Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Unreferenced articles/Archive 1

message: Addhoc 16:16, 24 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Alternative user box design 

message: *This list of statistics by letter is neat.  I am going to take some of the lower ones, each day, add references, and see if I can't just eliminate some of the letters from the list...  Smee 11:48, 17 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: * You could add your name after the sections Y, U, and V if you wanted.  Previously we have done that History and it is keeping with similar project trends  Stub Sensor.  Though I might suggest only signing up for one at a time, as other editors tend to not work claimed sections. Jeepday (talk) 13:44, 17 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: *Thanks, but nah, for now I'll just work piecemeal as I can.  If others want to chip in, no worries.  Smee 10:17, 18 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[:Category:Articles lacking sources from June 2006]] 

message: The wording of the edit box is the wording throughout wikipedia policy, and you are not following it here. Content must be verifiable--it must be able to be verified if challenged. It does not have to be initially verified. It is not now and it has never been acceptable to delete articles that have no references just because they have no references, nor to nominate articles for deletion on that ground alone. You need to know that it is not verifiable. There are only two ways you can say that: first, you made a good faith effort appropriate to the article and failed.   The other if it is obvious from similar cases that the material is totally unverifiable.  It is my experience at AfD that people who assume the second are as likely to be  wrong as to be right, and that references can often be found when challenged, and could have been found had they been honestly looked for.  
The goal of this project should simply be to find good references. Period. There should be another project to examine the articles for which references can not be found. In that project it should be considered whether the lack of references affect the possible notability of the subject. If so, it should be nominated for deletion. if not, it should be left alone for future work. 
All WPedians will cooperate with a project having such goals. DGG 06:54, 20 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: * The goal of this project is to find references for articles it has been on listed in the second paragraph of the project since the first day of the project History 16 May 2007.  Currently there is another project to examine  articles for which references can not be found. In that project it is considered by the community whether the lack of references affect the possible notability of the subject. Currently the project is AfD if you have an idea for a better project that people on this project could submit article to I would welcome it. You might look to Wiktionary:Requests for verification they use  to post the message This page has been listed on the requests for verification list. (Add entry to list.) It has been suggested that this entry might not meet Wiktionary's criteria for inclusion. If evidence is not provided within a month, the disputed information will be removed. See example atWiktionary:nouvelle illustration as long as you look quick before they delete it, or I attempt to reference it. Jeepday (talk) 01:39, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

text: Biographies of living persons can be nominated for deletion on grounds they are unsourced, provided they are negative in tone. Also, if after looking for sources, the article lacks non-trivial references, then it can be proposed for deletion. Otherwise agree with comments by Jeepday. Addhoc 09:55, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

text: The approach of removing material  if not sourced by a given time makes sense only if applied to material that is for some reason suspect, or controversial. There is so much dubious material in Wikipedia that it makes sense to concentrate on the worst and the most dangerous and misleading. DGG (talk) 04:10, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: verifiable

message: To the people who feel the wrong approach has been taken, please be more specific where you feel a member of this project has erred.  I do not know how to answer your concerns with such general complaints as above. The variety of needs of articles in his category go beyond references or deletions.  This category is pretty much a catch all for problematic articles and in going through it I feel we should do whatever is necessary, not limit ourselves to looking for sources. Most of articles simply get re-tagged with a more appropriate label because they already list a reference.  From what I have been seeing more articles by far have been given new references than deleted.  A few articles end up in deletion like Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Vibrational psychology and Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Zinc economy (2nd nomination).  Some end up in copvio (because they match an external link), tagged with ((tl|db-bio}} (or the corp version because they do not claim notability), or  (Mostly corporate spam but some oddball stuff too).  Others go to the noticeboard for WP:BLP and get nominated for deletion from there.  But please be more specific if you want us to reconsider our actions.  Certainly you aren't complaining about the copyvio's being deleted, but I don't know which of the various decisions you disagree with.  Asking us to do nothing but search for sources is impractical.  The category must be cleaned up before it is useful enough to focus on sourcing, it is backlogged for over a year and over 70,000 articles.  Surely you don't believe that any 70,000 articles, have no problems besides sourcing problems.  Or that editors should ignore any such problems they come across. --BirgitteSB 09:26, 20 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Good presentation Birgitte.  Exactly what is driving this perception that this project is deleting article without references?  Nothing in the project outline supports the accusations being made.  Jeepday (talk) 01:22, 21 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Overall we have sourced many articles and deleted very few, I'm not sure what has caused this misconception. Addhoc 09:32, 21 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I finally figured out where all that was coming from --BirgitteSB 19:31, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  It seems the thread starts here  with the comment "A Wikiproject to "eliminate unreferenced articles"?" by "Jossi Fresco" it begins with an unfair assessment of the project as an assumption. Jeepday (talk) 13:46, 30 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Complaints 

message: So here I am working :Category:Articles lacking sources and I find this stub Jooba History, I look and find one reference BCC_K8 Lesson Plan.doc and do a merge and redirect to Clogging (History) and I move on.  A little while later I flash back to a current AfD Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Jacqueline Fitzsimon where clearly the only references found so far are sourced from wikipedia History.  So how do I know that the one and single reference that I found for Jooba is not sourced from Wikipedia?
:I would ask around on the talk pages of the best contributor's at Clogging if they have any info of Jooba.  As a last resort take Jooba to AFD and see if anyone shows up there with better information.  These examples are good reasons why this category should not be allowed to get backlogged to such a degree.--BirgitteSB 16:37, 22 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Please see WP:Merge  -- any merge likely to be controversial should be proposed on the article talk page for 5 days--the success of this as any clean-up project is dependent on the good will of the editors. As a guide, any page being actively worked on in recent months should be discussed first. Better to discuss first, than defend it later. DGG (talk) 04:14, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Um the last non-bot edit to that article was Sept. 2006.  Not even remotely being actively worked on.  I don't think you really understand the situation being discussed here by your response, but in any event it was taken care of weeks ago.--BirgitteSB 12:47, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Jooba

message: Please see:
Wikipedia:Requests for verification
A proposal designed as a process similar to  to delete articles without sources if no sources are provided in 30 days.
It reads:
This page has been listed in :Category:Requests for verification.It has been suggested that this article might not meet Wikipedia's core content policies Verifiability and/or No original research.  If references are not cited within a month, the disputed information will be removed.
If you can address this concern by sourcing please [ edit this page] and do so. You may remove this message if you reference the article. 
The article may be deleted if this message remains in place for 30 days.
If you created the article, please don't take offense. Instead, improve the article so that it is acceptable according to Verifiability and/or No original research.
Please help [ improve this article] by adding citations to reliable sources. (help, get involved!)
Some editors see this as necessary to improve Wikipedia as a whole  
and assert that this idea is supported by policy, and others see this as a negative thing for the project with the potential of loss of articles that could be easily sourced.
I would encourage your comments in that page's talk or Mailing list thread on this proposal  WikiEN-l: Proposed "prod" for articles with no sources
Signed Jeepday (talk) 14:02, 18 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Wikipedia:Requests for verification

message: What are some good "reliable sources" for music and movie references? I know Wikipedia guidelines suggest against linking to a site where you can purchase something (I can't find the policy right now -- but I know I read it a few days ago..), but a lot of the time sites like Amazon and Blockbuster seem to have the most complete info for CDs and movies, and since movies and CDs don't have an ISBN, I can't just reference them by ID number, either. For now I'll keep doing what I'm doing -- just looking for feedback so I can do it better. Spazure 05:16, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The really good sources will not likely be online.  Probably magazines from the time period of they were released, but I am not really familiar with these subjects.  I am even less certain about moives, but my roommate subscribes to a heavy-metal magazine.  I can't imagine that magazine on just heavy-metal could have much content, without detailed reviews of the newest albums released.  Variety (magazine) is a film trade magazine, but I am not sure exactly what kind of material it covers.--BirgitteSB 18:49, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  I never thought to check magazines for music and film info, that's a great idea! Since I'd only need it for sourcing, I'll take a look at what's already available in my local library -- I already have a few things to look up next time I go in there anyway. Spazure 04:31, 21 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Album and Movie references 

message: Good news the :Category:Articles lacking sources from July 2006 currently has only 2211 articles in it so once we finish June 2006, we should be able to make faster progress there. August 2006 also only has just over 2000 articles. Jeepday (talk) 17:55, 12 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: July 2006

message: We have a bot to do some of the work here Wikipedia:Bot requests#Template:Unreferenced bot request.  Tomorrow it should go look for references as identfied by an external link and if present change Unreferenced to Refimprove.  02:10, 12 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: There was a delay but User:^demonBot2 is working on updating right now.  Seems to be going great.  additionally Smackbot is adding a reference section with a  if there is a reference in the article that is not posting.  Jeepday (talk) 23:02, 19 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  There were technical difficulties when it came to  the bot will not be continuing to make that changes.  I thank User:^demonBot2 for the effort on the project. Jeepday (talk) 23:39, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Unreferenced to Refimprove

message: This template is adding to our category here which I do not find appropriate.  What do others think?--BirgitteSB 14:13, 2 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Also  which Iam definately changing.--BirgitteSB 16:37, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

text: goes to :Category:Articles lacking reliable references which is the same as  so that should be ok.  I just looked and it seems CBM just changed  to :Category:Articles needing more detailed references so that should be ok now. Good catch Brigitte :) Jeepday (talk) 03:00, 3 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  {{tl|Onesource}} 

message: User:Viriditas brought up an idea on my talk page that sounds interesting "It would be nice if a bot could distribute a block of ten articles, say twice a week to the talk page of project members".  I think this is a great idea but it has challenges in providing the most current articles to the user.  I remember seeing  from Template:Wikipedia ads
  
and got thinking could we build a box or template that shows 10 random articles from the oldest :Category:Articles lacking sources.  It could be placed on your user page and would refresh bringing up new articles every time you opened your page and/or pushed a "refresh" button.  The bot is doable I think but an auto refresh from the category is going to have less articles that have already been fixed (and you can do more then 10). Thoughts? Jeepday (talk) 02:43, 11 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Bring the list to you

message: As the quantity of articles in the June 2006 category decreases the challenge in finding references for those remaining increases.  
I have attempted to gain assistance in referencing the 8 articles below by using this message on the talk page of some editors who have contributed (meaningfully) to the article and who appear to still be active Wikipedians. Jeepday (talk) 14:30, 22 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Asking for help

message: In the last week or two, several dozen afds have been opened, giving the reason "unreferenced for so and so many months." They are generally being closed as rapid keeps, on the grounds that this is not a sufficient reason for deletion. As indeed it isn't -- articles can be deleted because the information can not be verified--certainly -- but not because their present status is that they not yet been verified, no matter how long they have been sitting there. There's no point in going through the work of look at the articles here unless its going to be done right--before nominating for deletion, please remember to make a try at verifying--an adequate try. This as a minimum includes G/GS/GBooks for recent things that are likely to be in google. Fo things not likely to be in google, even if highly notable & verifiable, then its a more formidable undertaking--and t he suggestion above--to ask for specialized help--is a very good one. DGG (talk) 03:37, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: overuse

message: I just posted this invite to all the volunteers listed.  Come one come all lets get this one done :) Jeepday (talk) 02:29, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Invite to Reference

message: We are almost done, :Category:Articles lacking sources from June 2006 is down to less the 400 articles to find references for.  I would like to thank you for listing yourself as a volunteer at Wikipedia:Unreferenced articles and would like to take this opportunity to invite you to visit the project again and work on getting the last few articles referenced.  We started with 5,572 and we are in the home stretch, please come and try to do a couple a day and we can finish it up in no time. Jeepday (talk) 02:29, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: 399 to go

message: The huge set of unreferenced articles from June of 2006 is finally completed.  Thank you all for your contributions.  The new focus at Wikipedia:Unreferenced articles is :Category:Articles lacking sources from July 2006 which as of May 28 is only 1,322 articles and should go much quicker.  Thank you to everyone who has contributed and listed themselves as a volunteer. Jeepday (talk) 11:53, 28 May 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: New Focus at [[Wikipedia:Unreferenced articles]]

message: Dear All: I have added my name to those involved in this project.  If I understand it correctly you work thorough references needed for one period then when complete move onto the next.  My interest is mostly Polish history especially WWII.  If you are aware of Polish articles or related topics which need referencing then please feel free to e-mail, comment on my talk page or here comment here and I will try to help.  
My first contribution to this project is History of Czechoslovakia which I noticed was in Articles lacking sources from August 2006.  I added 17 references. Being a new editor I would like someone to confirm I can remove the tag?  Some tags such as neutrality should not be removed without discussion but can I removed reference tags once I feel I have corrected?  Any comments from experienced editors would be appreciated. Jniech (talk) 20:31, 8 December 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Certainly you can remove the tag, you've done a very good job. Editors can usually remove tags without discussion, but if someone complains afterwards (or the article is watched by many users) then it's often a good idea to discuss before removing things like neutrality tags. Hut 8.5 21:17, 8 December 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for the guidance.  Jniech (talk) 08:20, 9 December 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Message from a new editor 

message: Just a heads up for those referencing with books.  Be aware of books published by Icon Group International.  They create computer generated books trawled from other sources including Wikipedia.  My thanks to User:Apoc2400 for letting me know about this. -- Whpq (talk) 14:14, 6 March 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: *Ineed.  I had tried to use Ceos: Webster’s Facts and Phrases, and User:Apoc2400 pointed out the problem to me.  The preface to the book identifies that Wikipedia as a source with [WP] noted in the entry.  I suspect all the other books from Icon would similarly note the source. -- Whpq (talk) 11:26, 7 March 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: *I've noticed that these books have been turning up in Google Books searches in the last month or so. Even where the content isn't sourced from Wikipedia it's always sourced from a web site, because it's all automatically generated from web sources, seemingly without any fact checking (see Philip M. Parker for details). Any referencing that we do should be to the original online source rather than to one of these books. Also I would point out that these are print-on-demand books that in many cases don't physically exist. I very much doubt whether anyone has forked out $495 for The 2007-2012 Outlook for Bathroom Toilet Brushes and Holders in Greater China yet, so don't expect to be able to go to your local library to verify any references to it. Phil Bridger (talk) 20:14, 16 March 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: * Yes, these are quite annoying. I think Icon also re-publishes some old public domain books, but they are mostly automatically generated from web sites. These "Webster’s Quotations, Facts and Phrases" show up here when people don't check the publisher before adding a book source. Despite the title, it has nothing to do with Merriam–Webster, as far as I know. About a handful of these references per week is added. --Apoc2400 (talk) 09:38, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

text: I've modified  and  to exclude books published by the Icon Group. PhilKnight (talk) 13:59, 28 July 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Icon Group International

message: The above is a bot-task under discussion concerning :Category:Articles lacking sources.  Comments from more people familiar with these categories might offer some insight.BirgitteSB 17:43, 9 June 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Erik9bot 9 

message: The bot has been approved, the project to manually check the articles for appropriate action is currently hosted here as Wikipedia:Unreferenced_articles#Special_Project, but it needs its own project space. Any thoughts on project name? 
* Project name suggestions -
**CiterSquad! – Quadell (talk) 13:11, 27 June 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: New project

message: Note that there is ongoing discussion regarding the use of SmackBot to move all of the articles which Eric9Bot categorized into :Category:Articles lacking sources.— V = I * R (talk to Ω) 12:42, 20 November 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/SmackBot XXI 

message: An article that you have been involved in editing, 130s BC, has been listed for deletion.  If you are interested in the deletion discussion, please participate by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/.  Thank you.Please contact me if you're unsure why you received this message.  Jeepday (talk) 22:53, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[WP:AFD|AfD]] nomination of [[130s BC]] 

message: Articles needing additional references category/template seems to miss out some articles from the total count, even though they are visible in the category. For instance :Category:Articles needing additional references from June 2006 has atm 373 articles but only counts to 361. I'm guessing that some articles which have the |section option included in the tag are not been included in the total.
Does anybody know fix this? Mattg82 (talk) 00:21, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
replies: text:  I just looked and both the template and the category are reporting 362 articles.  I have noticed in the past that count of article listed at the top of the category page is not always correct.  Why might a category list not be up to date?.  I have also noticed that I can see diferent counts on different computers and different counts then others are currently seeing.  As a rule when there is conflict on a category that should be getting smaller the smallest number visable is usually correct. JeepdaySock (AKA, Jeepday) 11:56, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for the explanation, though I think in this instance its more than updating in a timely fashion or different computers. There is 373 articles, they are visible in the category. I also loaded the Category into AWB and that correctly counts 373. Mattg82 (talk) 01:10, 30 January 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Articles needing additional references&ndash;not counting properly