Wikipedia talk:Cleanup

See also Wikipedia talk:Cleanup process/Delete. Previous discussion moved to Wikipedia talk:Cleanup process.

Various

Why do people feel compelled to create entries that are simply lists of things? Listings are unnecessary when one has a searchable database. For example, instead of maintaining a list of "authors from Norway", people should just do a search on "authors AND Norway". IMHO, the only reason to have lists is when the list is organized for a specific additional order (for instance a chronological order). Lists are archaic when a searchable database is available. What do others think?

Maybe this is why -- WormRunner 19:13, 4 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Sorry! Full text search has been disabled temporarily, for performance reasons. In the meantime, you can use the Google search below, which may be out of date.

And at a more basic level because 'author AND Norway' would hit lots of people who weren't authors or from Norway, and it might miss out writers from Norway. Indexes are good, though autogenerating them would be better. Morwen 19:23, 4 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Yeah, but I just think its sort of silly for humans to be manually indexing things in the age of computers. A manual index will miss out writers from Norway too. A good index is great, but I'm just not convinced that manual indexing will keep up with the information being added to Wikipedia. If I add an article on a Norwegian author, how am I supposed to know to also update "List of Authors from Norway", "List of Authors Named Lars", "List of Mystery Authors", etc.? I'd rather just enter a good article and have the computer do the organizing.

Here's my proposal. A good, separate "list" type entry should meet two conditions: (a) the list must be "containable" and (b) the list must illustrate an additional order to the listing. For "non-containable" lists it should be clear that the list does not try to be comprehensive and is more of an example that could be included within another entry.

Example 1: A List of famous gay, lesbian or bisexual people is not containable -- there are estimates that at least 1/10th the population is gay so the list is potentially limitless. Just listing all the ballet dancers would be exhausting. Such a list is futile -- it will never be complete. My suggestion would be that under the Homosexuality entry there would be a subsection that gives examples of famous homosexuals without trying to be comprehensive.
Example 2: A "List of U.S. Presidents that were Homosexual" would be a much better type of list. There are only so many U.S. Presidents overall, and the ones that were openly homosexual is a small list, so the list is containable. If the list is also put into chronological order, then it would meet my criteria that it shows an additional order to the listing.
Example 3: The List of matrices does not provide any additional order. It should be merged into the entry on Matrix.

I'm not saying these criteria would be a hard rule, but should be considered for cleanup discussions.

One good reason to have a list page is the Related Changes function, which is useful if you want to monitor changes for say Games or Airlines. Not that I disagree with the above.

Any chance of a section specifically for articles which someone thinks might merit VfD, to give a week here for them to be expanded or redirected before they join the clutter at VfD? Should stop a quarter of VfD entries from ever qualifying and it'd be nice to work on them before lots of people spend their time judging them. JamesDay 09:21, 19 Oct 2003 (UTC)

How would you like to set it up? -- Cimon Avaro on a pogostick 18:15, Oct 19, 2003 (UTC)

After further thought I suggested a possible scheme on wikien-l during the delete discussion there. JamesDay 23:41, 25 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Hmm. I have been thinking about this a bit. Maybe they do not need their own section, but maybe we could just have some way of making them stand out from the rest of the entries. Like say enclose the entry withing ''' emphasis. Just a thought. -- Cimon Avaro on a pogostick 00:58, Oct 29, 2003 (UTC)

Sounds fine to me.JamesDay 02:14, 29 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Ok. Without opposition; will implement after several hours have passed. -- Cimon Avaro on a pogostick 02:38, Oct 29, 2003 (UTC)

Going ahead with the emphasis adding. -- Cimon Avaro on a pogostick 14:04, Oct 29, 2003 (UTC)

Maybe this isn't very important, but... why are there line breaks between the list-item '*'s and the entries themselves? That makes the list look quite ugly IMO. --bdesham 23:29, 23 Oct 2003 (UTC)

I think enough people have expressed they don't like the formatting of the page; so I guess it needs to be improved. But do let's try to not get into a nonproductive edit war over the matter. Maybe people could just add a sample entry or two as they would like the formatting to work, below. -- Cimon Avaro on a pogostick 01:56, Oct 24, 2003 (UTC)

How would this (below) look, any better? -- Cimon Avaro on a pogostick 07:05, Oct 24, 2003 (UTC)

That looks great. If there's no objection here after a couple of hours, I'll go ahead and change it. --bdesham 13:44, 25 Oct 2003 (UTC)

re: Sign with your sig only—no timestamp please

When was this added? I thought it was meant to be anonymous. Has that changed? If so, I object to the change. If not, the instructions need to be made clearer. Angela 06:34, Oct 26, 2003 (UTC)

p.s. I kinda like this Cleanup thing now.

I won't be signing my listings or comments. And compulsory signing I would resist strongly. But I am not personally going to make too big a fuss if some people like to leave their little John Hancocks in there. Maybe it livens the place up, maybe not. It seems that the habit of not signing still remains as the default. It's just extra keystrokes you don't really need. -- Cimon Avaro on a pogostick 06:53, Oct 26, 2003 (UTC)

It most certainly would liven the place up. That's why I object. Angela 07:00, Oct 26, 2003 (UTC)

I agree. See below for my comment that it is only suggested as optional for those who want notification or a time limit on deletes. I do not advocate or support it for other use and wouldn't personally use it for deletes either - but I think some would only list here with that option. I like this place nice and quiet.:) .JamesDay 22:02, 26 Oct 2003 (UTC)

I like the fact that no-one shouts at me for listing a stub and not for fixing it. And that I can call something unencyclopedic without having to justify the term. And that if someone I call non-famous actually is famous, the listing can just be removed rather than sitting there as a grounds for attacking me. It's much nicer. :) Angela

Hm. Perhaps 戴眩sv would like to explain his grounds for preferring signatures? Is it just precisely that he thinks this page needs more argumentative exchanges? -- Cimon Avaro on a pogostick 08:49, Oct 26, 2003 (UTC)

I frankly would feel a bit leery about calling an article, say, "POV nonsense" w/o identifying myself as the source of the opinion. -- Smerdis of Tlön 21:57, 28 Oct 2003 (UTC)

re: mailing list (why is this on the mailing list and not here anyway?)

it's on the list because there was an ongoing deletion redesign discusson there and I mentioned listing here first as one way of reducing VfD traffic. This place would end up getting half of the articles reworked and the VfD would never happen for them, cutting traffic and disagreements there. JamesDay 22:02, 26 Oct 2003 (UTC)

(戴眩sv said we could just use a day tag like VFD, or code timestamps that said 'early morning/ 'late night' etc.)

I don't think it's necessary to be too specific about the timestamps. Is anyone really going to object if something is moved from here to VfD half a day early? The alternative to timestamping everything would be just to timestamp something when you decide it should go to VfD, then it can go 1 week from that date. A lot of things on here aren't affected by that anyway as they are not being listed for deletion, just for improvement. Angela 07:54, Oct 26, 2003 (UTC)

I tried something new with the break-headers, it's just an experiment; feel free to comment. -- Cimon Avaro on a pogostick 08:49, Oct 26, 2003 (UTC)

I like it JamesDay 11:45, 27 Oct 2003 (UTC)

I agree about not being too specific. The tildes are convenient if someone wants to use them. month/day or month works for me. Just an option for some limit so people who want one will list here without thinking that it'll be shunted off into a corner and never dealt with. I agree with your desire for some limit (though a longer one) elsewhere as well, for the same reason.JamesDay 22:02, 26 Oct 2003 (UTC)

re: signing.

I'm the one who mentioned it on the list. I do not advocate it for all entries or suggest making it required for any. The only reason I mentioned signing was to provide a convenient way for people who though something should be deleted to both say that they wanted notification and to give a time limit it they wanted one. I do not propose or support making name or time (or day or week or month) stamp anything but entirely optional and at the discretion of the person making the entry. I do advocate it for deletion candidates only if the person wants that notification and/or time limit. Entirely optional. I'm trying to get those who list over at VfD more comfortable with using cleanup instead. I think some will want these things, even though I personally wouldn't use either. JamesDay 22:02, 26 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Perhaps signatures in themselves are not bad, if they don't encourage posing and or making statements instead of helpful guiding comments. I have edited the first bullet point of the preamble to state that verbose comments will be edited for brevity. I confess I removed a few signatures as well when I last formatted and cut excessive personal statements. I promise not to do it again, but I think we need to be strong about not letting rhetoric, statements about other users and such soil this page... -- Cimon Avaro on a pogostick 10:54, Oct 27, 2003 (UTC)

Agree about shunting. There's not so much urgency here. Just shift debate to the right talk page, say thereis one and point there for it... with luck it'll all be over before the issue escalates to VfD. JamesDay 11:41, 27 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Eh? Forgive me for being dense, but what exactly are you agreeing about? -- Cimon Avaro on a pogostick 11:54, Oct 27, 2003 (UTC)

Sorry, I didn't give you the context first and the first sentence didn't make sense without it. I agree about moving away the verbose things and suggest doing the same for any arguments which happen. Those could be moved to the article talk page and a link added. And this also proves that it's time for bed here...:)JamesDay 13:10, 27 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Just curious: why are some cleanup articles boldeded? Dysprosia 10:44, 30 Oct 2003 (UTC)

All those articles in imminent fear of being listed on VFD are bolded. Should probably make the fact more prominent in the intro. (for reasons, see top of this talkpage) -- Cimon Avaro on a pogostick 11:05, Oct 30, 2003 (UTC)

Moving listings from VfD to Cleanup

I've started to copy fresh VFD-candidates I personally think are salvageable on Wikipedia:Cleanup, since I am not quite bold enough to just simply move them outright. But maybe it might not be a bad idea to move obviously salvageable articles there, with the note that they came from VFD, and should be returned, if no fixup was forthcoming. -- Cimon Avaro on a pogostick 11:58, Oct 31, 2003 (UTC)

I have no objections to that as long as it isn't simply way of preventing an article being deleted by sneakng it off to cleanup and then removing it from the page when no-one's looking. If things genuinely go back to VfD if they are not fixed (and within a short enough time span - one or two weeks) then I think it's worth trying. Angela 12:11, Oct 31, 2003 (UTC)

Actually I have been thinking about that a bit. That, and the problem of having somekind of timestamp so they don't stay there for ever. How about if we were to move the debate which has already taken place on the entry at VFD into a special "freezefile" (in addition to listing on Cleanup of course). That would provide a timestamp for each entry removed, would prevent cheating deletion via Cleanup, and if no one fixes the article, the debate can start where it left off previously, by copying the removed debate back to VFD. The freezefile would store the debate. No one should edit it but to move stuff from VFD, or back into it. We could probably keep a pretty darn long backlog of frozen debates there, since the majority of them would be shunted there, before much debate at all had occurred. -- Cimon Avaro on a pogostick 12:53, Oct 31, 2003 (UTC)

Seems a good idea to me. This will stop people complaining that something should have been put here when it was at VfD. Instead of complaining, they can just move it, and those that really dislike the Cleanup page can continue to put things at VfD safe in the knowledge that someone else will bring them over here when appropriate. Angela 13:42, Oct 31, 2003 (UTC)

"NEVER list stubs for redirection or deletion"?

Someone put this after an entry, which seems a proposed policy rather than discussion of one article, so I moved it here:

"NEVER list stubs for redirection or deletion if they have the potential to be unstubbed."

At present I disagree with that. I suspect that the vast majority of stubs have the potential to be expanded. Left on their own, however, many won't be for long lengths of time. The stubs or sub-stubs that get listed on Cleanup tend to be of the particularly poor type; for example those of less than one complete sentance, often with less data on the subject than the article they were linked from. IMO such non-articles can be of less actual use than a red link or a redirect. If no one has shown any inclination to improve or clean them up after some time, in some cases deletion or redirection may be for the best. -- Infrogmation 11:38, 2 Nov 2003 (UTC)

"Sub-Stub"

I started using this term to refer to the minimal articles of less than one full sentance (usually newbie contributed), for example Leap, Ireland the full text of which at writing is "Named after a leap that O'Donovan made while fleeing English soldiers" -- not a full sentance, no wikilinks, raises more questions than it answers (where is it? Is it a town, city, river, or what? Who was O'Donovan?). Resently I've seen some other people list things as "sub-stub" when they have several sentances, but the article is still quite poor. Perhaps if were going to be using the term, we should have a general agreement as to what we mean by it. -- Infrogmation 11:47, 2 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Format of "Cleanup"

The format of the cleanup page is very unclear. There are about 4 or 5 sections called "NEW", then a few "OLD". Why can't we use actual dates like VfD? Also Cleanup is not mentioned in the Wikipedia:Deletion policy anywhere, what is it's exact status with respect to the VfD, etc., i.e. is actively used like VfD, how many people are actually checking this page regularly life VfD?

Subpages

On Wikien-L, Jake suggested Cleanup be split into subpages. I think this is an excellent idea. Often if people want to fix something, there's going to be particular types of things they would rather fix. Here's the categories he suggests for those who don't read the list:

Wikipedia:Cleanup -- lists the others, will probably be the misc dropoff
Wikipedia:Cleanup/copyvio -- It's a possible copyvio.
Wikipedia:Cleanup/foreign -- It's in a foreign language.
Wikipedia:Cleanup/short -- It's not even a full paragraph.
Wikipedia:Cleanup/rename -- The name is unworkable, and a better name is unknown or disputed.
Wikipedia:Cleanup/odd -- Material seems idiosyncratic or unverifiable.
Wikipedia:Cleanup/pov -- Such a POV rant, some would call it unfixable.

Obviously we already have foreign and copyvio, so I don't see a reason for duplication of effort in creating new versions of those. Also, I strongly object to Jake's notion that this should replace VfD. It should work alongside it. I see no real need right now to insist that pages be listed here first. Perhaps for some pages that would be beneficial, but not for all pages. VfD still has the advantage that it is extremely popular and people are way more likely to fix a VfD'd article than one simply listed on Cleanup. People love VfD so launching an outright attack on it will only make people resentful of the Cleanup idea. Keep both but aim to gradually bring people around to the notion of Cleanup rather than trying to force them to use it right now. Angela 18:28, Nov 7, 2003 (UTC)

Image Cleanup

There are quite a few big images (either wrong format bmp, png, or huge resolutions). Rather than list all of them here, like I was starting to do :), should these be cleaned up (i.e. resized/converted -> reuploaded -> deleted)? Perhaps we should have a Wikipedia:Upload Cleanup page? Dori 18:43, Nov 16, 2003 (UTC)

Subpages are allowed in the Wikipedia namespace so Wikipedia:Cleanup/images would seem best. Angela 19:11, 16 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Such a page would be quite handy for people with image-editing software (myself included) to focus their efforts on. Additionally, we could conceivably have a Wikipedia:Cleanup/audio page, though audio files seem to be even more rare than images. -Smack 18:47, 7 Dec 2003 (UTC)

suggestion

ANCIENT LISTINGS and VERY OLD should be moved either to VfD or to Wikipedia:Pages needing attention. thanks! Kingturtle 02:44, 19 Nov 2003 (UTC)

is Cleanup dying?

Articles are placed on Cleanup, but I don't see them being cleaned up. Is Cleanup dying? Kingturtle 18:25, 22 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I use it all the time - it depends whether people can be bothered to copyedit and sort articles - which is a greater problem than cleanup. Secretlondon 18:29, Nov 22, 2003 (UTC)

You (as I do) use it mostly to add entries that need Cleanup. But articles placed here are NOT being cleaned up, and the list keeps growing. A few days ago, I removed dozens of entries that had been sitting on this metapage for ages. This page contains nearly 200 entries! What is to be done?

we need to check to see if they've been improved enough and remove them from the list. If not we could list on VfD. I do clean up, I often put +sorted or +wikified next to pages. Actually pages needing attention is in a worse state. Secretlondon 18:45, Nov 22, 2003 (UTC)

I agree. I recently did a dump from Cleanup, moving articles into VfD and Pages Needing Attention. I also removed some articles from Pages Needing Attention that seemed to have received attention. But there's a lot to still sift through. Has Cleanup just turned into another Pages Needing Attention? Kingturtle 18:48, 22 Nov 2003 (UTC)

There doesn't seem to be any incentive to fix things here, whereas on VfD, there is an incentive of saving a page from being deleted. Is it worth trying the #Subpages idea? Angela

I was just thinking about that. Seems like if you really want an article to get attention, you have to put it on VfD. What is the Subpages idea? Kingturtle 18:55, 22 Nov 2003 (UTC)

See above. Basically, to split cleanup into categories, according to what needs to be done, so people who like npoving can go to Wikipedia:Cleanup/pov and people who like researching whether or not someone is famous can go to Wikipedia:Cleanup/famous?. Angela 18:59, 22 Nov 2003 (UTC)

and an article that has lots wrong with has to be listed 4 or 5 times? Secretlondon 19:01, Nov 22, 2003 (UTC)

Ooo, I like that idea. Secretlondon has a point. Maybe the last category could be "God Help Us!" or "Take Your Shots" or something like that. Kingturtle 19:04, 22 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I think further partitions via subpages will just drive cleanup listings further into obscurity. The categories are a good idea though, so maybe we could just split the main cleanup page via section headers? I was skeptical of this cleanup page at first, but it seems to be a useful buffer between pages that aren't quite deletion-worthy, but would also languish for months at pages needing attention. <<<>>> I think one of the main problems with Cleanup right now is that there isn't a very clear policy on cleaning up the cleanup page. It would be helpful if we set something firm like "After two weeks, listings that have been sufficiently improved to at least stub status will be removed. All others will be moved to WP:PNA or WP:VFD as necessary." Of course, this would still be somewhat arbitrary, but it would at least keep things moving, and perhaps give people some incentive to improve articles before they move on to "the next level". --Minesweeper 20:34, Nov 22, 2003 (UTC)

I think that having the date that a page was added next to each entry or at least each subheading would be helpful. Maximus Rex 20:39, 22 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I don't like categolizing. The simplicity always helps. How about simply archiving old listing if we want to reduce the length of the list? I disagree with that Cleanup is dying. It is useful place to put an article that does not make sense at all but when you are not sure it should be deleted or not. VfD should not be used as a place to list crap, mostly newbie experiments, but the listing should be more of editorial reasons. -- Taku 21:15, Nov 22, 2003 (UTC)

It definitely should not be archived. What would be the point of having dozens of archives of old rubbish articles? Either they are fixed or deleted. I can't see any point in archiving them if nothing is going to happen to them, but perhaps I'm just not enough of an eventualist. Angela 21:46, 22 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Isn't it possible that someone might crawl the list to find out what he can do in wikipedia? I guess it is a matter of preference or perception. The bottom line is that the page functions. -- Taku 22:30, Nov 22, 2003 (UTC)

Moved from User talk:MyRedDice

Hi Martin, I was wondering why you redirected Wikipedia:Votes for wikification and Wikipedia:Votes for NPOVing. [1] [2]. I've suggested at Wikipedia talk:Cleanup that Cleanup be split into subpages like Wikification and POV, which would seem very similar to what those two pages used to be, but if there was a reason they didn't work before, perhaps it would be best not to. I realise it was a while ago, but do you you remember what the problems with the pages were that led them to be discontinued? Angela 18:20, 23 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Please don't ressurect Wikipedia:Votes for NPOVing - wikipedia:NPOV dispute turned out to be much better than Wikipedia:Votes for NPOVing and similar things because:

NPOV dispute is attached to content - when content is fixed, dispute is removed.
Discussion on bias on the talk page, not scattered between talk page and random list elsewhere.
readers and editors are made aware of the dispute.
Much less housekeeping required.
Decentralised
Reduces impact from new folks leaping into debate without reading backlog

As a simple practical matter, I would strongly advocate against creating a competitor to wikipedia:NPOV dispute, which does a good job. Martin 00:27, 24 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Are you saying that everything listed at Cleanup as being POV should actually have an NPOV dispute notice put on it rather than being left at Cleanup? Angela 01:23, 24 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I don't want to dictate to the cleanup folks - what works for you, works for you. My personal opinion would be that if a page has been on cleanup for a week (say), and the only remaining problem is bias, and it isn't "irredeemably POV" (and hence in need of deletion), then the best approach might be to slap an NPOV dispute on it and drop it off the list, in favour of fresh instances of pages needing a cleanup. This will also help avoid becoming stale, as happened to pages needing attention. Martin 18:23, 24 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Pages needing attention?

What's the difference between these two pages? -Smack 17:45, 2 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Removing items from Cleanup

How do items get removed from cleanup? I can think of several easy cases where it seems clear that a page should be remmoved:

If the page in question is deleted
If the page in question is redirected

Some less clear cases:

When the issue has been resolved. For example, if a page is in need of Wikification, and someone Wikifies it.
- Issue: How is it determined that the issue is resolved?
If the page is added to another, more "definitive" action list, e.g. VfD or one of its subpages.
- How do we decide when that should happen?

And, then there's the troublesome:

When the page has languished here long enough without the issue being resolved.

I have a suggestion for resolving this issue: Create a section at the bottom of the page -- call it "Proposed Removals" or some such. If anyone thinks that a page should be removed, they list it in this section (without removing it from its original placement). The entry in Proposed Removals should include a signature with a date/time stamp. They should also include a brief reason for removal. If, after several days (5?) no one objects to the removal, the page is removed from this list. Anyone can "object" by simply removing the page name from the Proposed Removals section.

Comments?

Anthropos 16:15, 9 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Sounds good to me. Bmills 16:17, 9 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I disagree, though not strongly. My feeling is that the page is already very large, and having a compulsory waiting section for fixed articles adds to that. Can't people just be trusted to remove things that really are fixed? Angela . 05:22, 31 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I've gone for a rather more aggressive approach - I've removed a load of entries that appear to me to be fixed. For anyone who distrusts my judgement, each removal is reproduced in the edit comment together with my reason for removal. I think that's all the process we really need - don't remove anything without saying why unless it unquestionably needs no further cleanup (e.g. article has been deleted). Onebyone 06:01, 4 Jan 2004 (UTC)

My Butchery (or a Server Glitch)

According to the page history, i deleted and then added an enormous stretch of Cleanup at a time when i thot i was failing repeatedly to get my Save done:

(cur) (last) . . 14:05, 2004 Jan 2 . . Jerzy (+ re Peace Pilgrim)

(cur) (last) . . 14:05, 2004 Jan 2 . . Jerzy

(cur) (last) . . 13:50, 2004 Jan 2 . . Jerzy (+ re Peace Pilgrim)

(cur) (last) . . 13:40, 2004 Jan 2 . . Jerzy (+ re PeacePilgrim)

(The two in question are the 14:05 ones; IIRC i used refresh several times when "server on strike" msgs followed my Save; sure looks like i retyped the summaries.) Per "(cur)" compare from just before, looks like there was no net damage but let me know if my help is needed in investigating either damage or the server wierdness that i suspect. Email link from my talk page is best way to contact me right now. --Jerzy 04:19, 2004 Jan 3 (UTC)

How about a cleanup custom message?

How about a cleanup custom message for talk pages? Something like {{msg:cleanup}} that can be used on discussion pages only? Sounds like a neat idea! :)

A few Wikipedians are using a similar message for the Puerto Rico discussion page. That way, the first thing that Wikipedians notice is that the article needs a clean up, helping accelerating the process.

I know this is not the correct place for requesting a feature, but I would like to hear other Wikipedians opinions about it.

-- Maio 09:15, 9 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I've been wondering the same thing myself. I'd be in favour. Bmills 11:26, 9 Jan 2004 (UTC)

To be honest, I think this is creating unnecessary work for ourselves, adding and removing these notices as articles are listed and unlisted on Cleanup. If the article contains serious problems like severe bias or factual errors, then it should have a dispute marker on the page itself so that readers are warned. If the article just needs formatting, then this will be obvious from the article. If it's a stub, then that's also obvious from the article. Stuff like "needs a section on blah" should probably also be mentioned on the talk page, but for the most common cases the purpose of cleanup is to centralise information, and these headers are a distribution of "stuff" back out to each page. Btw, you should probably describe on the process page how to tell when the header should be removed - is it simply when the page is removed from cleanup? Onebyone 11:32, 9 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I agree with Onebyone. A separate notice for articles listed in unnecessary, and there are already factual accuracy and NPOV dispute notices that can be added if a page needs these. Angela . 11:40, Jan 10, 2004 (UTC)

Shouldn't Talk pages have a cleanup explanation anyways? and shouldn't Talk pages be checked also after the page is removed from Cleanup? (These are just questions, please don't beleive that I'm taking a combative stance or that I desrespect you or your opinions -- after all, Wikipedians fight for the same causes.)

I totally disgress with you in regards of creating more work load. The main purpose for the custom message is to provide a way to automatically track Cleanup articles, by having a link on the article's Talk page that links to Cleanup. By using the "What links here" utility, work load on Cleanup is reduced as it eliminates the list/unlist process; consecutively, the possibility of removing the Cleanup page itself arises.

If someone notices a Talk page listed on the "What links here" utility, he would go directly to that page, instead of reading the long page that Cleanup is. This would eliminate the current issue created by Cleanup; that is, having and extremely summarized information of why the article has been marked as needing cleanup. Wikipedians wouldn't be editing Cleanup constantly, instead they would be editing the article's Talk page. It is a reverse engineering of what Cleanup is currently: Talk pages will point to Cleanup, instead of Cleanup pointing to articles.

I'm pretty sure that most people will know, by simple logic, that when all the 'reasons for cleanup' are handled, they should remove the header (NPOV disputes work the same way). Have in mind that the message will have a line that says, "Read this discussion page for more information" -- in other words, the reasons for cleanup will be listed in-detail on the discussion page. If he/she notices that all issues have been resolved, he/she will remove the header. There could also be a notice on the header that says, "After all issues have been resolved, please remove this message blah blah blah", similarly to the instructions given in Cleanup.

Thanks for your response and concenrs on this matter. Again, I'm expressing my POVs, don't think that I'm replying in a combative stance -- I appreciate your replies, and your own POV regarding this. They all help constructively. :)

Nothing but <3,
--Maio 08:44, Jan 10, 2004 (UTC)

I like the fact this page is quick to use, anonymous and centralised. Your proposal would take away all these advantages. I also think Cleanup would be used even less if this were done as there would be no incentive to fixing an item in order to delist it if it weren't actually listed on this page. Angela . 11:40, Jan 10, 2004 (UTC)

How about this - what you describe is a different process from what we currently have on cleanup. I think there are enough people who like cleanup that cleanup is worth keeping. So what might be better is to implement your thing under a new name for a while and see how it goes. I think one of the main advantages of cleanup as it stands is that there's pressure to keep the size of the page down, which means that I personally fix a lot of articles that I wouldn't bother with if it was just a "what links here" list of unlimited size.

By the way, I agree that you aren't being combative, and I hope I'm not either... Onebyone 14:50, 11 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Just adding my vote for a custom "This page has been listed on Wikipedia:Cleanup." message. jengod 01:07, Mar 17, 2004 (UTC)

I think we as a rule should NOT add a cleanup msg on the pages we list. Look at Aust, South Gloucestershire, for example; it has BOTH the stub and the cleanup msg, and in this case there is really no difference in the message of the two msgs. The msg:stub is the tool of stub-markup; for cleanup, our tool is this central list. Thus, I propose, only certain classes of cleanup cases should be marked with msg:cleanup, i.e. in the cases where msg:cleanup does not mean the same as msg:stub. — Sverdrup 13:25, 28 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Dictionary definitions

I remove a lot of listings on this page when they reach or near the bottom. Those which aren't already fixed and which I can't fix myself I try to send to the proper places.

However, I won't do this in the case of dictionary definitions. Wikipedia:Things to be moved to Wiktionary doesn't seem to be maintained any more, and transwiki takes at least 3 page edits for a listing. I'm not all that bothered about dictionary articles, so this is more effort than I'm prepared to go to.

So, if you want wikipedia to be rid of dictionary definition articles, please drop a note here (or on my talk page) nominating somewhere I can put them where you will deal with them. Otherwise, those which I find at the bottom of cleanup I'll have to simply discard. Onebyone 23:26, 9 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I'd say list them Wikipedia:Things to be moved to Wiktionary. That page needs to be better maintained, but that shouldn't be a reason not to use it. Angela . 00:03, Feb 10, 2004 (UTC)

Will do. Onebyone

Damage to Cleanup

Moved from Wikipedia:Village pump on February 21, 2004.

I have reverted Cleanup about 5 hours worth, maybe a dozen edits. Those who can read the history will understand why. I have to go off-line for about 6 hours, starting now. Only one person should take over from me in restoring the lost edits; and no one with any doubt as to whether they understand the process should try. Sys-op status (even tho i lack it) would be a good criterion.

(Leave a note here if you're going to undertake it. Also check with User:MyRedDice to be sure he hasn't started, or gotten someone else onto it. And probably modify my *two* copies of modified "in use" boiler plate, to mention your name and help ensure only one person working on the repair.)

It *can* be left until i can finish it if necessary, but the sooner the better, IMO. --Jerzy 23:43, 2004 Feb 15 (UTC)

I'll take over. Onebyone 00:09, 16 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Finished, as far as I can see I've restored the lost changes. I'm about to remove the warnings from the page itself. Onebyone 00:20, 16 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Apologize for peing prirent, but what exactly was the problem here? Deliberate vandalism or some misteke? --Cimon Avaro on a pogostick

Archiving

What does everyone think of summarily archiving the Cleanup after a week? The old entries are unlikely to get cleaned up, but the size of the page might prevent the cleanup of other articles. The archive might be useful in the future in case someone has nothing better to do and wants to go through them. Dori | Talk 04:48, Mar 20, 2004 (UTC)

Better to cleanup the cleanup page. However, I think most people, are, like myself, a tad nervous about removing wholesale a bunch of entries from the page. Is there any kind of solution that gives a green card, (e.g. to the last 'improver' of an article, or poster of an article on this page) to remove an item.

Perhaps stronger wording at the top of the page is needed. E.G. "If you fix up an article; unless it really needs more cleanup or has just been posted; please remove the list item after fixing it." Perhaps add: "State in comments box what you've removed. Also post on talk page if a tad unsure, but do still remove it."

Of course, even implementing a 'harsh' cleanup of cleanup page like that requires a poring over of the current list items. But seriously, there's plenty can be removed - even keeping archaic list items. I might give it a go myself (people can moan at me if they like, or just plain revert).

Zoney 13:16, 20 Mar 2004 (UTC)

OK, perhaps some of the old articles are just ones no-one is likely to want to fix and should be put in archive!

Zoney 13:18, 20 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Yeah, perhaps archiving is the way to go, I've spent an hour or so going through older stuff, and there's lots there that's just, yuk. Sort of a problem - is anyone ever going to look at archived stuff. Even worse, are these blots on wikipedia ever likely to be fixed up? I mean, some are pretty awful to attempt to fix up.

Zoney 14:55, 20 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I don't think they're likely to get cleaned up as no one wants the job, but I think it'd still be useful to have a list of them (in the archive). I just think that having all the articles in there is keeping some people from improving the newer listings. I will wait about a week, and if no one objects, I'll start archiving. I'll post a notice on the pump as well. Dori | Talk 18:19, Mar 20, 2004 (UTC)

I think, rather than archiving, just delete them after two weeks. Even if they're unimproved, eventually they'll find their way back to Cleanup or Pages Needing Attention, or will just be improved by some future user. Meelar 21:28, 20 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I'd rather they were archived than just removed and forgotten about. It seems a waste of time to add them if they will just be removed as a result of the page being too long. Angela . 21:47, Mar 24, 2004 (UTC)

Well, no one seemed to complain about my proposal, so I archived everything from the 23rd and prior. Dori | Talk 07:54, Mar 31, 2004 (UTC)

I'm not a big fan of the archiving. So much of what gets posted to cleanup needs someone with specific knowledge, and those people may not come by every week. Archving just sends these articles to Siberia were they will never be looked at. - SimonP 00:10, Apr 2, 2004 (UTC)

These people are rare. If they want to look at it, that's what the archive is for (one click away! doesn't sound like Siberia to me). In the meantime, the other users don't have to spend all that time waiting for the page to load (not to mention it's good for the servers). Dori | Talk 00:13, Apr 2, 2004 (UTC)

I should also mention that Cleanup is for quick fixes, and it's supposed to be fast paced. We also have Wikipedia:Pages needing attention. Dori | Talk 00:17, Apr 2, 2004 (UTC)

I think a better solution would be to more agressively move articles to Pages needing attention, Votes for deletion, and to remove those that have already been cleaned. I went through the leftovers from Janaury and about 80% of them could be removed from cleanup. - SimonP 18:18, Apr 2, 2004 (UTC)

I took me much of the day, but I removed about two thirds of the entries in the archive. Do you think we could remerge the archive back into cleanup now? - SimonP 22:00, Apr 2, 2004 (UTC)

As you say, this took you a while. I don't know if there are any other people willing to do this, so it might fall to you. Will you be willing to do this often enough not to make Cleanup cumbersome? I think your efforts might be better spent doing something else on Wikipedia. You can remerge them if you want, but if the page exceeds 32KB, then it wasn't really reduced enough. Dori | Talk 23:51, Apr 2, 2004 (UTC)

What would be best would be if people who improve articles remove them. Alternatively it would only take ten minutes a day to clean what has been done, rather than a few hours of work every few months. - SimonP 00:52, Apr 3, 2004 (UTC)

Well it's somewhat over 32KB, but the page is now 40KB shorter than when you bisected it and since most people use section editing it shouldn't be a huge problem. I also moved the leftovers to the archive page. Most of those issues should be fine in Siberia as they are mostly obscure articles with difficult fixes. - SimonP 01:38, Apr 3, 2004 (UTC)

Complaints

After cleaning up the archives there are a couple of things I noticed that could help keep the page shorter and make it more useful.

Comments like "needs work" or "has problems" are much too vague. Be specific.
People place many requests here that belong elsewhere. We have a page for image requests, for NPOV disputes, etc.
People comment without doing anything. A lot of people suggest something be deleted and then never list the article on VfD. Many people also add a comment saying that they have cleaned an article rather than removing the entry from the page.

-SimonP 22:56, Apr 3, 2004 (UTC)

Comments like "needs work" or "has problems" are much too vague. Be specific.
- Listing is supposed to be quick though, and someone might not know what the specific problems are. Perhaps they just want a second opinion on it. In these cases, if someone else looks at it and see nothing wrong, maybe it should just be removed.
People place many requests here that belong elsewhere. We have a page for image requests, for NPOV disputes, etc.
- NPOV issues are not NPOV disputes though. To add a NPOV tag, you are supposed to have discussed it first. Cleanup is for simpler cases where editing is needed, but no one is fighting over it.
People comment without doing anything. A lot of people suggest something be deleted and then never list the article on VfD. Many people also add a comment saying that they have cleaned an article rather than removing the entry from the page.
- That could be because a lot of the things that get listed on VfD are not deleted because people there claim "it should have been listed on cleanup first".

-- Angela . 21:02, Apr 5, 2004 (UTC)

A new idea

I have added three new headings:

Articles over a week old
Articles over two weeks old
Articles over a month old

My idea is that each day when these titles are moved up that the person doing so could check all the articles passed over to see if they still need to be cleaned. Ideally the same checking would occur at the two month point before an article is moved to Leftovers. This regularly scheduled checking would help keep the page shorter and prevent a duplication of effort because the location of the bar would indicate how recently an article has been checked. - SimonP 22:56, Apr 3, 2004 (UTC)

The flood of headings

I wrote on User talk:SimonP before looking here,

I like what you're doing with the week-and-larger headings, and i think it's at least more valuable than what i've been doing with merging the Toc-visible headings. Now that i see what you are doing daily, i suspect my compression is probably an impediment to your work rather than complementing and enhancing it. Let me know how you see it; i'll defer to the approach you prefer. --Jerzy (t) 00:28, 2004 Apr 5 (UTC)

He replied

I think that the merging of headings is still essential and valuable work, if just to keep the TOC short enough to be useful. - SimonP 21:07, Apr 5, 2004 (UTC)

And

OK, i like that answer, since i think it's worthwhile to keep old entries on the list long enuf that compression is worth putting up with. (I'm the only one i'm aware of who's been doing it, but (of course) i wouldn't feel i "own" the job, if someone felt it should be consolidated with the reviewing Simon is doing.)

I've generally tried to group about 5-6 days all from the same month, but made exceptions of various kinds when there's an especially busy day. And i've 14 days old ungrouped. It appeared to me that Simon was reviewing, daily, one day from each section just before or after moving it to the next section. My main concern was that i would be creating groups of the wrong size, and forcing someone to fiddle with redistributing if they want to move single days into, e.g., "older than a month". Is it convenient to move multiple days at the same time to "older than a month" (even if they may be reviewed a day at time)? --Jerzy (t) 23:47, 2004 Apr 5 (UTC)

The flood of headings has returned, via one editor's (this is not a reference to User:SimonP) nearly four-hour series of edits, consisting of both heading changes and other, presumably constructive work, inextricably interspersed. IMO this is an example of what "edit boldly" does not mean: the revert that would re-compress the ToC would throw away the other work, yet this was done without any sign of consultation here, where the reason for having the headings as they were has been discussed.

One the other hand, it occurs to me that another response to a ToC with over 40 entries (a suburban-sprawling ToC) is a compact ToC, and i've created one for the top level headings (which will very seldom change, so the compact ToC doesn't need regular updating). For those really wanting to go directly to a specific date more than 2 weeks in the past, the automatic ToC should IMO stay, rather than be suppressed.

I may follow the t-l ToC, on the next line, with a separate compact ToC just for days (without the top-level headings, so that it doesn't need to be updated to reflect the aging of single-day entries), but not right now. --Jerzy (t) 03:04, 2004 Apr 10 (UTC)

The maintenance effort is small (and therefore the positives don't have to be big); it can be done nicely once a month, with a copy and paste to an editing program (no WP or regular expressions needed) to create a new month's markup with a single global edit, and a copy and paste back to the edit window.
Even (for my configuration) with a half-width window, the whole compact ToC is on screen at once, as soon as the window opens, along with the front matter and the section-edit link needed by those adding an entry. That's instead of about the last half the index being off the bottom of the screen (for my configuration), even with the window maximized. Hitting Page Down or clicking in the scroll bar shows about the bottom half, at the cost of losing the top half; getting the whole ToC on screen is a finicky business.

Also note (if this is seen as an issue) that the extra info in the auto-ToC is now real advantage, since it consists of

the hierarchical relationship between the two levels of headings, which (except for those doing the reviewing as the entries age) actually is merely spatial and conveys no useful meaning the top level, just providing a coarse first step for navigating the page, and
exactly which days have headings, which is not significant since nearly all the dead-links are to future dates whose lack of useful content should be obvious.

--Jerzy (t) 01:02, 2004 Apr 12 (UTC)

I still do not like the Horizontal TOC. It TOC does not work very well if dates are merged or deleted, having dates that do not yet exist is also a confusing problem. The manual TOC is also very large in an article that is hovering around 32KB already. A non-standard TOC is confusing, it is good to have a uniform style throughout the 'pedia. We have a very good automatically generated TOC that the developers spent a lot of time creating, and I see no reason not to use it. - SimonP 16:36, Apr 12, 2004 (UTC)

Ridiculous cleanup request

User:131.165.63.132 thought it would be nice to list Jew as needing cleanup. This article is, of course, an accruation of many sequential edits, and the listing is entirely inappropriate. I have removed it, if only for the reason that {{msg:cleanup}} was not left on the page in question. JFW | T@lk 23:20, 21 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I think this listing was reasonable, and I'm not sure this is ridiculous or inappropriate.

In the last 7 days, the article has undergone more than 250 edits -- the preponderance of them by User:IZAK, who has been adding new material daily -- most recently a section about Anwar Sadat being pro-Nazi (see Talk:Jew for more on that). If you look at the recent page history: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Jew&action=history&limit=250&offset=0 -- and at the difference between the article a week ago and now: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Jew&diff=0&oldid=3183484 -- the article has undergone siginificant changes in content and structure, and I think it has strayed away from NPOV.

I think it needs a few people with a variety of POVs to review the changes and work on the article. If there is a "less inappropriate" place to do that than Cleanup, I'm all for it. Thanks, BCorr|Брайен 23:52, Apr 21, 2004 (UTC)