Wikipedia talk:Cleanup/Archive 6

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Archive This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Contents

Yet Another Proposed Replacement

I suspect this page gets as many proposals for reorganisation as does VfD, but looking at a couple of comments, and thinking a bit, I had some thoughts™:

  • big, brash, labels are unnecessary and ugly on pages with less serious need for cleanup
  • since every article has a discussion page, it's a bit confusing to discuss the article somewhere else; especially where that somewhere else can be very hard to find
  • categories give us a very useful mechanism for maintaining lists, since a page is removed from a category by editing the page, not the list (i.e. you don't have to hunt it down in the archives)
  • if we put talk pages into categories, we can have a list of links that goes more-or-less directly to the reason the page needs cleanup
  • the only thing we lose through use of categories, is the ability to glance down a list and decide which ones to investigate based on the discussion; this can be mitigated by use of sub-categories to label what kind of cleanup is required.

As a random example: P'ent'ay, quite rightly, is labelled as needing cleanup; and to be fair, it's pretty obvious why; however: there is no text on Talk:P'ent'ay, and how one is supposed to discover whether it is listed on Wikipedia:Cleanup, and if so where, is beyond me.

So, the beginnings of a proposal:

  • replace Wikipedia:Cleanup with a hierarchy of categories under Category:Cleanup
    • sub-categories would be things like "sub-stub", "spelling and grammar", "POV"
  • encourage labelling of articles with the most appropriate sub-category
    • the top-level category could contain those that had not been sub-categorised yet; if someone browsed to an article from there but didn't fix it, they could re-label it more appropriately
  • different labels would have different amounts of visibility: an inch-high bright yellow tag for "this article needs grammar / spelling checks and fixes" just makes the article look worse than it (presumably) already is. Similarly, there could be a tag for all those articles where people want to say "I'm not sure what to do here".
    • possibly, we could put some of these tags on the talk pages, not the articles themselves: they'd still show up in the categories, but wouldn't have to impose on casual reader.

In other words, I think this page would work better as a kind of "draw attention to this article" system, rather than a "discuss this article; sort of; in a list that gets so long we have to keep archiving bits off".

OTOH, I've never used this page, and it may be I'd never use the replacement; but maybe the replacement would encourage me to a bit more than this version... - IMSoP 16:58, 2 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I support this proposal. Parts of it are more or less complicated to do, and needs more involvement.
Just on the principle, I think our kitchen/administration is not the business of the casual readers, and that no huge bright yellow label should be there unless the article is really really of poor quality. The label does us a diservice.
The main interest of clean up is to generate a list of articles to clean up. Having the category in the talk page is a good idea. If it really has to be put in the article page, the label should be more discreet (smaller, at the bottom of article etc...). It makes sense that the explanation is in the article talk page, but if it is anywhere else, a link should be provided in the talk page. SweetLittleFluffyThing 00:02, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Good ideas, well expressed. I agree. Bobblewik  (talk) 12:33, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)
I support this proposal. One of the things I hate most going on RC patrol is having to place a notice in two places. Johnleemk | Talk 15:21, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)
I support this too -- I would use Cleanup more often (both to label problems and to fix them) if the process were this simple. Catherine | talk 17:11, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)
I've never used Cleanup, but this proposal seems like a good idea, with no opposition. What happened? Maurreen 17:10, 30 Oct 2004 (UTC)
This proposal is better than the current one in my opinion, but with it we lose the effect of checking stuff by date. In other words: How are we supposed to cleanup the oldest requrests first? Mgm|(talk) 13:56, Jan 17, 2005 (UTC)

Implementing the replacement proposal

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:

  1. 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.
  2. Annotations should be made on talk pages, not on listings pages, unless there is a particular reason to do so.
  3. 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.
  4. 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 {{cleanup}} 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 {{cleanup}} 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)

Age management

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 {{cleanup|1}} (we'd just rotate back around to the same number the next year) or {{cleanup|Jan04}} (which would require the template to use subcategories, which might not be a bad thing). -- Beland 13:08, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)

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)
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)
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 {{cleanup}} and {{cleanup-old}}. The bot will automatically find {{cleanup}} articles and convert them to, for example, {{cleanup-old|January 2004}}. 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)

Existing templates

(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)

I was thinking each distinct problem, if not each individual tag should have its own category...perhaps all of these should be under Category:Wikipedia cleanup, in some logical hierarchy. Most of the existing ones already have categories; I'll see if I can make sure all of them do. -- Beland 02:34, 11 Dec 2004 (UTC)

For definitions of most useful tags, see Wikipedia:Template_messages/All.

(Beland removed a bunch that he incorporated into the new design)

Stubs:

  • Wikipedia:Peer review does not use a template (maybe it should), but some articles may be better listed there. We should make it clear that this is an option (in parallel with the various tags and deletion options). Maybe "Related Pages" should be made more parallel. -- Beland 08:14, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)
  • Category:To do is for finished articles needing improvement; "cleanup" is more remedial. It should go in "related pages". -- Beland 08:14, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Deletion:

Expansion:

(See also Wikipedia talk:Requests for expansion.)

Translation:

Misc. issues:

Navigation templates

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

Proposed templates

I'm sure that we'll need more than this, and some of the ones listed here are probably redundant with some existing ones. And I really did not do a good job picking meaningful or readable colors. Please feel free to add, improve, etc. -- Beland 13:08, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)

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)

Today, I turned most of the proposed templates into actual templates. Still trying to decide if this last one is still needed. -- Beland 09:09, 27 Dec 2004 (UTC)

{{cleanup-pov}} 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)

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)
The new version has been posted now. -- Beland 20:39, 15 Jan 2005 (UTC)

New cleanup mechanism seems good

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)

Talk?

Why put the templates on the talk pages. If you want the articles that need cleanup to get some attention they need to be in your face! I do like the new templates though. It's better to see what's up with the page without writing lengthy explanations on talk or looking through cleanup. Mgm|(talk) 16:26, Dec 29, 2004 (UTC)

I don't have a strong feeling either way on that issue in general, but can I point out that the {{copyvio}} template, which is included here, must go on the article page, replacing the copyright violating text, and must be accompanied by a listing on WP:CP, which is the time-ordered list we use for deleting copyright violations. Categories will not do for managing copyvios, because copyright violators are too fond of taking the tags off again. --rbrwr± 00:08, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC)
I agree. The reason I took WP seriously when I first found it is that one of the first articles I looked up had an NPOV tag on the front. This instantly told me that a) there were standards in place and b) there was a protocol for maintaining them. I would not have looked at the discussion page without this prompting (in fact I probably would not have noticed it). Icundell 11:11, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC)
I think that cleanup tags should be in the article at the top so it's the first thing you see when you go to the article. Another issue, although this might not be a problem for many people, is with a slow connection. With articles needing cleanup (i.e. wikification), the problem is apparent, so I usually don't go into the talk page at all. If I had to go through the talk page for each article, it would take twice as long just to get to the article to clean up (I have dial-up). I also agree that the NPOV and copyvio notices need to be in the article so people know that Wikipedia is controlled to some extent. --CDN99 15:19, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC)
I too think they should be in the article. The objective of the banner is to prompt action. Out of sight, out of mind; I doubt most people check the talk page of every article they read. --Ben Brockert < 00:02, Dec 31, 2004 (UTC)
Absolutely on the article page. I won't check every talk page for every article I browse through, and I doubt that I'm alone in that. It also indicates to the casual user that yes, we're aware that something is amiss with an article. Joyous 15:44, Dec 31, 2004 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Template_messages/All has a similar table with a column that has varying recommendations for where to put the tags. I mentioned this on the front page, but I guess it was too subtle, and it's also inconvenient to run around checking. So it sounds like we need to add a column to this chart that includes the recommended location. -- Beland 20:56, 15 Jan 2005 (UTC)

?????

How are we supposed to explain WHY we're listing an item for cleanup? RickK 23:44, Jan 12, 2005 (UTC)

From the article, under first heading: "4. Add an explanatory note to the article's talk page." (Maybe I'm not understanding your question.) - dcljr 02:21, 13 Jan 2005 (UTC)
The new system requires you to go through all the links and check talk pages to see what's wrong. It takes too much time. One central place to do so speeds up the process. Mgm|(talk) 13:52, Jan 17, 2005 (UTC)

Surely a new system should be as easy to use as the one it replaces - or provide logical reason as to why it requires more work.

As far as I can see the new system is too complicated and time consuming. Like others I #used to# check the cleanup regularly and do what I could. Now I don't do as much with Wikipedia as I used to. Encourage people to put relevant {{{1}}} in, yes, but not force them to faff around.

All the comments seem to be negative.

I hate to admit it, but I've noticed about 30 or 40 articles that desperately need cleanup in the last week... but life's too short and there's too much else to do here to try to work out which ones need which kind of template and how they should be listed where. I also haven't cleaned up any articles since the changes (I used to do about two or three a day), since I can't do a quick scan to see if there are any subjects I know something about - I'd have to check a dozen categories full of articles, go to the talk page of every one that looked worthwhile, and then maybe find out that what's needed is something different to what I can do. Basically, the new system is just too much hassle, I'm no longer involved in cleanup, and the page is now off my watchlist. Grutness|hello? 11:21, 20 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Ditto ditto ditto. The redirection list is far too long and complicated, and does not cover several necessary headings. There is also a blatent contradiction: heading "Where to find pages for cleanup" and "Do not add to these pages." Now-minimalist-Wikipedian.

I totally agree. I haven't checked in since the changes, simply because the new system is too complicated, and frankly, I have no idea, why it was changed in the first place. I didn't see any need to do so. Cleanup worked fine. Now the number of editors working on cleanup has decreased dramatically which I doubt will help the needy articles. I think we should to a site-wide poll to see what people want (and change it back to its old form if that attracts more editors) Mgm|(talk) 11:23, Jan 26, 2005 (UTC)
I'm afraid I don't get to cleanup nearly as much as in the past, for the reasons already mentioned above. I'm a sort of ad-hoc guy, and I'd way rather skim down one of the old lists looking for things I could handle than have to search purposefully for articles on a multiplicity of category pages. I support a user poll. Denni☯ 02:29, 2005 Jan 27 (UTC)

Cleanup pages

Why have the latest entries for the clean up by date pages have been deleted? When are the pages going to be updated, so we can go back to the old method - #which worked#. There seems to be nobody in favour of the new system which is too fiddly/confused to use.

Until there is a quick and easy noticeboard, so that comments and queries can be added, and they can be checked regularly, Wikipedia is not going to function as it should.

Most of us do not have the time or the patience, to work through the present updating system. Some of us have to get on with RL.

Multiple tags

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

Cleanup page

As the request for no additions was made over a month ago, and it does not appear that there will be an update in the foreseeable future, I, like others, will regard this as a non-event, and see what I can do elsewhere. I will check occasionally - but I do not have the time for the present rigmarole. 14 Feb 2005

Game-cleanup

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)

{{copyedit}}

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

Date entries

There seems to be a hiccup with the dating: go into edit April 12 (for example) and it comes up with the (non-visible) entries for April 13, ditto April 11 (showing April 12) etc.

Length of page

Can some of the earlier months be moved elsewhere, as the page is getting long.

Ditto ditto.

Wikipedia:Template madness

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)

Entries

Later ones seem to vanish on the page, though visible under edit.

Can someone resolve this persistent problem (so the problems can be resovled)


Removal of Pages

After a page has been cleaned up sufficiently, the cleanup tag is typically removed. Should the notice on the Cleanup page ALSO be removed? And is it ok for me to do it? I scroll back through previous day's articles that have been listed for clean up. Some of them have been cleaned up, some haven't. I find it annoying wading through so many articles that have been dealt with already, but I have to check anyay becase 1) the cleanup tag is still there even though the article seems to be in pristine condition and 2) it is still linked from the cleanup page. Thank you in advance for any responses! :) --Naha|(talk) 18:05, July 14, 2005 (UTC)

Well I spoke too soon. I just found and read Wikipedia:Cleanup_process. I knew there HAD to be a system for this somewhere and found it. Thanks anyway. Any suggestions not covered on this page would still be apprecaited :) --Naha|(talk) 18:11, July 14, 2005 (UTC)

Listing in addition to tagging?

Hi, I'm a relative newbie and I've marked lots of articles for {{cleanup}}, 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 {{attention}} and {{wikify}} and any other similar tags?

DavidConrad 08:02, 3 August 2005 (UTC)

  • While it is probably better to both tag a page for cleanup and list it here, there's no foul in just tagging. If one just lists a page here, no notification will be made to editors who have that article on their watchlists. -Acjelen 04:40, 4 August 2005 (UTC)
  • On the other hand there are people who just watch Wikipedia:Cleanup for things to cleanup so if you want an outsider to fix a page listing it here will help. I would sugest that the two-step process is a must, and this is the recomendation found on Wikipedia:Cleanup process. The {{attention}} tag implies that the article has been listed in a subsection of Wikipedia:Pages needing attention where people who know about that subject are more likly to find it. Andreww 09:35, 4 August 2005 (UTC)
  • Use the new system of {{cleanup-date|August 2005}} as opposed to {{cleanup}}. If it isn't patently obviously what needs cleaning, add another tag below the cleanup tag, like {{wikify}} or {{copyedit}}. Then it is automatically categorized by default and will be uncategorized when you remove it. You can then either add your own cleanup-specific comments either on the main Wikipedia:Cleanup page or the article's talk page (where it's preferred under the new system). I believe the consensus is to allow for both at present for the current month, but all older months are actively moved to the new system; mostly by myself and Beland. HTH — HopeSeekr of xMule (Talk) 03:59, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

The clean up page

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)
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)

Ban for Vandalizers?

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)

See WP:VIP, WP:BP, WP:BL, WP:BU etc. --rbrwr± 11:45, 1 October 2005 (UTC)
Wow I didn't know about that, thank you. --Thorri 17:23, 1 Oct 2005 (UTC)

{{notenglish}} vs. {{cleanup-translation}}

Could someone who knows what's going on with the new cleanup system update Wikipedia:Pages needing translation into English? The new {{cleanup-translation}} template isn't mentioned on the page, and I'm not sure when to use that or {{notenglish}}. Is the new one just for partial translations? (The template text implies otherwise.) Should pages still be listed? You could also discuss it at Wikipedia talk:Pages needing translation into English, where I first asked. 68.81.231.127 10:12, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I'd really suggest that we get rid of {{cleanup-translation}}. We have an excellent process working at Wikipedia:Pages needing translation into English, have had for about a year, and this can only subvert it.
Alternatively, we could use this tag for articles that need further language-related cleanup but are far enough along in this process that it is now clear that they will not be deleted (at least not for this reason: they can still be VfD'd like anything else). That is, for pages that are "mostly done" but could still use some attention from someone who approaches dual-native. -- Jmabel | Talk 19:53, Jan 26, 2005 (UTC)
I'll support either alternative over the current situation (both templates seem to apply to the same set of articles, but have different consequences). 68.81.231.127 02:07, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)


Sorted cleanup?

Maybe I'm just a fool for categorization... but I was wondering if others might agree that the cleanup process would benefit from categorization, a la stub-sorting. It seems like Category:Wikipedia cleanup has gotten much too big to be useful anymore. Why not break it down by topic? (Note that Wikipedia:WikiProject Schools has already done something like this, although I'm not really sure what they mean by "cleanup"). -- Visviva 04:13, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

Hmm, that's an interesting idea. Pearle is currently sorting articles in Category:Wikipedia cleanup into per-month subcategories of Category:Cleanup by month. I suppose tagged articles could also be cross-referenced by topic. I think this could actually be done relatively automatically, by the following method:
  1. Get a list of all the tagged articles.
  2. For each article, get a list of the categories it is in, and all the parent and ancestor categories of those categories.
  3. For every category that's an ancestor of say, 50-150 cleanup articles, create a by-topic cleanup category (using some heuristic to prevent unnecessary duplication and overlap). Create a special category for uncategorized articles.
  4. Refile tagged articles into the new categories.
I was thinking this might be a good method to sort expansion requests, which there is some support for. On the other hand, we have lots of existing WikiProjects with which we might want to align cleanup or expansion categories. -- Beland 04:41, 24 August 2005 (UTC)

Pages with self-referential redirects

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)

  • We do have Wikipedia:Offline reports/This article links to a redirect back to itself, but it has not been updated in over a year. I don't have time to update this myself, so I've opened a case for you at the Wikipedia:Computer help desk. Developer action (in the sense of someone who has shell access to the Wikimedia servers) is not needed; someone just needs to download a database dump and process it. If you have enough bandwidth and disk space, you can probably do it just following the instructions under "how to update" on the report page, but to load the dump into MySQL, you'll need to use the XML-to-SQL script (see Wikipedia:Database download). I'm hoping we'll eventually have all the reports listed on Wikipedia:Maintenance updated on a regular basis, but we're short of programmer-volunteers at the moment, it seems. -- Beland 04:22, 3 October 2005 (UTC)


Cleanup request vs. fill rate

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)

  • To answer my own question, I think this is a case of discovering problems that have been sitting around for a while, but I'm interested in others' opinions. And I'm still concerned about the growing backlog.
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)
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)
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)
  • At the root of this is that more people are spewing low quality articles into Wikipedia than than are interested in improving articles. I have the feeling that many of the cleanup additions are on recent articles. Don't know if anything can or should be done about that. Would requiring 200 edits before being able to add an article help? Without something substantially restricting, I expect the backlog will continue to grow, and quite possibly at an increasing rate. -R. S. Shaw 21:22, 3 October 2005 (UTC)
    A small survey of random pages in the Sep2005 cleanup cat showed that 20 were created in Aug or Sep, 8 were created in Jan-Jul 2005, and 8 before 2005. So it looks like most articles being tagged for cleanup do tend to be new ones. -R. S. Shaw 20:21, 17 October 2005 (UTC)
  • The idea of a cross-reference categorization of articles-to-clean by topic seems worthwhile, if it can at least half-work. (I sometimes scan cleanup cats for articles of interest.) Although it would help, I doubt the response would be enough to make too much of a dent in the backlog. -R. S. Shaw 21:22, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

Didn't we used to have a 'fall-off' date policy to help address this problem? IE 'Delete or afd if not cleaned up within X months'. Seems like {cleanup}, and especially {attention}, should have expiration dates where extremely sub-standard articles are deleted rather than being allowed to hang around indefinately. Hard deadlines can also inspire action. 24.17.48.241 18:57, 7 November 2005 (UTC)


Unexplained cleanup templates

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)

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)
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)

Cleaned-up, now what?

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)

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)
  • OK, thanks! Marcus22 17:37, 31 October 2005 (UTC)
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)
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)

I still don't see how to de-list! I can delete the tag from the article, but when I go to the cleanup-by-month page and try to strike out the now-clean article, I am unable to edit the list of articles. How is that done? Tstockma 10:18, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

When a tag like {{cleanup-date|November 2005}} 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)

Page length

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)
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)

Now mid December. Ditto ditto

Old requests

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)

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)


I was putting the idea in the air - and probably some of them are non-runners etc. There are very few "very old" requests which is why I suggested it. Some of the entries on the encyclopedia listing could have the same treatment.

Jackiespeel 23:08, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

Type of work needed

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)


Cleanup from Dec 2004

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)


Why not fix it?

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)

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)
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)
I guess the answer is to be more specific. The {{expert}} tag would cover many situations of this sort. Tearlach 18:30, 31 December 2005 (UTC)
Yes, I like that tag, although I don't remember seeing one. Art LaPella 18:44, 31 December 2005 (UTC)


New Template Idea

To meet Wikipedia's quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup.

The reason for this tag is: {{1}}

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 {{Cleanup-Because}}. 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 15:50, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

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)
Too much bold. RJFJR 21:08, 1 January 2006 (UTC)
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 23:26, 1 January 2006 (UTC)
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)

What's up with the template?

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


Length of page

Can someone keep an eye on this - discourages those of us on dial-up from looking at the page regularly.

Some means of putting "old" entries to the top (eg "updates from 12/24 months ago" - equivalent of "on this day") might resolve the problem - and if the entry is minor, consider it for VfD.


Jan 2005

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)

Everywhere!

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)
Only 12,000? We'll be done in no time. :) --Kerowyn 00:47, 1 February 2006 (UTC)


Cleanup Taskforce?

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