This page contains material moved from Wikipedia:Cleanup process/Cleanup sorting proposal when it became Wikipedia:Cleanup sorting. It contains some useful background and shows some of the proposed ideas before the current approach evolved.
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)
Per the discussions on the talk page, the {{ cleanup}} and {{ cleanup-date}} tags are proposed to be changed to something that describes the edits to be made. Please comment on the proposals below.
The format below is proposed as the new means of posting to Pages needing attention. It is deliberately modeled on the submission process for AfD, a thoroughly field-tested system. The result should be a set of maintained lists, as in the current Pages needing attention pages, as well as a tag/category system that maintains a dynamic listing of topic-specific listings. Since either humans or bots can affix the tags, this system can be used in either an automated or a hand-operated mode.
Vital to the system are the proposed tags {{attention1}}] and {{attention2}}, cognate to {{ afd2}} and {{ afd1}}, respectively.
Once this is in place, the categories and lists so generated can be immediately included in all relevant portals, wikiprojects, user watchlists, etc., etc.
To list an article for Pages needing attention, follow this two-step process, replacing PageName with the name of the page to be attended to.
I. | Add the article to the Pages needing attention category.
Click the link below corresponding to the correct Pages needing attention/Category page.
Replace PageName with the name of the page to be fixed, and include a reason why you think the page needs attention, where indicated. Check the "Watch this page" box if you would like to follow the editing process in your watchlist. Please describe fully what you think is wrong with the article; the more you explain, the more likely the problems are to be fixed, and the faster the fixes will happen. Save the page. |
II. | Put the attention tag on the article.
Edit the article, and put the following tag at the top of the page
Replace CategoryName with the name of the same category you added the page to in step one. This adds PageName to the automatic attention page lists, and brings it to the attention of the knowledgeable Wikipedia editors. Save the page. |
Alba 22:56, 5 April 2006 (UTC)
I'm concerned that the direction here is toward a much higher overhead implementation than is desirable or necessary. Use of list pages like now exist under PNA ( Wikipedia:Pages needing attention/Agriculture, etc) are overly cumbersome to use because they require updates to both article and the list page, and this occurs at both entry-time and at removal-time.
Instead, I think this process should take full advantage of the Category mechanism because this reduces the amount of separate edits needed to just one for entry and one for removal. I'm not sure how to handle the needs areas (like wikify, etc), but at least for topics this should use a pure-category mechanism invoked by a tag. With dates as well, the tag could look something like:
which, besides generating a box on the article, would enter it into appropriate categories as well:
The single edit inserting or removing a simple tag is suitable for human editing. If at some point an ambitious bot programmer could determine an appropriate topic for some articles (say from topical categories that are already referenced by the article), then such a bot could automatically convert {{cleanup}} tags into the topical-category form. - R. S. Shaw 20:42, 5 April 2006 (UTC)
PLEASE PLEASE HELP - We are in crisis mode to clean up articles.
- If you are good with English grammar, you can copyedit one of the following even if you don't know much about Wiki (list of maybe 10 copyedit jobs)
- If you know the basics of Wiki style, please Wikify one of these (list of maybe 10)
- If you know, or are willing to research, one of the following topics, they badly need some substantive editing
and so on. Apollo 11:28, 2 April 2006 (UTC)
This is definitely a proposal whose time has come. I've been meaning to implement something like this for a while, but haven't had much time to devote to Wikipedia.
One of the things that the original cleanup-date conversion was intended to accomplish was to free editors from the bureaucratic task of checking to see if which articles on a very long list had been fixed. The practice of tagging an article makes it possible for an article to be automatically removed from the list when the tag is removed from the article itself.
For this proposal to be most helpful, I think it should either use tags and categories instead of static lists, or the lists should be automatically updated by a bot.
If using tags, there are some choices:
If using a bot to update static lists, I would suggest:
I was also noticing the growing number of articles tagged {{expand}}, and thinking that a similar per-topic classification would be a good idea. Category:Pages needing expert attention is also growing alarmingly large, and obviously it would help a lot if "experts" were actually able to find articles in their field.
If using a bot to update static lists, the bot could create a "attention", "stub", "expand", and "expert" sections for each topic, using the same category lists (or the existing topical stub categories). PNA sections could be transcluded into appropriate Wikiproject pages, so there's a single distribution point for updates. -- Beland 01:42, 3 April 2006 (UTC)
Wow! Glad to have you aboard, Beland.
I think what I was proposing is a mix of several of your ideas listed there. Elements that have come out of discussions include:
Thanks for all your thoughts! Alba 21:46, 3 April 2006 (UTC)
I'm concerned that the direction here is toward a much higher overhead implementation than is desirable or necessary. Use of list pages like now exist under PNA (
Wikipedia:Pages needing attention/Agriculture, etc) are overly cumbersome to use because they require updates to both article and the list page, and this occurs at both entry-time and at removal-time.
Instead, I think this process should take full advantage of the Category mechanism because this reduces the amount of separate edits needed to just one for entry and one for removal. I'm not sure how to handle the needs areas (like wikify, etc), but at least for topics this should use a pure-category mechanism invoked by a tag. With dates as well, the tag could look something like:
which, besides generating a box on the article, would enter it into appropriate categories as well:
The single edit inserting or removing a simple tag is suitable for human editing. If at some point an ambitious bot programmer could determine an appropriate topic for some articles (say from topical categories that are already referenced by the article), then such a bot could automatically convert {{cleanup}} tags into the topical-category form. - R. S. Shaw 20:42, 5 April 2006 (UTC)
What I'm afraid of is a tag like this:
-- for, say, a textdump of building descriptions for al-Azhar University. Could Joe User figure out how to write that? I think not.
Tags-only would be great if a bot were doing everything, but I'm skeptical that a bot can handle everything. My way is more work but a less steep learning curve -- as with AfD, it's possible to explain in short declarative sentences. Turns, roundabouts, etc. Alba 23:05, 5 April 2006 (UTC)
This page contains material moved from Wikipedia:Cleanup process/Cleanup sorting proposal when it became Wikipedia:Cleanup sorting. It contains some useful background and shows some of the proposed ideas before the current approach evolved.
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)
Per the discussions on the talk page, the {{ cleanup}} and {{ cleanup-date}} tags are proposed to be changed to something that describes the edits to be made. Please comment on the proposals below.
The format below is proposed as the new means of posting to Pages needing attention. It is deliberately modeled on the submission process for AfD, a thoroughly field-tested system. The result should be a set of maintained lists, as in the current Pages needing attention pages, as well as a tag/category system that maintains a dynamic listing of topic-specific listings. Since either humans or bots can affix the tags, this system can be used in either an automated or a hand-operated mode.
Vital to the system are the proposed tags {{attention1}}] and {{attention2}}, cognate to {{ afd2}} and {{ afd1}}, respectively.
Once this is in place, the categories and lists so generated can be immediately included in all relevant portals, wikiprojects, user watchlists, etc., etc.
To list an article for Pages needing attention, follow this two-step process, replacing PageName with the name of the page to be attended to.
I. | Add the article to the Pages needing attention category.
Click the link below corresponding to the correct Pages needing attention/Category page.
Replace PageName with the name of the page to be fixed, and include a reason why you think the page needs attention, where indicated. Check the "Watch this page" box if you would like to follow the editing process in your watchlist. Please describe fully what you think is wrong with the article; the more you explain, the more likely the problems are to be fixed, and the faster the fixes will happen. Save the page. |
II. | Put the attention tag on the article.
Edit the article, and put the following tag at the top of the page
Replace CategoryName with the name of the same category you added the page to in step one. This adds PageName to the automatic attention page lists, and brings it to the attention of the knowledgeable Wikipedia editors. Save the page. |
Alba 22:56, 5 April 2006 (UTC)
I'm concerned that the direction here is toward a much higher overhead implementation than is desirable or necessary. Use of list pages like now exist under PNA ( Wikipedia:Pages needing attention/Agriculture, etc) are overly cumbersome to use because they require updates to both article and the list page, and this occurs at both entry-time and at removal-time.
Instead, I think this process should take full advantage of the Category mechanism because this reduces the amount of separate edits needed to just one for entry and one for removal. I'm not sure how to handle the needs areas (like wikify, etc), but at least for topics this should use a pure-category mechanism invoked by a tag. With dates as well, the tag could look something like:
which, besides generating a box on the article, would enter it into appropriate categories as well:
The single edit inserting or removing a simple tag is suitable for human editing. If at some point an ambitious bot programmer could determine an appropriate topic for some articles (say from topical categories that are already referenced by the article), then such a bot could automatically convert {{cleanup}} tags into the topical-category form. - R. S. Shaw 20:42, 5 April 2006 (UTC)
PLEASE PLEASE HELP - We are in crisis mode to clean up articles.
- If you are good with English grammar, you can copyedit one of the following even if you don't know much about Wiki (list of maybe 10 copyedit jobs)
- If you know the basics of Wiki style, please Wikify one of these (list of maybe 10)
- If you know, or are willing to research, one of the following topics, they badly need some substantive editing
and so on. Apollo 11:28, 2 April 2006 (UTC)
This is definitely a proposal whose time has come. I've been meaning to implement something like this for a while, but haven't had much time to devote to Wikipedia.
One of the things that the original cleanup-date conversion was intended to accomplish was to free editors from the bureaucratic task of checking to see if which articles on a very long list had been fixed. The practice of tagging an article makes it possible for an article to be automatically removed from the list when the tag is removed from the article itself.
For this proposal to be most helpful, I think it should either use tags and categories instead of static lists, or the lists should be automatically updated by a bot.
If using tags, there are some choices:
If using a bot to update static lists, I would suggest:
I was also noticing the growing number of articles tagged {{expand}}, and thinking that a similar per-topic classification would be a good idea. Category:Pages needing expert attention is also growing alarmingly large, and obviously it would help a lot if "experts" were actually able to find articles in their field.
If using a bot to update static lists, the bot could create a "attention", "stub", "expand", and "expert" sections for each topic, using the same category lists (or the existing topical stub categories). PNA sections could be transcluded into appropriate Wikiproject pages, so there's a single distribution point for updates. -- Beland 01:42, 3 April 2006 (UTC)
Wow! Glad to have you aboard, Beland.
I think what I was proposing is a mix of several of your ideas listed there. Elements that have come out of discussions include:
Thanks for all your thoughts! Alba 21:46, 3 April 2006 (UTC)
I'm concerned that the direction here is toward a much higher overhead implementation than is desirable or necessary. Use of list pages like now exist under PNA (
Wikipedia:Pages needing attention/Agriculture, etc) are overly cumbersome to use because they require updates to both article and the list page, and this occurs at both entry-time and at removal-time.
Instead, I think this process should take full advantage of the Category mechanism because this reduces the amount of separate edits needed to just one for entry and one for removal. I'm not sure how to handle the needs areas (like wikify, etc), but at least for topics this should use a pure-category mechanism invoked by a tag. With dates as well, the tag could look something like:
which, besides generating a box on the article, would enter it into appropriate categories as well:
The single edit inserting or removing a simple tag is suitable for human editing. If at some point an ambitious bot programmer could determine an appropriate topic for some articles (say from topical categories that are already referenced by the article), then such a bot could automatically convert {{cleanup}} tags into the topical-category form. - R. S. Shaw 20:42, 5 April 2006 (UTC)
What I'm afraid of is a tag like this:
-- for, say, a textdump of building descriptions for al-Azhar University. Could Joe User figure out how to write that? I think not.
Tags-only would be great if a bot were doing everything, but I'm skeptical that a bot can handle everything. My way is more work but a less steep learning curve -- as with AfD, it's possible to explain in short declarative sentences. Turns, roundabouts, etc. Alba 23:05, 5 April 2006 (UTC)