Wikipedia talk:Cleanup process

Double negative

Hope I didn't get my steamship ass ahead of my rowboat brain by changing 'not discouraged' to suggested....maybe should be 'somewhat suggested'????? My brain has trouble with double negatives.....Zardiw 01:12, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Cleanup process/Old instructions

Our cleanup process has changed and expanded dramatically (apparently mostly since late 2004) and large chunks of these instructions are no longer applicable and confusing to newer editors. Therfore, I am being bold and moving great chunks of the process instructions to the above page, where it can be kept for historical interest. Soundguy99 07:15, 6 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Steps

This page needs to actually tell you the steps for listing a page for cleanup! Do you add a tag and then manually add an entry on the cleanup page? Bobbis 30 June 2005 15:15 (UTC)

Dramatic Change + Unknowing Vandalism

Hello. I am presently migrating a *great* many aticles (already have migrated thousands) from the old system to the new. The new system has changed quite drammatically from the old catch-all {{cleanup}} tag to the new {{CleanupDate|Full-text-month YEAR}} (e.g. {{CleanupDate|August 2005}}). The people who started this started migrating July 2005 articles that needed to be cleaned up, but unfortunately, people are creatures of habit and many went so far as to claim the new process was "vandalism", consistently reverting all pages that had notices/instructiosn of the new tagging method, except for my modification of Beland's instructiosn on the main article of this page (which had been reverted numerous times over the last month).

I am migrating a month about every 2 days currently. The old August - December 2004 cleanup pages had at one point well over 3,000 listed articles that used the old system. I have whittled this down to about 800–1200; once November is completed it will take me just a few more hours to migrate the rest.

The old cleanup process was definately falling apart at the seams. It seemed to *require* comment pages because it covered every thing from wikification, NPOV, copyvio, copyediting, and formatting of the page. Under the new system these all have their own unique categories and methods of report. In the current system as I comprehend it, pages that do not conform to the typical professional wikipedia layout require cleanup. E.g., if it doesn't have wiki-formatted headings, has no headings and is quite large, has no pictures where appropriate, etc, it is probably a designation for cleanup. Cleanup has more to do with LAYOUT of the page than ANYTHING. Any other major flaws simply need to be labeled with their own categories.

In short, now comment pages are generally superfluous and should only be required in weird situations where you think a page needs "cleanup" but don't know how to state it...But I would be inclined to think most of those would be NPOV or factual disputes. You should be able to open up a page and go, O! No layout! It definately needs cleanup!

For now, *I* am not going to worry about convincing people to use the new system. I think it is best for me to migrate as many (e.g. all, heh) of the old articles as possible and then people will have to be fighting against hours and hours of work in order to have a competitive argument that the Old System should be continued. This is always the best way to accomplish change in memes in any setting.

Hope it helps, sorry for the long post,
HopeSeekr of xMule (Talk) 13:28, 7 August 2005 (UTC)

So when I converted Wikipedia:Cleanup to using tags only, people complained about the old system going away, so the community reinstated the central listing page. As a sort of de facto compromise, I've left the front page the way people want it, but have been converting the archives (starting with the oldest) to the new system. That way, at least we only have to check the listings once, instead of having to go through all 12 months every time.

I notice you've been helping with that; thanks for your efforts. I also notice that some of the pages which have already been fixed are being tagged for cleanup instead of just de-listed. I don't know if that's upset anyone, but I've been reverting any that I've noticed.

As for what the cleanup tag is for, Wikipedia:Cleanup resources says it all - problems not covered by other tags. If an article just has layout problems, then it should be tagged {{wikify}}. No matter what the tag, though, there are always situations where comments will be necessary. I saw a page yesterday where someone said "looks wikified" and removed the tag and I had to point out, "no, the footnotes are still a mess" and put it back. In any case, whenever I find substantive comments on the central listing page, I always move them to the article's talk page, so if someone comes along and sees the tag, they can read the comment to find out why it's there. (This is another benefit of tag-and-talk over central listings; many times people won't know there are comments on a central page floating somewhere else in wikispace.)

I'm sure some people just stick a generic {{cleanup}} tag on an article when they post it, even if there's a more specific problem. That's fine; it's not unlikely to get fixed right away, anyway. But when we process the archive, we should stick a more specific tag on it, so it gets put in a more specific queue. (Articles with narrow problems are often processed faster, and so those queues tend to move faster.)

Anyway, I wouldn't recommend trying to ram the new system down people's throats. We want them to feel happy about participating, and make it easy for them to list pages and to fix them. Given how many articles are in Category:Wikipedia cleanup that probably aren't in a central listing, I wouldn't worry so much about the people who still use the old system. Perhaps it will die a slow, natural death as people's habits change, or as new editors come on board. -- Beland 21:12, 7 August 2005 (UTC)

However, the old (current?) system of forcing people to manually list + correct and then hunt for and manually delist (what day did I stick it in anyway???) cleanup entries is so complicated it is a wonder far more articles weren't properly categorized. What's worse, you come to an article with a {{cleanup}} tag and you go "well gee whiz, what needs to be cleaned? has it been cleaned?" You have to manually hunt the months and months of cleanup tag listings for the possibility of a hint as to what is wrong and thus no one touches old unchanged articles.

What if you did what copyvio and VfD already do? Keep the comments about the needed changes (in the cases when it isn't patently obvious what needs changes (for instance your "footnotes" example)) on the page, right next to the {{cleanup-date|Nov 2004}}. More explanation can be had on the November 2004 Cleanup talk page. Then we do not clutter up the article itself and there probably wouldn't be an extremely large number of these special cases for any given month or that would be a prime candidate for a new tag to come into existence.

The idea is to do what is easiest for all and maintainable. This would seem to be the easiest of the currently-proposed worlds I've seen and mirrors what is done for other mechanisms. I had only assumed that others would vote out of ignorance without exploring the situation to its fullest potential. That is based upon not seeing any of these debates myself; and at any rate the archives haven't even been fully migrated; seems to soon for me to rush to judgement that the system wouldn't work until it is operational and fails.

HopeSeekr of xMule (Talk) 00:55, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

Well, I certainly agree people should be using cleanup-date instead of cleanup; I wrote a note about that in the Wikipedia:Cleanup instructions. I should be clear I also support the continued conversion of the archives from central listing to tag-only, so that we don't have to keep checking them. The problem with putting a link from the template back to the by-month central listing page, is that for the older months, those pages don't exist anymore. I clarified the instructions to remind people that people who see the article's talk page may not see the central listing, so they should really just add anything substantial to the talk page. Certainly putting things on the article's talk page doesn't clutter up the article itself, and it's the first place people look when they see a tag and it's not obvious why it's there. -- Beland 01:46, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

The problem with leaving comments on the central talk page is that already-

De-listing cleaned-up articles

Having read this and other articles, I'm still confused on one point: do I, or do I not, need to remove an article from a given listing page somewhere after having cleaned it up by manually editing that listing page? Some text seems to imply that simply removing the cleanup tag will automatically remove the article from listing pages. The instructions for listing articles seem to be clear, but those for finishing the cleanup are not (to me). Any help? Eaglizard 02:55, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

I think a lot of people are afraid to remove the cleanup tag even after making changes. When it was tagged, specific things to do should have been mentioned either in the talk page or the history. If those have been addressed, I am going to remove the tags and leave a note on the talk page of the tagger. --ssd 02:27, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

It appears that removing the tag from the article causes the article to drop off the cleanup listing page. So that's all you need to do. Tstockma 10:33, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

Care with Cleanup tagging

Given that it goes without saying that all items are subject to clean-up, this tag should be reserved for items of poorer quality that are not having any activity. The little niggle I have is that I have just done a first pass changing a stub into an article Dorridge. It is of limited merit, but provides the core of something that can be honed. Given that the content has been in place a mere 24 hours or less, is it appropriate to tag it before the natural wikifying process has had a chance to happen?

My point is that, though it is clear that there are problems with the page, my tortuous grammar, a certain repetitiousness, and so on, to immediately tag something as of poor quality does not encourage the process of bold creation. (I think what rubbed me up the wrong way if I am honest is that our neighbouring town of Knowle has an article with POV, gratuitous plugging of an insurance company, a lack of capitalisation, and my first effort is lumped in with that). I've been around the net for enough years to have a thick skin, but I know if something has rankled with me, then it will annoy others too. Some of this could be cured with a different template which acknowledged the prior contributions.

I'd like to suggest a less publicly critical process - tag the article for cleanup in the talk page, and if there is no activity after a period of time, then tag for clean up. That way, articles that are live and evolving do not need to get in the proper cleanup queue and this can be reserved for articles that do need active management. I think this might link in with the clean up category.

So to summarise:

• be aware that the Cleanup tag placed immediately after a large contribution will appear to be a critisism of the edit,
• automatically tagging new content before a period of time has determined whether a natural process of correction will occur will clog the Cleanup queue,
• We should have a positive template which goes on the discussion page,
• Cleanup queue should be reserved for pages where the contributors do not appear to be active. Trust the natural process.

Spenny 08:10, 12 October 2005 (UTC) (not as pissed off as that might sound!).

Response

See Wikipedia talk:Cleanup#Janitor bot proposal.

Deletionism vs cleanup facing (Judaism) articles

Hi, I have just placed the following on the Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Judaism. Thank you. IZAK 09:52, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

Shalom to everyone: There is presently a very serious phenomenon on Wikipedia that effects all articles. Let's call it "The New Deletionism". There are editors on Wikipedia who want to cut back the number of "low quality" articles EVEN IF THEY ARE ABOUT NOTABLE TOPICS AND SUBJECTS by skipping the normal procedures of placing {{cleanup}} or {{cite}} tags on the articles' pages and instead wish to skip that process altogether and nominate the articles for a vote for deletion (VfD). This can be done by any editor, even one not familiar with the subject. The implication/s for all articles related to Jews, Judaism, and Israel are very serious because many of these articles are of a specilaized nature that may or may not be poorly written yet have important connections to the general subjects of Jews, Judaism, and Israel, as any expert in that subject would know.

Two recent examples will illustrate this problem:

1) See Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Zichron Kedoshim, Congregation where a notable Orthodox synagogue was deleted from Wikipedia. The nominator gave as his reason: "Scarce material available on Google, nor any evidence in those results of notability nor any notable size." Very few people voted and only one person objected correctly that: "I've visited this synagogue, know members, and know that it is a well established institution" which was ignored and the article was deleted. (I was unaware of the vote).

2) See Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Berel Wein where the nominator sought to delete the article about Rabbi Berel Wein because: "It looks like a vanity project to me. While he does come up with many Google hits, they are all commercial in nature. The article is poorly written and reads like a commercial to me." In the course of a strong debate the nominator defended his METHOD: "... what better way to do that than put it on an AfD where people who might know more about the subject might actually see it and comment rather than slapping a {{NPOV}} and {{cleanup}} template on and waiting for someone to perhaps come across it." But what if no-one noticed it in time and it would have gone the same way as "Congregation Zichron Kedoshim"? Fortunately, people noticed it, no-one agreed with the nominator and the article was kept.

As we all know Googling for/about a subject can determine its fate as an article, but this too is not always a clear-cut solution. Thus for example, in the first case, the nominator saw almost nothing about "Congregation Zichron Kedoshim" on Google (and assumed it was unimportant) whereas in the second case the nominator admitted that Berel Wein "does come up with many Google hits" but dismissed them as "all commercial in nature". So in one case too few Google hits was the rationale for wanting to delete it and in the other it was too many hits (which were dismissed as "too commercial" and interpreted as insignificant), all depending on the nominators' POV of course.

This problem is compounded because when nominators don't know Hebrew or know nothing about Judaism and its rituals then they are at a loss, they don't know variant transliterated spellings, and compounding the problem even more Google may not have any good material or sources on many subjects important to Jewish, Judaic, and Israeli subjects. Often Judaica stores may be cluttering up the search with their tactics to sell products or non-Jewish sites decide to link up to Biblical topics that appear "Jewish" but are actually missionary sites luring people into misinformation about the Torah and the Tanakh, so while Googling may yield lots of hits they may mostly be Christian-oriented and even be hostile to the Judaic perspective.

Therefore, all editors and contributors are requested to be aware of any such attempts to delete articles that have a genuine connection to any aspect of Jews, Judaism and Israel, and to notify other editors.

Please, most importantly, place alerts here in particular so that other editors can be notified.

Thank you for all your help and awareness. IZAK 08:43, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

Invitation to Wikipedia Integration

I've identified this project as a candidate for material to be analyzed by Wikipedia Integration methodology. Please feel welcome to offer suggestions and feedback. WP:ʃ Cwolfsheep 16:21, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

Project redundancy

Please see User:Brad101/redundancy for things that have been on my mind lately. Use the talk page there for comments about changes etc. Thanks --Brad101 14:59, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Enlist help

Just a suggestion, I'm about to trial it on the October 2005 articles and will await the results. If an article requiring cleanup requires expert attention, and you're not an expert, try not to simply leave it. Instead, if the article belongs to a wikiproject (for instance, Westerdale belongs to Wikipedia:WikiProject Yorkshire), place the article on that wikiproject's to do list example.

If the article requires cleanup, doesn't belong to a wikiproject and you can't perform it yourself, consider whether a wikigroup is likely to exist that may have expertise in the area, and if successful follow the same process.

This procedure has several benefits, including:

• The editors involved in these wikiprojects will be relative experts.
• We will be getting more people involved in the cleanup process, and potentially increasing the number of people involved here.
• We can process more articles more quickly, on the assumption that many of the articles will be finished in the near future.
• Editors will then be able to focus on articles they feel they personally can contribute significantly to.

If this is merely a repetition of advice which already exists then firstly I apologise, and secondly I'd be interested to see the existing guideline. BeL1EveR 21:50, 2 July 2007 (UTC)