date after not long so maybe it would be best if this process was automatic. Mephiston999 (talk) 11:27, 2 September 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Undated articles need category no longer needed 

message: I have wasted half an hour this morning cleaning up the mess that one of your members left in :Category:Sports and I suggest that this "task force" is a waste of time and space.  
For example, what possible good are you doing by dumping List of FC Vaslui statistics and records into :Category:Lists, :Category:Romania and :Category:Sports?  Do you honestly think this helps the people who are maintaining those categories to help the readers navigate the site?  With only a few seconds effort, you could have found :Category:Romanian football clubs which is obviously an appropriate category for that article. 
Categories are there to organise articles efficiently to enable the readers to navigate the site, not as dumping grounds to be used by people who cannot be bothered to find the right sub-category.  In any event, experience shows that most uncategorised items are the sort of "article" that should be deleted, so may I suggest that in addition to improving your navigation skills you also learn about prod and AfD?  ----Jack | talk page 05:30, 4 October 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  This task force is a waste of everyone's time 

message: Reducing the backlog from four digits to one is certainly something to be proud of!  Well done, everybody. Fishal (talk) 21:49, 29 July 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Well done 

message: "WikiProject Report" would like to focus on the Categorized Patrol/Task Force for a Signpost article to be published next month. This is an excellent opportunity to draw attention to your efforts and attract new members to the project. Would you be willing to participate in an interview? If so, here are the questions for the interview. Just add your response below each question and feel free to skip any questions that you don't feel comfortable answering. Also, if you know anyone else who would like to participate in the interview, please share this with them. Have a great day. -Mabeenot (talk) 16:09, 21 August 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Uncategorized Task Force in the ''Signpost'' 

message: After much hard work, the entire backlog of 42,000 uncategorized articles listed at the Untagged Uncategorized Articles list has been cleared as of early this week; every article that was on that list has now at least been tagged with ,  or . Going forward, however, I would like to suggest that we make some effort to ensure that the backlog never gets that large again.
Although the entire old list has been cleared, typically somewhere between 100 and 200 new titles appear on the list each day. These aren't always all newly created articles, of course, as all of the standard ways in which a formerly categorized article can become uncategorized come into play as well. But it's important that we make monitoring and clearing that list a priority task for this project — somebody (I'd prefer that it not always be me) needs to check that list and do a "tag, categorize, repair or revert" run through it every day. Ideally, there should never again be a single day when that list isn't cleared back down to zero before midnight. If it's done promptly each day, it's really quite a simple and easy task that shouldn't generally take more than 15 to 20 minutes to complete — it really only becomes a daunting burden if we let it pile up for days or weeks at a time. 
I'd also point out that some further user education needs to take place as well. In the process of working on the backlog, I ran into quite a bit of flak from people who insisted that an article was properly categorized if it had (a) a stub category, (b) a list of unwikified keywords arranged under the unwikified heading "Categories:", or five or six keywords comma-spliced into a single category link, (c) a topic template, regardless of whether that template actually transcluded a content category or not, or (d) any category tag whatsoever, even if the category in question didn't actually exist. There were also a number of cases where people simply removed the tag without providing any reason whatsoever — as well as a bot that would invariably untag articles that had hidden maintenance categories like  but no visible content categories, while frequently missing articles that actually did have real categories added to them without the uncat template getting removed. 
Ultimately, if possible I'd also still like to see a way for articles to be automatically tagged as uncats the moment they're saved without a category declaration on them in the first place, though that's obviously a longer-term goal. But in the meantime, I would like to suggest that we work on some ways to make managing that list — both by getting articles tagged promptly and by attempting to reduce the number of articles that show up there in the first place — much more of a priority task. Bearcat (talk) 21:26, 1 October 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Backlog update 

message: Appreciate the work you do - because having good categories on articles really helps me with bot things. One question however occurs to me as I'm new to doing New Page Patrol. Is it worth me or anyone adding  to pages? In light that Uncategorized pages can be found at Special:UncategorizedPages? Regards, SunCreator (talk) 22:40, 16 June 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Great work guys 

message: We have a problem with the  queue, and I wanted to generate some discussion about how best to deal with it.
The problem, put simply, is that although I've taken on a little bit of management in the past couple of weeks, nobody else ever deals with it at all and I'm not willing or able to deal with it all by myself. There's a backlog of over 2,700 articles, dating at this point all the way back to November 2010 — and it isn't a queue that we can or should dismiss as a low priority, because for a variety of reasons, some of the articles in that queue are actually true uncats and some others just don't belong there at all. For one thing, User:SoxBot frequently removes the uncat tag from articles which have "categories" but fails to distinguish properly between true content categories and hidden maintenance categories that don't count as real categorization, with the result that I've frequently been forced to use the catimprove tag on articles that were more properly tagged as uncats just to keep the bot from inappropriately detagging them again — and for another, some other users who do manual tagging just incorrectly apply the catimprove tag to practically every article they touch regardless of whether it actually needs more categories or not. 
So, put simply, we have to start really dealing with that queue. So my question is, how do we actually want to do that?
# Leave everything exactly as it is, but commit to start actually dealing with the  queue. The thing about this option is that it only works if we actually follow through on that commitment; if we continue to let it just stagnate as a backlog that nobody ever actually deals with, then we haven't solved the problem.
# Collapse the "uncategorized articles", "uncategorized stubs" and "articles needing additional categories" queues into a single "articles that aren't sufficiently categorized" queue. This would have the benefit of keeping all of the project's work in one spot instead of dividing it up into three different piles. I know that traditionally they've been viewed as being three different priority levels, but frankly that's bullpuckey — for one thing, as I've already noted, a significant number of the articles in the "additional categories" queue are actually full uncats. And for another, there isn't actually any discernible or legitimate difference in priority between an article with no categories on it at all, one with a stub template but no content categories and one whose only content category is ; they're all equal in priority. 
# Set a target whereby any backlogged monthly "additional categories" queue older than X number of months gets culled, such that any existing categories would be removed so that the page can be swapped back into the uncats queue. This would certainly not be my preference, because it verges on being disruptive, but I'm certainly willing to consider doing it anyway if the backlog doesn't start getting dealt with through more productive means. 
The bottom line, however, is that we cannot ignore the queue or deem it to be a low priority; one way or another, it needs to be dealt with. Bearcat (talk) 04:04, 20 July 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Articles needing additional categories 

message: Hello! A BRFA has been filed for having a bot automate this task. Essentially, a bot will scan for Untagged Uncategorized Articles, and add  to them. Your comments are appreciated here. Avicennasis @ 18:51, 18 Av 5771 / 18:51, 18 August 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Bot for tagging uncategorized articles

message: :Category:Better category needed on the project page is a redlink; can we either fix or remove this redlink? MatthewVanitas (talk) 18:08, 18 September 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Fix redlink [[:Category:Better category needed]]? 

message: Hi All! Just a quick note to say that Addbots tasks involving the Uncat tag are now running again, Hence why this morning you had 750 articles to look at but now have 1500 and counting! The bot will add tags to pages without cats as well as remove tags from pages with cats! Enjoy! ·Add§hore· Talk To Me! 16:17, 8 January 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[User:Addbot]] 

message: Hello,
I'm working on :Category:Uncategorized from August 2015 and there are a lot of redirects there. I was just a little thrown because the main categorization problem I've seen with redirects is too many categories: they are often placed in the same category as the target article, creating double listings.  What is the project goal with redirects; to put them all in :Category:Wikipedia redirects?  
RevelationDirect (talk) 05:14, 17 January 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: You're right: Copying categories from the target article is counterproductive. In fact, redirects should not be put into article categories, except in a few special cases. Instead, redirects have their own categories and categorisation guidelines. Redirects are primarily categorised using these message templates. When adding more than one redirect category template, it's nice if you enclose them in Template:Redirect category shell. —Ringbang (talk) 22:04, 14 April 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Redirects 

message: :Category:No-Category Version 0.7 articles, which is within the scope of this WikiProject, has been nominated for deletion. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the Categories for discussion page. Thank you. RevelationDirect (talk) 01:30, 18 January 2016 (UTC)
thread_title: Category:No-Category Version 0.7 articles

message: Would any Germans with commons accounts be willing to give categories to all the images uploaded by Panoramio-bot named "Altstadt, ***** Halle (Saale), Germany?" If anybody knows this area better it's 1)A German, and 2)Somebody familiar with the Halle (Saale) region. ---------User:DanTD (talk)  23:08, 13 February 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Uncategorized German images 

message: Help me in adding references  Aayush anuj (talk) 16:25, 6 December 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Amma Makkal Munnetra Kazhagam  

message: I've been working on the categorisation of companies, and I've come across several uncategorized categories, such as :Category:Pioneer Corporation and :Category:Creative Technology Limited but none of them appear on Wikipedia:Database reports/Uncategorized categories. is there an explanation for that?Rathfelder (talk) 21:13, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Uncategorized categories 

message: There are no uncategorized pages on Wikipedia! 🐔 Chicdat  Bawk to me! 11:52, 12 February 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: Oh really? I see three... (they just keep on coming! but keep up the great work!) ~EdGl talk 18:21, 12 February 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  I did it! 

message: Hello,
I know it's a old discussion already talked about (a marronier as we say in French) but I'm (relatively) new here in English Wiki, and in the maintenances team
I see there are a lot of articles listed in the toolsever app, and that's are not marked by the template in category (the main cat). I know that the special page exits, but it's not always actualised. So, I made some search and I've found that a bot is working on it via AWB, so I would know if it's possible to ask him to perform some actions, especially if we have the list of articles to tag, as we can found it here. Or is there another person we can do that?
I think it's more simple to have a simple webpage where all the must-do articles are listed, in opposite of having to find from the three sources. Plus, we can have the right stats of uncat articles on the main maintenance cat.
Thanks for your answers, Anas1712 (talk) 18:32, 20 February 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: Good question. I don't know what the answer is, but we need a bot to go through and add that template to all uncategorized articles. ~EdGl talk 00:03, 21 February 2021 (UTC)
replies: text:  In the meantime, I added the link above to the main cat (All Uncat Pages) so people can also check when having corrected all the links.Anas1712 (talk) 20:41, 4 March 2021 (UTC)
replies: text:  Added request to AWB. Anas1712 (talk) 21:05, 11 May 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  adding uncat template to relevant pages 

message: Anyone know what category this should be added to? - Aussie Article Writer (talk) 19:41, 5 July 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: , I think :Category:Learned societies of the United Kingdom is relatively accurate. Pichpich (talk) 20:43, 5 July 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: Also, Special:Uncategorizedpages seems to be way behind... - Aussie Article Writer (talk) 19:45, 5 July 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: , If you want to work on uncategorized pages, the best place to find them is through :Category:Uncategorized pages. Pichpich (talk) 20:47, 5 July 2021 (UTC)
replies: text:  thanks! I generally try to avoid categories, it can be a scary place :-) thank you for the category addition, I appreciate it. - Aussie Article Writer (talk) 21:02, 5 July 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Sunday Lecture Society]]