Wikipedia talk:Community portal/Open tasks/Archive 2

message: All of the requests for specific article enhancements in this archive have either been filled or added to the template page itself. -- Beland 00:44, 24 July 2005 (UTC)

message: All/most of the pages on that list seem to have been handled. Can the automagic 'pages without wikilinks' script be reactivated, or at least run again? The open tasks:wikification bit is a little useless without it. -- Kimiko 18:47, 3 Mar 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Deadend pages too short 

message: Let's add Wang Youcai — it's hot topic. Updating Politics of China would be nice too.
:What about chinese politics needs updating? --Jiang 18:55, 4 Mar 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  suggestions 

message: I'm thinking of remvoing the requested articles section since there's already one in recent changes. I'll then add stubs and cpyedit. Comments?
*wikify
*copyedit
*update
*complete
*merge
--Jiang 19:25, 10 Mar 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: I am against removing it.  I have had recent experience that proves it is being used.  It is often a welcome entry for newcomers who may not have discovered "Recent changes".  I see no problem in adding to it with new useful entries, however. - Texture 19:29, 10 Mar 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Reorg 

message: Ok... finally get to edit this page now that I'm an admin. Whee! :) Ok. Ok. Calming down. Heh. Is there any backlog list to fill in as tasks are completed (and removed from the message)? Or is it just by ad hocery? - UtherSRG 17:20, 16 Apr 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: There's no queue as such, but there are plenty of replacements to choose from at Requests for page expansion, As of, Duplicate articles, Requested articles and cleanup. Angela. 20:10, Apr 16, 2004 (UTC)
Yup... knew of all of them. Wasn't sure if there was any organized thought to what to use for replacements. Ok. I'll do as I will. *grins* - UtherSRG 19:00, 20 Apr 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Backlog 

message: So I made the link for "parenting" go to :Category:Orphaned categories, which is for parenting of categories.  I added text at the top of that page to point to the homepage for categorization of articles.
My reasoning is this: Thanks to some automation, we recently expanded the list of orphaned categories a great deal; we are now up around 800.  Unfortunately, hardly any progress is being made on this project, due to a lack of volunteer attention.
The alphabetized list of articles to be categorized is extremely long, and rather intimidating to a newbie.  Though there are vague "projects" to categorize broad swaths of article space, there is scant documentation on how to do so.  In contrast, the list of orphaned categories is viewable on a single page, and it's nicely sorted.  Helpers have a choice between finding homes for the "popular" but hard to place categories, and cleaning out the sparsely populated dreck at the bottom of the barrel. And there are some friendly instructions to help newbies get started.
In the long run, I intend to build a system to cluster uncategorized articles by looking at their "see also" links and related articles in the existing category structure.  I think this will help make the article-categorization process more approachable for random volunteers.  However, this quasi-automation would probably work better if category space is as clean as possible.  And, of course, a clean category space helps future categorizers land articles in the right places.  So I'm thinking once :Category:Orphaned categories gets back down to a reasonable size (containing mostly orphans created in the past week or so), the "parenting" link can go directly to a place that can help newbies get started on categorizing articles.  Hopefully with the "suggested cluster" feature up and running.
Thanks. 
-- Beland 04:05, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Categorization 

message: Hi I moved out a few that were done and replaced them with some that were in wait.  But it seems from the history there is more I should do.  Can someone clue me in? - Taxman 17:19, Oct 5, 2004 (UTC)
:It's helpful if you mention the name of the article (with a link) in your edit summary. Also, if it's still a stub or needs to be wikified or copyedited, you should move it to the wait list for the appropriate category.
:It's also smart to preview your edits. All of the lines should be about the same length. If they aren't, either pick something else to add as a replacement (you don't have to go straight down the wait list if the next one on the list doesn't fit) or add something else. At least, this has been my impression of how it works. Aranel ("Sarah") 17:19, 8 Oct 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Process for updating the requested articles list?

message: How long should an article be left in the "merge" section after a merge is completed? -- Alphax 00:34, Oct 20, 2004 (UTC)
:I would think it should be removed immediately, to be replaced with another article in need of merging. -Beland 22:06, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  How long to leave after merge complete 

message: I don't know much about whatever it is this is written in (is there some text on this language in Wikipedia?), but I'm trying to put Opentask inside a colored box for a welcome message (as shown here) and there seems to be a problem.  In the first line, is style="background:transparent;" needed?  It seems to me that the background would automatically be transparent, and that line seems to be messing up what I'm trying to do.  So, is that line needed?  Would we be able to take it out? pie4all88 00:59, 20 Oct 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Line needed? 

message: I recently added more links to the list of "more tasks" at the bottom of this Template. (See this historical version)  They were reverted, with no explanation.  While I have no problem putting them elsewhere, this appeared to be the right place for them, and if it is not, I would like to know where else to put them, and/or why this is not right.  Any comments appreciated... JesseW 21:56, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: The issue is resolved.  JesseW 22:21, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)

text: I'm just going to remove the ones that are already listed in the template. There's no need to include them twice. -Aranel ("Sarah") 00:10, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Very good.  I've just done various formatting, ordering and other small changes (including linking cleanup to Leftovers (till we get that clean, we should encourage people to work on it) JesseW 00:27, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Where should I put these links, then? 

message: There's not a very large list to draw Merge items from, perhaps this line could be replaced with items off Wikipedia:Requests for expansion? 119 00:24, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Merge -> Expand ?

message: Could someone please update the Dead End Pages list? It hasn't been done in a long time and many pages have already been categorized (or vfd'd). Radiant! 18:17, Feb 14, 2005 (UTC)
:SimonP updated it today. -- Beland 05:52, 24 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Dead end pages

message: There's reportedly a problem with the capitalization page, so I'm temporarily changing that link to the orphaned category page.  It would actually be nice to clear out the orphaned category backlog because in order to fix the capitalization problem, I should probably do a new database dump analysis, which means it's time to add another orphaned category dump.  But that page was pushing 700k earlier today, and I don't have enough time to get things down to a reasonable level all by myself. -- Beland 08:01, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: The capitalization project has pretty much folded for now, so I'm leaving the pointer to :Category:Orphaned categories in place. -- Beland 03:11, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Capitalization/Categorization switch 

message: How are you getting these articles?  If they're from a category, can MediaWiki pick a random member?  That would make things easier.  Otherwise, at least make a category people can get them from.
Superm401 22:19, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Automatic Update 

message: Okay, I looked at it, and the page has always been done manually, but right now, there are lists or categories referring to each of the problems. i.e. wikification, stubs, updates.
P.S. I changed the link for more stubs form one to :Category:substub to :Category:Stub categories.  Substubs are needlessly restrictive.
P.P.S. There used to be a dedicated substub section of this template.  If you want to reinstate, feel free.  I don't.
I'm going to look into automating this.
Superm401 23:20, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  All Right 

message: This is now on two lines each starting with Requests: I think this should be be turned into one line. Does anyone agree? TAS 12:59, 1 May 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm not partial either way. I can see we may not want soo much red in one place, but I do think the requests are the most likely ones to be fulfilled and need the most exposure. In any case, we should somehow get rid of the repeated "Requests" at the beginning of the second line, and maybe just have an indented asterisk. --Dmcdevit 16:26, 1 May 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree with that. TAS 18:46, 3 May 2005 (UTC)

text: What is a YubNub??????--Zxcvbnm 03:34, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

text: Currently they come from The articles requested for 2+ years, the most wanted articles (by links) list, and random submissions by contributors. I'll certainly look there in the future now that I know about it, but I encourage you to add what you think are the most important (or at least most likely to be created) to the standby list. --Dmcdevit 21:13, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Requests 

message: The categories full of accuracy and NPOV disputes are getting excessively large.  In an effort to get more publicity, I've added a line here for NPOV disputes.  Fact-checking usually requires either familiarity with the subject or the willingness to do research.  NPOV disputes are a little easier for random people to help with.  Often all that's needed are fresh perspectives, or neutral parties to help move the discussion forward.  I expect a lot of random people will be enticed to click on the listings here, either because the topics are controversial.  Sometimes it is surprising to see seemingly innocent (or just plain weird) topics listed as having an NPOV dispute, and it's tempting to read the talk page to find out what all the fuss is about.  As usual, these will need to be rotated as they are fixed (which is easily checked by whether or not the NPOV tag has been removed from the top of the article page). -- Beland 06:08, 31 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: NPOV line

message: I'm getting tired of manually checking whether any of the articles here have been fixed today, and adding new ones.  It would be nice to spend less time doing that and more time actually fixing articles. I'm also a bit worried about the slow turnover here.  Some of the lines are simply fed, more or less at random, from categories - NPOV, copy editing, wikification, mergers.
I'm thinking it might be a good idea to have these lines updated on a regular basis - say, daily, by a bot.  Instead of only moving out an article after it is fixed, why not have the bot just display an entirely new set of articles every day?  Different people have different interests; perhaps this would make it more likely that some article featured here will catch someone's eye.  I'm thinking to keep things simple, the bot could just pick articles from the appropriate category at random, without bothering to keep track of them.  If an article is stubbornly broken, it will statistically get listed more often.  I wonder whether it's worth looking past the first 200 articles in a category, if it's that badly backlogged. 
Thoughts? -- Beland 14:09, 7 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Asking for permission on Wikipedia talk:Bots. -- Beland 09:37, 9 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Automatic updates 

message: I wrote the lightface analytic game page recently, and removed it from the Opentask template.  But if I hit "What links here" from "lightface analytic game", I still see about 200 user pages.  Does something need to be purged or something? --Trovatore 02:34, 8 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I think those link will remain until the next time those user pages are edited.  (Yes, this is a bug.) -- Beland 00:28, 9 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: How long till links go away?

message: So the old theory with the cleanup category was to take some of the oldest cleanup requests and feature them on this page for a week or two.  If they weren't cleaned up at the end of that time, I would assign them to someone on the Wikipedia:Cleanup Taskforce.
I'm thinking that it would be a lot better to pick five or six articles at random from a list of 50-100 cleanup articles from a given month, and feature that list for a day at a time.  That will give a lot more articles exposure here, increasing the chances that someone will become interested and clean them up.  Once a month has too few articles in it to provide a diverse pool of cleanup candidates, we can move on to the next month for this page.  The Cleanup Taskforce can still get the oldest requests, since now they are all sorted by month.  We can just assign it all the articles from months which are older than the current "featured" month here (and thus have a smaller number of more difficult articles to clean up).
To implement this change, I will now add cleanup to the list of lines that Pearle automatically updates. -- Beland 01:46, 18 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Converting cleanup to auto-update 

message: As far as I can tell, there are no links to Elvin Marsalas other than from transclusions (and maybe some substs:) of this template. Nor does googling for the term return any real hits. It went into to Most Requested category in this change; I hesitated to jump in and remove it since I might be missing something. Bunchofgrapes  (talk) 02:07, 9 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Requested Article: Elvin Marsalas 

message: FYI, I'm putting Pearle on a cron job to update this template daily, so that should happen at the same time every day now.  Sorry about the underscores, by the way; they should be fixed on the next automatic edit. -- Beland 04:22, 13 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Automatic updates 

message: I've removed the non-informative clip art to make more room for listings.  I'm increasing the number of characters allowed on the automatically-updated lines, and the other ones will grow to match as they are updated.  If this template gets too wide for any particular page, please let me know, and I'll lower the character limit. -- Beland 21:54, 22 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Widening 

message: The updatedness, factual accuracy, and style cleanup categories are fairly large, so I thought they should get featured on this template.  We have other templates that better track active projects, so replaced project listings with links to those other templates to make room for the new article lines.  I hope you like the result. -- Beland 05:29, 28 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: New friends

message: Automatic updates might be get done every day for the next week or two, as I'm taking my laptop on the road. Feel free to update by hand if necessary. -- Beland 08:13, 19 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: On the road

message: Stubs are now being updated automatically, because I got tired of doing it. -- Beland 02:39, 10 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Stubs