Hey guys; saw your post on VP. Here's my 2 cents on the Cleanup subject. If I'm reading the various article/talk page histories and archives correctly, W'pedia used to only have one page for listing articles that needed to be fixed: Wikipedia:Cleanup, and editors had to specifically list an article "by hand" on that page. As W'pedia grew exponentially over late 2003 thru 2004, other pages were created in order to list articles with specific problems (like Wikipedia:Requests for page expansion or Wikipedia:Deadend pages.) Then sometime in late 2004 User:Beland more-or-less unilaterally created a system where tagging an article automatically caused it to be placed in an appropriate Category. Some editors thought this was swell, others hated it. So now there are two ways to list or find an article that needs help; tagging it automatically places it on an appropriate Category page, and/or it can still be listed "by hand" on a Wikipedia namespace page.
I've found this confusing myself, and like you I've "lost" an article that needed to be fixed since I couldn't remember where I found it. And, just like you, after I'd been here about a month I had some thoughts about rearranging the whole system; then I did some investigating, and saw how much work would need to be done, so I abandoned the idea. Kudos to you for attempting to do something about it, but here's a few things to keep in mind (IMHO, of course):
So there's my Humble Opinion on the "Cleanup Mess." Hope I've given you some food for thought, and thanks for listening. Soundguy99 16:03, 10 July 2005 (UTC)
I really appreciate the time you took to give me this info and for waiting while I got back to you. I'll try to respond in the same order as above.
(Responses merged into the message by JesseW 8 July 2005 19:29 (UTC))
You have obviously given this issue some thought and we appear to be mostly in agreement as to what needs to be done. You've been here longer than I have. What's next? the tildes are not working, my log-in is kaphlooey. this is Jekoko 65.125.44.137 8 July 2005 01:51 (UTC)
I agree the state of cleanup tracking on the site is quite a mess! I guess I'm not taking a very effective Wikivacation by posting here, but I happened to be passing through, so, here goes....
I moved Wikipedia:Cleanup from a central-listing style to a tag-and-talk style mostly because we seemed to have reached agreement on the corresponding talk page that it was a good idea, but no one was actually implementing it. I guess a lot of people who didn't like the idea didn't notice the discussion until the page was actually switched over. It's fine with me if people continue to just dump things there; it's good that there's a low barrier to noting a problem, and that there is someplace where people will actually look at the note and do something about it.
Benefits of "tag and talk":
Benefits of central listings:
About the old Wikipedia:Cleanup/month pages: I was actually going to have my bot
Pearle automatically tag these with {{cleanup-date|MONTH}}, but I discovered that this is probably not the right thing to do. (And this is where the conversion project stalled.) As I mentioned above, one of the drawbacks of central listings is that articles can get fixed without being de-listed. No one is really checking these old pages to see if articles have been fixed. Here's what I started doing:
I suspect lots of the pages listed here have had the generic {{ cleanup}} tag applied, which is why that category is so full. So sorting through these will help that problem some by sorting them by month.
Sorting by type of work that needs to be done seems to encourage remedial work to get done faster. I think different people are fixing different problems. For example, wikification of articles listed on Template:Opentask seems to get done really fast, though there are a lot of articles to do. I try to rotate those requests frequently, so there's always fresh work in this high-profile list. Having articles tagged makes this really easy. I just open each article in a new tab and see if it still has a wikification tag at the top. If not, out it goes, and I cut-and-paste the name of an article from the wikification category.
For wikification and other types of work where there's a relatively small number of articles in the queue, I've been using alphabetical rotation, coordinated on the category page. This prevents any one article from sitting around too long in need of fixing.
Generic cleanup work does not go very fast, but fortunately there are compensating mechanisms. We get a lot of listings on Wikipedia:Cleanup every month, but a lot of those articles get fixed right away. A "by month" page that has been sitting around for half a year or more will have a bunch more fixed simply by random chance. Then if you follow my procedure above and punt non-generic-cleanup tasks to other queues, the monthly list has become a lot more manageable. The ones that are left are usually the harder nuts to crack. What I've been doing is feeding the oldest, hardest cleanup tasks to Template:Opentask, to get them wide exposure. If they aren't fixed within a reasonable amount of time (a week or two), I move them to Wikipedia:Cleanup Taskforce, where they get passed from desk to desk until they get fixed.
I was a bit concerned about the Taskforce's capacity to close as many articles as it opened in a given month, but it seems like if someone comes along and reassigns neglected issues to new desks, they do disappear fast enough. I wonder if it wouldn't be more efficient, in the short run, to open a slew of new issues (like say, all the undone generic cleanup tasks left in Wikipedia:Cleanup/September) there, so each participant will have at least one open issue on their desk. I also notice that some Taskforce items marked as open can probably be closed, and some of the issues listed there were actually expansion requests, which isn't quite what it's for.
Speaking of which, expansion and stub requests listed on Template:Opentask get processed very slowly. These aren't just a matter of fixing the content that's already in the wiki; you actually need to know something about the subject, or be willing to do research, which means you probably need to have an interest in the subject.
So it makes sense to me to organize these by subject area. This has already been done for stubs; I think it would make sense to do the same for expansion requests. For stubs, this is done with "tag and talk". I would prefer that method for expansion requests as well, since they sit around for so long and no one ever checks the lists to see what has been fixed. For example Wikipedia:Requests for expansion 2004 is most certainly in need of purging. Many of these articles have already been expanded, and can be de-listed. I see that many of them are also already tagged or should be tagged as stubs, and these shouldn't also be listed as having expansion requests. (Still others are actually now merge requests, and so on...)
Regarding Wikipedia:Pages needing attention, I agree it needs some help. Clearly, we need somewhere where articles needing cleanup by content experts are collected, arranged by subject, and this is the seed of that. I think it would be better used if this was clarified. A few ways to do this:
Personally, I would prefer a "tag and talk" tree, so experts would browse categories instead of central pages, for the reasons already mentioned. (But especially for ease of maintenance, since these requests live a very long time, and checking for updates is not really done much.) But keeping a central listing would also be fine by me, as long as it's purged and clarified; we can make some attempt to keep it reasonably updated.
I'll share one success I had at reducing the meta-cleanup mess - I managed to eliminate the rather neglected Wikipedia:Help wanted by removing everything that was already fixed or listed somewhere else. That left very little, if anything, to fix myself, and then the page was empty, so I redirected it to Wikipedia:Cleanup. I'm optimistic some of the current clutter can be reduced...it's not that hard to purge a week or two of backlogged requests off a page in one sitting. Which brings me to me next post...
-- Beland 05:27, 13 July 2005 (UTC)
Given the amount of purging that needs to happen, it seems to me that it's either going to take several months or more than one person is going to need to work on it. I have several recommendations for enlisting help:
You might try assigning purges of specific pages, or parts of pages, to people on the Wikipedia:Cleanup Taskforce who have expressed interest in meta-tasks.
If you have articles which are particularly worthy of improvement, Wikipedia:Collaborations of the week and Wikipedia:This week's improvement drive are the places to go. I wonder whether nominating "Purge cleanup lists from 2004" or somesuch would work on any of those pages. Hmm, probably not. But that would be a great way to publicize a meta-project - cleaning out things that have been neglected for an embarrassingly long amount of time. You could also just directly list yourself on Wikipedia:Community portal, as a few collaborations have done.
Good luck, and I hope to help tidy up more when I come back from wikivacation. -- Beland 05:27, 13 July 2005 (UTC)
Thanks for listening. Soundguy99 16:20, 20 July 2005 (UTC)
Spending time working through all these thoughtful views. Preparing lengthy response. Don't want to post anything half-baked. Jekoko 16:32, 17 July 2005 (UTC)
This response does not include any response to Soundguy99's latest post (most of which I agree with BTW). First let me give you the absolute bottom line of what I think. I have come to the surprising conclusion that things are nowhere near as bad as I thought. We have some good systems; they just need to work together instead of in parallel.
Here is how I see the Wikipedia structure if you organize the basic areas of what is done here. I call it the V-McFetch structure. (It's the best I could come up with using only one vowel.) I have not added or deleted anything we currently have, just shuffled a very few subareas around.
VERIFICATION
MAINTENANCE
COMMUNICATIONS
FUN
EXPANSION
TRANSLATION
CLEANUP
HIERARCHY
I also list my original scheme of cleanup pages for reference:
List of Cleanup Links in Three Schemes
Scheme I
The following seem to be centered on the date the work was requested:
Scheme II
The following seem to be centered on what work needs to be done:
Scheme III
This page and its subpage are the only two that seem to have no time-frame or indication of the work to be done. They seem to be mostly alphabetical with a few subject categories.
Within the Cleanup area, as defined above, we have three schemes (I-date, II-type of fix, III-alpha/subject) to access/add to lists of articles needing cleanup, using two different methods, “central listings” and “tag & talk.” I think that all three schemes and both methods have merit and should be retained. However, they need to be revised in order to work together more effectively and efficiently. In the best of all possible worlds, each article needing fixing would be listed in all three schemes — by date, by fix needed and by article title/subject — and most of the process would be automatic.
Merits of Date Listing/Scheme I [Tagged articles]
Merits of Work Needed Listing/Scheme II [Tagged articles]
Merits of Alpha-subject Listing/Scheme III [Central listing]
We currently have a big mess, but the more I look at it, the less vast it seems. What are the reasons for the current mess?
Noting that an article needs help
Let’s say someone decides that an article needs something done to it. There are at least two things that can happen in an ideal and automated situation:
Basic information page
We need to revamp the page that purports to explain how Wikipedia works, so that newbies can find their way around with less confusion. This page needs to contain a summary of the V-McFetch system, along with a large number of links to the major areas.
Promote and publicize the V-McFetch system
Explain that the V-McFetch system is only a new way to look at what we’ve already got. Explain that we are not eliminating the ways people use Wikipedia now, only making the ways work together instead of in parallel. In particular, we can automate listings on the tag lists, ask folks to continue any comments on the central listing at the article’s discussion page, have a V-McFetch team monitor the central listing adding tags where needed.
Keeping the lists up-to-date
If tag removal triggers automatic removal from Scheme I and II listings, couldn’t removal from those listing pages trigger removal from the Scheme III central listing page? Is this feasible in the Wiki software? At worst, we could have the team monitor the tag lists and manually make the removals on the central listing page.
Some suggested text
Building a free encyclopedia is not like running a company, commanding an army or even raising children. Wikipedia is most definitely NOT a hierarchy of commands from up top.
A good way to think of Wikipedia might be along the lines of a community potluck dinner, except that you get to change the recipes if they aren’t quite right. You can also help organize what goes on what table— desserts here, salads there. You can help clean up spills, prevent the kids from running wild, welcome the newcomers to the community, talk around the punch bowl, keep your neighbors Mary and Harry from arguing about politics, and ditch Agatha’s really bad potato salad (yecch!).
In this analogy, think of Wikipedia as a set of tables with goodies on them, a set of people milling about the tables and a set of tasks that need to be done if the dinner is to be a success. If there is anyone in charge, you can’t pick him or her out of the crowd. (Although if you ask, someone will kindly point you in Bill’s direction.)
Getting back to Wiki-reality, here are the major areas of Wikipedia structure, V-McFetch.
Verification - making sure that all is right and legal and that this is an encyclopedia, not a diatribe or polemic
Maintenance - making sure things are not forgotten or ruined, keeping the wheels turning
Communication - making sure we have a place to exchange ideas
Fun - making sure we don’t take this or ourselves too seriously
Expansion - making sure that little articles grow and new articles are written
Translation - making sure the English Wikipedia is in English
Cleanup - making sure that articles are of good quality
Hierarchy - making sure we can find what we are looking for
why doesn't my sign-in work on this computer - frustrating!! Jekoko 65.125.44.123 18:45, 24 July 2005 (UTC)
Wow. That is long and interesting! I've read it (yes, V-MacFetch is an embaressing name, but we can work on it. ;-) ), and lots does make sense. I think you've missed a few bits: the central listing cleanup page (would a fan of that speak up and tell us how and what they use it?), the subject orientated WikiProjects, and some other ones I can't remember right now, but you've got a lot of them, and I like the arrangement. I'll have more responses later. Great job! JesseW 04:36, 25 July 2005 (UTC)
Definitely wow. Very nice analysis of the situation, although I had to read it a couple of times - this kind of detailed breakdown complete with acronym and dividing by schema doesn't really come naturally to me; I'm more of a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants kind of guy. A few initial very general thoughts:
Not that they are related to cleanup, just so we are slighly more aware of them. JesseW
Well, I managed to get rid of Wikipedia:Pages needing attention/Maintenance by re-tagging or resolving all the problems listed there. A small victory against todo list clutter. -- Beland 10:00, 7 August 2005 (UTC)
Too many cleanup/month pages is distracting. I, personally, would like to see a maximum of six past-month pages. One solution is to just empty a page by putting all the non-fixed articles into the "leftovers" page. And/or we could just accept the fact that an article is not getting worked on and de-list it. While this may be unsatisfying, it is, in the long run, temporary, since sooner or later another editor will find it and re-list it or fix it.
I don't think many people know about the {{cleanup-date|MONTH}} tag, which is why it's rarely used. We should probably popularize it via the Village Pump and some instructions at the head of the Cleanup page.
Rather than significantly alter the system, we should use a mechanism that's already in place and create a Maintenance Taskforce to watch over and maintain the cleanup pages, de-listing, de-tagging, and moving articles. The core of the group could be me (although my Wikitime during the summer can be sporadic), JesseW, Jekoko & Beland
If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Nobody has provided evidence for a practical problem resulting from the way PNA works now.
Frankly, a lot of articles listed there don't need expert attention - just attention from an editor who knows something more about the subject, or has more interest in the subject, or simply more time than the editor who found the problem article.
OK, I'm trying to distill some concrete recommendations from Jekoko's long post.
-- Beland 04:02, 8 August 2005 (UTC)
I have bad things happening here and must go on wiki-vacation until further notice. Sorry.
Jekoko 15:59, 11 August 2005 (UTC)
Hi all. I had to deal with a death in the family (Iraq) and it will take me a while to see all that you guys have been busy with while I was gone. If the discussion on cleanup has moved elsewhere, please let me know. Thanks, Jekoko 16:08, 12 October 2005 (UTC)
Hey guys; saw your post on VP. Here's my 2 cents on the Cleanup subject. If I'm reading the various article/talk page histories and archives correctly, W'pedia used to only have one page for listing articles that needed to be fixed: Wikipedia:Cleanup, and editors had to specifically list an article "by hand" on that page. As W'pedia grew exponentially over late 2003 thru 2004, other pages were created in order to list articles with specific problems (like Wikipedia:Requests for page expansion or Wikipedia:Deadend pages.) Then sometime in late 2004 User:Beland more-or-less unilaterally created a system where tagging an article automatically caused it to be placed in an appropriate Category. Some editors thought this was swell, others hated it. So now there are two ways to list or find an article that needs help; tagging it automatically places it on an appropriate Category page, and/or it can still be listed "by hand" on a Wikipedia namespace page.
I've found this confusing myself, and like you I've "lost" an article that needed to be fixed since I couldn't remember where I found it. And, just like you, after I'd been here about a month I had some thoughts about rearranging the whole system; then I did some investigating, and saw how much work would need to be done, so I abandoned the idea. Kudos to you for attempting to do something about it, but here's a few things to keep in mind (IMHO, of course):
So there's my Humble Opinion on the "Cleanup Mess." Hope I've given you some food for thought, and thanks for listening. Soundguy99 16:03, 10 July 2005 (UTC)
I really appreciate the time you took to give me this info and for waiting while I got back to you. I'll try to respond in the same order as above.
(Responses merged into the message by JesseW 8 July 2005 19:29 (UTC))
You have obviously given this issue some thought and we appear to be mostly in agreement as to what needs to be done. You've been here longer than I have. What's next? the tildes are not working, my log-in is kaphlooey. this is Jekoko 65.125.44.137 8 July 2005 01:51 (UTC)
I agree the state of cleanup tracking on the site is quite a mess! I guess I'm not taking a very effective Wikivacation by posting here, but I happened to be passing through, so, here goes....
I moved Wikipedia:Cleanup from a central-listing style to a tag-and-talk style mostly because we seemed to have reached agreement on the corresponding talk page that it was a good idea, but no one was actually implementing it. I guess a lot of people who didn't like the idea didn't notice the discussion until the page was actually switched over. It's fine with me if people continue to just dump things there; it's good that there's a low barrier to noting a problem, and that there is someplace where people will actually look at the note and do something about it.
Benefits of "tag and talk":
Benefits of central listings:
About the old Wikipedia:Cleanup/month pages: I was actually going to have my bot
Pearle automatically tag these with {{cleanup-date|MONTH}}, but I discovered that this is probably not the right thing to do. (And this is where the conversion project stalled.) As I mentioned above, one of the drawbacks of central listings is that articles can get fixed without being de-listed. No one is really checking these old pages to see if articles have been fixed. Here's what I started doing:
I suspect lots of the pages listed here have had the generic {{ cleanup}} tag applied, which is why that category is so full. So sorting through these will help that problem some by sorting them by month.
Sorting by type of work that needs to be done seems to encourage remedial work to get done faster. I think different people are fixing different problems. For example, wikification of articles listed on Template:Opentask seems to get done really fast, though there are a lot of articles to do. I try to rotate those requests frequently, so there's always fresh work in this high-profile list. Having articles tagged makes this really easy. I just open each article in a new tab and see if it still has a wikification tag at the top. If not, out it goes, and I cut-and-paste the name of an article from the wikification category.
For wikification and other types of work where there's a relatively small number of articles in the queue, I've been using alphabetical rotation, coordinated on the category page. This prevents any one article from sitting around too long in need of fixing.
Generic cleanup work does not go very fast, but fortunately there are compensating mechanisms. We get a lot of listings on Wikipedia:Cleanup every month, but a lot of those articles get fixed right away. A "by month" page that has been sitting around for half a year or more will have a bunch more fixed simply by random chance. Then if you follow my procedure above and punt non-generic-cleanup tasks to other queues, the monthly list has become a lot more manageable. The ones that are left are usually the harder nuts to crack. What I've been doing is feeding the oldest, hardest cleanup tasks to Template:Opentask, to get them wide exposure. If they aren't fixed within a reasonable amount of time (a week or two), I move them to Wikipedia:Cleanup Taskforce, where they get passed from desk to desk until they get fixed.
I was a bit concerned about the Taskforce's capacity to close as many articles as it opened in a given month, but it seems like if someone comes along and reassigns neglected issues to new desks, they do disappear fast enough. I wonder if it wouldn't be more efficient, in the short run, to open a slew of new issues (like say, all the undone generic cleanup tasks left in Wikipedia:Cleanup/September) there, so each participant will have at least one open issue on their desk. I also notice that some Taskforce items marked as open can probably be closed, and some of the issues listed there were actually expansion requests, which isn't quite what it's for.
Speaking of which, expansion and stub requests listed on Template:Opentask get processed very slowly. These aren't just a matter of fixing the content that's already in the wiki; you actually need to know something about the subject, or be willing to do research, which means you probably need to have an interest in the subject.
So it makes sense to me to organize these by subject area. This has already been done for stubs; I think it would make sense to do the same for expansion requests. For stubs, this is done with "tag and talk". I would prefer that method for expansion requests as well, since they sit around for so long and no one ever checks the lists to see what has been fixed. For example Wikipedia:Requests for expansion 2004 is most certainly in need of purging. Many of these articles have already been expanded, and can be de-listed. I see that many of them are also already tagged or should be tagged as stubs, and these shouldn't also be listed as having expansion requests. (Still others are actually now merge requests, and so on...)
Regarding Wikipedia:Pages needing attention, I agree it needs some help. Clearly, we need somewhere where articles needing cleanup by content experts are collected, arranged by subject, and this is the seed of that. I think it would be better used if this was clarified. A few ways to do this:
Personally, I would prefer a "tag and talk" tree, so experts would browse categories instead of central pages, for the reasons already mentioned. (But especially for ease of maintenance, since these requests live a very long time, and checking for updates is not really done much.) But keeping a central listing would also be fine by me, as long as it's purged and clarified; we can make some attempt to keep it reasonably updated.
I'll share one success I had at reducing the meta-cleanup mess - I managed to eliminate the rather neglected Wikipedia:Help wanted by removing everything that was already fixed or listed somewhere else. That left very little, if anything, to fix myself, and then the page was empty, so I redirected it to Wikipedia:Cleanup. I'm optimistic some of the current clutter can be reduced...it's not that hard to purge a week or two of backlogged requests off a page in one sitting. Which brings me to me next post...
-- Beland 05:27, 13 July 2005 (UTC)
Given the amount of purging that needs to happen, it seems to me that it's either going to take several months or more than one person is going to need to work on it. I have several recommendations for enlisting help:
You might try assigning purges of specific pages, or parts of pages, to people on the Wikipedia:Cleanup Taskforce who have expressed interest in meta-tasks.
If you have articles which are particularly worthy of improvement, Wikipedia:Collaborations of the week and Wikipedia:This week's improvement drive are the places to go. I wonder whether nominating "Purge cleanup lists from 2004" or somesuch would work on any of those pages. Hmm, probably not. But that would be a great way to publicize a meta-project - cleaning out things that have been neglected for an embarrassingly long amount of time. You could also just directly list yourself on Wikipedia:Community portal, as a few collaborations have done.
Good luck, and I hope to help tidy up more when I come back from wikivacation. -- Beland 05:27, 13 July 2005 (UTC)
Thanks for listening. Soundguy99 16:20, 20 July 2005 (UTC)
Spending time working through all these thoughtful views. Preparing lengthy response. Don't want to post anything half-baked. Jekoko 16:32, 17 July 2005 (UTC)
This response does not include any response to Soundguy99's latest post (most of which I agree with BTW). First let me give you the absolute bottom line of what I think. I have come to the surprising conclusion that things are nowhere near as bad as I thought. We have some good systems; they just need to work together instead of in parallel.
Here is how I see the Wikipedia structure if you organize the basic areas of what is done here. I call it the V-McFetch structure. (It's the best I could come up with using only one vowel.) I have not added or deleted anything we currently have, just shuffled a very few subareas around.
VERIFICATION
MAINTENANCE
COMMUNICATIONS
FUN
EXPANSION
TRANSLATION
CLEANUP
HIERARCHY
I also list my original scheme of cleanup pages for reference:
List of Cleanup Links in Three Schemes
Scheme I
The following seem to be centered on the date the work was requested:
Scheme II
The following seem to be centered on what work needs to be done:
Scheme III
This page and its subpage are the only two that seem to have no time-frame or indication of the work to be done. They seem to be mostly alphabetical with a few subject categories.
Within the Cleanup area, as defined above, we have three schemes (I-date, II-type of fix, III-alpha/subject) to access/add to lists of articles needing cleanup, using two different methods, “central listings” and “tag & talk.” I think that all three schemes and both methods have merit and should be retained. However, they need to be revised in order to work together more effectively and efficiently. In the best of all possible worlds, each article needing fixing would be listed in all three schemes — by date, by fix needed and by article title/subject — and most of the process would be automatic.
Merits of Date Listing/Scheme I [Tagged articles]
Merits of Work Needed Listing/Scheme II [Tagged articles]
Merits of Alpha-subject Listing/Scheme III [Central listing]
We currently have a big mess, but the more I look at it, the less vast it seems. What are the reasons for the current mess?
Noting that an article needs help
Let’s say someone decides that an article needs something done to it. There are at least two things that can happen in an ideal and automated situation:
Basic information page
We need to revamp the page that purports to explain how Wikipedia works, so that newbies can find their way around with less confusion. This page needs to contain a summary of the V-McFetch system, along with a large number of links to the major areas.
Promote and publicize the V-McFetch system
Explain that the V-McFetch system is only a new way to look at what we’ve already got. Explain that we are not eliminating the ways people use Wikipedia now, only making the ways work together instead of in parallel. In particular, we can automate listings on the tag lists, ask folks to continue any comments on the central listing at the article’s discussion page, have a V-McFetch team monitor the central listing adding tags where needed.
Keeping the lists up-to-date
If tag removal triggers automatic removal from Scheme I and II listings, couldn’t removal from those listing pages trigger removal from the Scheme III central listing page? Is this feasible in the Wiki software? At worst, we could have the team monitor the tag lists and manually make the removals on the central listing page.
Some suggested text
Building a free encyclopedia is not like running a company, commanding an army or even raising children. Wikipedia is most definitely NOT a hierarchy of commands from up top.
A good way to think of Wikipedia might be along the lines of a community potluck dinner, except that you get to change the recipes if they aren’t quite right. You can also help organize what goes on what table— desserts here, salads there. You can help clean up spills, prevent the kids from running wild, welcome the newcomers to the community, talk around the punch bowl, keep your neighbors Mary and Harry from arguing about politics, and ditch Agatha’s really bad potato salad (yecch!).
In this analogy, think of Wikipedia as a set of tables with goodies on them, a set of people milling about the tables and a set of tasks that need to be done if the dinner is to be a success. If there is anyone in charge, you can’t pick him or her out of the crowd. (Although if you ask, someone will kindly point you in Bill’s direction.)
Getting back to Wiki-reality, here are the major areas of Wikipedia structure, V-McFetch.
Verification - making sure that all is right and legal and that this is an encyclopedia, not a diatribe or polemic
Maintenance - making sure things are not forgotten or ruined, keeping the wheels turning
Communication - making sure we have a place to exchange ideas
Fun - making sure we don’t take this or ourselves too seriously
Expansion - making sure that little articles grow and new articles are written
Translation - making sure the English Wikipedia is in English
Cleanup - making sure that articles are of good quality
Hierarchy - making sure we can find what we are looking for
why doesn't my sign-in work on this computer - frustrating!! Jekoko 65.125.44.123 18:45, 24 July 2005 (UTC)
Wow. That is long and interesting! I've read it (yes, V-MacFetch is an embaressing name, but we can work on it. ;-) ), and lots does make sense. I think you've missed a few bits: the central listing cleanup page (would a fan of that speak up and tell us how and what they use it?), the subject orientated WikiProjects, and some other ones I can't remember right now, but you've got a lot of them, and I like the arrangement. I'll have more responses later. Great job! JesseW 04:36, 25 July 2005 (UTC)
Definitely wow. Very nice analysis of the situation, although I had to read it a couple of times - this kind of detailed breakdown complete with acronym and dividing by schema doesn't really come naturally to me; I'm more of a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants kind of guy. A few initial very general thoughts:
Not that they are related to cleanup, just so we are slighly more aware of them. JesseW
Well, I managed to get rid of Wikipedia:Pages needing attention/Maintenance by re-tagging or resolving all the problems listed there. A small victory against todo list clutter. -- Beland 10:00, 7 August 2005 (UTC)
Too many cleanup/month pages is distracting. I, personally, would like to see a maximum of six past-month pages. One solution is to just empty a page by putting all the non-fixed articles into the "leftovers" page. And/or we could just accept the fact that an article is not getting worked on and de-list it. While this may be unsatisfying, it is, in the long run, temporary, since sooner or later another editor will find it and re-list it or fix it.
I don't think many people know about the {{cleanup-date|MONTH}} tag, which is why it's rarely used. We should probably popularize it via the Village Pump and some instructions at the head of the Cleanup page.
Rather than significantly alter the system, we should use a mechanism that's already in place and create a Maintenance Taskforce to watch over and maintain the cleanup pages, de-listing, de-tagging, and moving articles. The core of the group could be me (although my Wikitime during the summer can be sporadic), JesseW, Jekoko & Beland
If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Nobody has provided evidence for a practical problem resulting from the way PNA works now.
Frankly, a lot of articles listed there don't need expert attention - just attention from an editor who knows something more about the subject, or has more interest in the subject, or simply more time than the editor who found the problem article.
OK, I'm trying to distill some concrete recommendations from Jekoko's long post.
-- Beland 04:02, 8 August 2005 (UTC)
I have bad things happening here and must go on wiki-vacation until further notice. Sorry.
Jekoko 15:59, 11 August 2005 (UTC)
Hi all. I had to deal with a death in the family (Iraq) and it will take me a while to see all that you guys have been busy with while I was gone. If the discussion on cleanup has moved elsewhere, please let me know. Thanks, Jekoko 16:08, 12 October 2005 (UTC)