Wikipedia talk:Cleanup sorting

Changing the cleanup tag?

I like what you have here so far. I find in working on cleanup articles that it is not always clear what should be done to cleanup an article. Sure, I can usually tell, but if I can't, I have to go to the talk page which may have no rationale or many possible rationales. For this reason, and to aid in the implementation of this project, I think that two changes should be made to the {{cleanup-date}} tag:

1. The tagger should be required to put a rationale onto the tag when they add it, similar to the proposed deletion rationales that currently exist.

2. There should be a message indicating that if an editor feels that an article has graduated to the {{expert}} stage, he or she should change the tag.

These changes would help to implement this policy and add some sense to the current vague system. --Danaman5 06:20, 20 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I was going to propose something similar. More often than not, I stumble across articles that look perfectly fine with a cleanup tag on them and not a single word about it in on the talk page or even in the edit history. I usually just remove the cleanup tag then, seeing no reason what should be cleaned up about the article. People should really be forced to actually say what in the article needs cleanup in their opinion. --Conti|✉ 15:59, 20 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I have created a quick mockup for a change I think would be appropriate. See User:Danaman5/New cleanup-date template--Danaman5 17:07, 20 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Looks a little too wordy to me, Danaman. Could you tighten up the language? Alba 18:46, 20 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I was thinking the same thing myself. I have changed it to be much more simplistic but still convey the same ideas. Please examine it again and let me know what you think. --Danaman5 20:09, 20 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Cleanup tag: formatting

The basic ideas look great, but the visual impact can be improved a lot, I think. Take a look at User:Alba/Workspace/Cleanup tag proposal. Alba 21:40, 20 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The third attempt is too all-inclusive. The tag should be big enough to be noticeable, but I think that's too big. If nothing else, the space in between the bullet points should be minimized. The rationale idea is definitely a good idea, though. bcasterline^talk 22:47, 20 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I shrunk both the wording and the notices. What do you think now? Alba 01:09, 21 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Looks good. A few suggestions: I'd switch the "be bold and fix it" and "specify the problem", tho. People should first think about fixing a problem IMHO. I'm also not sure about the suggestion to put {{expert}} on the page instead of the cleanup-tag. It sounds a bit like a page needs the expert-tag when it is cleaned up. Otherwise it looks quite good. --Conti|✉ 01:41, 21 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I added in a fifth alternative, in which I retained Alba's small sized text, which I like, but also retained my "for the following reason:" over Alba's "needs include:" because I prefer the former. I think that the sentence flows better with "specify the problem" before "be bold and fix it", but it is certainly negotiable. The idea of mentioning the expert tag is to spur users to move to the next phase of the new cleanup plan that is now being proposed, so it fits in this situation. --Danaman5 01:59, 21 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The fourth and fifth look good to me, too. Instead of "needs include:" or "for the following reasons:", just "...this article or section may require cleanup:" (colon at the end) is probabably sufficient to convey the point that the rationale follows. As long as understandability isn't compromised: the fewer the words in the template, the better. bcasterline^talk 02:16, 21 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Good idea, I've added that as #6 on the same page. --Danaman5 02:32, 21 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Cleanup tag: more opinions and transition

Gentlemen, we seem to have options that are at least discussable by the larger community. I propose to move #4-#6 onto the cleanup sorting proposal page; we can ask people to vote/discuss them.

On larger topics: how are we going to handle transition? We have thousands of articles tagged with the old {{cleanup}} tag. A bot can move them to {{cleanup-date}}, but it can't insert rationales. Do we let them all display {{{{2}}}}? I don't think it's a good idea.

Here's a possible plan:

Have User:Pearle or another bot migrate all current {{cleanup}} to {{cleanup-date}}.
Deprecate {{cleanup-date}}.
Insert our chosen template (from #4-6 or other proposals) as the new {{cleanup|date|reason}}.

After that, Cleanup will require date and reasons. Please note that we will have to teach people to use the new cleanup, just as newbies need very clear instructions for submitting to AfD (which also uses the pipe format).

Perhaps we should rearrange, and let field #1 be the reason and #2 be the date? That way, dating can still be automated... Alba 03:50, 21 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I support moving them onto the proposal page for discussion. I had intended our new tag to replace the cleanup-date tag originally, anyway, so it is fine if we replace that with this. Our proposed tags all mention the date anyway. Finally, rearranging the #1 and #2 fields seems like a good idea as well. --Danaman5 04:26, 21 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Some thoughts

The reason why cleanup doesn't work is that it involves expecting other people to do the work. This is not how Wikipedia works. If you're not willing to clean up the article yourself, what makes you think someone else is going to do it?

I often see articles where someone has slapped a {{cleanup}} tag on it, when all it really needed to make a perfectly good stub was to bold the subject in the opening and add an appropriate category; this wouldn't have taken much more time than to add the tag. Gdr 10:49, 11 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

While undoubtedly there is an element of truth in what you say, it isn't a core problem with the cleanup process, IMO. Cleanup does work, it just doesn't work fast enough to keep up with the flood of crap being entered into Wikipedia. More people are interested in posting their own piece of prose than are interested in repairing the defective prose of others. In general one can spot and flag problems a lot faster than repair them, but that doesn't mean flagging shouldn't be done. Eventually the community may come to see a need to limit the addition of crap, perhaps by instituting a procedure for new article creation (a major source). -R. S. Shaw 20:56, 11 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Leveraging WikiProjects

Is a great idea in general, but doing so successfully will mean structuring the process so as to make it easier for them, in particular in terms of how the sorting categories are constructed. For example, WP:PNA currently had "Military History", "Military history", "Military", and "War" categories, even though there's only a single active WikiProject dealing with all of these. Combining them into a single category may make the sorting scheme less "correct", but would make it much easier for the project to focus on the relevant articles. Kirill Lok s h in 13:43, 11 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

We can just transclude all the categories into the same WikiProject. Alba 15:45, 11 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Somehow, I don't think that transcluding a bunch of massive and poorly organized lists into a project will get you quite the reaction you're looking for ;-) Kirill Lok s h in 16:30, 11 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Current template for modifying PNA subpages

Am confused on how I can go about leveraging the power of this into our new WP:Firefly. Looks like I need to add a subpage called Wikipedia:Pages needing attention/Firefly but I wasn't sure if the template under the subhead "Current template for modifying PNA subpages" was the most recent? Thanks! plange 06:54, 1 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Summary needed

I have some interest in helping with this, but the front page needs a summary to outline the current status, instructions and categories. Maurreen 17:51, 30 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, the project page is messy and almost stream-of-consciousness. I've added a summary section at the front. I'm sure it can be improved. (Really, the whole page needs splitting and rewriting. Does this even belong as a subpage of Cleanup process?) Please discuss questions, ideas. There are few people active in this area. -R. S. Shaw 04:06, 31 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. The summary helps. I tried doing something like this by hand maybe nine months ago, but I didn't get very far. Maurreen 05:05, 31 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Artists

I'm trying this at Artists subpage. If somebody could check my work, I'd appreciate it. Maurreen 05:05, 31 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The body for the Artists section you've set up is basically fine, however there's a overall structural aspect to handle. I see that the page Wikipedia:Pages needing attention/Culture and Arts as it stands is one big thing with inline sections. This has to become (when fully converted) a series of transcluded (sub)subpages. This is because each topical area has to have its own page, since the bot will replace all content after the first "BOT INSERTS CONTENT HERE".

A straight across setup for this instance would have a page named Wikipedia:Pages needing attention/Artists with the wikitext you created, and in place of that text in Wikipedia:Pages needing attention/Culture and Arts there would be a transclusion of it, thus: {{Wikipedia:Pages needing attention/Artists}}.

I think it might be good if before going too far some thought were given to the structure desired. In particular, how should topical areas be grouped? If you look at the 3 other major areas already done on PNA, you can see there are often 2 nested levels present. For instance, Computing, Health Science, and Transport each have subpages of their own (Anatomy, Medicine, etc). Maybe Culture and Arts doesn't need any, at least for a first cut, but it's something to be aware of.

One note: you removed the "Do not add text below this point" message. It's OK if you make that message non-visible by making it a HTML comment, but it probably should not be removed completely. It's intended to be a message to anybody who happens to edit the PNA/Artists page in the future, say to add a cleanup listing for an article in the old, pre-robot, PNA manner. Below that point it will get thrown away by the bot.

About content: I think you should leave the Portal:Arts out of this topic (and all topics). This is because the portal has too broad a set of categories listed (including poetry, comics, typography, Reggae, ...). You have to check content of portals for problems like this.

Enough for now. -R. S. Shaw 08:55, 31 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

OK, thank you, I'll work on digesting this. Maurreen 14:06, 31 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hey Maurreen, glad you're on this! I was coming here too to figure out how to leverage this for Biography - was thinking it would be great to have one for each discipline (like you have with Artists), I'll work on doing politicians as another test. plange 03:41, 4 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Politicians

I see there's a Politicians page but am unsure if this was converted to the bot process? When was the last time it ran, if so. Also, is it okay if I modify what categories and stubs it's using? This is on behalf of WikiProject Biography...plange 03:47, 4 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You can tell that it has been converted to new format and that the bot has been run by the bullet lines like "Cleanup needed (updated by bot)". To find when the bot was run, look at the page History for the latest edit by "Pearle" (which is the bot). (I've requested the bot be updated to put the date of the wikipedia image on the page, but that has not happened [yet]). Yes, thoughtful changes to cats and stub-cats would be good. Note the broader the set of cats, the longer and less selective the list will become. -R. S. Shaw 20:03, 4 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, and is it okay to create subsets, i.e. American politicians, when/if the main politicians one gets too big? Also, I would love to be able to transclude just the bot list generated instead of the stuff at top too (that lists all the categories and stubs) - Is that possible? plange 20:06, 4 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Page reorganizations are fine. New pages should always be at the first level under PNA, e.g. PNA/AmerPols; it's okay to transclude them in any hierarchy/nesting you want, despite the first level name, e.g. from within PNA/Politicians. PNA/Politicians doesn't seem too big, but PNA/People is probably way too big now (1300 cleanups), although maybe not much can be done about it.

I'd guess the transclude mechanism can only do whole pages, not sections, in which case you'd be out of luck since the bot requires the cat lists be on the same page as the resulting cleanup lists. (By the way, the new section named "List" you put in is a bit of an experiment. I'd guess the bot won't choke on it, but we won't know until a run is made.) -R. S. Shaw 21:48, 4 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Military

I redid military so we could have a subset of military people -- I followed how the other ones did it, hope that's okay. How do I get the bot to come by the new page? plange 02:51, 5 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]