Wikipedia:Pages needing attention

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Cimon Avaro (talk | contribs) at 14:47, 16 May 2003. The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Wikipedia:Index>Wikipedia:Pages needing attention.


Of course, every entry on Wikipedia deserves attention. But some entries deserve tender loving attention. If you come across a page that you think needs a lot of work, but have no idea how to approach it, list it here so that others can find it.

Do not add articles in the following categories:

Please date your entries here. This makes it easier to judge when pages no longer need attention. Undated entries may be arbitrarilly removed. Ideally, sign too

Please indicate the reason for listing a page. Pages listed with no reason given may be arbitrarily removed.

Consider adding a WikiMoney bounty for people who fix a problems that you've flagged up here. A code of honour applies - for each time you add an article to this list, try to fix an article already on the list.

See also: Wikipedia:reference desk, current events, wikipedia:requested articles

Articles that have good information, but need work for some reason

  • Åland - parts of this article have got various minor mess-ups, but I don't know enough about the subject to fix it -- This description of the problems is vague and unhelpful, can someone clarify? --
  • Ablution -- unless we can (or need to) write a general definition & description, this should be moved to "Ablution in the bible". Yet more from Easton's.
  • Abscam - needs more facts!
  • Abstract - seems like a very philosophical discussion. Needs some clarification, and extension to arts for instance.
  • Alexandria, Virginia - started updating 5/10/03
  • Assessment - should be turned into a disambiguation page as there are all kinds of "assessment". --KF 09:25 May 13, 2003 (UTC)
  • Assignment problem - to the novice or naive reader, this article is way-out-there. Is it a math problem? a logic problem? How can the everyday person be made to understand? Kingturtle 04:55 May 15, 2003 (UTC)
  • AT&T - uncertain tone, mis-matched paras, needs tidying.
  • Atlas Shrugged - the entire set of Atlas Shrugged/... articles need to be sorted out. (see: Talk:Ayn Rand
  • Bead artists: this page is becoming commercial!. olivier 09:51 Oct 29, 2002 (UTC)
  • Black box - a bit jumbled. Further notes on Talk:Black box
  • Black Sabbath - from the article: and someone else can write 1979 to date
  • Boar - if somebody would be looking for info about the wild, hairy variety of a pig, they just get directed to domestic pig page -- Skysmith 08:01 15 May 2003 (UTC)
  • Boer - redirect to Afrikaner does not seem to work
  • Capitalism.org - this article seems as a pretext to add quotes. (user:Ericd 12 May 2003)
  • Cascadia - i have no idea what it means! Kingturtle 00:17 May 14, 2003 (UTC)
  • Coney Island -- It's just a couple of quotes from a guidebook and Fortune Magazine, both from the 1930s. ridetheory May 15, 2003
  • Culture of Wales - no longer just a stub, but still very incomplete. Magnus
  • Diacritic - contains a list of special characters that don't have diacritic. -- Menchi 09:48 May 5, 2003
  • Echo does refer to mythology and telecommunications but not about the physical properties of the original phenomena -- Skysmith 08:51 May 14, 2003 (UTC)
  • E-mail: good information, but should be developed to have a proper history of E-mail, and perspectives on the directions E-mail is evolving: security, for example.
  • Ernest Hemingway: information from several sources to be merged. Copyright issues?
  • Funeral: I have expanded this with brief descriptions of U.S. custom, law, and a discussion of anatomical gifts. What I have written is still fairly stubly. Info regarding other religions and cultures would be a large improvement. -- IHCOYC 17:21 Feb 27, 2003 (UTC)
  • Harry S. Truman - Most of the important events of 1945-1948 are missing, including the Marshall plan, the cold war, the partition of Korea, and the Berlin airlift. -- April 20, 2003
  • History of Africa - This article is Eurocentric to the point of being racist. It's shocking that any article on African history doesn't detail black African states like Ghana, Mali, Songhai, Kanem-Bornu, Kano, Ashanti, Oyo, Benin, Ife, Monomontapa, or the Swahili-speaking city-states in East Africa, just to name some of the most notable. -- 172, May 3, 2003
  • History of Fiji and/or Politics of Fiji - excellently written, but much has changed in the government over the past two years. These pages need tremendous updats. See: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] Kingturtle 03:24 Apr 4, 2003 (UTC)
  • Holocene extinction event - more species are needed
  • Independent components analysis - Not clear to the non-specialist (or me anyway) -- sannse 08:01 May 3, 2003 (UTC)
  • Infertility: Stats with unverified origin - needs a lot more work.
  • Jesus Christ: Contains no information on Jesus' life. Only his birth and death, with nothing in between.
  • Japanese proverbs: Not really even a stub, needs the Japanese translating and more content.
  • Information: lots of near-empty sections -- Tim Starling 12:30 Mar 17, 2003 (UTC)
  • Image:KavirajuStampE-3.jpg -- article in image space, pasted from a Geocities page, apparently by the author
  • Job creation program: anyone from, or with knowledge of Switzerland able to tackle this one? -- sannse 12:54 Mar 19, 2003 (UTC)
  • Mary Kay Letourneau ? Just a bunch of links. I'm not even sure this person should be in Wikipedia at all. Is anyone going to want to look her up in 50 years? Pandora 20:09 Feb 4, 2003 (UTC)
  • Locust - a great deal needs to be said Kingturtle 02:35 Apr 7, 2003 (UTC)
  • Magdeburg rights: currently a collection of bits, without any real coherence or scholarship -- help needed from medieval historians, please!
  • Mamoru Chiba, Outer Senshi, and other contributions by User:Crealica. Potential copyright infringement - articles cut-and-pasted from other websites. Wikification needed. -- Wapcaplet 16:32 15 May 2003 (UTC)
  • The Matchmaker about the movie of the same name. I think that an article about matchmakers, those who arrange and/or procure marriagesm would be in order -- Skysmith 08:51 May 14, 2003 (UTC)
  • Mass media: lots of near-empty sections -- Tim Starling 12:30 Mar 17, 2003 (UTC)
  • Milo Burcham - need wikification and de-1st personing
  • Napoleonic Wars - little more than an extended structure
  • Old Catholic Church - one page, three articles on the same subject. In need for a synthesis...
  • Pie - The cooking section still needs work
  • Poet laureate - contains a list and little else that is useful. Should contain the history of the position and the duties or usual actions of the poet laureate.
  • Political philosophy - contains government definition inside, and is actually a quotatation of some (novel-like) lecture
  • Princess Antoinette of Monaco - currently makes it sound as though her greatest accomplishment in life is having three children out of wedlock. OK, for all I know, it might be, but it'd be nice to have a bit more about herself. -- John Owens 07:03 May 6, 2003 (UTC)
  • Religious aspects of marriage - Larry wanted this article, but I doubt he wanted it quite like this. (Not so bad now that the original has been replaced.)
  • RFC although not itself a stub, this article links to RFC 0823 and a number of similarly titled articles which are, and which should probably be merged with the head article. Before barging ahead with such an undertaking, I thought it better to have the entire question reviewed by someone more familiar with the field. The head article should probably also be renamed to reflect policy about abbreviations and acronyms. Eclecticology 17:22 Sep 13, 2002 (UTC)
    • I'd say keep the RFC stubs. People refer to specific RFC's during discussions about internet stuff and it would be useful to be able to link directly to the specific RFC. Also, as each RFC becomes useful, it will be elaborated on and grow. If all the articles were rolled together, they'd need to be unrolled at some point in the future. TomCerul Feb 21, [B2003
  • Shor's algorithm - half of it is missing
  • Sensory Integration Dysfunction - needs attention from an expert.
  • Side-effect - has only computer definition. Needs medical stuff
    • Well, I cleaned things up and created a beginning of a "medical side effects" article. It does still need work... -- RTC 04:00 Nov 26, 2002 (UTC)
  • Sigismund I Jagiello -- at present, this is just bad prosopography. Needs an infusion of context and coherence
  • Sociology -- somehow confusing at the moment, needs clearing up -- Tillwe 23:59 Mar 23, 2003 (UTC)
  • Juan Maria Solare -- reads like a resume (but this guy is legit. I googled him) -- Kingturtle 17:02 May 3, 2003
  • Spectrum, Optical spectrum -- links to them need disambiguating by someone with technical understanding
  • Stock market - Good article, but entirely US-centric. Needs globalisation in terms and content, and also history section about the development of stock markets.
  • Sugarhill Gang - now redirects to The Sugarhill Gang but could do with linked pages being directed straight to that page rather than via the redirect.
  • Survivor_VI - More information about the season
  • Tabletop roleplaying games - rename to Tabletop roleplaying game or maybe with a hyphen like Role-playing game.
  • Test (student assessment) - This term may have different denotations in various parts of the world, but what it says on this page verges on the unintelligible. --KF 09:25 May 13, 2003 (UTC)
  • Thirteen Years' War - needs editing and clarification. also, shouldn't have an approstrophe in the title, probably.
    • Thirty Years' War has the apostrophe too. I'm no native speaker, but my dictionary spells it the same way, so I'd think it's OK. Djmutex 15:51 May 3, 2003 (UTC)
  • Timeline of U.S. economic indicators - This page hasn't been touched in over six months and is very incomplete. Either someone should invest a lot of time bringing it up to date, or it should be removed. -- Minesweeper 11:31 Apr 20, 2003 (UTC)
  • Tree structure - formed by merging four fragmentary articles. Now has some reasonable content, but needs lots of copyediting and checking for mathematical correctness
  • Klaus Schulze - good comment but hardly encyclopedic content Kpjas 07:03 Apr 6, 2003
  • Ventspils - has loads of information, not necessarily all of encyclopedic nature. How do we deal with that? olivier 18:50 Mar 20, 2003 (UTC)
  • UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) - needs organization and an introductory paragraph -- Menchi May 2, 2003
  • Walker Evans - just add some more information, tidy it up.
  • Wends- general re-write and information needs
  • Wilhelm Reich the old boy may well have been bonkers but he deserves a better article than this as it stands quercus robur
  • World War II - There is nothing at all in here about Italian Fascism (other than appearing in a list of the major Axis powers), nor is there anything about Mussolini except a link to his article
  • Zarnowiec - translation problems
  • Zimbabwe - complex issue needing more facts, outdated data corrected

Subtly wrong

  • Faraday cage: see Talk:Faraday cage. I think the problem that several contributors mentioned, the confusion of electrostatic shielding and RF shielding, has now been sorted. -- Heron
  • Electrode -- lots of confusion here, also anion vs. cation and attraction/repulsion and oxidation/reduction. Help is needed from electrochemists to fact check all the details. (No, this is fine use of language at least as far as I have read. I will check the article in depth as soon as possible. User:Jedidan747)
  • Casimir effect: the equation (all through its history) uses η, which is electromagnetic moment; but I'm sure it's supposed to be either ε, permittivity, or μ, permeability, I just don't know which one. -- John Owens 05:18 Apr 9, 2003 (UTC)
  • Lancelot Dent: Not an encyclopedia article, but does contain some information, and I can't find anything else on the guy. -- Magnus Manske 13:19 Apr 12, 2003 (UTC)
  • Confectionery seems to incorrectly describe the various stages of candymaking and the products thereof; see Talk:Confectionery -- April 20, 2003

Larry's Text

  • User:Larry Sanger/Larry's Text is a set of pages input by Larry Sanger in the early days of Wikipedia. It is 350+(!) pages of introduction to philosophy lectures he gave at Ohio State University. Rendering it all encyclopedic has been a daunting task, and many of these articles still need a lot of work.

Articles needing editing

  • Cherokee 2003-05-11 -- I think added information culled from Trail of Tears and other places needs it's own article, but I'm not sure what that article should be called, or where it should go. ~ender

Articles needing a rewrite

  • Pregnancy -- Although I will probably take it upon myself to do alot of rewriting, Jedi Dan - I think others should help too, this information is fragmented and incomplete. -- April 22
  • Persona, Status, Alter ego ? all written by the same anon. user. Very skimpy.
  • Persuasion technology -- frankly bonkers
  • Capillary action -- Some good ideas, rewrite for 3rd person and add facts. -- JeLuF
  • SALT II -- FIRST DRAFT, appears to be nothing but the text of the treaty. I think a brief description of the treaty, and maybe some history would be more approriate with an extern link to the actual treaty. I will put this on my to do list, but may be more appropriate for someone else to do. MB 19:05 14 May 2003 (UTC)


  • More articles by 62.98.xx.xx containg Household Cyclopedia material. Added to previously existing articles. Dog

  • Amaranth information looks fine, but needs rewording

Articles that need periodic updates

Some articles contain list or table with annual data. They need to be updated and review periodically. Some popular pages may be edited frequently between reviews, so they may be up to date when the review is up. But some less popular pages may not be updated periodically without a scheduled review. This section maintains a schedule to make sure these articles are not forgotten and become obsolete over time. Please reset the alarm clock after each review and reorder them chronologically.


Over Due items

  • Wikipedia statistics last review: Jan 2003; next review: Jun 2003; frequency: quarterly; to do: update charts with latest data.
  • Stanley Cup last review: 2002; next review: May 2004; frequency: annually; to do: update winner list with latest data.

Future Items

  • Academy Award last review: Apr 2003; next review: Apr 2004; frequency: annually; to do: update multiple winner lists with latest data.

Articles of dubious merit, accuracy and/or validity

Files relating to Wikipedia Operations



Files containing prehistoric discussions

Much of the content here is based on long abandoned ideas. Old old hands may have better background to know what should happen to this stuff


Needs discussion regarding its format

  • List of tributaries of Hudson Bay - I'd like to have an article of this type, but I'm worried this format will become hideously complicated and tie me up in knots. Suggestions please? - Montréalais 19:51 Mar 25, 2003 (UTC)
    • Maybe list major watersheds in clockwise order from some starting point and within each watershed list the second and third order streams and the lakes over a certain size. So, one page per major watershed, with a paragraph for each second order stream in which all of its respective tribs are listed, and not worry about what province the rivermouth is in, but just mention provinces in each watershed's description?Uyanga 13:58 May 13, 2003 (UTC)

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