Wikipedia:Cleanup is broken, and Wikipedia:Cleanup process is too slow. The backlog of articles piling up on [[Category:Cleanup by month]] is threatening the quality of Wikipedia as a whole. To solve this problem, it is proposed that cleanup articles be sent to relevant WikiProjects by a process similar to WikiProject Stub sorting.
The graph at right starkly illustrates the problem. From May, 2005, to March, 2006, Wikipedia as a whole has grown only about two-fold (blue line). But in the same time period, the number of articles tagged for cleanup per month has grown sixfold (purple line). If we were clearing six articles from cleanup for every article created, this would be fine; but such is not the case. As a result, the cleanup backlog has grown at an faster rate: Cleanup has expanded twenty-five fold since May, 2005 (yellow line)!
The implication is clear: if we do not take action to improve the Cleanup process, the quality of Wikipedia will steadily degrade.
To clear the backlog, Cleanup must work faster than the addition of new articles. So far, the Wikipedia community has failed to achieve a fast Cleanup turnover, despite the attention lavished on the problem.
The Cleanup disaster is not a new issue, and previous moves have been made:
As desirable as it would be, Cleanup cannot be completely automated. Cleanup, taken as a whole, requires many decisions that are content-specific, such as wikification, bolding of the main topic, grammar and style editing, and clarification. Additionally, since most articles sent to Cleanup are poorly formatted or unformatted, most of the handles used by bots to sort articles into categories are not present. Some classifications can and should be bot-automated. I and User:Eagle 101 are working on one bot to automate some sorting (wikification needs, images for cleanup, etc.). User:Bluemoose has a Bluebot that does some similar tasks. However, the possible applications are few. (See Wikipedia talk:Cleanup#Janitor bot proposal for what we think can be automated. If we've missed something, let us know.) Other tasks can be machine-aided with tools such as Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser, if only we can get enough AWB-assisted editors engaged in the Cleanup process.
There already exists one set of pages that address topic-specific editing needs, namely Wikipedia:Pages needing attention. These pages are also showing a backlog, and are currently maintained haphazardly. Meanwhile, we have active WikiProjects whose primary goal is to improve articles in active collaboration on a single topic.
I propose that we improve the flow of articles from a vague basket marked "Cleanup" to the editors who are most interested in improving those articles:
The general idea is to harmonize the many, many projects we have devoted to Wikipedia improvement. Cleanup, Attention, WikiProjects, and other efforts are all effective in their own small way. However, because there is no clear system for deciding who can best work on what, many articles get left sitting for months in backlogs.
For deleting articles, we have a clear pathway for articles to take: Speedy deletion or Proposed deletion, which if contested goes to Articles for deletion, and can be appealed at Deletion review. Likewise, for dispute resolution, we have a clear pathway from discussion and warnings, through Requests for comment and Requests for mediation, to the ultimate Requests for arbitration. Shouldn't we have a similar, clearly defined pathway for article improvement?
Submitted for discussion by Alba 06:38, 18 March 2006 (UTC)
That's not a bug, that's a feature. Key to this proposal is the idea that people interested in a topic will be more likely to improve it than someone working only on a vaguely defined "cleanup", or on "grammar" or "copyediting", which are tedious tasks when you don't care what the text is about. WikiProjects exist for these issues, too; we should direct work on them to people who care about them.
Under this proposal, Attention is split into two levels, with Attention being less refined than Expert Attention. I wouldn't be ashamed to see an article tagged both {{wikify}} and {{attention}}, but would be appalled to see {{wikify}} and {{Expert}} together. Alba 06:38, 18 March 2006 (UTC)
Well, if you don't like my idea, I suggest you be bold and ignore all rules. Some people will anyway! This proposal, though, is meant more to catch all the articles you aren't just all fired-up to fix.
With apologies to MasterCard and the BJAODN folks: There are some article fixes Wikipedia can't buy. For everything else, there's Cleanup and Pages needing attention. Alba 04:32, 20 March 2006 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Cleanup is broken, and Wikipedia:Cleanup process is too slow. The backlog of articles piling up on [[Category:Cleanup by month]] is threatening the quality of Wikipedia as a whole. To solve this problem, it is proposed that cleanup articles be sent to relevant WikiProjects by a process similar to WikiProject Stub sorting.
The graph at right starkly illustrates the problem. From May, 2005, to March, 2006, Wikipedia as a whole has grown only about two-fold (blue line). But in the same time period, the number of articles tagged for cleanup per month has grown sixfold (purple line). If we were clearing six articles from cleanup for every article created, this would be fine; but such is not the case. As a result, the cleanup backlog has grown at an faster rate: Cleanup has expanded twenty-five fold since May, 2005 (yellow line)!
The implication is clear: if we do not take action to improve the Cleanup process, the quality of Wikipedia will steadily degrade.
To clear the backlog, Cleanup must work faster than the addition of new articles. So far, the Wikipedia community has failed to achieve a fast Cleanup turnover, despite the attention lavished on the problem.
The Cleanup disaster is not a new issue, and previous moves have been made:
As desirable as it would be, Cleanup cannot be completely automated. Cleanup, taken as a whole, requires many decisions that are content-specific, such as wikification, bolding of the main topic, grammar and style editing, and clarification. Additionally, since most articles sent to Cleanup are poorly formatted or unformatted, most of the handles used by bots to sort articles into categories are not present. Some classifications can and should be bot-automated. I and User:Eagle 101 are working on one bot to automate some sorting (wikification needs, images for cleanup, etc.). User:Bluemoose has a Bluebot that does some similar tasks. However, the possible applications are few. (See Wikipedia talk:Cleanup#Janitor bot proposal for what we think can be automated. If we've missed something, let us know.) Other tasks can be machine-aided with tools such as Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser, if only we can get enough AWB-assisted editors engaged in the Cleanup process.
There already exists one set of pages that address topic-specific editing needs, namely Wikipedia:Pages needing attention. These pages are also showing a backlog, and are currently maintained haphazardly. Meanwhile, we have active WikiProjects whose primary goal is to improve articles in active collaboration on a single topic.
I propose that we improve the flow of articles from a vague basket marked "Cleanup" to the editors who are most interested in improving those articles:
The general idea is to harmonize the many, many projects we have devoted to Wikipedia improvement. Cleanup, Attention, WikiProjects, and other efforts are all effective in their own small way. However, because there is no clear system for deciding who can best work on what, many articles get left sitting for months in backlogs.
For deleting articles, we have a clear pathway for articles to take: Speedy deletion or Proposed deletion, which if contested goes to Articles for deletion, and can be appealed at Deletion review. Likewise, for dispute resolution, we have a clear pathway from discussion and warnings, through Requests for comment and Requests for mediation, to the ultimate Requests for arbitration. Shouldn't we have a similar, clearly defined pathway for article improvement?
Submitted for discussion by Alba 06:38, 18 March 2006 (UTC)
That's not a bug, that's a feature. Key to this proposal is the idea that people interested in a topic will be more likely to improve it than someone working only on a vaguely defined "cleanup", or on "grammar" or "copyediting", which are tedious tasks when you don't care what the text is about. WikiProjects exist for these issues, too; we should direct work on them to people who care about them.
Under this proposal, Attention is split into two levels, with Attention being less refined than Expert Attention. I wouldn't be ashamed to see an article tagged both {{wikify}} and {{attention}}, but would be appalled to see {{wikify}} and {{Expert}} together. Alba 06:38, 18 March 2006 (UTC)
Well, if you don't like my idea, I suggest you be bold and ignore all rules. Some people will anyway! This proposal, though, is meant more to catch all the articles you aren't just all fired-up to fix.
With apologies to MasterCard and the BJAODN folks: There are some article fixes Wikipedia can't buy. For everything else, there's Cleanup and Pages needing attention. Alba 04:32, 20 March 2006 (UTC)