Wikipedia talk:Special:UncategorizedPages

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This is the talk page for the special page at Special:UncategorizedPages.
For general information on this and other special pages, see Help:Special page.
For recent talk about special pages, see Recentchangeslinked/Specialpages discussion

Note: You may want to use the Category Browser it's online, up-to-date, uses javascript, and is at the toolserver. Very Useful! JesseW, the juggling janitor 00:43, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] Disambiguation pages

Some disambiguation pages show up in the result. For those that already include {{disambig}}, it sufficient to click "edit" and "save" on the page and Category:Disambiguation gets added to the Category links table. This edit wont show up in the edit history of the page. -- User:Docu

[edit] Years BC

See Category talk:Years for the proposal to categorize them in the same way as years AD. According to Wikipedia_talk:Timeline_standards#Year_articles_before_CE there shouldn't be any pages for individual years earlier than 499 BC. -- User:Docu

[edit] Orders of magnitude

Most have been categorized in Category:Orders of magnitude. -- User:Docu

[edit] Sport events with year in title

Most are now categorized in subcategories of Category:Sports by year.-- User:Docu

[edit] "Ca-Wikipedia Uncategorized pages" not working

We've been working to reduce the amount of uncategorized pages, but the system doesn't update. You can see what I mean visiting this page. Almost all the articles from the first page have category, but anyway, are appearing there. There're any solution or workaround? Micru 10:58, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Page is updated once a week. So you have to wait...
Anyway, how many uncat pages you guys have? At Dutch wiki 91% of 50.000 is categorized! 130.161.12.211 14:06, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Thank you for the info. We're working to solve that issue. Micru 14:47, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC)
In the Catalan one the 96% of 12.000. Llull 19:30, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC)


In English, on February 9, 2005, there were 59000 uncategorized pages of 388000 in article namespace. -- User:Docu
Yes there might well be 59000 pages without a cat. Does not really matter since the "system" only shows 5000 of them. It seems to be broken?. Combine that with no update for a week, its pretty dang annoying to people actually trying to cat. pages! Twthmoses 04:52, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] How about a Random Uncategorized Page facility?

This would provide a way to encourage people to find good cateories for pages that lack them. There might be a need to maintain an accompaining List of maintenance categories whose entries would not prevent a page from being displayed. --agr 22:27, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I don't understand the second point, but I think the first idea is an excellent one. Wincoote 02:53, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I was just concerned whether we should count as catorgorized those pages that have some stub category or the like. But maybe that is already taken care here. It's not so important. The main thing is a way to get at uncategorized pages anywhere in the namespace, not just the A's. --agr 03:41, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • A function like this would be great! Even more useful, a search function that searches only in uncatgorized pages. I often find that an anonymous user creates several very useful articles about related topics at one sitting, but fails to categorize them. An 'uncategorized pages search' would allow editors to immediately capture and catgorized all of that content immediately. Also, the function should exclude articles with wiki tags like STUB, b/c that automatically adds the STUBS category, but STUBS isn't a "real" cat. I think this functionality is what ArnoldReinhold is referring to above.

Feco 05:00, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)

  • Agreed & agreed the "no stub categories" thing. ♥purplefeltangel02:12, 15 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Proposal for automatic Category:No category

I think it would be something similar as above, but it would work like this: every single new article would be automatically categorized under, say, "Category:No category yet" or "Category:Need categorization" until someone would actually take a minute to add a category. Stubs and other categories assigned with templates don't count. Several benefits: real time environment, no need to wait for weeks of updates, making sure nothing gets lost, encourages clasification and I believe it would not be that hard to do it, would it? Renata3 06:59, 24 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] How about an alphabetical index?

I've just categorised 20 or 30 on subjects I'm interested in from the first six pages - up to Be! Given the drop off in the number already categorised after page 1 it seems that only a fraction of users make it to page 2. I wonder how many reach the second half of the alphabet? If there was an index people could dip in at different points. The 500 on a page system is just totally inadequate here, and it will probably become more and more so. Will anyone ever look at the z's? Wincoote 11:26, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)

  • I think we would if we could actually get there :) For the last month or so I have not been able to get past 5000 entries leaving pretty much everything after B inaccessible. Twthmoses 04:42, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I usually edit the URL bar to skip straight to an offset of 500 or more, to avoid running into large numbers of articles that are already categorized. :) Bryan 02:19, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Only 5,000 entries?

I've pushed on a little further today, but I can't get past entry 5,000. This leaves 24 letters inaccessible. Is this normal, or is it a glitch? Wincoote 02:53, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)

  • Yeah me too. It does not show entries past 5000 :( and have not done so in a month or so. Anyway I cat. about 30-80 pages each day and since I can't get to pages that is of real interest to me, I just cat. whatever I find. But that is fun too. You find subjects you would NEVER had found normally :D Twthmoses 04:48, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)


[edit] Borderline close to useless?

It is now 14 days ago the uncat page has been updated. Come one, man!!! What is going on here? I though it was in the interest of the system to get pages categorized... apparently not! And the page can't show more than 1000 entries either.... This is going downhill fast :( Twthmoses 07:34, 12 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] grammar

"up to date" should be "up-to-date"

(This was unsigned.)

No, it shouldn't. The latter form is correct if and only if using the phrase as an adjective, as in
This may not be an up-to-date listing.
Adalger 20:06, 7 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Redirects

Is there any way to remove pages which are redirects from this list? They can't be categorized.

Adalger 20:07, 7 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Indeed. Or maybe a way to categorize redirects? I know there are some redirect categories, but they don't cover all the reasons for redirects. Quotes around the topic, for instance. What redirect category for that? You can call me Al 16:10, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] manually listed uncategorized pages

... exist in Category:Category needed, where they are added via {{catneeded}}. --Joy [shallot] 01:54, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Project?

Is there a project that is specifically aimed at giving relevant information on how to tackle uncategorized pages? I believe if we could have some order around this (like assigning tasks) the categorization would go much faster (instead of voluntary actions by random users). Any info on this or the prospect of it? --Eeee 05:38, 26 November 2005 (UTC)

The limit right now is 1000 pages. That sucks. It should be 100,000. Then people could just dive in with a big offset and start cat'ing pages! We just have to find somebody with the authority to change those parameters. BTW: It seems that database dumps and Specialpages are, for now, updated on Wednesday morning and Friay evening. -- Fplay 08:37, 17 December 2005 (UTC)
There should/could be a bot that would add {{uncategorized}}... I was thinking about it for the longest time, but still have no time to do it. And the project exist, but it is not very active at the moment (Wikipedia:WikiProject Categories & Wikipedia:Categorization projects (current)). Renata3 13:05, 17 December 2005 (UTC)
I agree with you on the bot - has anyone requested it via the community portal? I don't want to repeat the request if it's already been asked for. Waggers 21:11, 16 February 2006 (UTC)
See the fairly newly created Uncategorized Task Force. →EdGl 22:47, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Date

It would be really useful if the date that the report last ran appeared on the offline report page. Waggers 21:11, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Uncategorized "good" articles

Anyone who works on categorizing pages may want to take a look at User:Bluemoose/Uncategorised good articles for a list of "good" articles that need categories. Qutezuce 22:28, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] How to beat the 5k page limit

We could move all the articles, using a bot, into a "uncat" category. Call them "uncat-a" "uncat-b" etc. Would that work? We would only be able to move 5k at a time if we just used the "uncat" list as the bot's reference, but it would be an eventual solution. ---J.Smith 21:22, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia association

If you believe that categorization of articles is important in Wikipedia, join Association of Categorist Wikipedians --Eeee 18:38, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Stats/progress

I don't know if this is the right place to ask, but can we get some stats on the page each time a new update is ran? Even as little as showing the total number of uncategorized pages would do, it'd help to see if we're making any progress in reducing the backlog. - Dammit 21:43, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

  • This is probably more makeshift than anything but I measure stats by where in the alphabet we're at. The farthest I've seen is around Bu. Some day we'll actually uncover the Cs. Crystallina 23:52, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
As of September 9, we're up to "Charlie", so I count that as progress.  :) --Elonka 16:45, 9 September 2006 (UTC)
September 13, up to "Circumferential." :) --Elonka 19:09, 14 September 2006 (UTC)
September 16, "Communications". --Elonka 19:19, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
September 22, "Congestion". --Elonka 23:07, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
September 23, "DIVO". Woot, made it into the Ds! Good job everyone. :) --Elonka 01:44, 25 September 2006 (UTC)
September 27, "David" (we're out of ALL CAPS land). --Elonka 19:40, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
September 30, "Detali". --Elonka 20:48, 30 September 2006 (UTC)
October 11, "Cortlandt". Looks like we lost some ground because of the delay in cache update. --Elonka 18:02, 13 October 2006 (UTC)
October 14, "Dress". Moving forward again, we are.  :) --Elonka 19:50, 14 October 2006 (UTC)
October 18, "ESP LTD SC-200". Into the Es! --Elonka 18:01, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
October 21, "Engineering" (again, past the ALL CAPS section). --Elonka 18:02, 21 October 2006 (UTC)
October 28, "Dr. Michael Stone". Again, lost ground because of the delayed refresh. I wish we could get either a faster refresh, or more than 1000 at a time... Anyone know how we could accomplish this? --Elonka 09:42, 29 October 2006 (UTC)
November 1, "Enrico Pedrini", making small headway again. --Elonka 07:16, 2 November 2006 (UTC)
November 4, FEZ (Software). Yay, we broke into a new letter! Bit by bit, we shall overcome.  :) --Elonka 18:04, 4 November 2006 (UTC)
November 9, "Efficient market hypothesis". --Elonka 20:30, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
November 13, "Ensemble cast" --Elonka 22:05, 14 November 2006 (UTC)
November 17, "Executive" --Elonka 22:53, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
November 21, "Family fun center". New high water mark!  :) --Elonka 23:49, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
November 23, "Frances" --Elonka 01:21, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
November 25, "Five points corner" --Elonka 18:42, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
November 30, "Fana Rugova" --Elonka 19:50, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
December 4, "Flypaper" --Elonka 00:43, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

January 3, 2007, "Average Wholesale Price". Looks like we lost a lot of ground over the holidays.  :/ --Elonka 02:15, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

I noticed that. However, it seems more likely to be an artifact of the lack of updates to the special page causing a "pile-up" of the low-alpha instances in particular, these tending to get "special attention" when the list is refreshed. Overall progress will be easier to judge when there's a database dump (currently also rather overdue, seemingly due to a "stall" on (and since) Christmas Day). I do hope updates to one, or ideally both, become a little more regular at some point. Alai 03:03, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

January 10, 2007, "Arthur Quintal". Do you think it would be possible to sic your bot on the 1000 pages specifically on the Special list, as a way of trying to knock it down a bit? --Elonka 20:21, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

I've done that now, after the update on the 13th. ("Aston Eyre Hall"/"02138") Alai 06:17, 14 January 2007 (UTC)
January 16th, Book of Life (Judaism)/15732510. 'Bot-tagging those too, now, as there seemed to be no objections to the last exercise. Alai 14:37, 17 January 2007 (UTC)
Yay, glad to see progress being made again. Let's push on towards the C's!  :) --Elonka 05:26, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
January 19th, Candy Land: The Great Lollipop Adventure, followed by the now-traditional raggle-taggle of numerics. (I suspect these are being sorted in the special page differently from the order they're being retrieved from the db, as on the face of it coming after the As and Bs doesn't make a lot of sense.) I hope I'm not jinxing things if I say that we seem to be on a run of special page updates every three days... Alai 07:50, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
22nd Jan., Christmas Chants. Another 881 tagged. Alai 18:58, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
25th Jan., Copa Interclubes UNCAF 2007. Tagging in progress. Alai 07:55, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
28th Jan., Daniel Jenkins Academy of Technology. We're into "D" territory, and, whisper it softly: there's been a new db dump. Alai 08:00, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
Which reveals over 20,000 uncategorised articles. I plan to tag these all with either {{uncat}} or {{stub}} over the next week or so, if no-one prevails on me not to. Alai 07:23, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
31st Jan., Depression (kinesiology). Alai 17:27, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
And just to confuse matters, there was an update yesterday! Diacetyldihydromorphine Alai 09:42, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
4th Jan., Enchanted Wood, an identify-confused disambig. I was hoping we'd have gotten a bit further, but then again, the Bot Approval Group seems to think my plan to tag the remaining 5000 very short articles from the db dump with {{stub}} requires lengthy pondering, so there's likely to be a disproportionate number of untagged stubs on the list. Alai 08:11, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
Sorry, they want you to what? I was actually curious about the last batch, because when I spot-checked on Friday, it looked like your bot hadn't gone through the list yet (I took care of it with AWB though). Personally, I thought your bot was doing a great job... Where can I participate in the discussion, to ensure that Special:Uncategorizedpages keeps getting handled in a timely manner? --Elonka 21:06, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
They don't want me to do anything, aside from I suppose implicitly, "keep on waiting". This only indirectly effects tagging as uncategorised, in that I decided to: first tag the longer articles from the db dump with uncat (which was going to take several days in any case, and which I duly did); then tag the shortest articles with {{stub}} (per the discussion at CAT:NOCAT and WT:WSS, and this request for bot task approval); and then tag the list from the 31st, before the next update, due to be on the 3rd. Now, as it turns out there were a number of flaws with this otherwise weasel-like piece of cunning: firstly, there was a special page update on the 1st; and secondly, approval for the task hasn't yet been forthcoming, and nor have any comments either way (other than some meta-commentary about the length of task approval in general). I still have approval to tag articles with {{uncat}} (here), and I certainly plan to keep on doing so, though I'll do so at the end of the three-day 'cycle' until the stub-tagging thing is resolved one way or the other. Indeed, the more recent task seems sufficiently similar that at first I wasn't sure if it was worth the bother of filing this separately at all... Anyhoo, it may delay getting something like "caught up" until the next database dump (whenever that is), or me getting a toolserver account (ditto), but hopefully most the "hidden backlog" will get tagged sooner or later... Alai 00:50, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
So, erm, does this mean that I should process the current Feb 4 list with AWB? Or can your bot handle it? --Elonka 01:21, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
The bot can (and now has) handled it. Alai 10:40, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
Non-update update: no refreshes to the special page in a week. Alai 09:41, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
13th Feb, Eliran Avni. Bit alarming that we've managed to go 'backwards', since though there were no pages refreshes since the 4th, by a bit of luck there was a db dump on the 9th, from which I tagged over 9,000 articles with either {{uncat}} or {{stub}}. So this is, at least to a good first approximation, 4 days' "throughput", from (numerics)-"El"... Alai 12:51, 13 February 2007 (UTC)
16th Feb., Farecast. Forwards again! Alai 19:31, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
24th Feb., Cramster. Alai 01:52, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
28th Feb., Dragon's Fury. Alai 02:37, 1 March 2007 (UTC)
1st March, General Kincaid. Alai 14:50, 1 March 2007 (UTC)
4th March, Heat map. Alai 17:27, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
7th March, Green Revolution. Alai 03:43, 8 March 2007 (UTC)
10th March, Helen Taft Manning. Alai 15:34, 10 March 2007 (UTC)
13th March, Hi jaslfdj. Alai 03:41, 14 March 2007 (UTC)
16th March, High speed camera. Alai 21:49, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
19th March, Hampshire County Youth Orchestra. Alai 01:30, 20 March 2007 (UTC)
28th March, Fulani (disambig). Note the gap in updates, but hopefully no real harm done, as a db dump cycle is now underway... Alai 15:51, 28 March 2007 (UTC)
31st March, House of Salome. Alai 04:31, 1 April 2007 (UTC)
1st April, JSS Banashankari Arts, Commerce & S.K.Gubbi Science College. Alai 00:49, 4 April 2007 (UTC)
Damn, that's some nice progress! Straight into the Js already? --Elonka 01:02, 4 April 2007 (UTC)
I think it must have been due to there having been special page updates two days in a row. I hadn't noticed that until today: I was expecting it to have updated early yesterday. If it's back to the three-day cycle, it should update again in a few hours. Meanwhile, I'm just starting a run on the output from the April Fools' Day db dump (no, really!). Alai 01:33, 4 April 2007 (UTC)
And evidently, it wasn't. Alai 14:48, 4 April 2007 (UTC)
7th April, Jacob Black. Alai 06:50, 8 April 2007 (UTC)
10th April, Joseph Betts. Alai 03:41, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
13th April, 25399 Vonnegut. Suncloud 16:44, 13 April 2007 (UTC)
Ah, thanks, but we tend to disregard the numeric stuff at the end. So that would make it Irena Dogsa for this refresh. Lost some ground, unfortunately.  :/ --Elonka 17:38, 13 April 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for letting me know, I wasn't quite sure how the numbers fitted into the whole list. I too am disappointed at the loss of ground since it's not been that long since the last update. I've come across quite a lot of things that have needed attention beyond just categorisation (at least 2 requiring db tags) :( Suncloud 18:34, 13 April 2007 (UTC)
Unfortunately the size of the special page means that we're likely to lose ground after a certain point between database dumps, since typically more than that (1,000) seem to be created (or get decategorised, unredirected, etc) every three days. If the page updates were more frequent or were larger, or if db dumps were more frequent or the toolserver was replicating en: data, we'd be able to get a bit more up-to-date, though of course CAT:NOCAT is in any case still distinctly backlogged. One other possibility is for me to run the bot on "newpage patrol" one or more every day, though I have my reservations about that approach... Alai 02:37, 14 April 2007 (UTC)
I agree the problem is that the number of entries/refresh rate is a problem in terms of acheiving a copmlete pass. I too am not sure about letting the bot out on "newpage patrol". I feel this list throws up a good number of new pages that need serious attention (beyond category/stub additions) as by the way it works it picks up new pages created by users not yet versed in the ways of Wikipedia (Think I've used db, prod or AfD on about 5 pages now, that's probably 10-20% of pages I've looked at). —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Suncloud (talk • contribs) 11:20, 14 April 2007 (UTC).
Yes, I think it's indeed likely that the "newpage" route would tend to get articles at a scrappier stage (which isn't to say that they might not get cleanup up somewhat even after tagging). The aforementioned backlog possibly has a beneficial effect in that by the time categorisers get around to them, they may have improved from their newpage incarnations significantly. Alai 04:43, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
16 April 2007 Irascibles Suncloud 20:45, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
19th April, Herxheimer reaction. Alai 16:09, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
22nd April, Ipm-syndrome.Suncloud 12:20, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
25th April, Iran National. Alai 17:04, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
29th April, Horacio Lavandera (who's managed to keep his autobio on the list for some time by "pseudo-categorising" it). Alai 04:54, 29 April 2007 (UTC)
1st May, James Robert Patterson. (This looks a lot like another autobio, though this one distinctly nnbio-ish, and probably about to turn into a redlink...) Alai 19:30, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
4th May, Janet Wu MacKinnon. Alai 17:09, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
7th May, Increase your learning power. Alai 21:08, 7 May 2007 (UTC)
10th May, Innovation Way. Alai 00:30, 11 May 2007 (UTC)
13th May, Jasper Joffe. Alai 01:41, 14 May 2007 (UTC)
10th June. K-Deezy, due to the benefits of clean living (and a db dump). Alai 04:12, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

And for the record... on the 28th of October the special page got as far as 1943-44 SM-sarja season... which is at #436 on the list, and thereafter... nothing. So it may be of some comfort to those editors beavering away at WP:UNCAT that there's at least little in the way of "hidden" backlog. (I do notice that there's a large chunk of the special page that's effectively "stuck", due to the presence of protected pages (such as Main Page/7), pseudo-sub-pages that are "not designed" to be categorised (such as List of InuYasha chapters/Vol11to15), or which otherwise the bot is gulled into ignoring, despite the lack of an actual category, or which simply have the uncategorised tag successively removed. If anyone has any additional insight into what to do with these, do share...) Alai 10:19, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

Alai, I haven't said it recently, but I still love your bots.  :) And I'd like to see if we could get the artificial limit at Special:Uncategorizedpages bumped up to 5,000 or 10,000 (or no limit?) As it is, it's still refilling too fast to really be able to see the scope of things. --Elonka 19:11, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] New template

FYI, there is now a new template: {{uncat-date}}. Anyone who feels so inclined, you may wish to work your way through Special:Uncategorizedpages and tag every uncategorized article with {{uncat|November 2006}}. I've been doing thousands with WP:AWB, and for anyone else who's interested in helping, here's a suggestion on how to configure the AutoWikiBrowser:

  • For "(1) Make list" select "Special page"
    • In the "Special:" box add something like: Uncategorizedpages&limit=1000&offset=0
    • Click "Make list."
  • In the next box, click on the tab that says "(2) Set options"
  • Check the "enabled" box on "Find and replace"
    • Click on "Normal"
      • In the "Find" box, enter "^^". This is a regex for "beginning of file"
      • In the "Replace" box, enter {{uncategorized|November 2006}}\r\n
      • Check the "Regex" and "SingleLine" checkboxes
      • Uncheck the "Add replacements to edit summary" box (it can create odd edit summaries in this kind of situation)
      • Click on "Done"
  • Lower down in the panel, check the box for "Skip if contains". I use a search string of "[[Category:", or if I'm getting fancier, "\[\[Category:|uncat|stub\}\}|\{\{dated prod|CC\}\}|[D|d]isamb|copyvio|hndis", which skips many other things which don't need categorizing
  • Click on the "(3) Start" tab, and add an edit summary like "Tagging as uncategorized" (it'll automatically append that you're using AWB)
  • SAVE your settings by clicking on the "File" menu. If you're using a newer version of AWB, you should have a "Save as default" option. I also recommend keeping a backup copy with a distinct name like "uncat settings", so that if you install a new version of AWB that writes over the default, you don't have to start over from scratch. You can just Load the uncat settings with the new version, and then save them as the new default.
  • Click on "Start the process"
    • AWB, beautiful thing that it is, will now work its way through, looking for any articles that are still missing a category in that list.
    • Preview/save as usual. Any page you're in doubt on (like you may get false positives on talk pages or certain types of disambigs, or you may run into the occasional PROD-ed article), just go ahead and click "Ignore." Or, if you right-click on the article title in the list box, you can select "Open article in browser" if you'd like to open up a tab for it so you can look at it more closely later.
      • I also frequently keep {{wikify|November 2006}} in my clipboard buffer, so I can easily paste it into any articles that obviously need it.  ;) There are also other tags available, like if you right-click in the edit box, there are various things you can insert.
      • Another trick that I use, is to run multiple versions of AWB. So I'll have them both working on the same list, but one will start from the beginning and be working forward, and the other I'll start at the end of the list and work backwards. I find this works more efficiently, since one version can be loading, while I'm eyeballing the other one, and I don't have to spend as much time waiting for load times. When I'm really on a roll, I may have as many as six or seven different versions of AWB all running at once, each working on a different section of the alphabet.
  • Good luck! I think if we can get a few people using this method (or some other bot), we can gradually work our way through the backlog. And if anyone knows some of the finer points of AWB to make this process easier, by all means speak up!

--Elonka 02:09, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

I've always found that template kinda useless, the articles are still uncategorized, the only difference is that they have a template on em now. - Dammit 10:41, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
Categories are a way of organizing things. The uncat category is a way of organizing uncategorized articles. Try it, it works. Piet 12:50, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
I have to agree with Dammit, sorry. It's easier if you just categorize them in the first place rather than dumping them in a mass blob. The former gets them where they need to be; the latter makes them languish in yet another backlog. Like stub templates, it's supposed to be a temporary association; however, in practice it tends to become permanent. It's not hard finding categories for the majority of articles. Crystallina 00:20, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
Finding the right category can still take a few minutes, just tagging uncat takes seconds. The last few days about 2000 articles have been tagged so they could still make the August subcategory. It would have taken much longer to give them a good category. Now we have a list of articles that have been tagged for so long (1 day to be exact :-) ). From now on we will know which articles to concentrate on. Piet 07:06, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
And in many cases tagging can probably be done by a bot, which will certainly make this category useful. Piet 07:07, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
I understand the perception that as long as an article is being edited, it might make more sense to actually take the time to put a category on it rather than just tagging it as uncategorized, but Piet is correct. There's a relatively small team (I'd say less than 20 people) who are currently devoting serious attention to the categorization project, and even an expert categorizer can do no more than a few dozen articles per hour. However, there are thousands of articles that are being identified as uncategorized. To me, it makes sense to proceed with the {{uncat-date}} template, to at least identify the scope of the problem (I see that over the last few days, we've identified roughly 5000 uncategorized articles). I know that in my own experience, I've been routinely running across articles that have languished uncategorized for years, simply because they were never identified as needing a category. So I feel that proceeding as we currently are, which is to first identify the total number of articles needing categories, and then ensure that none of them get left behind in an uncategorized state, is the correct way to go. Maybe someday we can get caught up, and then set aside the "uncat-date" template and go back to a simple "uncat" system, but for now, it's definitely needed. --Elonka 00:11, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
Absolutely. The simple fact of the matter is that we just don't know how many uncategorised pages there are in Wikipedia. Tagging them (and thus assigning them to a category) is the only way to find the scope of the problem. Special:Uncategorizedpages only finds a portion of the uncategorised pages at a time. Furthermore it appears to me that more people look at the category than at the special page. Waggers 09:12, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Cats not showing up

Categories are not showing up on some article pages even though they appear in the text when editing. Does anyone know what's causing this or what can be done about it? -THB 15:17, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

Examples

That's because you did not close <ref> tag. It has to end with </ref> otherwise the software will think that everything after <ref> belongs to the reference explanation. HTH, Renata 15:25, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

Actually, I didn't do it but I appreciate you fixing it. I will post other similar pages here for help as I run across them if the problem is something else. -THB

[edit] Updating the cache

Does anyone know who's in charge of updating the cache that provides the thousand pages here? If we're done tagging them all with uncat, can we contact someone to "goose" it and provide another thousand? Or is it generated by some other automated process? It seems like it updates every 2-5 days, but I can't figure out what the rhythm is exactly. --Elonka 21:43, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

It's done pretty much every Wednesday and Saturday during the early AM. Sometimes it gets delayed until afternoon. I'd be all for a faster refresh rate myself (every other day would be good), I've been told the person in charge of that would be User:Tim Starling. --W.marsh 21:45, 29 September 2006 (UTC)
Last update was September 30, and nothing since then. I wrote to Starling, got one reply last week asking whether or not I could use the toolserver, but nothing since then, despite two different emails. I've heard that he's in poor health recently though, so that might have something to do with it. In the meantime though, the list of uncategorized articles is no doubt growing rapidly. Any idea who else we can contact to unclog the pipe? --Elonka 05:47, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
No... it's a bit frustrating. The pages had a hiccup but they seem to be updating on the Wednesday/Saturday schedule again. --W.marsh 17:04, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
It's actually kind of a scary thing, how quickly they're accumulating. Within one week, the cache has accumulated 1000 new uncategorized articles. These are almost entirely articles created just this week. Further, it's only the uncategorized subset of articles this week, which I assume are a minority subset or the larger group of "all new articles this week." I'm actually worried that the longer it takes to address this issue of a slow cache refresh, the further behind we're going to drop. Articles (particularly uncategorized articles) are getting adding to Wikipedia at a faster and faster rate, and we're losing our ability to keep up. I'm more and more in favor of implementing a technical solution that automatically adds an {{uncat}} tag to any article that doesn't have categories. --Elonka 09:51, 29 October 2006 (UTC)
Gone over a week without an update again; anyone have any info on this? It's a bit unfortunate that this has become irregular, when the database dumps are even moreso (and the en: data on the toolserver but a distant memory). Now of course, if the forcing/strongly hinting about categorising articles were implemented... Alai 18:52, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
The problem with updates is not just with the list of uncategorized pages. All of the lists that rely on updates from database dumps (Broken Redirects, for example), have not been updated for a long time. I wish I knew what was up with this, so that we could get it fixed. --Willy No1lakersfan (Talk - Contribs) 19:40, 23 December 2006 (UTC)
I didn't think this did depend on a db dump: until recently, it was being done twice a week, whereas dumps are (much) less frequent than that. My impression was that this was being run on the live database, by exactly what route I'm far from clear on. Alai 04:03, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Additive identity

Any idea why Additive identity keeps appearing here? It's been categorized, and not edited since Jan. 5, yet it keeps showing up here. Eli Falk 10:41, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

  • I noticed a number of these: I was surprised there was as many false-positives when bot-tagging from this list almost immediately after it was "refreshed", so I looked at some of the articles being skipped (of which there were 95 in total, I think it was). Several of them had been categorised much earlier, and indeed not edited since December or November. But it beats me as to why. Alai 16:12, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
    • That's very strange about Additive identity. Perhaps it's something in the mathematical notation of the page that's triggering the false positive? Alai, could you make a list of some of the other ones, so we could look to see if they had some similar internal syntax? Also, I made a small edit to the Additive article today... We'll see if that refreshed anything, and perhaps causes it to not show up in the next list. --Elonka 22:21, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
      • I could readily make a list of the ones the bot skipped on some recent run, though many of them will probably be highly uninteresting. Generally there seems to be about 100 or so per run, the 25th Jan being about the "cleanest" so far, though the 28th is fairly similar. Either of those be any use to you? Alai 23:48, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
        • I'm an info-junkie, show me anything you've got.  :) --Elonka 03:27, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
          • Fair enough, here's the latest two: User:Alai/skipped-Jan25, User:Alai/skipped-Jan28. They were all skipped because they had categories, or were directs. If they were actually categorised or redirected before around 07:45 on the appropriate day, something's a bit fishy. Alai 03:49, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
Avco Embassy Television (from that list) was actually a malformed redirect page - had other content before the redirect line. However, I think that most of the content of the list was in fact categorized. Eli Falk 11:55, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
That's why they're being skipped. The question is, what are they doing on the list in the first place? Look at Al-Muhtadi, for example. That article appears on both of the above lists, and today's list... but has been unedited for over a month, and has been categorised since its creation. Alai 17:49, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
There may have been something going on with the data behind-the-scenes that we don't know about, like perhaps having some files copied from one server to another. On all the false positives that I've checked, the problem is not just that they're showing up at Special:Uncategorizedpages, but also that they're not showing up in the proper categories. For example, Al-Amin has been consistently showing up on all the false positive lists, even though it appears to be categorized normally. However, if you actually go in and look at any of those categories, you'll see that the Al-Amin article is not being listed in those categories.
I've managed other (non-Wikipedia) MediaWiki databases, and we've seen similar problems when we did a file copy. For example, we moved a set of wiki database files from Server A to Server B, and then once on Server B, the articles weren't being properly categorized, because something (I'm not sure what) hadn't been refreshed properly. We came up with a kludge, by making small edits to each of the buggy articles -- when they were re-saved, this updated things so that the categories showed up normally. For example, after I tweaked Additive identity, it stopped showing up as a false-positive. My guess is that the same thing will happen with the other articles. --Elonka 21:53, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
Ah, of course: revenge of the return of the "null edit" syndrome. I noticed something similar recently after my bot mis-tagged an article that wasn't in any category at the last db dump, but did have a category-populating template. (I only noticed this because of a 'bot bug that caused it to miss the category in the live page markup, and someone was kind enough to point it out to me (and even kinder to do so in a yelling-free manner).) This used to be an endemic problem with template-populated categories (like stub types), was mostly fixed by the work the job queue now does, but occasionally some still seem to slip through the cracks, for whatever reason. Must be for the same reason, I just didn't think of it at the time. If it's indeed the same thing, not even a tweak is required: just saving unedited seems to be enough. touch.py does exactly that, whereas replace.py just reads and skips if there's no changes to make, so I'll run it on the list of "skippees" before the next update. Come to that, I should do the same for the lists from the db dump, since they'll show exactly the same behaviour. Alai 23:08, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
Good call.  :) You're right, that attempting a null save fixes the problem. I tried it on Al-Muntasir, and it popped the article into the category, without making any change to the article's history. I learned something new today, thanks! :) --Elonka 23:24, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Mandatory categorization proposal

Please see Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#Mandatory categorization of new articles. --Eliyak T·C 08:41, 10 July 2007 (UTC)