Wikipedia talk:Cleanup/Archive 6

message: The accelerating proliferation of maintenance templates and categories definitely need to be brought under control, and the above proposal is definitely a good first step.  So let's start implementing it.
The proposed goals:
# For each type of cleanup need (e.g. wikification, POV, complete rewrite, accuracy check, possible deletion), there should be a category under :Category:Wikipedia maintenance and a corresponding template that puts an article in the need-specific category.
# Annotations should be made on talk pages, not on listings pages, unless there is a particular reason to do so.
# :Category:Wikipedia maintenance should be well-organized, so that it's easy to find a.) a list of discussion pages where votes need to be cast, and b.) lists of articles that need work suited to one's expertise, mood, etc.
# It would be nice to have some easy way to sort articles by date of listing; some people like to give special attention to very new or very old items.
There are several things to do:
* Create a list (or improve or recycle an existing list) of specific types of remedial cleanup needs (wikification, POV, complete rewrite, etc.) and their associated tags and categories.
* Post a rule saying that if an article can be classified into one or more of the listed "cleanup need categories", editors should add the appropriate tag to the article's talk page along with any clarifying explanation or justification.  They can use  as a catchall if nothing else fits.
* Go over all the existing Cleanup listings, tag them, and move explanatory comments to their talk pages.
* Create new, more specific templates for common "cleanup needs" in the remaining listings, and add these to the official list.  (See "proposed templates" below).
Later, we can:
* Go over all the articles tagged  and see if there is a more specific tag that better fits them.
* Move the comments for all remaining articles to their talk pages, and change Template:Cleanup so that it tells people to look on the talk page, not Wikipedia:Cleanup for discussion.
You, yes you, can get things started by posting the initial list of tags (actually, there are some already there), and related instructions.  The next big step would be starting to tag, move, and de-list.
-- Beland 13:08, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: To make things easy on the humans, I'm going to assume that someone (possibly me) will write a bot that will identify the articles that have needed cleanup the longest.  I'm not sure how to address the issue of finding recent additons.  Perhaps  the bot could actually reclassify articles into subcategories, meaning anything in the top-level category not classified by date is new.  Given the volume of articles, would letting the top level be "new this week" and older articles be sorted by month be OK? -- Beland 02:34, 11 Dec 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: As an outline for a unwritten bot, it sounds fine.  I also agree that we should punt the problem of age management off to a future bot.  JesseW 00:19, 12 Dec 2004 (UTC)

text: OK, I think what I will do is have a shadow template for each cleanup template for the bot to use to sort by date.  So for example, there will be  and .  The bot will automatically find  articles and convert them to, for example, .  Template:cleanup-old will be the same as Template:Cleanup, except that it will also say something like "This page has been tagged for cleanup since January 2004." and will be added to a January 2004-specific subcategory of Category:Wikipedia cleanup. -- Beland 02:01, 28 Dec 2004 (UTC)

text: There are way too many of these.  What are we going to do about this? Looking at them more, it doesn't so much look like there are too many, as it's not clear how they should be divided up category wise.  I guess each of them should have a category; should we just go ahead and create a category for each of these?  Or not?  And what about the ones you proposed below? JesseW 23:35, 9 Dec 2004 (UTC)

text: Yay Beland!  Thanks for doing this.  I'm now going to look over what you've said here and see what I can do to help. JesseW 23:22, 9 Dec 2004 (UTC)

text: Category:Wikipedia articles needing POV edit
This article needs to be edited to address point of view (POV) issues. See Wikipedia:Neutral point of view for guidelines. Please remove this notice once this has been done.
(But see existing NPOV and POV_check templates.)
===New text for front page===
This is almost ready to be moved over. -- Beland 09:52, 27 Dec 2004 (UTC)

text: It would be a lot cleaner if you put the draft version at Wikipedia_talk:Cleanup/New_Rev, or some such, temporarily (the sub-page can always be deleted later). Noel (talk) 14:49, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)

text: The new version has been posted now. -- Beland 20:39, 15 Jan 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Implementing the replacement proposal 

message: There are two ways I can think of to track the age of articles (so the oldest and newest ones get noticed).  One is to have a bot create a list of articles in a given category sorted by date.  The other is to use the "piped" sorting method built in to the category mechanism to arrange listings by month or something.  So if you were adding the tag in January, you'd do something like  (we'd just rotate back around to the same number the next year) or  (which would require the template to use subcategories, which might not be a bad thing). -- Beland 13:08, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: To make things easy on the humans, I'm going to assume that someone (possibly me) will write a bot that will identify the articles that have needed cleanup the longest.  I'm not sure how to address the issue of finding recent additons.  Perhaps  the bot could actually reclassify articles into subcategories, meaning anything in the top-level category not classified by date is new.  Given the volume of articles, would letting the top level be "new this week" and older articles be sorted by month be OK? -- Beland 02:34, 11 Dec 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: As an outline for a unwritten bot, it sounds fine.  I also agree that we should punt the problem of age management off to a future bot.  JesseW 00:19, 12 Dec 2004 (UTC)

text: OK, I think what I will do is have a shadow template for each cleanup template for the bot to use to sort by date.  So for example, there will be  and .  The bot will automatically find  articles and convert them to, for example, .  Template:cleanup-old will be the same as Template:Cleanup, except that it will also say something like "This page has been tagged for cleanup since January 2004." and will be added to a January 2004-specific subcategory of Category:Wikipedia cleanup. -- Beland 02:01, 28 Dec 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Age management

message: (Please feel free to add, rearrange, etc.) 
:There are way too many of these.  What are we going to do about this? Looking at them more, it doesn't so much look like there are too many, as it's not clear how they should be divided up category wise.  I guess each of them should have a category; should we just go ahead and create a category for each of these?  Or not?  And what about the ones you proposed below? JesseW 23:35, 9 Dec 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Existing templates

message: These might be adapted for the official list of tags, categories and whatnot. -- Beland 13:08, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Navigation templates

message: This is almost ready to be moved over. -- Beland 09:52, 27 Dec 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: It would be a lot cleaner if you put the draft version at Wikipedia_talk:Cleanup/New_Rev, or some such, temporarily (the sub-page can always be deleted later). Noel (talk) 14:49, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)

text: The new version has been posted now. -- Beland 20:39, 15 Jan 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: New text for front page

message: I was surprised when the new category/template-based system went into effect; I didn't know it was in the works.  After living with it awhile, it seems to me to be superior to the old method, mainly because:
*Adding a page is easier: when you look at a page and spot a problem, edit that very page, putting in a template.  (Although, if additional notes are needed, must also edit the Talk page).
*Removing a fixed page is easier: delete the template from the page.  You don't have to  go edit two places (to do it correctly).
*No longer are there mismatches between a problem list (eg. WP:CU page) and the corresponding article (which may or may not still need cleanup). Mismatches used to cause wasted inspection or articles not to be found for cleanup.
*Finding pages to fix seems ok to me: you simply go to the Category page of interest (e.g. to :Category:Articles that need to be wikified if you feel like doing some wikifying, and choose an article from its title to have a look at).
-R. S. Shaw 23:49, 5 Feb 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  New cleanup mechanism seems good 

message: We are getting far far to many of these despite the request to avoid this.Geni 12:23, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Multiple tags

message: Do we really need the "game-cleanup" tag? It seems unnecessary and overly specific beside all the others. I suggest we just use the regular cleanup tag for game-related articles. Right now it is only used on 24 game-related articles. TheCoffee 18:23, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Game-cleanup

message: I've started a discussion about  at its talk page; please comment there with anything relevant. Thanks! —msh210 16:36, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  {{tl|copyedit}} 

message: To counter TM, proposing that we offer a choice of 2 standard size templates to avoid unnecessarily cluttering and defacing articles while disputes are in progress. This should apply to all templates, but each must be begun from particular area. -SV|t 18:35, 18 May 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Wikipedia:Template madness]] 

message: Hi, I'm a relative newbie and I've marked lots of articles for , but I just discovered the Cleanup project page. Was I actually supposed to list them there as well as putting the tag on the page? I thought it worked like categories.
There's nothing on the Wikipedia:Templates page that would indicate that's how they are to be used (nor is there a clear delineation of which templates to use on the article page and which on the talk page), nor is there any clear statement on the Wikipedia:Cleanup page that marking for clean up is a two-step process, although I infer from what it does say that either it is, or that there are two ways of marking for cleanup: tagging or listing.
If it is a two-step process, does that also apply to  and  and any other similar tags?
DavidConrad 08:02, 3 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Listing in addition to tagging? 

message: Has everybody worked their cotton socks off and cleaned everything up? If so, congrats.
:No, there are over 8,000 articles tagged for cleanup under :Category:Cleanup by month.  This page was only clean because it's a new month. -- Beland 04:42, 9 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Come to think, that hadn't been done yet.  Huh. I have no idea what prompted this comment, then. -- Beland 04:51, 9 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: The clean up page

message: I couldn't help laughing when I saw the vandalized article about Thomasville, Georgia. But I really despise these people who vandalize different articles, they deserve to burn in (fill in with your own idea). But then this thought crossed my mind...since there are a lot of computer-savvy people here, why can't we develop some kind of banning system for people who vandalize articles? Why don't we just ban their IPs so that they can't edit articles (but that they can still come to Wikipedia and read articles)? I think that would be a great idea. Yay or nay?
P.S. I'm not quite sure if this is the right place to post this idea...but at least it's in the place where we deal with vandalized articles! --Thorri 12:25, 1 Oct 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: See WP:VIP, WP:BP, WP:BL, WP:BU etc. --rbrwr± 11:45, 1 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Wow I didn't know about that, thank you. --Thorri 17:23, 1 Oct 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Ban for Vandalizers?

message: I've noticed recently that there are a large number of pages with self-referential redirects.
For example, List of handgun cartridges. The first link to this page is 2 mm Kolibri, which redirects back to List of handgun cartridges. The link appears to offer more information, but simply redirects back to the page the user is currently on.
Would it be possible for someone to work out a way of fixing this in batches in a method similar to the project at Double redirects? I don't know how to do this, we might need the help of a developer or something. splintax (talk) 09:07, 30 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Pages with self-referential redirects 

message: Looking at the statistics at Category talk:Cleanup by month, we are currently getting about 2,000 cleanup requests per month, and filling only about 1,000 each month.  We have a backlog of over 9,000 requests.  If nothing changes, this will continue to grow at a rate of about 1,000 per month.  Only about 10% of cleanup requests are listed on this page.  (I see about 170 listed right now for September 2005.)
Does this mean that articles are being messed up faster than we can fix them?  Or does it mean there are simply a large number of dirty articles out there that we are just now discovering as the use of cleanup tags catches on?  Should we be worried about these statistics?  Should we make a concerted effort to improve the cleanup rate?
What does it say about the utility of this page if only 10% of the requests are being put through here? -- Beland 04:57, 3 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: As for potential solutions to that problem...  We could try to give "cleanup", or backlogged categories in general, more visibility.  Wikipedia:Maintenance collaboration of the week tries to do that on a rotating basis.  We could also tweak Template:Opentask.  The Wikipedia:Community Portal is also already getting a facelift, but I'm not sure that will make much of a difference. I think the biggest difference would actually be made by implementing the above suggestion - to sort (or at least cross-reference) cleanup requests by topic.  This should increase traffic to needy articles from people who are actually interested in the subject. -- Beland 04:57, 3 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: One way to fix this would be for people who submit an article to cleanup to be strongly encouraged to clean up some other article and thus not increase the backlog. If people don't have time to improve an article then I don't think they have time to assess if an article should be listed. Andreww 06:10, 3 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  I disagree.  The amount of effort to tell that an article is in definite need of some cleanup is way, way, way less than that typically needed to clean up an article.  The cleanups needed are often very time consuming, like a substantial rewrite, not just a bit of spelling or wikifying. The poor articles are out there, and discouraging marking of them due to lack of time to clean up another article is not the way to solve the true problem.  -R. S. Shaw 21:22, 3 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cleanup request vs. fill rate 

message: Most articles with cleanup templates have one or two things I would change. A good definition of a cleanup problem would be that once you've noticed the problem, it's as easy to type in the fix as to type in a cleanup tag, so why bother with the template? Anyway, about 20% of the articles I get by clicking "Random article" have similar problems. Some tagged articles like Redeemer University College, Richard Kozlow and Ripped Magazine have no apparent problems at all, at least compared to other Wikipedia articles. The template says "See How to Edit and Style and How-to for help, or this article's talk page.", but there is almost never anything relevant on the talk page. Writeups on Wikipeda:Cleanup are also rare, and there's no link from the problem article anyway. The discussion above notes that most cleanup templates never get cleaned up. So why don't we get rid of most or all cleanup templates? Here are some possible explanations:
1. The articles I mentioned need to be "cleaned up to a higher standard" that's beyond me. I don't think so, but the possibility discourages me from cleaning up an article with a cleanup template, because afterwards it could be wrong to remove the template and it could be wrong to leave the template in. It's more fun to go on to an article with no template, and clean it up as best I can. Other explanations:
2. The 3 articles are fine, but I'm the only one to admit he can't see The Emperor's New Clothes. The rest of you will answer that some higher literary quintessence is missing.
3. We can agree that these 3 templates, and probably many more, should not have been added. But why were they added? Maybe someone just had a bad feeling about the article that others don't share, or
4. Maybe the template adder wanted the sophistication of being able to see the Emperor's new clothes everywhere, or maybe even
5. Vandals distributing templates randomly. I have no direct evidence, but most vandalism is quickly reverted, so some vandals might get a thrill out of ruining the appearance of an article for months.
Suggestion: a sentence in the cleanup template like this: "If there is no obvious cleanup problem, and no explanation on the talk page, then please delete this template." Art LaPella 17:02, 22 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Removing unexplained cleanup tags is probably not a bad idea--hopefully it would encourage explanations, even if they are just left in the edit summary when the tag is added (which is what I usually do). As for the examples, I probably would have used {expand} for Richard Kozlow and Ripped Magazine, tho' other problems include both being US-centric for not carrying their geographic locations out to the county level, and Kozlow has over-lapping images, and Ripped gives no idea of time-frame. I have no idea why user spinboy thinks the Redeemer college article is bad enuf to deserve a cleanup tag, unless it's the link to the non-existant 'Template:Canada-edu-stub' template--otherwise it's in better shape than many un-tagged articles. 24.17.48.241 19:17, 7 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: OK. By the way I disagree with the US-centric part (even overseas we seldom say "Paris, Île-de-France, France"), which I mention only because the perception difference reinforces my main point that unexplained clean-up tags don't accomplish much except to ruin the appearance. Art LaPella 21:15, 9 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Unexplained cleanup templates

message: Having cleaned up, what do I do then with the tag etc..  Just remove it? And what about the listing in the articles for cleaning up section? Delete it or does it delete itself?Marcus22 15:16, 31 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: It needs doing manually. If you're absolutely sure, delete the tag (I tend to be cautious and leave it for someone else to do, in case I missed something). On the cleanup page, you can again either delete if you're certain, or strike out the entry thus. Tearlach 16:29, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

text: What about the listing on this page? I've been putting lines through them like this. It looks messy but I was afraid to remove the history of it. I've also been crossing out other items that seem to have been taken care of. What is the preferred method? --Foofy 06:33, 1 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: There should be another page to put fixed articles on. Also, I think there should be a way to request a vote on removing an article from the cleanup list if you aren't sure (nothing big, like when deleting a page, just if one or two people agree, then remove it). Twilight Realm 22:38, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

text: When a tag like  is put into an article, the article automatically becomes a member of the corresponding :Category:Cleanup from November 2005.  Similarly, when you remove that tag, the article is automatically removed from the category without further editing.  However, there sometimes is also a manually-made note about the article on Wikipedia:Cleanup; that note can be removed by a normal edit of Wikipedia:Cleanup. -R. S. Shaw 05:25, 31 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Cleaned-up, now what?

message: Half way through the month - can October be put elsewhere yet?
Now end November - as above.
:Please wait a bit longer, a lot of work is getting done, and I know nobody will touch these pages after they go into the archive.  Almost no work was done on the October list that month, but it has made some great progress these past three weeks!  I will quickly go through and remove all old deleted items, that will shrink the page size a great deal.  But don't archive everything just yet.  :) --Foofy 23:27, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: There, I've removed a bunch of old stuff from October.  I left anything with comments that are less than two weeks old.  I'll do the same for some of the old crusty stuff in November in a bit. --Foofy 23:51, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Page length

message: Perhaps a few of the very old requests could be filtered in to the clean up section - might encourage some of them to be pursued.
Jackiespeel 14:25, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: How about listing them in reverse order so we can clear out the few very, very old requests first? Or making an option for listing in either normal or reverse order? I know that would be hard, and my first suggestion would cause problems, but the current situation causes problems too. Twilight Realm 22:42, 18 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Old requests

message: This is similar to organizing by topic (discussed at the top of this page). There should be some way to organize or just mark the entries with what work is needed. I don't have much knowlege, but I'm very good at catching grammar or spelling mistakes. Categories should be Grammar/Spelling, Style, Organization (improving organization often greatly improves clarity), Needs Information (needs someone knowlegable to contribute; this could be organized by topic), and probably others I can't think of right now. Twilight Realm 22:42, 18 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Type of work needed 

message: I've cleaned up all the articles in this category, or assigned them to members of the Cleanup Taskforce. How do I delete the category? Kerowyn 03:27, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cleanup from Dec 2004 

message: In the recent past I have seen quite a few good editors express disillusionment with Wiki, and it is not hard to see why.  Your recent edits to Battle of Malaya and comments accompanying your edits are a good illustration. You have twice replaced a cleanup tag on the article giving "tone" as your reason. Firstly, not everyone would see what you are talking about so why don't you specify what you believe is wrong with the tone. Secondly, why don't you fix it instead of placing on it a dubious tag which is likely to remain there for ages because not everyone would know what you are on about. There are 12,000 plus articles awaiting attention on Cleanup at the moment, many of them simply dumped there by people who place tags but never do the work to improve the articles to a quality where they remove the tag. This is not a dig at you personally/exclusively, but at the very unhelpful habit which has crept up on us and become almost policy.  For myself, I refuse to be a willing drone from here on, unless some of those who flash tags around actually try to improve Wiki by actually editing articles. Incidentally, I will copy this comment to the Cleanup talk page too. Moriori 00:10, 30 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I can't speak for others, but I often find circumstances for adding a Cleanup tag and not doing the work myself. For instance, it might be that I can see that an article is obviously biased, but someone with specialist knowledge of the topic would do a better job of fixing the bias. Tearlach 15:48, 31 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I've never used a Cleanup tag, because my understanding of cleanup is something that almost anyone can easily clean up. I have used a neutrality tag on a biased article, after my attempted fix was reverted without explanation. I think the Battle of Malaya tag was explained better than most tags, although I disagree with it. The article is written from a British point of view, but I don't see much point in compromising with a Japanese militarist who might prefer "The triumphant Japanese swept away all the riffraff", because as I understand it few Japanese talk that way any more. Art LaPella 18:20, 31 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I guess the answer is to be more specific. The  tag would cover many situations of this sort. Tearlach 18:30, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

text: Yes, I like that tag, although I don't remember seeing one. Art LaPella 18:44, 31 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Why not fix it?

message: To meet Wikipedia's quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. 
The reason for this tag is: 
Please discuss this issue on the talk page, and/or replace this tag with a more specific message. Editing help is available.
Probably should be called . Might make it easier for people to know exactly what's wrong with the article. My only problem might be people going around writing "Moar Cowbell!!!111". I'm No Parking and  I approved this message</small> 15:50, 31 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I love it, and I love anything that might reduce the tide of unexplained cleanup tags. I don't think there's any consensus on what's wrong with most alleged cleanup articles, and I wish there were a consensus for just eliminating tags with no explanation on the talk page. Art LaPella 18:24, 31 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Too much bold.  RJFJR 21:08, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

text: It's the same amount of bold as the current cleanup tag. Or do you mean too much "Be bold"? :P I'm No Parking and  I approved this message</small> 23:26, 1 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm recluctant to introduce a new tag when the old ones aren't really used properly. As for the articles that are tagged without explanation, I usually just delete the tag unless something is obviously wrong. --Kerowyn 00:46, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: New Template Idea

message: Gee, it seems like the cleanup template keeps changing every week! Why is it changing so much? --ApolloBoy 02:34, 3 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  What's up with the template? 

message: Can someone close the Jan 2005 section of the Cleanup-by-month? Article that are getting tagged cleanup in Jan 2006 are being put in this category for some reason. Kerowyn 10:49, 16 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Jan 2005

message: Is it me or is the cleanup template EVERYWHERE at the moment?
:According to :Category:Cleanup by month, it's only about 1.4% of articles that have a cleanup-date tag.  That's only about 12,000 articles. -R. S. Shaw 04:14, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Only 12,000? We'll be done in no time. :) --Kerowyn 00:47, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Everywhere! 

message: Where exactly do you sign up? --Highway 17:53, 29 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cleanup Taskforce?