Template talk:Cleanup

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Contents 1 No box 2 Useless and overused 3 Spotlighting high-priority cleanups 4 Too threatening? 5 New cleanup - date link like IfD template 6 Template proposals 7 Changes 8 Useless and overused (reprise) 9 Shirt? 10 Keeping templates synchronized 11 Attention merger 12 Rewrite as a WikiTable 13 Subst'ing 14 Used without talk! 15 Template is broken 16 Request: Arabic Template and Interwiki 17 Template not working 18 Is the old version better?? 19 Editorial templates should be placed on talk pages 20 Interwiki to Thai WP 21 Swedish IW incorrect 22 Hm 23 Stupid image

Older comments have been archived by chronology: 2004, 2005.

[edit] No box

The current version only has a box if you happen to be using the default style. I'm using the old style, and I don't see the box until I log out. It has nothing to do with the cache. —Ashley Y 00:52, July 21, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Useless and overused

I hate this template. The point of a wiki is that editors can fix problems themselves, instantly, without having to go through any formal process to get the changes implemented. This template goes against the whole spirit of a wiki, since it commands everybody else to do the inserters bidding.

If an article is in bad shape, fix it. Don't just add a dumb cleanup template and move on. That doesn't help anything, it just clutters up the encyclopedia with lots of uselessly tagged articles. This has the side effect of undermining confidence in the articles as there is a giant banner on top proclaiming everything as substandard, while the problem might be as small as a few garbled lines or a misplaced section.

I recommend this tag be deprecated as soon as possible and hopefully eliminated entirely. I don't see that it serves any useful purpose. --Bk0 03:06, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

Not all people know how to handle certain situations, or it might be that the person doesn't know enough about the topic or understand the jist of an article. I was about to add a cleanup tag to Polar low because someone copied and pasted an enormous block of text from another website, and I have no idea whether the information should be reworded, removed entirely, removed and linked to in External Links, or allowed to stay until someone can write an actual article based on information in the text (and I don't know what other template would be appropriate). AySz88^-^ 20:20, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

My first thought is that I'd ask a question on the talk page about the concerns, which you should do anyway if you add this template (the only thing more annoying than Template:Cleanup is a tagged page with no clue in talk about why it was tagged). The template itself serves no purpose as the existing article experts presumably have the page on their watchlist and will see your addition to talk. --Bk0 21:07, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

That assumes that there are active 'article experts' watching those articles; I'd think that most pages tagged by {{cleanup}} probably were made and then relatively left abandoned. My comment was on Talk:Polar low for well over a week; apparently, there weren't many people watching it. :p AySz88^-^ 23:46, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

How long would you expect the cleanup tag to last before the article is fixed? Most tags I come across are 3-6 months old (not a scientific sample, granted). --Bk0 03:40, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

I was amused to come across this discussion, since we currently have over 11,000 articles tagged for cleanup, and a cleanup backlog of about a year. Considering we will soon have about a million articles (literally), it's actually quite useful for editors who are looking for articles to fix (for example, the Wikipedia:Cleanup Taskforce to have a list of identified problems. I've seen a lot of comments on talk pages about problems with articles that just get ignored. -- Beland 03:14, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

Argument in favour of this template: If I see it on a page, I have no qualms about wading in and making wholesale changes, particularly if it's been there for a while. Without the template, I try and get people's approval before making changes, lest they revert me. So it serves a "don't hesitate, go for it" kind of role...Stevage 04:01, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

I respect your methods, however Wikipedia policy is the opposite: Be bold unless there is compelling evidence of controversy/edit conflicts. --Bk0 (Talk) 23:31, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

That's wonderful. But we have to face reality. In a perfect world, everyone would BE bold and fix whatever they could as soon as they came across something that needed fixing. But this isn't a perfect world, and another thing that's central to Wikipedia is to let people edit voluntarily according to their own time. If I'm busy with something else, and I don't have the time to clean up a disaster, at the very least I can FLAG it so that OTHER editors can do something about it. Leaving a note on the talk page just doesn't attract as much attention. Not even close. And Beland is absolutely right. Given the fact there's a difference between users who aren't willing to wade hipdeep in crap (and should NOT be forced to, no matter what you think "policy" is) and users who bravely charge into it, the most efficient thing to do is give a method for the first group to pass the baton to the second.

-- Hinotori^{(talk)|(ctrb)} 07:08, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

(unindent) Agree with the above; we should keep this tag. When brain dead and unable to do "deep editing" or engage in thoughtful discussion, I often go on "random article" patrol. Sometimes I find things I can fix right away. Sometimes I find something in need of a clean up, but don't have the time, energy, or subject knowledge to do the clean up. I think I still add value by tagging with the cleanup tag. If I should be doing something else/better, let me know. --Martinp 04:58, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Spotlighting high-priority cleanups

I've created an additional template which should only be used for articles which need to be cleaned up which are on Wikipedia:List of articles all languages should have. These are articles which should be expected to be of a decent (if not featured) quality on Wikipedia, and should be considered a high-priority cleanup, because their topics are considered essential for encyclopedias. Hopefully this will help focus some of the cleanup efforts. The template is {{cleanup-priority}} and has its own little category as well. --Fastfission 16:03, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Too threatening?

Some new users, having written new articles are finding this template on their article and being afraid it means the page will be deleted due to low quality. Would it be overly controversial to change the wording to:

This article should be cleaned up to conform to a higher standard of quality and style.

? jnothman ^talk 03:46, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

Personally I find the wording "to conform to a higher standard" a bit bizarre. You conform to a standard or you don't - you don't go looking for a "higher standard" :) How about "to conform to Wikipedia's quality standards". But anyway I like your "should be" much better than "needs to be". Stevage 04:03, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

Okay:

This article should be cleaned up up to reach Wikipedia quality standards. See Help:Editing and Category:Wikipedia help for help, or this article's talk page.

An improvement? We'll see if there is any dissenting vote. I'm not able to change the template now anyway (protected page) but may be able to at the end of the week =) jnothman ^talk 10:59, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] New cleanup - date link like IfD template

This article needs to be cleaned up to conform to a higher standard of quality. Please consider adding this to today's date if you have just added this tag. See Help:Editing and Category:Wikipedia help for help, or this article's talk page.

—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Thorpe (talk • contribs) 02:03, 22 December 2005.

Well, ideally include the wording change to 'should'. I also think the phrase "consider adding this to today's date" is a bit obscure. Perhaps "consider adding this to the clean-up to-do list" or something Stevage 17:00, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

I don't think Thorpe was taking into consideration the comment above. This is a separate suggestion. And I think that suggestion can be cleaned up too:

This article should be cleaned up up to reach Wikipedia quality standards. If you just added this tag, please list this page and an explanation under today's date. See Help:Editing and Category:Wikipedia help for help, or this article's talk page.

jnothman ^talk 23:10, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

(Note that the above table is invisible to me; perhaps there is a CSS problem. -- Beland 08:55, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Template proposals

I would be much more comfortable with this template if:

• It was worded with more emphasis on the article not meeting common standards of quality: "This article may not reach accepted levels of quality for Wikipedia. Please see talk for details and ways you can help."
• It became policy to always post clear reasons and/or arguments for the tag on the respective article's talk page. If there is no explicit stated justification, the template is removed. I already treat unannotated cleanup tags this way, but it'd be nice to get community consensus. --Bk0 (Talk) 23:31, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
  • I do hope you at least read the article to make sure the problem isn't obvious. Certainly if people tag an article for a non-obvious problem and don't leave a note about it, that's not very helpful - though different things are obvious to different people. One can also leave a message for the original tagger on their user talk page and ask them if they had any specific suggestions, and tell them if they do, they can re-add the tag and leave a note on the article's talk page explaining why it's there. -- Beland 09:00, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Changes

I changed the wording, trying to incorporate everyone's suggestions. In recent versions, perhaps due to CSS problems, I cannot see the box at all. I have reverted the code portion to a version that still works for me and hopefully everyone else. -- Beland 08:57, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Useless and overused (reprise)

How are we supposed to find articles in serious need of attention if people use it try and get things improved from a "C" to a "B" (talk:TLC)? Could we get some guidelines that articles with this tag have to have some serious, and specific, problems? Kappa 00:36, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

While I do support more vigorous guidelines on when to use the template, I fail to see how overuse makes it useless. If you come across an article that isn't that bad, it only takes a couple minutes to skim through it, look over the talk page, and move on. That's a lot better to me than not having the template at all. Let's not indulge in hyperbole.

-- Hinotori^{(talk)|(ctrb)} 01:36, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

• The more it's over-used, the more I have to waste my time skimming articles that don't need cleanup, instead of cleaning up articles that do need it. If I can't quickly find something that needs actual cleanup, its useless and I'll do something else. Kappa 19:20, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

"Overused", "misused", and "useless" are all different terms. I think this is "misuse" more than "overuse". --AySz88^-^ 19:31, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

I'm unsure how semantics really help in this at all, but for what it's worth, I think it's "overuse." Almost any article on Wikipedia could be cleaned up a little more and, without solid guidelines on when to use the template, an article "needing" to be cleaned up is firmly in the realm of subjectivity. At the moment, people tend to be loosely interpretting when the template is needed, which leads to people like Kappa wasting their apparently precious time and threatening to take their ball and go home, so obviously some guidelines would be useful.

-- Hinotori^{(talk)|(ctrb)} 03:15, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

The problem is more fundamental. Unlike the rest of Wikipedia, this template focuses on what contributors should do in the future, rather than describing the current state of an article or effort. This is the crux of my criticism and the reason why this template will never solve more problems than it causes. --Bk0 (Talk) 03:43, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

I don't see how giving contributors a heads up for what needs to be done on an article makes this more of a problem than an aid. Judging from your previous posts on this page, it seems like the real crux of your criticism is that you're assuming that editors be bold which is a great policy, but isn't the case for all editors (or even the majority of them), and never will be. People have real lives to attend to and being able to differentiate between articles that are badly in need of cleaning and articles that are mediocre but passable is an asset. Granted, when that line is blurry, the effectiveness of the template is decreased, and that's why I support clear guidelines. I disagree that this template in any way discordant with the nature of the rest of Wikipedia, at least, no more so than the expansion template, or any of the other template messages for that matter. Templates alert users as to what needs to be changed, and change is a future process, whether it be five seconds from when the template is put up or five months. It may seem distressing that many articles have these templates slapped on them for very long periods of time, but that's the nature of the beast; Wikipedia is huge, and many articles just won't be gotten to in a short amount of time. I think if this template didn't exist, you'd see such articles sit in their former format for even longer, or even forever.

-- Hinotori^{(talk)|(ctrb)} 04:57, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

• Your feeling that editors' time is not valuable is obviously part of the problem. You want to leave this tag on articles indefintely, attracting any number of nonspecialist editors who will waste a few minutes skimming and walking away, just hoping that eventually someone with specialist knowledge will find it. Kappa 05:55, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
• First off, I'd appreciate it if you didn't presume to know what I "feel" or "want," especially when we both know no one feels or wants any of those things. I feel that editors' time is VERY valuable; why else would I be in favor of clearer guidelines? I don't want to leave this tag on articles "indefinitely." I want to be able to tag the article at all. Articles that aren't tagged have a much higher chance of remaining in their current state indefinitely than those that are. As for "specialists," I don't think that has much to do with this issue at all. This is a request for cleanup, NOT a request for expansion. In my mind, "cleanup" means fixing prose, grammar, and spelling as well as wikification and organization. That doesn't require any "specialist" knowledge other than a competency with the English language and an understanding of style.

-- Hinotori^{(talk)|(ctrb)} 06:14, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

• OK we can agree that this template needs stricter guidelines. If it gets them, it won't matter if it's useful or not without them. Kappa 06:40, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

Yes, we have agreed on that since the beginning. However, if the template does not receive stricter guidelines, I still would support it as being useful, hence our difference (at least, initially). If I can make some time later, I might try my hand at drafting a sample set of guidelines that users can refer to.

-- Hinotori^{(talk)|(ctrb)} 16:24, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

I'm not sure what it is that people want to change, exactly. We can't wave a magic wand and change ten thousand editors' ideas about what "cleanup" means, but we could change the wording of the template and hope people read it. We could also draw a distinction between major and minor problems to help editors more easily find the types of problems they enjoy solving. Do we need a "cleanup-minor" tag? "cleanup-major"? I have futher strengthened the wording; it now actively recommends leaving a note on the talk page. Perhaps this will help cleanup editors zero in on problems quickly.

I would certainly recommend removing cleanup tags from articles where you do not see a problem, and leaving a note on the talk page asking for clarification if it is going to be re-added. Either the article will not be re-tagged and editors move on to other articles, or we will get more specific guidance and hopefully move things forward. -- Beland 07:13, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

I added a mention about more-specific tags. --AySz88^-^ 15:33, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

As per my comment above, I think if someone drafted a set of guidelines to be placed at the top of the talk page and we voted on it, that would be somewhat effective. At least there would be something consistent for users to refer to.

-- Hinotori^{(talk)|(ctrb)} 16:24, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

I have a connection to 20Q and have spent time updating, correcting and cleaning up the article about 20Q on Wikipedia. I check back regularly, and have been advised to create a username, which I've done. Now that I've cleaned up the article, how can I arrange to have the clean up tag at the top removed. Believe me, my corrections are authentic. I've been married to the inventor since before he invented 20Q, and am now the owner of 20Q.net Inc., and I regularly visit Wikipedia to make sure the information is accurate. Please inform me if there is a process I can undertake to have the clean up tag removed. Thank you. my email address is tanis@20q.net.

[edit] Shirt?

Considering that the template is so well-known as to have a Wikimedia shirt, it might be preferable to reword the first line and retain something close to the original wording, as long as it doesn't lose meaning. Maybe something like "This article or section needs to be cleaned up to conform to Wikipedia's standards of quality." --AySz88^-^ 06:45, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

I was bold and changed it. Feel free to revert and discuss. --AySz88^-^ 19:28, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

That's a remarkably weak argument for discarding the changes discussed here. I feel that emphasis on quality standards is important for this template and the wording should reflect that. They should change the shirt, or perhaps not create a shirt which can be so easily made obsolete. --Bk0 (Talk) 23:52, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

Huh? I don't think I discarded the changes? I thought the significant change was changing "higher standard" to "Wikipedia's standards of quality". The shirt was just an example of how well-known the previous wording was. What is the difference between "This article or section needs to be cleaned up to conform to Wikipedia's standards of quality." and "To meet Wikipedia's quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup."? --AySz88^-^ 00:18, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

I actually prefer the AySz88-version, as it reads better, and don't think the template needs to highlight quality control. The AySz88-version makes it clear that cleanup is requested, without condemning the content of the article. -- Ec5618 00:49, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Keeping templates synchronized

I don't know much about writing MediaWiki templates, so forgive me if this is an ignorant question, but is there a way to modify the family of cleanup templates (cleanup, cleanup-date, cleanup-section, etc) so that they share the core wording/formatting? Modifications to this template, for instance, will propagate to all the others in the family. This would make maintainance easier. --Bk0 (Talk) 23:56, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

This isn't a MediaWiki template, I think. But anyway, it is possible to use templates within templates ("meta-templates"), but they supposedly are supposed to be avoided. --AySz88^-^ 03:32, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Attention merger

It is proposed that {{attention}} be merged with this template. Please see Category talk:Pages needing attention for rationale and discussion. "cleanup" will remain for remedial work only; suggested improvements to intact articles should be tagged {{expansion}} or {{expert}} if necessary. But all articles tagged for cleanup will hopefully soon be sorted by topic. (See Wikipedia:Cleanup process/Cleanup sorting proposal; volunteers wanted.) -- Beland 04:38, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Rewrite as a WikiTable

I've re-coded the template using wiki table format. I used Help:Table and its links as a reference guide. Cwolfsheep 00:31, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

I tried recoding it with the right color. Still gets rejected. Cwolfsheep 18:53, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

Actually the darker indigo color makes the text more difficult to read, the narrowness of the box causes the text to take up four lines and waste space to the left and right, and the gray margin is completely unnecessary. --CharlotteWebb 18:57, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

Any way to make it look better using Wikitable? Cwolfsheep 20:31, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Subst'ing

Anyone have an opinion on whether this template should be subst'ed? It makes sense to me because it makes it more obvious if the template gets removed before time, but opinions would be nice! EVOCATIVEINTRIGUE TALKTOME | EMAILME | IMPROVEME 20:19, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

No. If somebody subst the wrong version it could take a while to fix. --CharlotteWebb 15:36, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

huh? "removed before time"? Is this template going to be removed? I'm still a little confused by this where it says "please use cleanup-date instead", and wondering why "cleanup-date" wasn't made in this very same template just adding an optional parameter instead. Anyway, I think that advice already used about using "{subst:Cleanup-now}", should be the first thing on the description, if that's what you meant. --Caue (T | C) 13:07, Tuesday 2006-10-31 (UTC)

That advice might just confuse people. If everybody just used {{cleanup}} with no date it would be no loss, since there are bots that quickly change it to {{cleanup-date}}, usually before the month changes... unless it's like the last day of the month (like today is) which would still be no big deal. — CharlotteWebb 18:15, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

hehe, I think I was already so confused that I said something that looked like an advice. I was talking about changing the disposition of the advices that are already there. One way or the other, your point is stated. Things around here does confuse people, just as myself! :P --Caue (T | C) 20:14, Tuesday 2006-10-31 (UTC)

Please don't subst: this template; that will cause problems for bots like User:Pearle. -- Beland 22:41, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Used without talk!

I find it very annoying when I come accross this template and it says "further details are available on the talk page". In fact every time I've seen this there has been no mention on the talk page. We either need to make sure all using this tag put something on the talk page or at least remove that phrase! Flutefluteflute 12:05, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

It is now possible for the display of certain parts of the template to depend on whether the corresponding talk page exists yet, if that would help. On the other hand, due to the wide variety of specific {{cleanup-issue}} templates, actual clarification on the talk page is usually only needed in complex cases. — CharlotteWebb 18:18, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Template is broken

See the category tag at the start of Periodic table (standard).

There is no longer a cleanup tag on this article; hopefully whatever was wrong is now fixed. -- Beland 05:43, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Request: Arabic Template and Interwiki

For some reasons at the Arabic facilities (since some articles are in bad standards), we need the Arabic version of the template, and then the interwiki linking to it. Can anyone help out? Thanks. -- Qasamaan 6:00; November 2, 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Template not working

Articles that have this template now have [[Category:Cleanup from [[Category:Cleanup from {{{1}}}]]]] on them. What's wrong with it? --AW 20:02, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Is the old version better??

Does anyone apart from me think the old version was better-looking?? --SunStar Net^talk 00:18, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

I wouldn't mind if the <small> font currently in use became font-size:90% as above... Regards, David Kernow (talk) 09:21, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Editorial templates should be placed on talk pages

I think editorial templates like this belong on the talk page of an article not on the article page. After all "A Wikipedia article is a page that has encyclopedic information on it" and the "standard talk pages are used to discuss an article" (see [[Wikipedia:What is an article?]] and Wikipedia:talk page)

If a person was to write on the an article page "This page is rubbish it should re-written" the edit that created it would probably be reversed with a comment of "rvv". But for some reason some people think that by putting such comments into grammatically correct sentences and then wrapping them up in coloured boxs justifies putting them on to the article page. Templates that warn a reader of an article that the information is not accurate like {{unreferenced}} are in my opinion useful encyclopedic information for the reader of an article and should be placed in the appropriate section(s) on the article page, but all templates like this one, which are there just to inform an editor of blemishes in the page, should only appear on the talk page because they add nothing to the encyclopedic information on the article page and are essentially the type of information that the talk pages are there to discuss.--Philip Baird Shearer 12:39, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Interwiki to Thai WP

I would like to add interwiki to Thai WP with th:แม่แบบ:ช่วยดูหน่อย. Thank you. --Manop - TH 04:06, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

• Done.¤~Persian Poet Gal ^(talk) 18:29, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Swedish IW incorrect

The swedish interwiki is incorrect, and should go to sv:Mall:Kvalitetskontroll notwist 15:14, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

• Done.¤~Persian Poet Gal ^(talk) 18:29, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

Ack!! Someone please remove the photo of the "Golden Lab". There is NO SUCH THING as a Golden Lab. That's a Yellow Lab. Sheesh.

[edit] Hm

Please get rid of that image! —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 124.180.192.49 (talk) 07:08, 13 March 2007 (UTC).

[edit] Stupid image

That image is annoying the hell out of me. Please get rid of it! 124.180.66.13 03:48, 24 March 2007 (UTC)